When it comes to stuff that’s new and useful, having FriendFeed on tap 24/7 without a browser open is my new favorite, outside of HelloTxt, Twitter (itself), Qik and of course… Flickr. Me loves me some Flickr.

Oh, AlertThingy is what I’m referring to. I recently downloaded it, and within the first day - a shiny new version came out, auto-updated, thanks to AIR being awesome, and I can now Tweet from it. So, now that I’ve added my “with others” feed to FriendFeed as an imaginary friend, I can interact with Twitter and FriendFeed from one AIR app, instead of using Twhirl or somesuch.

Speaking of, Twhirl is great; but with SMS notifications on for what I have them turned on for, and m.twitter.com for my phone, I really don’t have a problem paying attention to Twitter “when needed”… I find that with Twirl, it turns Twitter more into … well… crack.

So, AlertThingy is slick, I keep it open all day, and just watch the feeds I have subscribed to roll on in. You can also tag a post as “Liked”, comment on it, search the timeline, and toggle the alerts, etc from the app. I dig it.

Aggregate (v.) - to bring together; collect into one sum, mass, or body. [link]

Aggregators seem to be all the rage right now. Thankfully I only really need one. (me on FriendFeed, Lifestream.fm, tabber)… Tabber actually is neat, but it’s just not going to really cut it for the power-use I put into the social arena. It’s not that it’s lacking services, which it is, it’s just not “interface” enough.

I do like lightweight apps, I love lightweight interfaces, but when I think aggregation, I think… I need features of those things I’m aggregating on that aggregating aggregate… otherwise, it’s just a reference point which I can see being useful to people who simply “want to keep track” of all their stuff.

So, good times with tabber, not my cup of tea, but it’s light, it’s super straight forward, and very easy… if they turn this into an AIR app, it’ll go farther - I’m tellin ya.

Adobe is definitely flexing their awesome with their not-so-recently released Flex application, Photoshop Express. Ok, it’s no Photoshop CS3, that’s a “duh”, but it’s a full range photography touch-up application with a social network spin on it, that allows you to create galleries, share them with others, and adobe is even kind enough to give you a custom URL that’s easy to rattle off or remember to type.

Features include:

Importing photos from Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa… what?! NO FLICKR?
Create galleries and albums
Edit photos - Crop, touch-up, adjust brightness/saturation/hue, red eye correction
Tune photos -  Highlight, sharpen, soft focus (blur), etc
Apply effects - Pop color,  sketch, distort, etc
Browse the Photoshop Express world of other galleries
Check out your recently viewed
Save favorites,

The whole application is done in Flex, meaning, it has all sorts of neat bubbly feeling interface chunks in it. It’s fun to use, and fast to respond. Ready your RAM though, it does make my browser say “HELLO! I’M #1″.

Overall, Px is super useful, even for a guy with Photoshop CS3 readily available pretty much everywhere I go. If they give me flickr, I’ll be ALL over this like white on rice, lemme tell ya.

If you like dodgeball and use twitter, brightkite is your new best friend. The down and dirty of the site is simply this: create an account and get ready to learn a shit load of SMS commands to control your account.

What can you do: Check into a location, write notes for that location, save’m as placemarks, message your friends, make new friends, and do all the fun that you can expect to do on a social network.

The application is still in development, but the promise of GPS, phone apps, and other fun stuff are still to come. Here are a few things that might … actually WILL come in handy:

1. The SMS cheat sheet: http://brightkite.com/help/sms_guide

2. The SMS reference guide: http://brightkite.com/help/sms_reference

3. The Blog: http://blog.brightkite.com/

All in all, I like it. It’s handy and social network friendly. But, they do have a ways to go for a few things, and I kind of hope they rely more on Twitter and Pownce than relying on their own micro-blogging system… That’s just me though. Woohoo!

Finally a free service that only sucks a little for free mobile based IM. I’d much prefer an install app that clogs up the airwaves with a listening service like Agile Messenger, only their profit model it terrible! even though I have it on my PDA… I’m also not a huge fan of the interface of IM Plus, it’s bulky and the cost for what you get is… sub-good.

So, heysan! is a decent solution, but still not really what I’d like to see on a phone or mobile device for IM. It works for Yahoo!, MSN, AOL/ICQ, and GTalk, which is great - but it relies on browser refresh from the phone, which can be slow to respond, awkward to use (especially the refreshing screen while you’re reading), and the input window is kind of icky.

Complain, complain, complain…I know. Pardon me, I like using messenger’s they’re handy, and over the, the response time is better than SMS (and the character limit isn’t 160 characters)… no matter, I’ll be using heysan! until something better comes along, perhaps it’ll be the 2nd release of heysan! who knows.