These are a few quotes or borrowed Brianisms in the inside cover. They don’t present quite the same way in html. Felt like sharing.

Brian Henshall

MY LIFE IN SIX WORDS…

Bristol mated - project sated - kiwi elated.

Brianisms…

It pays to be an optimist:   Optimists live longer than pessimists.

No one of us is as important as all of us.

Always look on the bright side of life. [as from LIFE OF BRIAN by MONTY PYTHON]

This one “No one of us is as important as all of us” has been consistently influenced my thinking as I’ve gone through and  thought about life. Thanks Dad!

Story Bought new iPhone today. No contacts. Only knew TwitterID’s Sent Phweets! Made calls. Who needs an address book? Think about it. I did

I spent almost four hours in an iPhone store today. Downtown SF. I have the tweets to prove it. I was using Twinkle at the time. However, after they’d taken my SIM from the old iPhone and put it in the new 3G one… my address book was gone. Yep still had my email. Everything just works on Google! But my address book. Not a number.

Never fear as the story above said. I started sending Phweets out. In fact I’d been hitting Twitter at the Nokia Breakfast hosted by Gigaom. Good to get out. I’m still concerned that the discussion was too open source. The developers are right to push it, the problem is it currently isn’t always providing the solutions that you and I want in that mobile social world. I asked them how OpenSource was going to help us get more Open Telephony? How will it empower you and me. After that I kept silent… sort of.

So I exited the Intercontinetal. My daughter had been beating me up about an iPhone and I’d just come out having done a Phweet demo on Edge. Worked perfectly well. We’ve been experimenting with the iPhone to activate a dial-in connection. So you can take your Phweet on the iPhone with just a click and confirm. A little way to go still.

Had lots of fun in the store while waiting for AT&T. The service experience was appalling. I’d love to have shopped elsewhere and I would have paid 1500.00 for the privilege of not having to deal with AT&T in a second. I still don’t know if my account is “right” as it is not yet updated online. STUPID.

What was fun was demo Phweet in the store and showing them phweet working in tandem with Twinkle. Potentially any Twitter app on the iPhone could be making Phweet Talk to anyone anywhere at anytime.

I said this was all changing me. I’m going to twitter more and more. I am going to blog less and less and I am going to participate in more discussions with interesting people than ever before possible. If the whole world can talk without friction but merely based on personal choice then we have made the world a better place. Just think… you are going to have a world where if the phone rings… you chose to make it ring!

Now that’s progress.

• The Five Big Mistakes That Changed My Life and How I Moved Past Them - SmartNow.com
  Interesting!
  (tags: startups psychology pets.com)

Who might get the first 100 in a call and indeed how manageable will it be. What new things will we have to add? And more. My list is growing.

I am going to talk about one Phweet in particular that I both enjoyed and learned more than I can write here tonight at the end of a long day. I ended up speaking to “CleverClogs” and the funny thing is she sounded just like she should! Marjolein Hoekstra thank you for your advice and insight. We nailed bugs, I got chastised for not providing step by step instructions and some breadcrumbs perhaps for letting people know what step or stage they are in. I learned a lot more too. I’m now walking in new Clogs across new territory for me. Marjolein runs @twtooltrack something I could identify from after working the Skype Journal so many years ago. @twtooltrack may not have a Techcrunch following but only took me two minutes to start following. Here was my first introduction to the Twitter community and I’m not even sure I’m ready for it.

I shared that we have already started with an early PhweetAPI. That we’d love to get Twitter Developer input on how to voice activate their applications and solutions with a “Phweetman” button. I really believe that when a community can talk together they have the potential to grow together. I know nothing of the “politics” or if there are any behind the Twitter API (no I’m not totally naive!)

I had another group of conversations that packed me with further excitement and insight. I concluded we need bodies and we need to go from 2 people to 10 people in days not weeks or months. I’m really hoping for some self-selection. People that grok Twitter and know how to make a difference and can tell us how.

I also got great suggestions for other ways to use the PhweetURL. Ways to keep it in a session and almost permanent. I almost can’t wait to see the first hacks of Phweet. It will be another signal telling us what to do next.

In the meantime a huge thank you to all Phweet’s new followers today and all who have blogged it. I’m trying to find them. If you like Phweet - well please Phweet. If you have problems I want to get it fixed. So Phweet me @stuarthenshall.

PS the picture is of a set of CLOGS I was given that were made and custom painted for me when I left Holland in 1983. They are a very fond memory of a very first job! Hardly painted in the traditional fashion and I have big feet.

Phweet lets you accept calls with one click from your Twitter page or Twitter clients.  Phweet is a simple service where you don’t need to download or share anything more to talk. The call is contained within a PhweetUrl;  a smart link that calls you.  And you can share who you are talking to in real time without having to reveal or exchange phone numbers or other identities.

New Conversation Paradigm:

Phweet empowers you to adopt new conversational techniques where you have complete control. Phweet helps you share who you are talking with and builds new conversations. You choose whether you promote the conversation or keep it strictly private. You can easily Host conference calls on any subject and control who participates. You can request to join other live conversations; and the Host may approve your request.  No need to share or make additional information public (phone numbers, ID’s or other details).

Your conversation is contained in the unique PhweetURL generated for that call. It’s all you need. And you control it.

How does it Work?

Sign-in with your Twitter name and password at www.phweet.com.  Select your preferred channel (Browser, SIP ID or number/Mobile Phone which will be enabled later) for hosting/accepting a Phweet. Add the Twitter username of the person you want to talk to, and send them a message (public or direct/private).

That’s it.  The PhweetUrl does the rest for you. Once your conversation ends, the unique URL expires and your session message board disappears with it.

Phweet is a simple idea. A mashup of telecommunications, microblogging and chat.  It brings real “presence” and context to open up communications. Phweet will initially enable free calls between Twitter friends. Before long, it will add many more social networks. The Phweet API enables application developers to quickly integrate “talk” and put all “calls” on speed dial without the need for complicated  coding or infrastructure.

Smart Links are the new way to talk. Don’t dial - Phweet!

How do I know Phweet secures my Privacy?

Every Phweet is a unique URL that expires when you end your Phweet session. What remains are just a few tweets.

Our PhweetVision

Our PhweetURLs are smart links that make communication more social.  Today we are operating off Twitter and Twitter clients, tomorrow it will be all other social networks!  Our vision Is to create a more open telephony and communications environment where the users take control and are not dictated to by numbers, directory services, or tariff barriers, while retaining increased control over their privacy and presence information.

Phweet frees communications from centralized directory services replacing the traditional telephone exchange (or log-in server) with a simple hyperlink or Phweet URL. Our business development is focused on developing the linking paradigm for communications. We are not in the twitter (et al) applications business. In fact our API will enable any application developer to add a “Phweet Button” to make creating talk requests as easy as pushing a speed dial button.

Who’s behind Phweet?

Stuart Henshall and David Beckemeyer who combine a wealth of experience across VoIP, social media and social networking, and want to push social communications in new directions.

This post duplicates our original About page.

Not long after getting David’s commitment and recently off completing an assignment with Bo for a quite separate application,  where we’d hooked up as he’d just finished another Facebook application. We ended up working our tails off on that one too. Bo also knows I become pretty driven when there are deadlines to meet. We really hammered out that concept.

So was quite natural to turn to Bo and start sharing my latest idea. Much like David at first he didn’t get it. He prodded me and probed me as I brain dumped again what became the initial screens on a whiteboard. It was an important session as I then went home and mocked them up into something that isn’t all that far from the alpha we have today.

Bo went to work thinking further out and detailing use cases. We began talking about what it would look like. I sent him a crude brief. A few days later I had back the first iterations of Phweet in Black and White. Some extra talent and time went into the lettering.

I know Phweet and the Phweetman together and separate are just perfect for what we needed. I spent years in major consumer products companies and have developed many brands from scratch. We had none of the BS and we got something together quick. It didn’t come without creative tension. It did come with a dose of reality to get it done fast. Simple learning. Don’t agonize over things that are basically right.

Bo then began working on a broader color palette and thinking about something much beyond our Alpha version. What you see today is not what he’d want it to look like. It’s where the combination of expediency and my crappy CSS skills got us. We know we have some fixes to do and a huge opportunity to learn from usability and user comments.

Bo will want your insight and we need lots of users, support and probably dollars to take the emergence of something that can be great to the next level.

We’re launching Phweet today. It has involved me in two fantastic relationships which have pushed my creativity and also my desire to get something done and out there in as little time as possible. This post is about David and the central one to making “Phweet” actually happen.

On June 6th I finally convinced David Beckemeyer that Phweet was a really interesting idea and it simply ought to be done. See: Why Phweet?. At the end I told him then he was the first person I’d shared Phweet with, right at the beginning… crazy long documents weeks and weeks earlier that then went through iterations and became better with each person I talked to.

From our “conversations in urls” clarity we embarked on emails and more sharing. Examples of Twitter messages sharing “phweetURLs going back and forth got a real thrashing. I was challenged by “constraints” and to be specific. I think David was learning that I need my buttons pressed to find ways to make it simple and often just think it up in real time.

On June 13th, I got this priceless (to me) rant.

<rant>
It is impossible to actually write code with (what feels like) everything changing or new twists every time we talk. I guess that’s kind of why I want to make a SOMETHING, some version of this idea that can actally be touched and felt, to start giving us something more than vapor to discuss.
</rant>

Things settled down pretty quick after that. Grounded. Screens started to emerge from me that made some more sense. And David simply adapted it and figured it out. I took off for a week for a quite separate assignment that I’d been pre-committed to. I think that gave David the breather he needed. The first totally international test “phweet” before I returned.

I’m still in awe. I’ve had pushback, I’ve had counseling, and I know I’ve got someone whose heart is in what we are trying to do just like me. I said up front I’d try and sell the guts out of it. I really believe it’s different. I really like it. Knowing a guy like David is behind me keeps my sense of take this higher and further going. Run harder. It’s a good condition to be in. He also cautions me that I’m about to take a lot of flak. Hope not. But good to know that we both have thick skin and know where we are going.

David is the founder of TelEvolution, Inc. and the innovator behind Phonegnome. In the VoIP world he’s known as MrBlog. Phweet is not the last or the first startup he’s put his attention to.

Less is explicit, more is somehow exchanged tacitly. Perhaps this is just me filling the gaps but the reality is I think my peripheral vision is better than ever. And as the “earthquake” proved again today I learned about it first over Twitter.

Twitter conversations are also thankfully short and sweet. Although every so often they they become very active between a few. And very often they escalate into calls. Surprise surprise people actually talk to each other around Twitter posts. I have proof.

Now that’s not such a surprise to me. In fact one of the things that got the blogosphere really talking five years ago was Skype. All of a sudden, relationships that had been global and out of touch were enabled by free calling. The relationship factor went up dramatically. It also helped that the calls were of a high quality. On the downside the “callme” button on the blog has never really worked. There’s little recent in the way of presence information to make this work.

So I’ve been asking myself in an accelerating world where the peripheral vision is being increasingly shared over open feeds (Twitter, Friendfeed, Identi.ca, Pownce, Jaiku etc.) why telephony shouldn’t be managed in the same way. Aren’t these various profiles the directories of the future? Isn’t the 140 character update the “contextual” update and the reason to talk? We are signaling everyone all the time! And unlike the traditional services these are open. And I’d say this is also the Facebook problem. We won’t ever be confined to just the white or yellow pages ever again.

So what if Twitter or infact any of these open services were to be part of changing the conversation around Telephony? What would be required? In fact what is required to make that happen. Could Twitter bring in a better form of telephony

This is in fact a question I’ve been wrestling with for quite some time. Some things are obvious. APIs generally provide the opportunity for new mashups. And if you are wrestling with API’s then you want to work with open standards. So Twitter and SIP naturally go together. However these are not natural partners. Telephony and the web are hard to synchronize and the last thing anyone wants to see is a DTMF keyboard on Twitter.

In fact Twitter is about chatter and escalating chatter. Because so much happens in real time and in real life, people jump into the conversation. Well that’s a paradigm that telephony hasn’t catered to very well. Where’s the self selection? Where’s the opportunity for others to join in the fun so to speak. While it happens at the water cooler everyday it doesn’t happen on the telephone. We get boring conference calls scheduled etc. When our reality is more like the office water cooler or the party, we come and go… there is an ebb and flow.

So simply I’ve had my head down because I want to make Twitter talk!