Category: twitter

Forget Blogging, Start Tweeting

I’m going out on a limb here and just say it. If you’re an elected official and you aren’t blogging already just skip it. No disrespect to bloggers. I consider myself one. I love them. I love BlueNC. But times are changing and the tempo is speeding up!

A new site called Tweet Congress lists all the Congresspeople who tweet. This is a serious case of you waited too long and technology lapped ya. Don’t feel bad. Tech is fast.

So you may ask, “What the hell is Twitter?” This video can explain it.

No Twitter is not really about the silly mundane stuff you are doing. ex. what you had for dinner, how cool mowing your lawn is… Think back to when you first learned about blogging. I bet you thought that was silly and powerless too. So when the next Presidential election is swayed because of Twitter just thank your friendly early tech adopter.

Dig new communications trends now. Empower yourself!

Social Carolina: Tech Events Calendar

Wayne Sutton is on top of local tech events in our area. So a couple of us asked him to create something to keep track of these events. He set up a blog at socialcarolina.org and I created a google calendar. Plus we have the Twitter user RDCH to follow and stay up-to-date.

Know about a cool event that involves technology of some kind? Is it happening in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area? Then contact us with the blog form. We’ll put it up on the calendar and promote it. We already have a few cool events up there. Check it out.

RDCH: Twitter users in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill

Last week I created a new user on Twitter called RDCH. It stands for Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill. The idea is for this Twitter user to act like a group. I’ve been using Twittervision Map and Google to find people who’ve identified that they live somewhere in the Triangle aka RDCH. (That includes Apex, Cary, Carrboro, etc.) ex. Location: Durham

While I’m logged into the RDCH user account I goto the different Twitter users I find and add them as friends. So far in about three days RDCH has 88 friends and 33 followers. You make friends they decide to follow you.

I hope this helps people meet each other in person and make new friends. Another neat “feature” I’ve discovered is the with friends page. If you goto twitter.com/RDCH/with_friends you can read what all these people are doing. Its like a group micro-blog! This page has an RSS feed too at twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/6140022.rss.

I’ve been trying to use the contact medium in ways that could help all these neighbors of mine. So far I’ve shared info such as weather updates for Chapel Hill and Hurricane information. Going to build the friends list and hopefully the followers and announce a party or a flash mob.

What do you folks in RDCH want this user to do?

Darth Vader Speaks

This just cracks me up!

Raw text from above image to get google cached:

Wondering how its possible that, according to Kenobi, I somehow betrayed and murdered… myself. He always was an old coot. 6 minutes ago from twitterrific Darth Vader

Man am I a Star Wars dork… really only love the first one. Episode four or what ever the fuck they call it now. Maybe Return of the Jedi too…

In college one of my Art professors said that people have two types of modern fiction that influences them. Fantasy and Science Fiction. I am most defiantly a Science Fiction creative. Sadly the movie theater that I saw Star Wars in during the ’70s is gone.

Gee am I rambling…

Presidential Candidate Fakesters?

Fred Stutzman has a interesting post on Tech President about Democratic Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John Edwards using Twitter. (I learned about his post via Twitter actually.)

Now, I’ll gladly apologize if I’m wrong on this, but it appears that Mr. Obama didn’t write his first Twitter. There’s just something patently un-senatorial about all of those exclamation points.

I was wondering the same thing when I sent a direct Twitter message to John Edwards and received a direct response.
JRE Q&A Twitter

BrianR: Are you carrying the phone that gets our twitter updates? 🙂 12:55 PM March 10, 2007
JRE: Hi Brian. Yes. Will begin giving updates from the phone this week. 12:37 AM March 13, 2007

Basically I wanted to know if that was really John Edwards on the other end. Interestingly one of John Edwards next Twits contained this before the message: (from staff). I’m not sure if I had anything to do with this disclaimer appearing… but I hope a smart staffer was paying attention. 🙂

Fred is right on when he wrote:

However, with social media, there’s something a good bit more personal about the nature of the interaction. A Twitter is not a blog post or a press release or a campaign email, it is a one-to-one interaction between Twitterers. I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but it feels personal – and because it feels personal, I want to know who the Twitter is actually coming from. Does Edwards or Obama actually need to type the Twitter? No, sure, they can dictate it, but when I get a Twitter from John Edwards or Barack Obama, I want that Twitter to be from them, not an over-caffeinated message person.

I love reading the fakester Darth Vader’s twits but I don’t want my future President to pretend. Keep it Real® and don’t become a Presidential candidate Fakester!

Twitter in NYT and my thoughts

From Many Tweets, One Loud Voice on the Internet

My thoughts…. Twitter is very useful for keeping up with people you care about. The tweets may be trivial to some but gold to others. As long as it continues to be useful, fun, and cheap I’ll use it.

Sadly right now trying to put tweets on my blog is causing it not to load… a serious problem for the microblogging aspects. Technical hurdles that I am sure Twitter inc will overcome.

Getting Star Wars characters Twitters

I’m following Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Yoda, Boba Fett, C3PO, R2D2, Princess Leia, Chewbacka, Han Solo, Ackbar, and the Emperor with Twitter. These fun fakesters appear to be pranks and not official marketing. But ya never know.

Fakesters are profiles created on social networking sites, like Twitter, that spoof all kinds of people both real and fictional. It can be done in a funny or scary way. Some of the twitters I’ve gotten from Homer Simpson have made me laugh out loud.

The fact that 186 people follow Princess Leia when she only twitters about her hair is amazing.

@-_-@

Update on my twitter blog

I’ve redirected yesh.com to yesh.com/blog for now. I had a Twitter/SMS blog up at yesh.com but found some bugs. I thought I could squash them quickly but it turns out its a bit more complicated. I’m working on it now and hope to restore the Twitter/SMS blog soon. I know ya’ll are freakn’ cause you can’t find out what I’m doing up to the second. 😉

Props to Calvin for inadvertently showing me some new ways to do this.

What is Brian doing? – a SMS/Twitter blog

Now when you go to the top page of the domain Yesh.com you’ll be taken to my SMS/Twitter blog. (Not when you come here to yesh.com/blog. This blog ain’t going nowhere.) This SMS/Twitter blog is basically a really simple page that is updated with my cell phone via SMS (Short Messaging Service) and Twitter.

Twitter is this really cool social text messaging service that has groups. You can keep track of what people are up to. Its much faster than checking your friends blog. The updates come to your phone, web page, or Jabber IM client. (ex. Google Talk).

I made my SMS/Twitter blog by parsing the RSS feed into html from my personal updates on Twitter with Magpie RSS. I looked at the code David Kadavy did over at his blog and adapted it. Instead of just putting it in a small side bar on my blog I made it my main index page for yesh. Thanks David!

I was inspired to do a fast mobile blog when I heard about the iPhone. I figure one day I’ll be updating my blog with my phone full time. So much more immediate and timely. So right now I have a page for what I’m doing NOW (SMS blog) and what I think today (wordpress blog). See the difference? Up to the second verses up to the hour or day. Only thing I lament is the absence of spell check on my Treo’s SMS client. Thank Jebus for spell check in Firefox! 🙂

So if you really care what Brian is doing right now go there with your cell phone. It looks pretty good in my Treo 650 browser. There is even a RSS feed for my SMS blog.

Comments welcomed.