-sha-

Posted

the 20,000th tweet

getting to my 20,000th tweet is no large feat, by any means. no reward, no parade, no commendation from the mayor. just another number. but its worth noting how much has changed since i sent my first tweet back in 2007.

since then, we've seen the rise of the iPhone into prominence. we've moved cities, changed jobs. bought a house. started a business. had a baby. traveled to Boston, London, and Seattle. got a dog. elected the first black President. made new friends. lost a few along the way.

when i first began tweeting, it was like pulling teeth to get friends to hop on board. no one really saw it as a viable means of communication between people and space. now, my closest friends and family are tweeting on a daily basis, back & forth, posting pictures & videos of both the inane and significant. we all talk about the weather, sports, politics, music, lolcats... things we'd still talk about if we were all gathered together. "tweeting" has found its way into the lexicon of daily speech, inserted itself into the nightly news, raised millions for amazing and heartbreaking causes, shed awareness and light onto worldwide atrocities.

we know the Fail Whale, the trending topics, the fake celebs (incredibly hilarious), the real celebs (typically boring), and everything in between.

Twitter, for all the slagging and tags of uselessness and asinine, has revolutionized how we interact with one another. if ever i've encountered someone who refuses to pay attention, who doesn't see the point, its likely because they refuse to move with the times and haven't tried it out. once you're in, you're hooked. you can scream at the vastness and converse between friends. its better than Facebook and quicker than blogging. yes, its a dumb name, and it carries a weight of self-avowed embarrassment when "tweeting" is mentioned in public, but it is what it is, and its not going anywhere, anytime soon.

i like Twitter. and i'm glad that many of you reading this right now are my Twitter friends. onward!

Tagged twitter

Posted

@tweetie's expiration date

i'm a big believer in brand loyalty, especially when it comes to software and hardware components that retain a place in my daily life. for a very long time now, i've been one of Tweetie's biggest supporters. Tweetie, of course, is a twitter client, one of a virtual plethora of twitter clients available for purchase on the iPhone. it made its distinction by being one of the simplest, pretty twitter apps. but Tweetie also has a desktop "big brother" that looks and acts much in the same way as its iPhone counterpart.

problem is, while the iPhone version received a major upgrade in the latter part of 2009, the desktop version hasn't been touched in what feels like ages.

i was such a believer in the Tweetie app that on the day of its desktop release, i purchased a license. while not a requirement at all, i felt that the developer deserved some small pittance for his hard work in developing the software. but now its aging, and aging badly.

desktop apps like TweetDeck have long since surpassed it in functionality and features, including in-app video playback, support for the ever-growing amount of twitter picture services, and the almighty "new retweet." there are the other features, like a direct connection to facebook, giving you an up to the minute insight on what's up on your news feed (although that can get tiresome real quick; i can live without it). Tweetie for the desktop is way way way way behind; it doesn't even support the new style retweeting system.

problem is, there seems to be little to no movement on the part of the developer to update anytime soon. hell, the iPhone app hasn't seen an update since late November, although in all fairness: if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and for me it ain't broke.

so i've been using TweetDeck for almost two weeks, and you know what? i hate it. in the same way the Apple software Color looks completely un-Apple like, TD feels the same way. i've tried reconfiguring and changing color sets and everything else; it just doesn't feel right. ever. and of course, no line breaks. so now i'm back on Tweetie because it does feel absolutely right, but it feels like cheating at the same time. i'd decided to leave Tweetie because of the developer's seeming unwillingness to update, but it does what it does perfectly and dammit, its hard to leave that behind.

at the end of it all, i feel weird complaining about a piece of software that connects to a social media outlet. it ultimately is silly, but i think the other end of that is, "hey, i paid some money to encourage further development and future updates, and it seems you've taken the money and run." many of you reading this won't care, but i know there are some of you who get what i'm saying and i want your opinion: is it ok to feel betrayed by a developer when they just give up on updating their product, especially when you paid money for it when you didn't have to? or is it completely within a developer's rights to not feel compelled to continue... developing... when they've made their stack of cash?

Tagged iPhone mac tweetie twitter

Posted

tweeting 'cross America

Tagged america iPhone tweetie twitter

Posted

digital print done right | twitter v. google

Click here to download:

digital_print_done_right_twitt.zip (207 KB)

today i received an email from the Oxford American (the South's finest literary magazine) letting me know that as a subscriber, i was now entitled to free parallel subscription of their brand-new, fancy pants online digital edition. i got the email on my iPhone, so on a whim, i tapped the included link to see what would happen. i figured upon some giant, sprawling mess of Flash that, of course, wouldn't work on the mobile version of Safari. what i got was an incredibly elegant solution to mobile viewing.

i'm no expert by any means, but i do remember when iPhone OS 3.0 hit the airwaves, there was a great hullaballoo about the greatly expanded capabilities built within the Safari browser. something about WebKit and HTML5 and blah blah blah. it sounded great... and stuff. coming face to face with it today was a whole 'nother story. i mean... really. this is perfect: intuitive, scaled correctly, and completely accessible. its truly a testament to the ingenuity of print media doing its best to survive in the digital age.

[in a fit of boredom, i made this little video showcasing the awesomeness. enjoy]

---------

and in another success story for Twitter...

i've had this problem with this video work i've been doing. photos that have placed into sequences have come out looking like garbage and i've spent about two days trying to figure out the solution. Google has been no help (sorry, guys); its typical results would lead me to product placements and forums that sent me in circles, inevitably back to "BUY OUR AWESOME PRODUCT AND BE A MASTER WHIZ VIDEO EDITOR!!! LOL!1!"

seeing as the Conference is on a very tight budget right now, there was no way i could justify purchasing a plug-in or third party solution. in desperation, i tweeted (yesterday morning) about my problem.

and as if sent from heaven above, a relative newbie to Twitter answered the call. after a couple of back and forth question & answers, i had the perfect solution to my problem.

48 hours on Google versus 15 minutes talking to a fellow Tweeter.

Twitter-1 Google-0

Tagged digital print iPhone magazine oxford american technology twitter

About

the 20,000th tweet

@tweetie's expiration date

tweeting 'cross America

digital print done right | twitter v. google

Tags