MichaelandChrissy.com

I’ve been using Twitter for about nine months, and I probably send out about five tweets a day. Twitter is an interesting animal, in that different people use it in different ways. I think that it was originally meant to be a list of your current doings (”eating breakfast”, “feeding baby”, “out to lunch”), but reading grocery lists like that is like watching grass grow. And I prefer to watch paint drying. Twitter has evolved, though, to be many things to many people.

Personally, I tend to use it as a stream of thought collector. I think of it as supplemental content for my web site, so I don’t reply to others much on it (unless the reply might be interesting to read on the site). I do keep up with a lot of people, however, I just do it via direct message. These do not show up on the public record, but the other person receives them via email or through third-party interfaces like “Twhirl“. I also try to include any links or contextual information from the original tweet in my responses. This ensures that each of my tweets is a stand-alone thought.

I’ve seen some news organizations (including my local paper, “The Northwest Indiana Times“) just post links back to their content. They’re not there to be social, as the term “social media” might imply, but rather to disseminate their products to anyone on Twitter who may be interested. Just don’t expect them to follow you back, since these are often automated bots. The more successful ones have a live person behind them that does follow and engage other users.

Other people may use Twitter as a chat room, sending a series of fragmented replies to several conversations at once.  The problem with this is that Twitter has no threaded discussions.  That’s not a criticism of the way Twitter works, it’s just a fact.  When I read someone’s archive of tweets, I like to be able to understand each one and get a feel for what that person is about.  There is no right way or wrong way to use Twitter, but I still have an opinion on what makes the most sense.  I usually only “follow” people who use the same tweet etiquette I do.

There’s nothing worse than a tweet that reads, “OMG! ME TOO!” What does that even mean? I guess I could go back into the timeline of whoever they were responding to, but if their tweets are just as indecipherable, then it would do little good. How about something like, “You thought that last night’s Doctor Who episode was great? I loved it too! Here’s a link to my thoughts on it: http://is.gd/zIy“. That is easily within Twitter’s 140 character limit, tells everyone what you’re talking about, and provides a link to more information than your short tweet can convey.

The nice thing about Twitter is that the architecture is so open that all of these uses are possible.  Businesses send out links to products via the web interface.  Spammers send out spam through the Twitter API.  Podcasters send out notices of the latest releases with Twhirl.  People talk about their day by cell phone text message.  Short messages, long messages, and bot messages.  It’s all good with Twitter, in whichever way people want to do it.  It’s a very flexible, if sometimes unreliable, system.

Rene Engström is a Swedish cartoonist who does the web comic “Anders Loves Maria“.  She draws and paints each update by hand.  The art seems to be finished in water colors, and they turn out beautifully with spectacular shading and gradation.  The subject matter leans towards the adult side, with some nudity and mature topics, but the story is taken seriously and is very well put together. I’ve added it to my daily reading list.

I first heard of Rene on Twitter, where her handle is “reneengstrom“.  Today, she was taking random requests for quick sketches and then posting the results for everyone to see.  Some of the requests were pretty out there, but she came through imaginatively every time.  I requested an Optimus Prime sketch, and she sent over a picture of her work.  That’s some funny stuff; I laughed out loud.  Thanks, Rene! You made my day.

I haven’t finished writing down all of this year’s Botcon experience, and I will most likely only write a short bit about the huge haul that I brought home. However, I did notice that I have a ton of tweets (Twitter posts) pertaining to Botcon, so I thought that I would post these for anyone who is both interested and not already following me on Twitter. To get the full effect, click on the “Continue Reading” link below!

I signed up for Twitter a few months back, and I’m hopelessly addicted now.  I find myself checking my Twitter feed about ten times a day: reading replies from friends to people I don’t know, checking those people’s feeds, adding them to my own friends list if they look interesting.  I don’t mind the jones, since I enjoy it, but does anybody outside of the “Twitterverse” read my entries (”tweets”, as they’re called)?

Well, now you have to.  I found a WordPress plugin that will post my tweets as a daily blog post.  I’m not going to use it though, because I don’t want my blog to be filled up with Twitter digests (I saw a site like that recently, and it wasn’t pretty).  However, I might post a “best of” list as I see fit.  Below is the first installment.  Redundant data or a poignant look into my psyche?

Our web site has finally made the move to WordPress.  Doing so was no easy task, since it meant having to move to a new internet hosting provider.  The worst part of it was transfering all of the blog entries and photo gallery items.  The photo gallery was a total pain because it required so many steps; it was literally a project all by itself.  I also had to make some changes to the WordPress pages, but luckily the learning curve wasn’t too high. 

I had to take a quick crash course in WordPress functionality.  The system is really rather robust.  I’m very impressed with it, and it’s relatively easy to use.  I was able to bend an existing theme to my iron will in a matter of days, including separate templates for the blog and photo gallery.  And the best part is that I can very easily switch themes whenever I want for a change of pace.  I really like the one that I have though.  I’ve also installed a number of helpful plugins, including a CAPTCHA anti-spam plugin and a Twitter output plugin.

The downside is that all of my old blog posts are still on Google.  Although I was able to transfer the blog content to WordPress, all of the links out there still point to pLog.  I’m going to try to set up a redirect that will send all pLog links to my new blog.  At least people won’t end up with a 404 error.  In the meantime, I should probably queue up Google to spider the new site. 

Twitter is an online service that allows you to post public announcements of your current doings. The catch is that you can only post text blurbs of less than 140 characters (called a “tweet”). They have a desktop widget that allows you to enter updates whenever you feel like it. You can even send updates via your cell phone, but I hate text messages, so I won’t be doing that.

It’s sort of like a thirty second blog entry, which is nice because I usually spend more time tailoring my blog updates. Some people use Twitter as their exclusive blog, but I think that would be difficult given the character-limit restrictions. I tend to ramble though…

You can go directly to my Twitter page, but my last three updates will be posted to our web site and the most recent one will show up on right column of this page (see it there?).