Currently browsing: Twitter

You find people in the funniest places

As much as I avoided most of the social networking type sites when they began gaining in popularity (i.e. MySpace, Facebook, etc.), I found myself eventually dragged into them in order to keep up with loved ones. For instance, I originally joined MySpace so I could keep up with my brother and help out with his campaign last year. Since then, I have been discovered by more people from high school and college than those I had previously connected with via Classmates.com and Reunion.com. (Funny how that is!) I’ve since in started getting back in touch with old acquaintances via MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook (a LOT of my former co-workers are on the latter two!), MeetUp, Virb, Jaiku, … heck, even one of my Twitter friends recognized me in a restaurant a week or so ago!

Cool how that is.

In fact, a friend of mine from college now surfs — well, he surfed during college, but now he does it for a living. Funniest looking thing he was back then: tall, skinny, long blond curly hair that he usually teased up into a ‘fro. Sweet guy though, I heard he married a girl from Vestavia. He now goes all over the world. He had emailed me a schedule of places he’s going: Southern CA, Outer Banks NC, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Japan! (I never knew surfing was big there?)

Another friend I ran across on MySpace — he was one of my best friends in high school. He graduated 2 years ahead of me and went into the Navy. He now lives in Nevada and bounces between there and Japan and works for the gaming industry.

(Color me green with envy on that one! )

Anyways, it’s just neat how people you know are everywhere and can be found literally anywhere.

Don’tcha think? :cool:

Careful what you Twitter

Mama always said, “Keep your words soft and sweet, in case you’ll have to eat them later.” I guess this isn’t exactly what she had in mind, but it’s possible that a recent Twitter glitch made lead to some eating their words, or having words of their own. :wink:

Twitter glitch leaves ‘private’ users exposed to the world

“Twitter, the popular messaging site which has gained traction among the Technorati, has come in for plenty of criticism for downtime, bugs and trouble keeping up with the volume of users signing up.

But its latest problem takes things beyond the merely irritating and into the realm of dangerous – by undermining user privacy.” (via The Guardian)

Due to some unforeseen quirk of the Twitter API, certain things that are protected within the virtual walls of the Twitter.com realm were available for the whole world to see via Twittervision, regardless of the user’s selected privacy preferences. That means that whatever someone was twittering away privately was actually visible to the whole freakin’ world!

A few hours ago the hole was plugged, but what most users may not have realized yet is that since it was obviously open for a good long while, those tweets may linger on via the many available search engine cache sites.

*ahem* Google, anyone? :twisted:

Twitter down, WordPress up

Twitter seems to be a very jumpy cat this morning. I installed Twitbin only to find out that it kept rejecting my password because Twitter.com was down. (perfect ;P)

I received a notice last night that WordPress 2.2 has been released. However, considering the amount of trouble Jim had upgrading his site last night, I think I’m going to wait a few days and watch the Support forums before jumping on this one. Besides, I’m eagerly awaiting 2.3 for those nifty tagging features they keep promising!

Tweets on Twitter

Had an uber-busy weekend. For those who observed it, I hope everyone had a good Easter. Jim’s brother and his family are in town, so we spent most of the weekend with them.

I didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time on the pc, so I’m just now catching up. Posted a lot of things to BYKYC that I’ve missed over the weekend. I had originally resigned to sit and go through my Twitter updates, but let’s face it — I got WAY too may Friends listed, and I’m not keen on pouring through 25 pages of one-liners, LOL!

I did read today’s though! hehe

I have run across a nice site for keeping up-to-date on new Twitter gadgets and various Twitter-related news: Twitter Hacks. They featured a piece on there today on how easy it is to spoof someone on Twitter:

Twitter Vulnerable to Spoofing?

Can someone pose as you on Twitter? With a very simple trick, yes they can.

Both Twitter and Jott authenticate users by their phone number. Twitter does this by validating users based upon the source of SMS messages sent to the phone number 40404 (US), and Jott does this by trusting the incoming Caller ID when someone calls 877-568-848. From a security perspective this means the following:

* Anyone who knows your phone number can update your Twitter page by spoofing a SMS message, i.e. post a Twitter entry as you.
* Anyone who knows your phone number can spoof his or her caller ID to send a Jott message as you.

Read Twitter and Jott Vulnerable to SMS and Caller ID Spoofing by Nitesh Dhanjani for the full details. Needless to say I hope they are able to fix this. I don’t know much about the SMS world but hopefully they’ll be able to block these fake sender services. The problem is new ones will fill up all the time. Does this mean Twitter and similar services need another layer of authentication? I know a lot of people on Twitter publish their cell phone numbers on their web sites so this could get ugly kinda quick like.

I guess lucky for me I don’t have a cellphone, so the above wouldn’t apply to me; but anyone who does, it would be easy to spoof an account and send an unGodly amount of spam — say, messages advertising that Phentermine stuff? Anyone with a blog has seen those! That’d likely piss off people on your friends list, easily having your account terminated, and worse: labeling you as a spammer.

Twitter Terms, Kitty Cuteness, and a Last.fm Twitter How-To

Yes, I’m amusing myself far too much with this thing! LOL :mrgreen:

I ran across some Twitter-related terminology via the San Fransisco Chronicle:

• Twitterer: A user of Twitter.
• Twittering: To send a Twitter message.
• Twittermob: An unruly and ragtag horde of people who descend on an ill-prepared location after a provocative Twitter message.
• Twittercal mass: A community that has achieved a critical mass of twitterers.
• Twittermaps: A mashup technology that lets Twitter users find each other using Google maps.
• Twitterrific and Twitteroo: Two services that let users post to Twitter using a Mac or PC.
• Twitterpated: To be overwhelmed with Twitter messages.
• Twitterrhea: The act of sending too many Twitter messages.

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Here’s some funnies I ran across while surfing through the Twitter Fan Wiki (cats):

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A quick “how to” for anyone wanting to display their Recent Tracks:

1. Visit Last.fm’s Data Feeds page and grab the RSS URI listed under Recent Tracks: www.last.fm/tools/feeds
2. Hop on over to Twitter Feed and login: twitterfeed.com
3. Click “Create new twitter feed” and add the RSS URI for your Recent Tracks and set to the desired update frequency

Voila! :cool:

When you first add the feed, it will post only the first entry from the feed. All entries after that are added separately.

Tweet Tweet Tweet!

I’ve been having fun playing around with my Twitter account lately. I wanted to pop on real quick and post a few more links that some of you may find interesting:

Twit This! – a scrap of javascript to allow your visitors to quickly send Twitter messages about your blog or post. (a WordPress plugin is also available)

TwitterAmI? – A Frappr map of fellow “Twitterers” (or “Tweeters”?). Find someone local to you.

Newbie’s guide to Twitter – Rafe Needleman’s how-to for getting started using the Twitter service, some advanced features and a few “Twitterers worth following.” (Or, just do what I do, use the TwitterSearch!)

The Top 5 Ways Smart People Use Twitter – Sharon Sarmiento’s list on the benefits of using Twitter, including branding, improved communications, networking and more.

Twitter: Use it Productively – I love LifeHack.Org. This handy list demonstrates how you can use Twitter to actually get things done.

Hacking Twitter for Fun and Profit – Don Steinberg’s article describing “10 ways to make the newest wireless social network phenomenon do something interesting – and useful.”

If you have anything that you’d like to add, please feel free to share via the comments! :grin:

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UPDATE: Ran across one on the Last.fm forums:

Google Twitter Gadget – A widget for your Google personalized home page. It can show the public timeline, your own or your friends timeline, you can also elect to show the ‘What are you doing’ update section, and more.

More Twitter mapping tools, nice!

TwitterMap & GeoTwitter

A Firefox “add-on”: Post updates from your Firefox Search bar

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UPDATE: A nice tip from Josh Kenzer on how to find Twitter users by Location:

If you want to find Twitter users near you, you can use Google to search based on location. To do this, enter into the Google search bar:

site:twitter.com location cityname

Obviously, replace cityname with the location you want to find users from.

Very nice! :cool:

Twitterpated

Twitterpated:
1. the happy jumpy feeling you get that causes you to smile uncontrollably.
2. the way birds and other animals act during mating season (as seen in Bambi)

1. Vianne gets twitterpated when Marcos touches her cheek.
2. “The birds gettin’ all twitterpated,” said the owl. (Disney’s Bambi really is a good movie.)

I’m sure most of you have heard about Twitter by now. Personally, I don’t care to know what my friends are doing every 30 seconds of the day, and I don’t have the time (nor interest) to update mine that frequently. However, this service could be useful in promoting blogs. I’ve seen several “auto” publishing techniques. One of which I’ve been playing with over the last week was Engtech’s “Twitterbot” Guide. Very easy to understand and use, but it meant leaving the app on my pc 24×7 and if I had to restart it, it might re-post something already on my Twitter profile. I also looked into an online auto-posting service called AutoTwit. (Named appropriately, I thought.) It’s barely beta, and I never could get it automated.

Today I discovered Victoria Chan’s Twitter updater plugin for WordPress. Works brilliantly! This plugin will allow your Twitter profile to be updated when you create a new post, publish a new post, and edit an existing post. These are, of course, configurable. HOWEVER, at the time of this post, the original plugin (as-is) does not work in WP 2.1.2. James Cridland was kind enough to post a quick code fix and an access tip here.

I’ve been playing with this for just a few minutes and I’m already impressed. (OK, I’m easy to impress ;P) It’s not like this is rocket science or selling funeral insurance. hehehehe

Anyway, I just thought I’d share for any fellow “lazy twits” out there like me! ROFL :mrgreen:

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