Well. Yeah. There’s that. But, hold on… putting Twitter in the same league as other popular networking tools is also a mistake. Here are some reasons which put Twitter ahead of the game and might probably give you enough incentive to join.

1. Gather information. More importantly, let others gather it for you.

Face it, there’s a lot of information out there. An overwhelming amount… and you may not know all the places to look for the juicy bits.

And, while you can find articles and resources for what you need by yourself, when you follow knowledgeable people, they may be able to provide you with certain material that you may have previously been unaware of. After all, they are more experienced in their respective fields and so, are the best people to tell you about the latest or coolest things.

Also, if you follow people who are into the kind of stuff you’re into, you benefit directly from whatever information they put out there in the form of tweets. Just sit back and let all that great information come to you.

2. Receive breaking news

If anything happens, it’ll break on Twitter first. Has the moon been sighted for Eid tomorrow? Just log onto Twitter and you’ll be able to tap information from Muslims around the globe with updates every other second. Did that volcano erupt again? Find out what stranded passengers are thinking exactly at this moment.

Whether it’s a celebration or a catastrophe, Twits (twitter users) are quick to spread the word, and the word spreads pretty fast.

3. Connect and stay up-to-date

There are tons of cool people on Twitter and now you have a way to keep up with them. You get to connect with and know about people you normally wouldn’t know so up-close and personal.

The good thing about Twitter is that it verifies accounts of celebs, politicians or other high profile people. This way, you know that they really are the people they claim to be and that you’re getting information or news about them, directly from them.

No more worrying about the media taking their words out of context, you get it straight from the horse’s mouth.

4. Use it like a marketing tool

If you have a brand, website or blog, tweeting about it is a good way of promotion. If it turns out to be something of interest to the public, your tweet will likely get ‘re-tweeted’ or re-posted by others to their followers and so on. This will result in more traffic to your site and more popularity for your brand.

5. It’ll teach you about being ‘to the point’

Twitter updates can only be made in 140 characters or less. Crafting your entire message into just one or two sentences requires that you be clear and concise and creative. Instead of posting rants, learning to get your point across in as few words as possible will help you become a better communicator.

6. Get help and suggestions from followers

If you need help or suggestions, asking for it is just a tweet away. Most likely, you will be following a wide variety of people and most of them will probably be following you back. Your tweet for help is very likely to be answered by someone with relevant information.

Well, seeing all the positives that Twitter has to offer, you’ve got nothing to lose and only to gain by signing up for an account. So go on over to www.twitter.com and enter the Twitterverse

Oh, and, don’t forget to give us a follow here: http://twitter.com/ammultimedia. We intend to start keeping you posted on interesting stuff soon enough.

Thanks to social media networks, the World Cup 2010 is enjoying its largest audience yet and is probably the first event of massive international interest to be celebrated over the triple W.

Through the internet, you have a number of options on how to keep yourself posted about what’s going down, no matter if you’re out with friends, at home or at *cough* work *cough*.

Website

First thing’s first: Bookmark the schedule off of FIFA’s website:

Remember to click on “Match times are currently set to your time zone, please click here to revert to local time.” to convert the time to your local time.

The website has a wealth of information about the players, matches, stats and much much more.

Smartphone App

Always on the move? For a free mobile app that’ll keep you updated with stats, scores and more, head on over to Goal Mobile (goal.mwap.at) with your phone and install it.

Facebook

• Offical World Cup 2010 facebook page
• Follow your favorite team on facebook
• South Africa 2010 Fifa World Cup Group

Twitter

• Twitter’s dedicated page specially for the World Cup
• Direct updates provided by the Official Site of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
• Follow your country on twitter.

Youtube Channels

• FIFA World Cup 2010
• WorldCupOfficial2010

More Video

• Livesoccertv.com
• Fifa.com
• Footytube.com

If you haven’t had the pleasure of listening to the awesome World Cup 2010 theme song, Waving Flag by KNAAN, we’ll just leave the youtube version for you here:

Do you have any other favorite sites or apps which help you keep up with the World Cup 2010? Do share them with everyone and help bring the fever down.

If you like hanging out or exploring your city, you might find it an interesting concept to know which of your friends are close by. The catch is that you have to “check-in” whenever you’re at some venue in your city. Doing this will broadcast your location to your friends. Say you’re at Papa John’s. Just check-in and if any of your friends happen to be close by, they’ll know you’re there and can decide to join you (or avoid you depending on what kind of friends you have!).

iPhone app for Foursquare

In order to make sure that people stay motivated to keep checking in to places, the makers have devised a clever little reward system which rewards a person with either badges or mayoralty for checking in. If you visit a venue more often than other people, you get to be “Mayor” of that venue. Your name and designation is visible to anyone who views the venue. Also, the more you check-in, the more badges you unlock. Plus, if you’re at a coffee shop like Starbucks, you have the option to leave tips for other people like “Don’t forget to try the Maltesers milkshake!”

If you don’t find one of your favorite locations listed, you can add it in yourself. Apart from this, small business owners can benefit by listing themselves and therefore advertising their existence to users who live within their proximity. Business owners can “confirm” themselves as managers of their venues (there’s a procedure for this where the foursquare sales team has to contact you, but they may or may not respond depending on your location). Being a manager means you can view special stats about visitors and their frequency as well as offer specials or discounts to frequent visitors or Mayors.

Although it sounds like all fun, games and a great way to keep up with friends for some people, others are wary of letting people know their exact locations at all times. But then again, as with any social networking site, you have ultimate control on how much information you want to share. Remember, you’re only as safe as your last status update.

No sooner did news of the iPad’s release come out that a slew of ‘iPad killers’ started creeping out of the woodwork. At the top of the list we have the German made Wepad, the Google tablet and the HP slate, all promised to be released later this year. It’s no wonder that 2010 is being called ‘The year of the tablet’.

Since trying to beat the iPad for its slick interface design and usability seems to be something of a lost cause, at least until someone comes up with their own little design revolution, what exactly do the others have to offer that the iPad doesn’t?

Well, the Wepad, among other things, offers support for flash, a webcam and unconditional multitasking… all of which the iPad does not. Since these were considered to be features severely lacking in the iPad, the Wepad, which also touts a larger screen, has garnered some significant interest.

Also, Google is getting ready to release their own tablet. There have been reports that Google has been working on the idea “for the past 18 months” and have produced “several working models of a touch tablet”. After launching their Nexus smartphone to positive reviews, it should be interesting to see what Google will be rolling out in terms of tablet technology.

According to Information Week, HP’s yet-to-be-named slate computer features a 1.6 GHz processor (just like the Wepad, against the iPad’s 1.0 GHz) and 1 GB of DDR RAM. HP’s slate also runs on Windows Home 7 Premium, includes a VGA Webcam, and a graphics chip that supports 1080p high-definition video playback.

But in all fairness, the iPad was never actually meant to compete with the big boys in the first place. No matter how people joke about it… at the end of the day, it was really just meant to be an oversized iPod-touch. Probably what Apple might have going for them is that they are putting as much effort into their tablet’s content as they are into the gadget itself. If reports that Apple is trying to secure TV show subscription packages for the iTunes store is any indication, it seems that they pushing forward in their aim to provide music, video and TV content to cover all our infotainment needs.

Just when you thought that there couldn’t possibly be another networking site, out came Google Wave. Well, it’s not technically out yet. It’s still in its “get-an-account-through-invite-only” phase and isn’t visibly making much of a wave in the Middle East as of yet. Quite unlike abroad, where people are actually making money by peddling invites on ebay!

But, is it really any different from the others? I mean, for Google to walk into social networking territory amongst giants like Myspace and Facebook, wouldn’t it truly have to offer a unique experience that would make it stand out and be the communication medium of choice?

The creators of Google Wave, the Rasmussen brothers who were also the brains behind Google Maps, had a vision to unite different methods of communication. So, where people saw email and chat as two different things, they saw it as one. Where people thought about sending and receiving documents, they thought about sharing them. All neat and tidy, in one place. According to them, Google Wave would “kill e-mail and forever change online communication.”

The AM team’s curiosity got the better of them and they decided to give Google Wave a go when they needed to collaborate on projects over long distance. The sessions weren’t too bad. With what felt like a mixture of email, chat and file sharing… it proved to be a pretty effective tool for team collaboration. Co-writing documents couldn’t be easier.

Some of the cool features worth mentioning would be real-time updates where multiple users can be shown adding or updating content in real time(unlike chat conferences, where it is more turn based, mind you), conversation replays for people who come into a conversation late and want to know who updated what and in which order(our favorite feature) and private messaging between a subgroup of users within a group chat.

Even so, it might take a little more work before it appeals to the general public. At the moment it might look a little bland. The interface, at times, does feel a wee bit clunky and could do with a makeover.

If you haven’t tried it out yet, you probably might want to see what all the fuss is about. But that would mean that you would have to sign up for an invite and wait for the Google Wave team to grace you with one. And of course, it’s no fun to use it alone which is why they give you your own set of invites which you can then distribute amongst friends and colleagues and ultimately proceed to have a blast.