Odd, I thought. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

This morning Jon Christopher mentioned that a “Random tweet from someone [he's] *not* following showed up in Tweetie”.

A few minutes ago, Faruk AteÅŸ said the same thing happened to him.

On my count that is three people and I can only imagine out of millions of Twitter users that it is happening to others as well. I am not sure what is going on, but like the Persians led by Cyrus the Great in October 540 BC when they diverted the Euphrates river to enter Babylon, something or someone is diverting the Twitter stream.

Update: It turns out Twitter knows about the problem. I just hope people that have their Twitter profiles private are secure.

Today it changes again. I’ve decided that my personal blog being ‘named’ my name just wasn’t working. I’ve known this for a long time but I didn’t do anything about it because I wasn’t sure what to do. Finally I got sick and tired of thinking about it and just decided to name it after what it has already become, rather than naming it something I’d like it to become. If that makes any sense.

As of today this blog, which is still going to be my personal Web site in all of the glory that it has come to be, is known as First Initial, Last Name – The official Web site of Colin Devroe.

For several years I have admired the ‘blogs’ that have been branded with their own names yet are run by one or very few people. If you read this blog with any regularity you can probably guess the forthcoming list, but here it is anyway: Daring Fireball run by John Gruber, Waxy.org by Andy Baio, Avalonstar by Bryan Veloso, Waking Ideas by Daniel Nicolas, Monday by Noon by Jon Christopher – and many, many others. I’m listing my friends who are good examples because, well, they are my friends and this is my blog and I can do that sort of thing.

This doesn’t mean that I put my own personal blog in this same line up. I don’t. It isn’t worthy. Also, some of these examples shouldn’t be classified as blogs. Daring Fireball is a business. It is the way John feeds his family. It just so happens that John’s business is “blogging”. This site will never be a Daring Fireball.

So First Initial, Last Name it is. I may grab an appropriate domain name for it, at some point, but I’ve always done more than fine with cdevroe.com so I don’t see that happening any time soon. Who types in domain names more than once or twice anyway, really? You should have subscribed to this site by now.

Side note: I’ve recently added the Share This button to my site (come to this post to see it). If you feel that anything I share on this site is worthy of letting others know about, please consider using this button to make it quick and easy to share the post, photo, or video on your service of choice.

Thanks to all of you that subscribe, read, and participate on my site. I really do appreciate it.

New York is easily one of my favorite cities. The last time I was there I had the privilege of eating some really delicious Thai food, drink at an authentic Irish Pub, and scarf down 4,000 calories worth of White House burgers. Where else can you do that?

The Thai food that we had was at Thai Basil on 9th Ave. and W. 56th St. Thai Basil is, or rather was, what seems to be, a repurposed hallway or stairwell turned restraurant with a few small tables. The decor is clean, simple, and in typical asian style. The service was proper, prompt, and delicate.

Chris and Jon had either never had, or seldom had, Thai food before that day. So we were all in for a treat. Chris got squid and something curried. I can’t even remember, now, what I got. But it was delicious. Although 9th Ave. between West 54th and 56th streets is riddled with what I am sure is excellent Thai food restaurants – I can recommend Thai Basil on Manhattan.

The Irish Pub (which could have been either McGee’s on W. 55th or Connolly’s on E. 47th or maybe even a different pub altogether) all I know is that we walked, and walked, and walked before we stopped here for a couple of appetizers and some beer. Speaking of beer Jon had some sort of light beer. I had to fight off the entire staff to keep them from throwing Jon out by his neck and belt loop. While I was wrestling with the barkeep – I managed to scarf down a bunch of stuff mushrooms. Shhh, do you hear that? Ireland is absolutely screaming for Eliza and I to visit.

And the day was just getting started.

We had a lot more walking to do this day. You see, we’re not from New York City and so this is sort of a novel thing. Walking. Everywhere. To the library (which was closed). To another library (which was lame). To the pub, to a restaurant, through Times Square, back to our hotel, to the parking garage, back to the hotel, and ultimately – late at night – to White Castle.

I know what you might be thinking. Isn’t this post supposed to be about No Reservations? Anthony Bourdain’s show about traveling the world and eating some of the best food ever made by human hands? Yes. But if I know Tony. He digs a late night White Castle burger binge. So, off we went. Twelve blocks to the nearest White Castle. No problem. We had already walked miles and miles that day – why not a few more footsteps? We all ordered the exact same meal. Ten burgers and two fries. We ended up giving some of the food to a beggar sitting outside of White Castle (smart man). But most of us finished our double-portions of the greesy, grimey, and some would say disgusting little burgers that leave a wet spot on any table you set them on. I was sick.

In case you didn’t know the sign that you had a successful visit to White Castle is if you leave feeling like you want to puke.

Overall we had a very good time in New York. I always do. That is why I enjoyed seeing a different side of New York than the one I typically get to see in the latest episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. Tony’s side. In this week’s episode Anthony shows us a portion of New York City that is slowly disappearing, being replaced, rebuilt, torn down, or put up for sale. Sad? Maybe for people like Tony who grew up in and around New York and have a history there. But for those of us that come into the city on occasion to soak up some of the city life, the culture, the food, the architecture, the noises, and again the food – New York is always changing. Always disappearing, being rebuilt, replaced, torn down, or being sold. It is what makes New York, New York.

Photo credit: Jon Christopher.

(Source: Comparing Safari 3.1 and Firefox 3 Beta 4 – Monday By Noon)

After reading through your list of feature requests I’m not so sure I have a ton to add at the outset. But here are some things I’d like to see added “long term” (and may even take the time to help you with should I get a few free moments):

1. Export to vCard
You can setup a permalink per contact (an address card if you will) then just push the URL of said card to Technorati’s Contact Service (eg. my vCard).

2. Option to show and/or link to maps service.
Typically a link would be created to open the current address in Google/Yahoo! Maps or Mapquest. However now that Google Maps can be embedded easily I think it’d be a nice addition.

3. iPhone version
Perhaps this is in your plans with the ‘mobile version’ you mentioned. The iPhone could easily navigate the current layout (since it has a full version of mobile Safari running Webkit) – but creating a simple look up and entry point for this application for the iPhone would be killer. I could see companies or family sharing a contacts database this way.

4. hAtom for the hell of it?
The main reason I think it’d be cool to add hAtom is so that coworkers or family members could subscribe to changes found in the database. If someone’s number is changed and/or a new contact is added to the database by one of the applications users – all other users would be notified via a feed.

5. Data import / export / share.
Obviously having some way to import my current address book would be killer. Also, exporting for backup or moving to another platform (or just into my address book) would be killer too. Exporting into vCard per card is ok but if we could have one big vCard with all contacts that’d be neat). This could be done pretty easily with a large list of all contacts on a single sheet marked up with hCard. Though that probably wouldn’t scale too hot.

Sharing though – is something I think would be really neat. It’d be neat to create a community around this project and allow people to share their contact information through this system automatically importing anyone that shares their information into a new “company” called “shared contacts”. Quick and easy way to get in contact with other people that use this app. Just a thought.

6. AIM / Skype contact information
I suppose support for Yahoo!, MSN, Jabber, Gmail, etc would be a plus. But for me AIM and Skype information is crucial.

This isn’t all – I will have more. Now you have wanting to help you out!!

I’m leaving comments off on this post because all discussion surrounding this project should be done on his site.