Phone Chat App Cubecakes

First time i heard of chat app cubecakes were from my kid sister, who's quite the techie for her age. That time, still using my old Samsung Wave with Bada as the OS, i was stuck with Palringo and it didnt taste good & pretty bland, but still edible. She told me though Whatsapp isnt Bada-compatible, Viber is... until it turns out Viber's only compatible with newer versions of Bada. So yeah, I was stuck with Palringo.
[wrote a blog entry about it last year too]

After I got  my new LG Optimus phone, I finally got both Whatsapp and Viber, along with 4 other chat apps. In a day, the first one I downloaded was Rocketalk. Second was Viber, third was Kakaotalk. I downloaded Whatsapp and Line the next day and WeChat the day after.

I group Whatsapp and Viber together because identitywise, they dont require us to make usernames and rely heavily on our phone numbers. Plus they dont have timelines and profile pages (cuz you dont really need them) though Viber has more features than Whatsapp, like stickers free call and video call (only available in Viber desktop). Viber Desktop also reminds me of Skype too, their interfaces are a bit similar.

Meanwhile Rocketalk, Kakaotalk, Line and WeChat sorta have this whole profile page thing besides just for chats.

In Line's timeline & KakaoStory, you can post pictures, post links and videos, add your location and also stickers (and in Line you can comment with stickers too). In WeChat you can only post photos in your timeline. If you go to your home, all your posted photos are posted in timestamps, as grids within each timestamp.

Rocketalk is different in terms of design & interface though, cuz you can post media like photos, audio and video, and there's this whole 'hot picks' page thing, where every rocketalk user can see your stuff. The media corner is kinda like Youtube rather than Facebook/Path. And if you go to your profile & view the media, it displays them in a grid. Just like KakaoStory… or like WeChat, but without tiimestamps. Also, unlike Line timeline, KakaoStoy and WeChat timeline, Rocketalk doesn't have a cover photo (like the ones on Facebook & Path).

It's true though, with my parents, I tend to use Whatsapp and Viber a lot due to their simplicity & not much going on like stickers and timelines and yada yada (like WeChat, Kakaotalk & Line) and they make use of the free call often to pick me up from the office back when I'm still working.
With my siblings it's the same with my friends. Stickers here and there cuz hell, they're cute and expressive.

Uuuugh I wanna try those other chat apps mentioned above too (not so much Kik though, IDK why. Probably cuz everyone's already got it), and more, but sadly the memory space in my phone isn't enough.

Videochat Cubecakes: Skype and Oovoo

As previously mentioned here, I tried Skype in 2012 and Oovoo later on in the same year. I heard of Oovoo from my sisters when we talked about Skype alternatives and then continued using both with some friends, (and enjoying the echo effect too)

Skype sorta has this clear white interface while Oovoo stays classy black. An additional note is, although both apps allow group video conference, Oovoo allows up to 12 participants, more than Skype (although I've never tried group chats before).

On a personal note, with friends like Likaura & Myoo89, we always wind up having crazy-ass conversations. Of course, this is a video chat app so sometimes they're not compatible with bad internet connection.

TUMBLOUP EVERYTHING

Now that I've got Tumblr (since October 2013) this is what I basically do (but Soup is still my first love).
Previously I made comics about adjusting & balancing these two tumblelogs [X] and even some personified Tumbloup ones [X][X] but none of them are cubecake'd so I made the cubecake version now. It's never too late.

Funny thing is I'm not even addicted to these tumblelogs anymore. Sure I check them once in a while but, in cubecake consumption terms, I only take small doses & maybe cut little pieces of them, and eat a heap of Soup & a heap of Tumblr all at once.

P.s. new haircut yo~ and just to clarify, my hair has always been naturally black. I was just too lazy to shade them in the previous comics.

Back and Springing

Got myself a Spring.me account. Yeah, it IS Formspring. It used to be, but after it underwent new management, it changed its name and is now releasing a new beta version. And guess what, the icons are all circle-ized. Guess it jumped in the bandwagon after Heello & Google+. And probably some other sites too.

Here I am with Likaura because both of us have Ask.fm & Spring. She's moving back to Spring as well due to people spamming her with stuff in Ask.fm cuz it still allows anonymous questions. But hey she won't forget about Ask.fm. Also, I have both Askfm & Spring apps on the phone.

And lol in the pic we look like we're related to Marceline or something.

Microblog Cubecakes pt4: Bentio, Heello & Moodler

Same old story. Qaiku unexpectedly (and not surprisingly) followed Jaiku's steps. It finally shut down after Jaiku after precisely an 8-month gap. Bad news? It didn't back up all the users' updates unlike Jaiku did. Thus, no "spices"

I moved to Bentio cuz it reminds me of the old Identica. Shortly after, Likaura (Amelstrange) joined in with me.

Long story short, Bentio began to malfunction. And after a few months, it eventually died.
Another few months later Adocu underwent hiatus because something happened to the server, but that's another story.

And we decided to move to Heello, cuz it seems reliable. Hey, its founder is also the same dude who founded Twitpic. And just this year Heello underwent a major upgrade to remove all spam & fake accounts and had a redesign too, which I totally like.

Turns out, Heello is quite popular too (only if you follow certain followers that like echoing - the equivalent of retweeting - status updates from strangers) and, like Plerb, Heello is full of fake celebrities as well. Looks like the big troll-account-massacre hasn't wiped these off yet.

Despite all that, I still miss Jaiku and all its icons. I tried looking for similar microblogs with it and found two, I Rate My Day and Moodler. I thought I'd gave Moodler a try.

Alright well I guess the icons kinda do look like they belong together in a set, with a theme... a little.

Unfortunately Moodler's currently unavailable right now I don't know whether it's dead or just under maintenance.

Microblog Cubecakes pt3: Plerb

It's always the same story, I see an alternative website to this and that, I wanted to try it eventhough I've already got a lot of accounts here and there already. But it's not that bad since I basically know how much is "too much" and I don't like wasting. Still though, I fancy myself as a bit of a 'website alternatives reviewer' so I read online lists of web alternatives and finding ones that I can try at the time.

Like Plerb for instance. Qaiku was going downhill that time (file/img attachment, video embedding and rss feed not working) and i dont know why i was so god bored, i decided to make a random roleplaying account for Cangkir as an excuse to try out Plerb. Which resulted in Likaura joining me, making roleplay accounts for her OCs from The Miraculous Guts.
_{[In order of appearance: Eri, Blade, Mike, Scott & Lee]}

And of course, there's Envy Cake (although how I remember it the story didnt go that way, Envy Cake was unsure with getting a Plerb account since it already has Facebook but Cangkir pushed it into getting one). The downside of Plerb is that it has no RSS feed and some updates get washed away into who-knows-where in time, but the upside is that it's clean and simple and reminds me of the old Twitter, which is ok for roleplaying. Then again that does explain the fake so-called celebrity accounts posing as celebs there, which is also a downside.

Microblog Cubecakes pt2: Jaiku & Qaiku

Adocu's server (I think) was pretty unstable that time so it went offline. I realized  that since I have a lot of followers on Twitter, I need some space to put all my personal ramblings without offending any of my followers. Since my ramblings are short & randomly comes out at weird times, it has to be another microblog. And that's when Jaiku came in.

Well, actually I was torn between Jaiku and Identi.ca. I mean for one thing, Identica lets you update Facebook statuses, while Jaiku used to be able to do that, but not anymore (it probably lost its features ever since Google acquired it, idk). But still, what made me chose Jaiku first was those adorable icons. And the fresh green theme.

And Adocu came back. Since then, those three became my main sites to vent & shout random stuff. Moreover I can import my Twitter & Jaiku feeds into Soup and use the RSS import for Adocu (eventhough I still cant update Facebook with Jaiku)

I would still like to try Identica sometime in the future. Cuz this was what happened. It upgraded and I can't see the theme/look customization options anymore.

Well, Status.net has themes, but I still have no clue on how to install them.

A year later, Jaiku announced that it was closing down. I'd pick Identica if it was still in its old layout (not saying the newer one sucks, no, it's all just web evolution) but then I stumbled into something. Qaiku. It rhymes with Jaiku so I assumed it was an obvious clone of Jaiku. I decided to read articles & reviews about its background before finally deciding to make a Qaiku account... a bit early.

Jaiku finally died. I'll miss it cuz Qaiku just isn't the same (although it has more useful features... but still no cute icons)