Centauri's Thoughts

This is a bit like the #followfriday in that these are people I follow and my reasons:

This list is the merest hint into all that are out there!

For StarTrek:
@wilw (Wil Wheaton) because he is his own geek and knows it! (too cool!)

@levarBurton – Because he has a charm all his own.

Blogging:
@lizardoid (LittleGreenFootballs blog) – I've been following Charles Johnson for years.

Funny:
@theEllenShow (Ellen DeGeneres) - She cracks me up, but she has good things to say.

@KrisColvin – a web designer with a head for biz and other aspects of life.

Humor and science:
@badastronomer (Phil Plait) - I've been reading his stuff since the FoxTV moon hoax.

uplifting:
@tonyrobbins – Great Motivational speaker I first learned of in the movie “Shallow Hal”

B2Evolution supports a Twitter update plugin via leeturner

If it ends up too spammy, I may turn it off, but I tend to tweet most blog entries as it is, so this should save some effort.

Its now been almost 20 days since I opened a Twitter account. A lot has happened in this (somewhat short) timeframe.

In addition to some real time news about the ISS today (they had to stay in the Soyuz module, because of a possible space debris hit), there has been a LOT of chatter since Ellen DeGeneres has discovered twitter.
On Monday, Diddy explained it to her (sort of) on her show, and by today, she has an account set up and is trying for a million followers (She has more than 92,000 as of this post).

The clip of the show with Diddy got her interested and todays show said this.

There are a number of celebrities on twitter, but Ellen talking about it on her show and trying to get a million followers might make a huge increase in people very quickly. Not just for her, like most twitter users, they will begin to wonder “what else is out there?” and start exploring and finding things on their own.

In answer to that, I have been following some interesting tools to make using twitter more interesting, and a fair number of them come from Chris Pirillo

Chris lists a top 10, and 10 more, of those, I'll be listing the ones I find the most interesting plus a few I have found via other tweeters:

#1 Monitter
Hands down winner to me for real time. you have a default of 3 keywords to follow and that can be increased or decreased.

#2 twitscoop.com
An awesome way to see whats hot and trending, it even has graphs showing activity by the hour, (it showed todays spike about the space station)

#3 TweeTake
Allows you to make a local save of followers, friends, tweets, direct messages, or everything.

#4 twitpwr.com
Produces a tag cloud from the bio's of those you follow

For completeness, I include both of Chris Pirillo's lists

10 Twitterific tools

10 MORE must have twitter tools

Check them out, because we all have different uses for twitter, and what might not be of critical interest to me, might be just what you wanted!

I can barely believe its been only 10 days since I create a twitter account and jumped right in! In this span of time, I have found people, conversed, learned of special web sites and analytical tools all made specifically for twitter and to track tweets.

I now see all the various uses that can be applied, and how groups of people can interact. A very interesting thing indeed.

Its everything from the most practical: family members to track a caretaker, to random thoughts, to special interest area updates, and anything else one can imagine a broadcasting platform could carry, in addition to total interactivity in that group.

There are those people out there following and being followed by nearly 40,000 people. Managing this would take (in my mind) software other than the twitter interface, which shows all people you are following is strict chronological order.

Some special tools are being developed to watch for keywords, which might be better suited than following 1,000s of people who speak specifically to things of interest to you on occasion (along with everything else). I just cant imagine reading the tweets of 20,000 – 30,000 people and getting use of that. There are tweet aggregators which can make this process easier.

That being said, twitter is still a new and interesting new social app, and as such, you just never know where the social crowd will take it.

I have seen Tag Clouds in use for about a year or two now, but I believe they have some interesting potential for a visual reference of content in many more ways than is being seen.

One recent app I saw was based on the bio's of your twitter followers: http://twitpwr.com/5vk/

So, armed with that knowledge, I made my own small app that text can be pasted into. It strips common words like a, an, of, the, by, for and so on.

Give it a try at http://www.centaurihome.net/cloud.php

Apparently, there is a special kind of twitter hiccup that happens on occasion (as it did today) and people lose 1,000s of followings (friends) (it acts like a person just stopped following other people).

This happened today to at least 2 people that I know, and I dont follow very many (yet).

Due to the nice API set out there, it looks like someone has already thought about this, and there is a way to back up your followers and those you follow.

You can also back up your favorites, direct messages, etc., but I imagine the biggest thing is the followers and friends (as it is called on tweetake)

Here is an excerpt from the about page:

Why bother to do this? Many reasons:

• Twitter may lose followers again like it did in June / July
• You may change your Twitter name and want to re-follow the people you were following, and contact the people who were following you
• You may want to refer to an older Tweet - currently Twitter does not keep all of your older Tweets
• You may just like backing things up, ‘just in case’, like us

It creates a CSV file suitable for saving in many types of spreadsheets (or text software if you have the patience to read comma separated values that way

My understanding of Twitter is growing by leaps and bounds as I read and use it. In the span of five days, I have seen that followers come and go, but some interesting things happen out there. Of course, it really depends on who you are reading, and the content is only as good as the posters.

Some call it micro-blogging, but that too, depends on your style of blogging, I suppose

It seems many use twitter in conjunction with tinyurl.com to make new blog posts known, and I use it myself for that purpose for specific blog entries.

Of course, on the spot news is a great use, as is instant communications between a group (I dont know how much twitter is currently used in the capacity).

I'll definitely be keeping an eye out though, just to see where things are heading.

Twitter, short blogging (140 characters or less), random thoughts.. hmmm.

Twitter has been around for a while now, and I hear more and more of it as of late. A few of the cases I knew of it a few years back were one of the Egyptian Blogger Alaa (AKA the Big Pharaoh) being held. Many people use it, according to what I see, some famous, some not, and some that became famous, for one reason or another, if only for a short time.

It definitely has it uses in small social circles or even for temporary groups of associated people in coordinating events.

It does take on a larger life though, it seems, in others.

I suppose following the tweets of another, purely as a social experiment, has its values. We shall see.

See all of twitter at twitter.com and see my own wandering thoughts (though not too many yet at twitter.com/Centauri7)