From filter to aggregation: A look at Threadsy

I'm always looking for new and interesting utilities. The Internet is a wealth of these utilities and many of them are free. In this series of blogs I'll go over some of the best and most interesting I have found - I welcome you to go try one of them and let me know what you think!

 Last month I took a look at a web application intended to primary filter information better. That application, Brizzy, is still something I use. It's a wonderful example of wrapping around a great tool (Twitter) and creating a filter to the noise. Another major revolution (in progress, if you will) is the move towards aggregation. The definition of aggreation is:

An aggregate is a number of people or things that are being considered as a single thing

And Threadsy does that incredibly well. Threadsy takes your email and social networking accounts and aggregates them all into one, single interface. The sheer number of types of mail accounts supported here are incredible, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, Google Apps, even straight up IMAP servers. Threadsy also includes support for social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The result is an interface that is truly incredible. Many shots of the interface are all over the Internet.

The clear polish of this tool is evident in many of the interface elements on display. From the support for a number of accounts, to the ability to rename mail accounts to short names to the support for multiple Twitter accounts. This is the kind of aggregation you need if you hold a number of email addresses or Twitter accounts (and really, these days, who doesn't)? Threadsy also does some of the things Brizzly does - like the automatic expansion of short urls (like bit.ly).

Threadsy is currently an invite-only tool. You can request your invitation by providing your email address here. Give it a shot.

Also, with a little more information on Threadsy, here's a video of a recent presentation on the new web app.

Windows and the Black Screen of CRAP!

If you've been following some of the more recent news on Windows - you'll have come across stories about a "recent" patch from Microsoft causing what is called a "Black screen of death". The fix to this seemingly unknown problem comes from a security firm name Prevx. This stuff is problematic on so many levels.

#1 - The problem is VERY poorly defined. The patch that supposedly causes this problem may have been released on Nov 10th, but no one seems to know what patch that is or can site the name/kb number of the patch itself.

#2. This problem is not a new or unique issue - the supposed "Black screen of death" can be cause by forms of malware and certainly other applications that may not have been installed properly. For Prevx to say "If you have these symptoms you can safely try our free Black Screen Fix" is inviting problems and fixes to problems that may not exist.

#3 - It's inviting poor users to act more poorly as users - Yes, I know that's a bit of a mouthful - but the very purpose of malicious software is to take advantage of ambiguity to get the user to run THEIR executable on a user's computer. In this case, a security firm is now describing an ambiguous problem, caused by an unknown patch and saying you can download THEIR executable to fix it. Suspect.

This may turn out to be a real issue - and it may be a well defined problem in the future (based on another Microsoft mess-up), but please, people, be skeptical before playing into this hype.

UPDATE:  I have found more details from Zdnet that seem to confirm the issue on Windows is real and related to the recent update numbered MS09-065.