This is the second in a three part series of posts exploring the new Jaiku client for the Nokia S60 phones. Yesterday several more people were added in to the beta testing, so if you're a Jaiku user. you may have seen lots of chatter and buzz about it. Part 1 of my series can be found here and here.

Just to set the stage clearly, I am only using the Jaiku client on my Nokia N95 for this series of posts. I will certainly want to use it on the other N-series phones, but to really focus on the client, I felt it best to stay on a single platform. We'll look at a few more  screenshots and continue our gentle tour through my experience using Jaiku on my N95. Again, several other bloggers have joined the beta program now. You'll probably be seeing more from them after tomorrow.

Yesterday we looked at Jaiku as a lifestream aggregator and some of the basics. Today we'll look at Jaiku as a status sharing tool, but first, a highlight that got some chatter yesterday as some friends started playing with Jaiku for the first time in depth.

I often say I'm in Olympia, WA for ease of explanation, but I actually live in Lacey, on the Olympia border. Today I fixed my location, partly because of conversation.


The Jaiku client knows where you are, up to a point. This isn't GPS based. In fact, I rarely use the GPS in the N95 myself. And while I don't know of anyone who's seen a good technical explanation, our consensus as users is that Jaiku refreshes location data based on cellular tower locations. If you name a location, such as home or work, Jaiku will remember that name, and associate it with your location automatically.

If you're agreeable to sharing this information, it makes a really interesting tool for people to know where you are. And down the road, it might be nice if it became GPS and map enabled to provide really specific information. But at the moment, there's an element of user control that we'll all appreciate. It's another facet of maintaining our relationships and social network. If I were to find myself in San Jose, and see that a friend from another part of the country was in Mountain View, what a great opportunity to meet up for dinner!

Ok, onward to the way Jaiku lets users post and share information back and forth. There are a few different ways to get to the "Post an update" option. The simplest is to click the Options button on the left side of the screen. Here's the options menu.


This is really the equivalent of the main menu. The first option on the list is to post an update about your status. To say something, or send a Jaiku. Choosing update, gives us a clean and easy input field as shown below.


I typed something in, and actually posted it. You may have spotted this on Jaiku if I'm one of the people on your contact list.

Back at the main screen for Jaiku, we look at the tabs on the top. Each has a purpose.


When we scroll to the right, we move from the main menu into the stream of inputs in Jaiku stream. These are the posts others left, that we'll read and comment on. We're seeing all the Jaikus from the people I'm following, plus any comments on their posts from other Jaikuers. Scrolling down allows me to read older posts. Depending on how long your contact list is, you might scroll down several screens.

Last night we used my friend Darla Mack in the example. Tonight, we'll use my friend Dameon Welch-Abernathy, aka Phoneboy. His is the first entry, and is highlighted. And while this isn't critical business information, Dameon mentioned the homemade lemonade he was having with dinner. 


Now to be really honest, Dameon and I have not yet met in person. But we've done voice and video calls and been friends for quite a while. And who doesn't like lemonade? So I thought I'd like to add a comment to this post. Clicking the Options button on the right in this screen, I'm presented with an option to comment on Dameon's entry. I clicker on comment, and here's what followed.



After I grabbed the screenshot, I hit the left button to Publish, and this too appeared in the Jaiku lifestream of conversations between Dameon and I. And that conversation is open to be read because we're sharing information, albeit trivial in this case.

As I said yesterday, Jaiku is what I call a lifestream aggregator. When you build your profile, you have complete control over what you wish to share of your lifestream of information. For many, that's simply their Jaikus like we looked at in this post. We can share bits of information, posts of our own choosing. These might be travel status, updates on what conference we're heading to, a question, or just a grumble. And for some, it might be a place to post notice of an earthquake, tornado or other disaster. It's your choice as the user.

The ability to read and comment at this level of detail is new functionality in this latest first Nokia client for Jaiku. I think these improvements are huge. Judging from some of the commentary I saw today, I'm not alone in that thinking. And yes, this is purely for the Nokia higher end phones. But Jaiku can do all of this via a web browser. Sometimes I do it from my N800 Internet Tablet; sometimes from my Treo, and sometimes from my PC. And there are Widsets and gadgets to use Jaiku from other places; even a Facebook app that you can read and post from.

In yesterday's post I used Darla as my example. Today I used Dameon. I point that our to reinforce that this Jaiku client has invigorated my viewpoint on how I manage my relationships with people. I'll repeat something from yesterday's post, because in the context of social networks, I think this represents a shift in how we'll view them.

Jaiku let's me look at all the flows my friends have chosen to share, in one place linked to them personally. If RSS enables aggregating information flows, Jaiku refines that and let's me look at flows related to my specific contacts. RSS helps me manage information flow. Jaiku lets me manage my relationships with contacts. I can see what they're doing, thinking, writing in whatever information flows they choose to share. I think we're onto something new, and I think it's important.

I realized more consciously today, after getting some feedback on yesterday's post that how I work has changed. RSS feeds have become overwhelming. And even though I constantly prune and trim what I read, they dump a huge quantity of information in front of my eyeballs every day. The streams of information have led some people to become what Stowe Boyd calls "Attention Economists."

Recently, I think some people looked at my withdrawal from Twitter and may think I've become an attention economist. That's quite the opposite of reality. I think folks like Steve Rubel, Herbert Simon, Tom Davenport, and Linda Stone are way off base. I think they don't get it. And I think Stowe does (recommended blog post here). If anything, I'm probably frustrated that I don't have the time and bandwidth to add to Stowe's thoughts the way I'd like to. It's just a freedom I don't have. In Stowe's post he says:


As technologies go, Jaiku is a laser beam, helping point me toward what's important. Not information, but the people whose thoughts and doings I want to know about. And for me, that's more important that any technical wizardry.

If you haven't signed up for Jaiku yet, now's the time. Changes are afoot, and this really is going to change how a lot of us work, collaborate and share information about ourselves.


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