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Category: twitter

Are Filters Important? Ask Sarah Palin


Monday November 3, 2008

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Spam comes at us from many directions. It is estimated that on any given day 88% to 98% of emails sent across the internets are spam or virus laden. That begs the question, how good are your filters? Do you get 1 bad email a day? an hour? a week? Or has email become such a wasteland of spam that you no longer bother to read it and go directly to instant messaging or Facebook and Twitter. It looks to me like Sarah Palin needs to check her filters, as no “Flapper” should have ever let that kind of call thru. (a Flapper being the human equivalent of a filter.)

As Sarah found out, it is a good idea to check your filter regularly. Like your car, not just to see what has been caught, but also to decide if too much junk is getting thru.

Here at Webconsuls we use GMail for our domain email. Today I bet Palin wishes Google had a service that could filter her calls, perhaps when Grand Central comes outa beta.
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Home from BlogWorld08 in Las Vegas!!

We had and excellent time meeting up with old and new friends.

Blogworld07 vs BlogWorld08? Last year CNN was there to watch everyone arrive, this year no TV coverage from what I could tell. Last year a great pajama party with an open bar, roast beast, and a chocolate fountain, this year was a scene from Napoleon Dynamite with bad red wine and a quesadilla bar. Last year, the buzz was about Stumble, This year Twitter? We were wondering what the next big thing was going to be but this year seemed to be about rehashing old memes. I was very happy to be able to stoke out my photographer friends with a link to Photosynth.net they missed those blog posts I guess.

Webconsuls.com always on the lookout for that next big thing.

Got the next big thing? We want to know about it!

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America is addicted to foreign oil.

It’s an addiction that threatens our economy, our environment and our national security. It touches every part of our daily lives and ties our hands as a nation and a people.
The addiction has worsened for decades and now it’s reached a point of crisis.

In 1970, we imported 24% of our oil.
Today it’s nearly 70% and growing.

As imports grow and world prices rise, the amount of money we send to foreign nations every year is soaring. At current oil prices, we will send $700 billion dollars out of the country this year alone — that’s four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.

The Pickens Plan

Did you know you can follow the Pickens Plan on Twitter, and Youtube?

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When out and about, Lisa and I are “Life Streaming” using Brightkite, Twitter and Plurk.

It added a whole new dimension to our trip to Tucson.

By sending a SMS message to BrightKite with our location, @ Blythe for instance, Then sending shots we were taking with our iPhones via email to BrightKite where they were then tagged with that location.

As BrightKite posted the picts they tweeted them for us so those that were following would be notified of new content. (HI MOM!)

With the actual conversation taking place on Plurk, where we could use the direct link to all of those iPhone/BrightKite images we took the time to share.

Next we get home and slam everyone with our Nikon shots…

But that is another post.

Got a Life? Have fun with it!

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Verb. plurk – To chronicle the events of your always on, action-packed, storybook, semi-charmed kinda life…

Microblogging is where it is at today, and with all of Twitter’s recent downtime many of the Internets crash test dummy’s, (like yours truly,) have jumped on the Plurk bandwagon, and here is why,

1) It has a time line, and inline reply’s to your “Plurks“
2) It’s up.
3) You can put your friends in groups.
4) It’s up.
5) I has “Karma”
6) It’s up.
7) The Mobile version is boss!
8) Did I mention it was up?

Got Plurk?

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There’s a new e-card you can send inspired by James Buck’s timely use of Twitter. Send it to your loved ones.

Saved by Twitter

April 10, James Buck was going to head back home from a three-week assignment studying the Egyptian blogosphere.

“I was trying to take some photos of this small protest and trying to be very clear that I was not in the protest, It was very tense.” – James Buck

As Buck tried to leave the protest in a taxi, He was chased and then detained by Egyptian police. As he was driven to the police station under the direction of the police, Buck was able to sent out a single-word message from his cell phone to his Twitter account: Arrested.
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Today across the bloggispheir everyone from Seth Godin to Nate Ritter are bemoaning the problem of the signal to noise ratio going in the wrong direction.

Being that any social network is only as strong as the people who call it their own these posts got me thinking about something that has been running around in my head for some time. Twitter for me has become my Search Tool of choice. If I need a Guru, I can ask the folks who use twitter for help.

So, here is my idea, and it is far from new, Nate rightly called it “Pay it Forward”, but let’s also make it into a game!

We Twitter users LOVE games!

Got Twitter? Ask a question, get REAL answers from REAL people.

Then, Become the Guru and answer a question, want bonus points? answer 2 or more questions!

We could track thru hashtags, so

#1to1 would be 1 point,

Think this would work?

What else would you do to make Paying it Forward on Twitter fun?

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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle,
or Getting your head around Twitter.

Ok, you just got twitter and you are completely lost as to what to do with it.

First, follow some people with your interests, you can do a search or use twitter tracking to find the buzz from people with your interest who are already using Twitter. (A “How-to” for another blog post, this walk thru is about using Twitter via the web.)

We all start our day at home and that is as good a place as any to start your day twittering.

http://twitter.com/home

Here you will see a “Recent” tab, these are messages from the people that you follow and this is where you are at at Twitter when you are at home.

Next you will see a “Replys” Tab, these are messages the have been made by other Tweeters that reference you in some way, a reply or a remark, @DarinRMcClure would be about me for instance.

The “Archive” tab would be everything that you have publicly posted on Twitter, and a great way to see where your were, or what you were doing on any given day.

I like to tweet cool quotes, or links that I want to be able to check at leisure, and this is where we get to the Meat of Twitter,

“What are you doing?”

A good way to let your friends know you are online and checking into twitter, is to just say hello.

I see tweets that range from “another great day, or good morning, or COFFEEEEEE!!!!” Ok, I do all the coffee tweets …

Don’t miss your direct messages,

http://twitter.com/direct_messages

And as this is a conversation, reply to your replies,

http://twitter.com/replies

Then go back “Home” since you only followed “Groovy People” you should see some interesting to REMarkable things in your public timeline, from Haiku’s on the smell of the person in front of you at FiveBucks, to classic rockers coaxed out into the twitterverse.

Want to really have fun, get your family on twitter, friends, coworkers. You will get to know them in ways that you may never have before. Who got fresh powder in Utah, Who is competing in an around the world adventure for charity, who is stuck in traffic, or thinking about a great new mashup.

Got twitter?

Spend the next 21 days playing with it, and you may.

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The British Prime Minister’s Office at 10 Downing Street is now running an official twitter channel (this is not an April fool’s joke, by the way!), using a mixture of manual posts/replies and automated posts using twitterfeed.com. It’s apparently run by the Prime Minister’s Digital Communications team. How cool is that?

Happy April Fools day, May all your jokes be good ones!

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I am one of those people who need to justify most purchases. When that iPhone came out my creative juices started flowing. Hmmmm … how can I convince myself that phone is vital to my existence, maybe not vital, but how can it help me? Sometimes you just need a little inspiration. The iPhone is a powerful tool and with every update new functionality is added.

Social Media takes time. Some say it takes more time than they can fit into their hectic lives. What if all you needed was a mobile phone? You could promote your business in your down time, those frustrating times when you can’t really do anything productive, the commute home, waiting for doctors appointments, waiting in line at the grocery store, you could even use that iconic device to open up conversations about your business.

Here is a list of the ways I have used the iPhone for social media optimization.

1. The dynamic duo “photos” and “camera” turn you into a photoblogging superstar! Take a picture and upload immediately to your blog. Get more bang for your post and cc your social sites while you are at it. Setting will have to be preloaded and the contact for each social site added to your contacts for easy and immediate access. Once settings are in place shoot your tantalizing picture and post. Be sure to add a compelling title.

2. Find the videos you have loaded up on YouTube and watch them, send them to social sites, email them to contacts, or make the person in line with you at the grocery store watch it. Bookmark your videos on your iPhone. Depending upon your industry and chattiness you will find opportunities to share your videos.

3. I was never a text message sender before the iPhone, but the iPhone’s large (by mobile standards) qwerty keyboard makes it easy and accessible. Combine your iPhone with a microblogging client such as Twitter and there are a variety of combinations to utilize. For example: Monitor your keywords and find the conversations as they happen. Using Twitter you can add ‘bots’ to search conversations which have your keywords in them. These messages containing your keywords can be sent directly to your phone and then your conversation begins. IMPORTANT POINTER: Be sure to adjust your text messaging package to insure your keyword alerts do not exceed your current text messaging package.

Buy technology you love and optimize your settings, bookmarks and features to remove all obstacles to using that technology.

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Voice calls won’t get through and crash networks: Twitter messages are more likely to get through & lets those who MUST use voice. Another “21st-century disaster tip you WON’T hear from officials.”

Stay Safe And Well This Holiday Season .http://twitter.com/safeandwell

Click here if You use Twitter!

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In October Lisa and I attended the Blog World and New Media Expo in Las Vegas. We were excited to share and learn from our fellow New Media and Blogging peers. We are your classic early adopters and we were anxious to learn what other early adopters were utilizing in the realm of New Media and Social Marketing. We found iPhones dominated the crowd, this did not surprise us. Our most notable observation, as we looked over various shoulders in each workshop we attended, was the prevalence of Twitter. Twitter was absolutely hailed as the up and coming social media technology.

Our experience with Twitter prior to arriving at the conference certainly foreshadowed its significance.

Our first hand experience with Twitter was remarkably exhilarating. We started networking and researching Blog World Expo before we even arrived. Via Twitter we connected to all the posts (Tweets) on the topics of greatest interest to us. We tracked posts containing the phrases “Blog World Expo”, “Social Media”, “Internet Marketing”. We connected to various people who shared our interests and professional goals. Twitter gave us the opportunity to gather information, watch trends, see comments and conversations, identify key players, and network. During the conference participants “twittering” their workshops enabled a level of participation beyond our workshop sessions.

What is Twitter? Twitter is a new concept in blogging. Just like Blogging was a new concept only a few years ago and is now accepted into the common language. Twitter was developed by the creator of Blogger.

Twitter is microblogging. Why micro? Because Twitter messages (often referred to as Tweets) cannot exceed 140 characters. Twitter messages answer the question “What are you doing right now?” and so they are timely, sometimes personal, and are posted for the world to see.

Twitter can be used in a variety of ways and with a variety of internet appliances. Twitter can be used on cell phones. It’s brevity of messages and portability make Twitter ideal for the web enabled cell phone. Tweets can be received on laptop and desktop computers via instant messenger, email, and through their web interface.

Think Skywriting from your cell phone. You post to Twitter and your post is out there for all your network and anyone tracking the keywords in your post. Think chat room for Facebook. Posting to Twitter alerts all your friends (referred to as followers in Twitter) and you have the opportunity to reply directly and personally to the person who posted. Think Minority report, (Twitter tracking), gives you the opportunity to track conversations containing keywords. These conversations may have not even happened yet.

What is Twitter not? It is not email, you do not have to pay attention, you can tune in and tune out as needed. Your information gathering can be adjusted to your needs. Do you want to be notified on the fly or would you rather return to your page to gather and respond to the online conversation.

So back to our story, one of the people we have been following on twitter is Jeremiah Owyang Senior Analyst at Forrester Research on Social Computing. Jeremiah set off a Twitter firestorm on Tuesday with this blog post, “Some Conversations are shifting to Twitter” Where he tells us that he is getting 2000 hits a week from Twitter to his blog and that something is happing here. His call to action, comment to his post with your Twitter id and friend up.

One of the number one things that we brought back from Vegas was to spend 50% of your time off blog, at places like Facebook, Myspace, Blogs, where ever you find these conversations taking place. Content + Connection = Conversation, is the core of Web 2.0. So I replied to his post with my Twitter ID.

I have gone from having 60 Followers to over 270 and the conversation is extraordinary. My feeling is this, you will not “get” Twitter until you start “using” Twitter and taking part in the conversation. Walk on over to the internet’s watercooler, you will be glad you did.

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What is Twitter?

Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends, colleagues, and current events, no matter where you are or what you’re doing. For some friends or events you might want instant mobile updates for others, you can just check the web. Invite your friends to Twitter and decide how connected you want you to be.

During the recent Earthquake and California Wild Fires Followers Set Twitter Ablaze: “Twitter users Nate Ritter and Viss have been busy posting rapid-fire updates of the current wildfire situation in Southern California. Both of them are on the scene in San Diego, and they are doing an excellent job of providing information and news about evacuations, meeting points and anything important that local residents would need to know.”

Quite simply: There is nothing more important to teach educators (and the rest of us) about technology, than how to network.

Putting out a fire? Escaping an Earthquake? Planning a class? meeting? Lunch? Conference? and need to be able to update (and update your site?) and be updated via your mobile device? Twitter is how you can do so.