It ‘a shame that the microblogging platform Qaiku still has not found – in general, and in the Italian community in particular – the credit it deserves (in my humble opinion), in light of the features and flexibility of its structure (less minimalist but far more effective than Twitter, just to make a quick comparison between the most diffused platform).
Features such as thematic groups, the possibility (really unique, for what I know) to select the language for messages, or sending images (and now, after the restyling, also more general attachments)… not to talk about the evolved conversational models (inspired to Jaiku, it features the possibility to add real comments to posts, with a build in notification mechanism to inform other participant about your reply)… these are things that might lead someone to a more careful analysis of the platform (which incidentally has been already translated into Italian for the most part, guess who did it…)
This week Qaiku went offline for a few hours, after which users have been surprised to find a substantial “refurbishment” of the site, which just recently celebrated her first birthday.
I followed the adventure of Qaiku from the earliest times (I am still convinced that I was the first to post a message in Italian, to say one thing). I was already there when the infrastructure had just gone out from the “internal” test phase. Time slowly brought a lot of interesting improvement over the original project, but the user base – at an international level (Qaiku is rather strong in Finland, its native country) – perhaps did not expand as the structure deserves.
Now it seems that good things are happening, for Qaiku. Among others, maybe you’ll be glad to know that Ubuntu users can rely on Gwibber – a microblogging client already included in Ubuntu 9.10 – as a powerful tool to access the service, without even having to open a browser.
On this occasion, we publish here a screenshot of the Linux group (which, as any other group, can work selectively in Italian, English or any other language) .. you never know , maybe someone wants to join us …
