Identi.ca ‘dents’ vs. Twitter ‘tweets’ – Twitter Wins Again
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 | AIR, Beta, News, Tools, Twitter, WebApps | 2 Comments
Many different services have been touted as the “Twitter replacement” recently, including FriendFeed, Pownce, Plurk and even the Google-owned Jaiku. All enter the scene with much fan-fare, typically gaining temporary popularity as Twitter users migrate over to check out the new service, ultimately returning to Twitter after giving up on having to build a new community/following. So far FriendFeed has been the closest in becoming a viable alternative to the ever-growing Twitter community in that it allows for users to comment and track posts to a variety of different social media services (including Twitter). It’s basically a way to combine all your social-media/blogging habits into one stationary form for easy cataloguing of conversations. Conversations? If you’re like most people, upon reading that word you are either scrathing your head or are skipping the rest of the post to hit the “Post Comment” button – Twitter doesn’t allow for traditional “conversations!” Well, I hate to admit this, but FriendFeed enables you to not only hold a conversation by pinning all related comments to a post, but also export them in a variety of ways including a custom RSS feed. Because of features like this, bloggers have been continually talking about the merits behind FriendFeed vs. Twitter. When Twitter goes down, people scamper over to FriendFeed…when they succumb to information overload, they scamper back to Twitter. Now there’s a new dog on the circuit – Identi.ca.
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AT&T Allowing Home Activation For New iPhone 3G!
Friday, July 11th, 2008 | Apple, Business, News, Twitter | 2 Comments
Contrary to what AT&T and Apple have both been telling everyone, some stores are quietly selling iPhone 3G’s to customers and telling them to activate it at home via iTunes. A massive server overload this morning has rendered Apple’s Activation Servers useless at this moment, however representatives from Apple have already acknowledged this and are working to get them back online.
Until the activation servers go back online, anyone trying to purchase a new iPhone will find out that they have a “bricked” version – only allowing for Emergency calls as it will not have been synched with the wireless account.
Users trying to upgrade their 1st generation iPhones or iPod Touches will also “brick” their device, making it useless until Apple fixes their servers.
News of this, along with updates from stores all across the country, has been widely talked about on Twitter.com. A quick and easy way to search through ‘the noise’ on Twitter is to use a free service called Summize.com. Summize enables you to easily search for specific topics and arranges them based on the time/date that they were ‘tweeted.’ For example, to see all the messages posted to Twitter regarding the iphone activation servers, search on Summize for “iphone + activation.”
Apple should have been able to predict that there would have been a heavy strain on the servers with thousands of users trying to register, synch, and activate their Apple products simultaneously. This makes you think twice about using Apple’s server hardware in any production environment….bad move on their part.
Video of Twitter Broken Down Into Plain English
Thursday, March 6th, 2008 | Twitter, Video | No Comments
Found via one of Chris Brogan’s tweets, this is a shining example of what happens when you realize the need to explain a social trend/community, have a camera handy, and enjoy making collages/paper cut-outs.
Created by the folks over at CommonCraft, this is a great 2.5 minute video explaining Twitter – from it’s beginnings to it’s common usage in today’s society and more importantly, why you should be using it too. Really nicely done, this doesn’t look like it was just thrown together in a few minutes, it even sounds like they put some effort into making the narrator’s voice come out clean and crisp…i.e. actual production values… As far as I’m concerned, this is the new PSA for Twitter.
Nicely done.
You can read more about it and even see some of the great comments left on their original post – CommonCraft Explains Twitter in Plain English
Botanicalls Twitter DIY – Your Plants Are Now Online
Thursday, February 28th, 2008 | Mashup, Twitter, Unusual | No Comments
Yes, The title is true, now you can stay updated on the health of your plants via Twitter. From the people who enabled your plant the ability to talk to you on the phone (yes, this is no joke) – Botanicalls, they have now incorporated it with a DIY setup for incorporating Twitter. For those of you thinking this is a joke, being able to actually “hear your plant” talk to you is all done via a DIY setup that incorporates PHP, some light soldering, the open-source Asterisk phone system, and a solid afternoon. For information on how to get your plants talking, first visit their website and read how – www.Botanicalls.com. Then continue on to incorporate Twitter.
Well, if you followed the link above and were successful, it is now time to take it a step further. Why not let your plants automatically twitter you when they need to be watered? They’ve even made it so that you’ll receive insta-gratification after feeding it with a polite thank you, letting you know that your plant appreciates all the work you’ve done setting up the communication system. For instructions on incorporating twitter with the Botanicalls system, go to www.botanicalls.com/twitter/ and follow their instructions (step by step photos are included as well).
Pretty interesting usage of twitter. This is the result of people who have way to much time on their hands, love their plants, and are addicted to twitter…. that aside, it’s pretty cool if you ask me. It could also be considered the ultimate “mash-up” – plants + phone + instant messaging + open-source + twitter.
If you want to see it in action, here’s their flickr page, to add to it just tag your photo with botanicalls or botanicallstwitter.
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