I’m a software pirate. Yup, that’s me.  I’m a bad guy, right?

I have a jailbroken iPhone, and I use appulo.us to download pirated apps.  I’ve downloaded dozens of pirated apps, and I don’t feel the least bit guilty.  As I write this article, there are only 2 pirated apps on my iPhone.  The others I’ve either paid for or deleted because they were terrible, or I didn’t use them.

Right now Apple is counting their way toward 1 billion apps downloaded from their app store, and a significant number of those are free apps.  But, of the paid apps, I’m willing to bet that most of those are not in use by their buyers for the same reasons I delete most of my pirated apps.

The app store thrives on the impulse-style marketing found at grocery store check-outs everywhere.  Most apps are only a buck or two, so most people don’t take the time to think about whether they really want or need that iFart Mobile app. They just buy it and delete it in a few days because they realize it’s crap (no pun).

When I download a pirated app, I do so for evaluation purposes…really, I do.  I’ll use if for a while and see if it suits my purpose.  If it doesn’t, I delete it.  If it does, I buy it.  Simple as that.  Too bad more people don’t operate that way.

Let me put this question to you:  Given my previous statement that most iPhone apps are purchased and never really used is true, does the developer lose out on revenue when his apps are pirated?  If his app wasn’t available to download as a pirated app, would it appear on as many iPhones?  I say no.  In fact I think that that developer probably sold more copies as a result.  And if not, then either the software provides no real value, or it doesn’t fit at its current price point.

As for the 2 pirated apps I have on my iPhone…I just bought one, and deleted another. I think that developers should get paid for their work, but I don’t want to buy crap, and I think a solution to appulo.us would be a 14 day trial system for apps that aren’t games.  That way I can make sure it fits my needs.

I love Twitter.  Let’s get that out of the way right now.  I think it’s a great way to share information, and keep up with friends, family, and people with shared interests.

Despite all the benefits to Twitter, there are a number of things that irritate me, and take away from the ideal user experience, and I thought I’d share them with you.

First of all, and probably the most irksome of Twitter’s flaws isn’t with the service itself, but in how people use it.  Some people are obsessed about the number of followers they have.  Aston Kutcher (@aplusk) recently put out a call for more Twitter followers in a bid to reach 1 000 000 in order to surpass CNN.  So, he wants publicity.  Fine.  What about all the non-celebrity Twitter users out there who spend all there energy getting followers?  What’s the point?

And then there are the people who follow thousands of other people.  How could you possibly keep track of everything all of these people have to say?  I look at my Twitter stream, and I see that half of the tweets are replies to people I don’t know.  I follow 40 people.  I can’t imagine trying to weed through tweets from a couple hundred people, let alone a couple thousands. The signal to noise ration is just way to high on Twitter.

Next, I really can’t stand it when all people tweet about is Twitter.  I was following they guy in my area who would tweet something like this: “@soandso Thanks for the follow” every time he got a new follower.  Since he was getting quite a few new followers every day, this became essentially spam.  I had to unfollow him for my own sanity.

Then there’s #followfriday, which I think is great.  The idea here is that you both follow people and have followers with similar interests.  If this is the case, it makes sense that some of your followers might find somebody you follow to be interesting.  So, on Fridays, you recommend a person or two that you follow to your followers by tweeting something like this: “#followfriday #topic_of_interest @soandso, @someotherguy”. So, those of your followers who are interested in #topic_of_interest may want to check out @soandso and @someotherguy. Simple.

The problem comes from those obsessed people in my first point who want to follow and be followed by as many people as possible.  Sometimes you’ll see tweets from them recommending dozens of people at a time.  This kind of defeats the purpose of #followfriday.  When I see this, I just ignore it because it’s like finding a needle in a haystack.

And finally, I despise services like Mr. Tweet and Tweetmeme that flood your twitter stream with automated garbage. I also find it irritating when people automatically cross-post from other social networking services like Facebook or Blip.fm.  Why do you think that your twitter followers want to know about every song you think is great on Blip.fm?  If you want your followers to know about your newest blog post, that’s fine, but your facebook status?  I don’t get it.

Feel free to post this on all your social networks, and follow me everywhere