Not a long post as i’m sitting in an airport waiting to get on a plane but as I see all this talk about twitter (btw i’m dying to start a service called Twatter now), reminds me of the experience i’ve had with other social media tools which I can only term as Ambient Friends. Maybe it’s the RSS of relationships but I can tell you of at least one occasion that I discovered that a friend had just given birth because they were in my contacts on flickr. Maybe that just makes me a bad friend, or a lazy relationship builder, but I enjoyed finding out and immediately left a comment. Maybe the technical term for various web based technology “loosely coupled” is now defining how many relationships are maintained? In some ways probably bad for me as I think I need more tightly coupled relationships with other humans 
I understand what you mean. I only knew you had been snowboarding recently because I looked at your blog and saw the photos!
btw, it looked fantastic - I can see why it is called Heavenly with the blue of the lake, the white snow and the blue sky.
Have a good trip.
I can definately relate. Over the past 6-months, flickr and gmail status has become away for my friends to keep in touch on what we do without actually ever having to talk to each other on the phone or even on IM.
We know when John is having a bad day from his Gtail Status, or that Zoe went to see a show at Fillmore last night (via Flickr or even Upcoming) or the fact I started smoking again (as declared on my GTalk Status).
It is very interesting level of social interaction. It is ambient for sure, but also somewhat passive in the sense you just “push” the content out there, but never confirm if anyone ever “reads” it or not.