After learning about <> () today, I was tempted to try it out. The basic idea behind it is to create a page where all the stuff you're doing online comes together, like <> on Speed. Every user creates his or her own page that shows the last photos you've sent to <>, the last thing you've linked to on <>, your latest <> videos, blog posts and what not. All this stuff is aggregated into a neat AJAXish interface. A desktop client for Windows and Linux is also available.

Wait, what? I can hear you say. Yes, there's no desktop client for the Mac, so why is there one for Linux? Because the company behind mugshot is not Google, Yahoo or any of the big Web 2.0 players. It's Red Hat. Yes, the Linux distributor. And in case you're wondering whether the source code is available: <>.

You can't get a lot of information from the <>, the <> or the <> (just have a look at the URL!) about how it's like to be a Mugshot user. The only possiblity is to create an account. After having tried Mugshot for about 15 minutes, I decided not to use it.

The main reason is the lack of documentation. I couldn't find out after two hours how to add a news feed for my favorite blogs. Maybe that's because it's not possible (although I've seen feeds on other people's Mugshot pages), but it would be nice if the site would clearly say that somewhere. Maybe you can add feeds via the Mugshot desktop application. But, left alone the fact that there's no package available for <>, it reminds me way too much of <>.

The second reason is, in order to interact with your (real life) friends using Mugshot, they need an account as well. You can't add someone else's Flickr photostream, for example. Yes, this is basically a good thing, but it makes Mugshot unusable for the kind of "centralized whats-going-on site" I was hoping to turn it into. Back to developing this shit myself.