Tag Archive for 'Twitter'

The Edinburgh Twestival

Published on February 5, 2009 in Personal. 1 Comment Tags: , .

You may have seen Twitter in the mainstream media of late. Either from Janis Krums breaking the first pictures of Flight 1549 landing in the Hudson River or, more recently, Steven Fry getting stuck in an elevator and getting more viewers than your average BBC3 sitcom. An increasing number of celebrities like Jonathan Ross, Danny Wallace and Chris Moyles are jumping on the bandwagon too. Perhaps accordingly, UK Twitter website visits jumped by 974%.

You may not ‘get’ Twitter – I didn’t for a long time. There’s a lot of implications of this deceptively very simple concept. It’s fantastic for alerting news outlets to breaking stories. It is not a news source in itself. There, I’ve said it. Many people believe that it signals the end of mainstream media but they’re wrong. Traditional and reputable reporters get the facts checked before broadcasting. They have to but Twitter has no such accountability. Imagine a modern-day Orson Welles on Twitter.

Twitter has recently got me some peanut butter and organised a flashmob snowball fight in Trafalgar Square. Next week it will do something far more worthwhile.

Continue reading ‘The Edinburgh Twestival’

Paranoia

Published on January 26, 2009 in Personal. 1 Comment Tags: .

I received a package at the office today and while I am expecting a new cardigan that my mum has been busy knitting for me at some point, this was obviously not it. It was far too small and heavy for a start. Secondly, looking up the postcode gleaned from the ‘Sender’ label on Google Maps placed the sender somewhere in a field in Hampshire. Thirdly, said sender was somebody who identified themselves only as ‘Donovan’. I briefly thought that an 80s musician was stalking me for some reason before deciding that was simply too bizarre.

I then started thinking that someone may have sent me something that may bring me harm. The next random thought was that my future as supreme being of the planet may just come to pass after all and that this was some kind of Terminator or Valkyrie type plot to get rid of me.

Not having access to a fluoroscope or fume cupboard in which to open it I decided to just proceed carefully. It turns out that there was no need to get carried away. It was a simply jar of Whole Earth crunchy organic peanut butter. I deduced that one of my Twitter followers must have taken pity on me after my rants the other week on the availability of decent peanut butter in the West End of Edinburgh (or lack thereof to be more exact).

This was indeed the case: a belated birthday present. Big thanks Ben!

Give it another go

Published on November 18, 2008 in Technology. 0 Comments Tags: .

I’ve mocked Twitter whenever it has been mentioned at the weekly Edinburgh Coffee Morning – and it’s mentioned quite often with people like Mike Coulter in attendance. I think my main mistake in the past has been relying on my FriendFeed as a hub for all my updates. You simply just don’t get the interactive conversation element of Twitter and it’s only now that I’ve happened across a lot of my @replies that I missed months ago. I’m now all set with Twhirl and Twinkle so I don’t miss anything again.

I decided to give Twitter another shot last week. Within minutes, 10 Downing Street and the geek luminaries zefrank, Chris Pirillo and Jason Calacanis were following me too. This is probably down to them using TweetLater or something similar rather than a manual process (unlike Steven Fry who added me after a couple of days, although I’m led to believe that it’s his PA who adds his followers).

Things are going crazy at the moment. The staggering milestone of one billion Tweets was reached last week. This may have something to do with Barack Obama making heavy use of the micro-messaging format.

Update: since posting this, Twitter had been up and down like a kangaroo on a tramampoline. Database upgrades several times per day? Come on, don’t play us for fools!

Now for something completely different

Published on August 15, 2008 in Personal. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Edinburgh in August is a fantastic place to be. The Festival is in full swing, the sun doesn’t set until after 2100 and the pubs are open for longer. Okay, so the weather does demand that you equip yourself with an umbrella and sunglasses but spirits don’t appear to be dampened all that easily.

To many, comedy is what the Festival Fringe is all about and I can’t say that I’m all that different. I have been to see musicians, book launches, gallery openings and the odd bit of theatre but usually I’ll be laughing at Tommy Tiernan or someone similar.

However, for a bit of a change of tack, I think that I may have finally found a use for Twitter: I’m taking part in a scavenger hunt in-and-around Edinburgh in the morning, the fruits of which will be collated and presented in a week-long exhibition.

Keep an eye on my Twitter feed to see what I’m up to and looking for between 0900 and 1800 tomorrow.

Do you Twitter?

Published on June 7, 2008 in Rants and Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

My rule of thumb is if I can mention something in the pub and my non-geek friends have heard of it then it’s pretty much guaranteed to be a success. Even among my switched-on geek brethren Twitter isn’t all that popular.

Just when I had something possibly exciting to broadcast Twitter was unavailable again. I could have sworn that the monkey man himself, Steve Ballmer, walked in to the restaurant last night. I tried again and then checked Twitter’s status to find that it wasn’t actually down at all. It just wasn’t working.

At the risk of invoking Evan’s ire, Twitter is next to useless at the moment. Okay, so it may have broken the news of the Chinese earthquake. It can get you out of jail. There are stories of the LA firefighters using it and it can even tell you when to water your plants. Twistori is interesting but Twitter needs a sticky killer app before the masses adopt it but before that can happen it really has to get the stability problems sorted out.

Switching hosts and abandoning Ruby on Rails may be a start but there’s a long way to go.