Twhirl and Alert Thingy are both well built little apps that are getting a lot of attention lately, but neither of them have rethought the way we need to communicate at all.  With Twitter in the picture, we can no longer use the same paradigms from email, RSS, or even IM.  Twitter is omni-directional, mobile, time-sensitive, and overwhelming in quantity.  Voices are rising louder and louder complaining about how they are drowning in twitter messages, and so far applications have only been concerned with enabling users to get even more content, not less.  Every day I realize the harsh reality that I cannot keep track of the entire Internet, and I quite literally dream of a service that would lower the signal to noise ratio.  Here’s where everyone (including Twitter) is missing the mark: Read the rest of this entry »