It's probable that a good number of the most-followed users on Quora have disabled or filtered many of the notifications from the site, including new followers and replies to posted content. With the site activity spiking in the last 60 days or so, follower notifications were fast and furious into the in box. Today, Quora appears to have reduced their tax on both users' in box and on their servers, in terms of delivering the messages, by capping the update at a single roundup per day.

Minor update you say? Not worth a blog post? Fine. Skip this one. But it's a trend I'd like to see other services adopt or offer as an option.

Most social networks, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and practically everyone, send you individual notices when a single user connects to you. In theory, you should have the time to scan the user's information and choose to follow them back - or just to ignore them. Quora's daily summary is welcome, and is very similar to the SocialToo daily follow/unfollow notifications that Jesse Stay has been offering paid users for the last few years. (Of note, I am an advisor to SocialToo)


For me, after 3,000 or so follower notifications on Quora, it was nice to have absolutely zero updates between the morning of March 4th, and the wrap-up in the evening of March 5th. Now, if I get a minute or two, I can scan the incoming message for interesting people and dedicate time to this, rather than multiple interruptions per day.

If you've previously turned off notifications from Quora, or want to tweak the settings you have now, they've got extremely granular options you can access on your settings page. And if you want to be added to my following list in tomorrow's message, we can get connected here: http://www.quora.com/Louis-Gray.

Apple is at its best when it takes giant leaps forward and risks its reputation on a new product or idea that could change the industry. Arguably its biggest successes in the last decade have been of this variety - from the original iPod and iPhone to the iTunes Music Store, the iPad and the MacBook Air, each of which is iconic, and unquestionably a success. At a time when competition is moving faster and more intelligently than ever before, we've all collectively come to expect the amazing from Apple from every announcement, and simple upgrades with anticipated features don't change the game. The iPad 2 delivered what we expected - faster processors, dual cameras, and a thinner body, great upgrades, but not really much of a stretch. Now we're in a waiting game again, about 9 months to a year from their next announcement (maybe), giving the competition a new target.

When the iPad was introduced in January of 2010, I said no other company could pull off what Apple had, adding "they are going to sell a ton of these machines, and you'll see them in places you never expected." Apple's sales numbers prove that to be true. They've sold excellently, and we've got a pair of them in our home (the original WiFi only version, purchased on day one). The company's focus on interesting markets, such as health care, and gaming, at the iPad 2 unveiling backed up the belief that the iPad would be in a new place for Apple, and the wide range of apps are extending this even further. So as Mac people, Apple people, we get spoiled.

Leaving aside personal preference for one OS or another right now, I've grown somewhat fatigued about iOS in general. Between my iPod Touch and two iPads, the design doesn't seem to have been dramatically upgraded since launch. A little faster here, a little multitasking there, some folders in another area, and the product incrementally proceeds. So too feels the upgrade from iPad (the original) to iPad 2. For existing iPad owners, like myself, the push to upgrade from version one to two is not a big one - unless you can get a sucker to buy the previous rev for a good price on eBay.

What we've come to expect Apple to do - not just the first time, but every time - is to take a big leap, and put themselves on the line for all mankind, with Steve Jobs, the immortal one (we would hope), playing the role of superhero. The floppy disk? Consider it slain. Proprietary networking? Dead. The optical drive? Rolling in the grave. Maybe the next step is to walk away from boxed software altogether? Maybe it's to do away with all wires? What I wouldn't give for a real device with true wireless power...

In the iPad 2, Apple didn't take any risks with the size of the product. No 7-inch model. No small/medium/large, with the exception being the amount of Flash memory and 3G option. And if you were blown away by SmartCovers, then I believe as an industry we're focused on the wrong things. As a long-time Mac viewer, I remember Steve Jobs introducing the Flower Power and Dalmation-colored iMacs, and the iPod Socks (for real) that could protect your iPod while simultaneously confirming you as a doofus.

As Apple pushes forward with the iPad 2, which we can safely say now will be both the volume leader and revenue leader in tablets for the foreseeable future, competitors from all corners, from HP to Blackberry to LG to Samsung to Motorola are preparing alternatives with platforms that quite possibly are more innovative than iOS today. The HP WebOS is worth peeking at. Honeycomb (Android 3.0) is compelling. The PlayBook remains to be seen, but maybe there's a niche out there for it.

I'm all for buying the latest and greatest stuff. It's fun and it's got serious geek bragging rights. If I didn't already have iPads, I would take a serious look at the iPad 2. But I believe I already have the very best product from Apple that is on the market today - the MacBook Air. The Air is a major reason I haven't fallen in love with the iPad. The light portability and thinness of the Air, plus a real keyboard and a real non-mobile OS. While Apple held serve with the iPad 2, it didn't take the risks that we love from Cupertino. It may have the app numbers now, but I can get practically all the apps I want on Android, and the aspects of that OS seem more comfortable and more designed for a cloud-centric era. If this is the Post-PC era, the OS has to be there too, not just the hardware. So Apple, great job, nice work, but I want more. Take a risk with us, so we can do the same with you.

Yobongo, the location-based open chat room for the iPhone and iPod Touch, officially opened its doors this morning, in select cities including San Francisco, Austin and New York City, while in parallel opening the opportunity for desiring cities to vote their way up the priority chart. The idea, as outlined in previous coverage, is putting a forum for discussion in your pocket for your local community to discuss anything in the world.

The service is following Foursquare's roots in starting slow geographically, which will no doubt draw some irritation from expectant users outside the covered geographies, but there's a method to the madness. San Francisco and New York are well-known social media hubs, central to the success of Twitter and Foursquare, and Austin is home to the SXSW event starting next week, which could be a high-profile beginning for Yobongo.

The launch also comes only days after the announcement of Facebook's acquisition of Beluga, a well-received group chat application also expected to make waves at the show. Caleb Elston, cofounder and CEO of Yobongo, says, "If we are not in your city, don't fret! You can vote to bring it to your city next :)" The app is now live on the iTunes Store.

Nearly a year after former Blogger product manager Rick Klau took on the important, if not glamorous, role of heading Google Profiles, the product of his efforts debuted today, letting users make their profiles much more personal than before, with greater customization, improved layout and photo options, presenting an alternative to the Facebook profile or AOL's About.me, for the open Web. The new profiles put the users in control, are more fun, and keep Google Buzz front and center.

Interestingly, as the new profiles debut (mine's here), Rick has simultaneously announced he is moving elsewhere within Google, to act as a new product manager at YouTube, where he's responsible for the video service's home page and social strategy. I know Rick well and consider him a friend, so I hope we see more launches out of YouTube with his fingerprints on it that just might take less than 11 months.


In April of last year, following Rick's move, I suggested ten ideas to redesign the profile and postulated the tie-in with Profiles and Buzz would help the company compete more directly with Facebook. That Buzz remains a center of the new Profiles shows the company may continue this hope, despite some skepticism from the greater tech Web, and as I count down those items I suggested versus what was delivered, it's clear there is still more work to do, which Rick hints at on his blog, where he says there's "a lot more to come in the weeks and months ahead."


Without speculating on the future of Buzz or Google's greater social strategy, the addition of the new Profiles is absolutely welcome. You can see the new profiles bear a profiles.google.com subdomain, while for now at least, the old ones remain at the google.com/profiles subdirectory. (New vs. Old)

Having learned from the Buzz privacy flareups last Spring, sensitive data on the Profile is only shared at your behest, so you can share as much or as little about yourself online as you like. So go check out your new profile, upload some great pics, and take ownership of the way Google presents you.