January 2009 - Posts
“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
- Walt Disney
Well worth remembering. Keep opening new doors and doing new things.
I know…I know…another Twitter post. I’ll return to regular programming soon, I promise. I just thought I’d share another great way I discovered to find the posts I’m after quickly.
I’m a news junkie. After checking email, my next check is my RSS feeds. Once I’ve cleared email and my news feeds, I can move on to other business. I’ve been experimenting with Twitter’s search site, http://search.twitter.com. I use OutTwit regularly and it helps find the posts I need, but this is actually a pretty neat way to find things.
Let’s say I want to find posts from certain folks to make sure I didn’t miss any. By this I mean, yes, I use OutTwit but if I exit OutTwit or Outlook, stay disconnected for a few hours, say for a flight, then log back in, it doesn’t catch me up like email. It only pulls the most recent, and certainly not all posts for the last two or three hours. So, search.twitter.com to the rescue.
Back to my example. In this case, let’s say I want to find all of Rod’s posts or Reed’s posts. Using Twitter’s search terms, I enter below:
Once I click the Search button, it will display all of the posts from Reed or from Rod. But, here’s the neat trick:
Once I’ve completed the search, notice the links in the right hand column. One of the links is “Feed for this query”. What will this do? That’s right, it will create an RSS feed for the search query just created that can be inserted in to your news reader. It’s just a matter of copying and pasting the shortcut in to the news reader. As I’ve posted before, Twitter has some great advanced search features, and after each search, you can create feeds for your news reader. When you launch your newsreader the next time, it will read the RSS feed and display the posts. Since I’ve started doing this for posts I don’t want to miss, I catch them since I’m already checking RSS feeds. So, if I want to stay caught up with what @lancearmstrong, or @levarburton, or @jerryrice have been up to, yep, I create a search and drop it in to my newsfeeds.
Once they’ve downloaded to my news reader, there’s an option obviously to view the link. Once you click the link, you’re taken to the actual post to reply, retweet, view, and all of the other options. Some readers, like Snarfer, actually have a Twitter add-in that allow you to post directly from the news reader. It’s not pretty, no, but it’s a great way to stay caught up with folks, even if you don’t have your favorite Twitter client loaded all the time.
I’ve been watching the stats for Twitter clients posting to Twitter. Tweetdeck is making a run up the charts for the most popular Twitter client:
Using the web and sending text messages also remain popular, and those using Twitterfeed and Twitterrific round out the top five clients. Clearly 72% of Twitter users prefer to post to Twitter with the methods listed in the top five.
Out of curiosity, I scanned the clients for where OutTwit may be lurking in the polls. The results?
You can see for yourself…315 posts were made to Twitter from 143 users. Much lower than I expected.
One of the draws to Twitter is seeing the avatars of those that you follow. Some are real pictures, some are funny, others just express the mood the person happens to be in. One thing I see a lot of in the twitter stream though is that OutTwit doesn’t display the avatars and that’s part of what they miss. To answer the question, yes, OutTwit displays the avatars, and now with the latest release, you even get avatars in the tweet preview:
The avatar of the preview toolbar now displays the avatar for quick glance. But what about while your reading? Yes, looking at the Twitter stream as the posts hit it appears there’s no avatar:
From the above snapshot, yes, it appears that avatars are not there but that is at the folder level. It looks like an icon from posts to a newsgroup or SharePoint site, but if you select the message itself, which is how I read (using my up/down arrow keys on my keyboard or the scroll wheel on my mouse), you can see the avatar:
Does it have a slick GUI and look pretty on the surface? No, it doesn’t. Can you see all the pretty avatars at the top level? No, it doesn’t. Do I care? No. Why? One, I don’t need to load Adobe Air to make anything work (or blame Adobe Air when there are problems). Two, does it actually work and keep the posts organized to make Twitter use efficient? Yes, it does. By that I mean, a lot of the popular clients (like Tweetdeck) have a tendency to error out due to too many API calls. I can honestly say that I have not seen a single error since starting to use OutTwit, and using Tweetdeck and Twhirl caused issues for me. And I can honestly say that I monitor the Twitter API website for resets/too many API calls and OutTwit has figured out how to be efficient, even checking for new tweets every minute or two.
To answer the question, yes, OutTwit does display the avatars.
For those that follow my blog for my comments on mobility, standby. I have several posts in draft mode for the phones I’ve been testing on all the carriers (and yes…I know I OWE some folks a phone or two…I know…I know…). I’m trying to get caught back up. Honestly I am. Holidays are always tough to find time, I’m tied up with some major projects, and I’m addicted to Twitter. There, I said it.
There’s certainly a balance between being social with all your new online friends you find on Twitter (and Facebook…and MySpace…and…), and remaining social with not only your blog, but those you come in to direct contact with. Yes, I said being social with your blog. Those of you that manage a blog among other things know what I mean. And yes, I said those you come in direct contact with. I find myself twittering my current status while neglecting those standing right next to me. I find it hard sometimes to answer folks that ask “what are you doing?” Why? I’ve tried answering regarding Twitter, but unless you really experience it, you don’t know how to answer “what’s twitter?” I can’t tell you how many times I still hear “twitter? never heard of it”.
Look for phone reviews and comments on mobile industry in general (including the Palm Pre) shortly, and more posts to the blog.
I’ve discussed OutTwit (from @techhit) in previous posts. Over the last several weeks, I’ve really expanded my Search/Track Keywords and finding some really interesting folks, and really interesting topics, all by using OutTwit’s Search/Track Keyword functionality.
By this I mean, I’ve mentioned previously that Twitter has a 100 per hour pull limit from remote Twitter tools. Understandable given the number of users and the number of Tweets. In any event, Search/Track Keywords dramatically increases your ability to find things quickly. Yes, Following a bunch of people and using Search Folders as I’ve mentioned does the same thing, but again, requires API usage where Search/Track Keywords does not. For the last several weeks, I’ve been using Search/Track Keywords and it’s pulling faster than Following.
A couple of examples of how I’m using Search/Track Keywords:
I’m a fan of mobility so I like to follow conversations on mobility in general. So, I created a Search Track Keyword for Windows Mobile that’s going to a Windows Mobile folder. This search will find any posts made to Twitter where the user uses the words Windows Mobile.
I also want to follow certain trade shows, and those attending trade shows, so obviously creating searches for things like CES or CTIA will work:
I’m also a Cub Scout Den Leader, so want to find others on Twitter that are in to scouting (and obviously also find those who aren’t), so I’ve created a search for Scouts. This will find any posts made to Twitter where the users uses the words Scouts, however the term is used. I’ve meet some other great den leaders in the process.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, you can obviously search for users and “follow” them without adding to your following count. So, searches can be made to follow people (and those that reply to them) by searching for the twitter username, such as levarburton or lancearmstrong or michael_phelps or jerryrice or the_real_shaq (yes, they all use twitter). Or, I can refine the search further by finding any posts just from them, and weed out those replying to them, or trying to get their attention. For this, I use the from: in my search term:
This will only pull posts made from user lancearmstrong, and weed out all replies. If I wanted to follow the entire conversations, I’d leave off the from: and pull any referring to that username. There are many powerful search terms that can be used. You can find a few of them by clicking the underline:
Again, Search/Track Keyword does not utilize or take your API so you can create as many as you want, or use them as often as you want, without fear of running in to the dreaded API limit issue. I won’t tell you how many I’ve created, but there are a lot, and it’s greatly improved my twitter experience.