Thanks to a tweet from FrankArr I’ve been playing with Digsby, a fairly new combined IM, Email and Social Networking client.

So what does that all mean?

Essentially it provides a replacement to the Windows Live Messenger and GTalk clients I usually have running on my dekstop. In that role it’s much like Pidgin or AdiumX for Mac users and does the job at least as well as they do. It still needs a bit more polish to get it on par with more developed clients for things like smileys but it does what it says on the tin (and I get tabbed chat which I love!)

The it adds on a notified for Social Networking tools like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook to let you see messages, alerts, status changes and what have you. It saves me many a wasted moment in the browser checking these things. You can even respond to some things directly, or get taken straight to the relevant item to manipulate it however you want.

Finally it acts as a mail poller for Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, POP3 and IMAP accounts – letting you read, manage and reply to email.

If it continue to evolve and deliver a stable, reliable, light footprint (resources and screen real estate) client I think it’s going to be a keeper.

It’s not going to replace Outlook (or Communicator for Exchange based IM and phone control) any time soon, and it doesn’t support Skype or MagicJack to manage all my communications … but who knows what the next build will bring :)

At little late with the news (but Michael's posting prompted me to follow up) - it looks like Facebook have made another one of their leaps to keep the other Social Networks wondering what they need to do to keep up.

Last year Facebook opened up their platform. It gave app developers the chance to write and deploy viral apps that any Facebook user could add to their profile and interact with. Sadly that has resulted in an increase in Facebook spam (hint: I don't want to battle your virtual vampire or send you a pixilated pina colada) but over time hopefully ranking of apps and increased user awareness (just like for any other sort of spam) we'll start to see some really useful apps turning up on the platform.

Well, they've now taken it a step further. They have opened up a JavaScript driven API that allows anyone with an HTML page to embed a Facebook app on their site.

Essentially it means that as a site developer you now have access to the Facebook infrastructure to build your own niche social network - saving you time and effort, giving you a robust, scalable platform, and giving Facebook potential new users as people sign up to take advantage of your network.

TechCrunch call it a clever move. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for the first really cool use of this extension to the platform.

Looks like I was right when I said that I guessed it was just an unintended consequence when Facebook implemented the beacon that accidental data leakage count occur.

The process has now been tweaked and looks like it's working just how I'd expect it to - keeping me in control of my personal information.

Good on you Facebook for listening and doing the right thing.

I'm a fan of Facebook and the concept of social networking and their particular slant on things. I'm also really intrigued what's going to happen as their platform continues to evolve over time.

One thing I'm a little wary of however is invasive advertising and accidental leakage of personal data.

I was initially quite surprised when I logged into my wifes Blockbuster account today and had it offer to send my data to my Facebook profile.

Luckily I managed to hit the "no thanks" button before it did (not that I have any credibility in my taste in movies, but my daughters SpongeBob wish list wouldn't help!)

I did a little bit of searching on the web to see what was going on and discovered I was behind the curve on the outrage that had accompanied this which meant I was able to look at it with less vehemence than some had visited upon Facebook and their partners.

My biggest concern I guess it having Blockbuster and others sharing data without giving me obvious and timely control over the process, especially when the data it's about to share is wrong!

I elect to share my twitter posts, or Last.FM data publicly because there's nothing private and personal. But I do consider my movie and TV viewing or Amazon purchases to be private - not just because I don't see value in sharing them simply to help someone (be it Facebook, Google or Amazon) track data about me but also because I don't like the potential inferences they may make because they don't have context surrounding the decisions. I don't watch SpongeBob, my daughter does. I didn't rent Forever Young with Mel Gibson, my wife did. I didn't buy a book on Renaissance painters for me, it was a gift for my Mum.

If I can control what is shared and when (so I can give it context or filter the irrelevant) then I'd be happy to share data with them. If Blockbuster or Amazon included something like the MadKast "ShareThis" widget or AdaptiveBlue Smartlinks on every line (ideally with a multi-select option for my Blockbuster queue).

If it makes the advertising and personalization more appropriate, just in the same way I love the idea of fine-tuned TV advertising, I'd be happy to share.

For now though, I've added a new AD Blocker filter rule to IE7Pro - all calls to *.facebook.com/beacon/* get blocked ... when I get a bit more granular control I'll be happy to turn the rule off again.

FWIW I don't think Facebook did it to be sneaky or "evil", they simply didn't look at it quite as carefully as they could have and think about the unintended consequences.

I am at Defrag in Denver for the next couple of days. Because I'm taking notes on paper and not live blogging (I hate this portable keyboard. must get a better solution before my next trip) I'll link to Phil Windley who is doing a great job.

There are some really amazing speakers and conversations going on. I'm really glad to be here. I hope to gather my thoughts later in the week... 

When I remember I Twitter. I'm not very reliable or consistent in my posting (and I'm more likely to use it from the web than SMS that maybe cuts down the spontaneity (must get a cellphone plan with including texting).

Just like updating my Facebook status or changing my Messenger status I'm not really sure that it adds much to the communications with my friends (though I get enough complaints when I go quiet for a week that maybe it is).

I've finally found an explanation for maybe why it is worth updating these status messages - this exhaust data confirms that the network is alive and well and it just performs a comforting action. I even found out there is a term for this sort of small talk - Phatic communication.

So no, Twitter isn't just noise... it provides social reassurance, confirmation that the network is working and... an opportunity to learn random titbits.

To the right you will notice a series of monsters.

They all have something in common.

Can you guess what it is?

They represent the various email addresses that I've used on a regular basis over the last decade using a new authentication / anti-spoofing technique called MonsterID that has been implemented in a number of programming languages to make it easy to adopt.

The idea is pretty simple.

If you're presented with a login form and you know what certain input should generate graphically then it's hard for a fake site to spoof that input (for instance you enter your userid and as well as your password you then have to select the correct critter from a page of randomly generated ones. Obviously to make a site secure the seeding and images would have to be unique to that site to avoid simple spoofing from the common set of images.

The system can also be used to automatically generate cute alternative icons for a system such as Gravatar. In that case a common consistent set of images would be handy to help you recognize "friends" across different networks.

It looks like the latter form of MonsterID may well make it into my new blog platform of choice which will certainly liven the themes up a little.

The folks behind BlogEngine.net are certainly taking securing the platform against robot form fillers, comment and trackback spammers quite seriously and if MonsterIDs somehow add another level of protection I'll be glad to see them make an appearance in an upcoming release ;)