Twitter Explained
My boss at work sent out this explanation of Twitter to help our staff understand what Twitter is all about.
It’s pretty fun and accurate too!
Pecs-a-frenzy on Dancing with the Stars
Each week of Dancing with the Stars is an anticipated wait for Cheryl Burke and Gilles Marini to perform. By far, they are the best couple of Season 8. For their paso doble in Week 5, Gilles started a fan frenzy even before the dance began, standing on stage shirtless, showing off his martial arts trained physique.
Building on the frenzy caused by his pecs, Gilles and Cheryl delivered a killer (though hectic, Len is right) paso. Where is this guy’s weakness? It surely ain’t kryptonite.
Week 5 might be the last for Steve-O. Could be LT, but the Edyta-factor should keep LT in the game for another week. Lil’ Kim, dancing with Derek Hough is raising your stock.
And lookee, lookee, DWTS now has a presence on Twitter with a few of their stars tweeting. The “Live on the Set” section is powered by Twitter with stars Holly Madison, Gilles Marini, Ty Murray, Denise Richards, and Melissa Rycroft providing updates. So far, these tweets are pretty boring, and Holly and Denise are already eliminated. How about changin’ them default Twitter avatars?
Update: Neither of my predictions (Steve-O or LT) were eliminated. Instead enigmatic David Alan Grier is gone from the competition. While his dancing was better than Steve-O or LT, he really didn’t connect with partner Kym Johnson.
I Am Awesome!
Sometimes you need a little pep talk to yourself and Twitter and AwesomeUpdater is here to help. Merely sign up, set a few optional preferences, and now and then, you’ll receive a tweet of how awesome you are.
How awesome is that?
Slacking or Enjoying Life?
Took Thursday off to spend some extra family time even though we just came back from a SoCal vacation. In jest, a coworker said I was slacking via Twitter, but I replied I was merely enjoying life! What did I do on my day off?
Started the day off playing with Play Doh.
Then we headed out to Kahala Mall to dine at The Counter. No Daniel Dae Kim sighting, but the place was packed! Instead of waiting to dine in the kind-of-plain interior, we got take out. Our meal consisted of the signature Counter Burger and Taco Turkey along with Fifty-Fifty fries (regular and sweet). At the recommendation of @abaggy, we needed to try a milkshake too.
Total damage was around $30. Food was good, and I would go back but probably construct my own burger.
I managed to exchange my ultracompact USB power adapter that came with my iPhone 3G at the Apple Store. Then headed to Champs Sports to take advantage of the on-going Friends and Family sale. Sadly, I couldn’t find anything, wishing for the new Nike Air Max 2009+ (of which there’s some confusion about its release date).
The highlight of the day was meeting @NEENZ and @noe808 in real life. I’ve interacted with NEENZ online for some time, going back to her days with Truemors and now Alltop.com. We just never did meet in person. That changed today thanks to Twitter (and BriteKite) when I saw this tweet come in. We were both at Kahala Mall.
I managed to find the Chief Evangelist of Alltop sitting outside of Starbucks. We chatted for a bit about all kinds of stuff (blogging, business, finding time, family, etc) before NEENZ had to continue her social media consultation with @hazelnutcottage. Still though, it was a great chance encounter! (But dumb me forgot to take a picture)
So back to the title of this post, slacking or enjoying life? Definitely enjoying life!
Ginx Article by Erika Engle
Local columnist Erika Engle wrote an article about a new Twitter client, Ginx. Lots of the hi-Ginx are done in HI. 😉
Observation: Twitter > RSS
Now that I’ve been using Twitter for some time, I’ve noticed a change in the way I learn about new things on the web. I’m a believer and proponent of RSS feeds for some time, calling this technology a “game changer.”
But now, I find myself using my RSS reader less and less. I still do check my feeds for any updates, but it’s second behind Twitter. I’m more apt to follow links published by Twitter users even though the actual URL is obscured by a URL shortener like tinyurl. Why is that?
Maybe it’s because I share similar interests with those that I follow on Twitter so any links they provide are more to my liking? Also, I think Twitter users serve as a kindof filter for noise on the Net so that anything that they promote is more worthwhile than an RSS feed of a blog post with only a catchy title.
I’m not saying that I’ll abadon my RSS feeds anytime soon, but Twitter has supplanted RSS as my first source of interesting information.
Pulp from the Twitterverse
Some pulpy highlights from the Twitterverse.
- Macross Robotech remixed with Top Gun!
- Interesting R-rated scarves.
- What went down between Chris Brown and Rihanna. And she wants to continue seeing him?
Twitter and Watchmen in the Media
In the media circuit, there’s been a lot of coverage of two topics, Twitter and Watchmen. Here are just a few of them:
From Time Magazine:
From Entertainment Weekly:
Nominate Your Twitter MILF
No, it’s not what you think! We’re not talking traditional MILF but the remixed Twitter variation, Mothers I’d Like to Follow, aka “Twitter MILF.” In the Urban Dictionary, Twitter MILF is defined thusly:
In the Twitterverse, the Twitter MILF is the modern day woman who can do it all. She can impart her wisdom in less than 140 characters, enthrall with her beauty in a 73 pixel avatar, and raise children! Indeed, she is a Twitter Mother I’d Like to Follow…
So who would you nominate as a Twitter Mother I’d Like to Follow?
New Respect for Skittles
While I still won’t eat those pure sugar pills known as Skittles, I have a new found respect for Skittles’ recent online advertising. Skittles (temporarily) dumped their web site and instead is showing a live Twitter search of tweets containing the word “skittles.”
So whatever you tweet about Skittles, it’ll show on their site. Gutsy for sure since there are a lot of worthless tweets showing up, but a very bold move to leave your “site” in the hands of the public.
Imagine What The Oprah Could Do to Twitter?
If Barbara Walters and the cast of The View can bring down Twitter, imagine the damage The Oprah could do if she promoted the service! If The Oprah were to pick lucky winners for her annual giveaway show from tweets, Twitter would absolutely melt.
The Lightness of Twitter
One of the things I’ve noticed about using Twitter is its “lightness.” Once you’re using Twitter’s microblogging service, you’re not tied to or heavily dependent on any particular Twitter client. You can use the default Twitter web interface, or you can try other web UIs that improve on Twitter shortfalls like Ginx.
There are Twitter clients for mobile platforms like Twitterriffic or Tweetie for the iPhone. And there are a ton of desktop clients such as Tweetdeck and Twhirl.
With all these various client apps, you can easily switch without losing much. Because Twitter is so light and specific in functionality, trying out various apps ain’t nothing (try changing email clients – what a pain). I’ve now switched to Twhril since it better manages multiple Twitter accounts, but I also use the Twitter web and Ginx web interfaces and Tweetie while mobile.