Geek Swagger.
Posts tagged twitter
Giving Up Social
Apr 8th
On Fat Tuesday this year I was puzzling over what I should give up for Lent. I couldn’t decide and I couldn’t decide, until I heard Leo Laporte of TWiT joke that he should give up Twitter. So I thought why not? Heck I’ll take it a step further and cut out all social networking from my digital life for over a month. Well, at the time of this writing I’m within a week of Easter and I just wanted to share how it went.
When I started this whole experiment I assumed that giving up Facebook would be the hardest part. Cutting ties with all of the people I know in real life? That has to be worse than giving up people I’ve probably never met. That said, I have to say, keeping away from Twitter was as struggle! Everyone has a twitter page these days and that tends to be what they want to plug 9 out of 10 times. Do you want to hear what “so-and-so†is up to these days? You better be on Twitter!
Personally I’m shocked by this development. I never would have thought I’d be more secure with folks on Twitter than I would be with others, whom I know, on Facebook.
Google Wave
May 28th
I'm not sure what to make of Google Wave just yet. It seems to me like it's a collaboration tool more than anything - you'll be able to share and create documents with rich text and multimedia support, and these projects are updated real time to allow easy communication between participants. Still, there is Google inbox, chat and Picasa integration, and it's been said that this is Google's response to Twitter. Based on the screenshots it looks like it'll be a good way to communicate with friends, but the description makes Wave sound like something entirely different. All I know is that I like the user interface, and I'm happy it's open to developers.
You can throw your name into the hat to try Google Wave as soon as it becomes available at the link below.
Tangled Up In Blu
Mar 11th
One of my favorite things about Mac OSX are the stylish applications it has. Â Applications like Twitterific, NewsFire, Blogo and even Colloquy are all shining examples of beautiful programs that I love to use. Â However today I'm not talking about a Mac app, I'm talking about a really cool Windows Twitter client called Blu. Â The only caveat is that Blu is so pretty that you might mistake it for an OSX app at first glance.
Blu has a nice translucent blue user interface that's pretty intuitive. Â Want to shorten a URL? Â All you have to do is paste it into the update box and it's automatically done for you. Â Not sure how many characters you have left? Â Blu counts down the characters as you type behind the update box. Â It has separate panes for your direct messages and @ replies. Â Even the login screen is impressive, and if you save your login info you get a slick little animation of your details being entered into the fields when Blu starts up. Â Add to that the dulcet piano tones you hear whenever a new tweet comes in and you have a neat little package.
I have to say that on Windows this is my absolute favorite Twitter client. Â As long as you have the .NET 3.5 framework installed I see no reason to use anything else. Â In case you're wondering I generally use Twhirl when I'm working in OSX. Â Also, I can't take credit for discovering Blu personally as it wasn't until my buddy @Eddie_Bell started using it that I tried it out for myself. Â So, what Twitter client do you use? Â If you're interested, you can find Blu at the link below.
I’m tired of Twitter, kind of want to leave
Feb 24th
I won't, but all of the drama that has resulted from Twitter putting out a featured list of users has really put me off. It's even worse that the most vocal voices are coming from those that are already super users on Twitter. Leo Laporte? Sarah Lane? I have no beef with them but come on, you guys already have so many followers and you're upset you weren't featured so you could get more?
It's all just a popularity contest. It seems like a lot of these people are more concerned with their own notoriety rather than the community, and not just from a followers standpoint but from a content standpoint. Twitter is NOT about how many followers you have or how many people you're following, it's about the content. To see these big names in the tech industry be so upset because they weren't featured and Whole Foods was...it kind of makes me sick to my stomach. Get over it guys.
If you pay more attention to getting actual value out of Twitter you'll be much happier. Focus more on who you're following rather than who's following you. There's no question that Twitter will be a powerful tool not only to normal users like myself but businesses and corporations, and part of that is the potential for direct connections to followers. Still, even if I love a company I'm not going to be following them if they're just trying to advertise to me instead of providing useful content. Not only that but I think people are giving this featured users thing a little too much credit. If a user comes to Twitter and follows a bunch of recommended twitterers they won't be experiencing the site the way it was meant to be. If you ignore that stuff and only follow those who you're legitimately interested in you'll find yourself in love with the site.
</rant>
FriendFeed
Aug 7th
These days with the seemingly endless number of social networks it quickly becomes difficult to keep up with all of them. Â Micro-blogging sites like , , , , and all offer their own features and are good enough on their own to pull in an audience of users, but as a result it seems like everyone is spread out because they're using their own favorite service. Â Not only that but chances are good that if you're micro-blogging you probably have an account on or , maybe a or account, and so on and so forth. Â Needless to say it quickly becomes difficult to follow all of your friends' activities across all of these different services. Â That's where FriendFeed comes in.
When I first heard about FriendFeed I was very slow to adopt. Â The entire premise is so meta (a social network for my social networks?) that it was difficult for me to back because I wasn't sure it it was necessarily needed. Â Now that I'm expanding the blog a bit though, creating YouTube videos made me realize that maybe it was time to standardize. Â What FriendFeed does is gather up a feed of everything you do on whatever sites you tell it you're on, and they're all displayed in one place for your friends to see.
When I opened my FriendFeed account the first thing I had to do was tell it what I'm using. Â You don't have to give passwords or anything, just usernames since most of posts/content are publicly available on these sites anyways. Â So I gave it username, the address to my blog, username, // info and so on. Â Now anything I do with any of those sites is automatically added to my FriendFeed. Â New blog post? Â FriendFeed has it. Â New tweet? Â FriendFeed has it. Â The interface is really simple and clean so it's easy to read, but if you don't like it for some reason you can add your or any of your friends' feeds to your favorite RSS aggregator.
That's all I really have to say about it, go .  If you decide to make an account you can subscribe to my feed and I'll do the reciprocate the love. =)
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