jenny-bee.net

I’ve decided to start collecting twitter feeds.

Feeds that have something interesting about them - linguistically or visually.

I’m going to create a page on this website to display them at some point. But for now, here are the first artifacts to be added to the collection:

@towerbridge
“I am opening for the SB Hydrogen, which is passing downstream.”

@shippingcast
“Shnn, Rckl, Mln SW bckg S or SE 5 2 7, phaps gale 8 l8r. Ruf or v.ruff. Shwrs then rain. Gd, bec. mod or pr”

@fireland
“The video poker machines burble. The casino carpet blurs into a 3D dolphin. The waitress’ lipstick, Tokyo Gutter, is smeared across my neck.”

@andy_house
“electricity meter reading: 31550 KWH”

Popularity: 19% [?]

Stowe Boyd recently invited startups to ‘Twitpitch’ him in order to arrange to meet with him at a conference…

1. All companies who would like to have a meeting with me, need to send me a Twittered description of the product. Yes, please Twitter it to me at www.twitter.com/stoweboyd. Yes, one tweet, 140 characters less the eleven used for “@stoweboyd “.
2. Optionally, send a supporting twitpitch with one link, and no other text. Could be to anything: website, video, press release, Rick Astley, etc.
3. Then, twitter me one or more suggested times/place to meet at the event, using the times on the calendar, and a location in the conference building I won’t have time to visit your nearby hotel or offices.

Nice. If you’ve got a brilliant idea it really should be communicable in 140 characters. And I’m all for using words sparingly and in a considered fashion. Any application that encourages that gets my vote.

Popularity: 43% [?]

There’s a war going on on Twitter and it has a hue.

We used to play color wars at summer camp. Near the end of the year the entire camp would split up into colors, red, green, black, blue, etc… and compete in a series of events: tug of war, egg toss, basketball…

zeFrank

I LOVE the idea of playing games on twitter.

So I started a thread using the concept of chain stories which I think would work really well within the 140-character medium.

Here’s how it went (read bottom to top):

Some immediate issues surfaced:

1. There has to be mutual follow-ship between the participants (the penultimate post on the above screenshot was tweeted by someone I wasn’t following and I didn’t see it at the time it was posted)
2. Simultaneous posting from more than one participant (is likely and it…) breaks the thread (if facilitated by @replies)
3. Likewise, delayed posting also breaks the thread
4. It’s just generally difficult to follow the thread of the story

Possible solutions:

1. Limit the game to two participants
2. Set up a group and have people tweet to that somehow (this wouldn’t totally solve the simultaneous posting problem)
3. Let the game descend into anarchy from time to time - use hashtags to follow the story rather than @replies

I’m inclined to take the latter approach. As long as an individual is monitoring the thread they could draw everything back together if tweets got out of control. Alternatively, the story could be allowed to branch off by changing the hashtag (#story, #story1, #story2 etc).

Ultimately for a game like this to work, it has to be spontaneous and simple. I’ll give it another try at some point and document it here.

Some other game ideas:

• Word of the day: challenge people to include a specified (really obscure) word in their tweets
• Web treasure hunt: clues build up a picture and participants have to identify a digital artifact and link to it
• Degrees of separation: get from one person/thing/place etc to another in as few ‘degrees’ as possible
• I’m NOT going to suggest Mornington Crescent as that would be far to geeky

Popularity: 88% [?]

The irrepressible Dave Briggs has launched another really cute local government web app.

lgSHOUT! is a ’site that lets local government folk yell for help or holler about something fabulous’.

It’s very similar in concept to a much loved micro-blogging tool.

It’s tools like lgSHOUT! that will open up geek concepts like micro-blogging to a mainstream audience, making web 2.0 truly accessible to ‘normal’ people.

Good one Dave.

Popularity: 62% [?]

As anyone in the tech world who hasn’t been under a rock for the last few days will know, the SXSW tech love-in is currently taking place.

I’m not there but I’m trying to keep abreast with what’s going on. Fortunately, this is a lot easier to do than ever before. Twitter and Seesmic are updating me with observations from people who’s opinions I respect and my rss reader is busy gathering feeds. There are also a number of tools I can use to ‘manually’ find content - digg, del.icio.us, hashtags etc.

But sifting through the gossip, chatter, informed opinion, official texts, party videos etc etc to identify key themes, opinions and zeitgeist is a daunting task.

Established publishing channels such as Wired seem to be doing a good job of recording key moments and general observations. But I’m not totally certain their reporting is accurate. What if they are completely failing to notice the Twitter buzz around a new application?

What I’m faced with is my perception of trust and authority in the recording of this event. I need to employ a number of methods to build a complete picture of the conference as there isn’t one source to do that for me. I trust that I’ll be presented with well informed, intelligent, crafted commentary from the Wired blog, and I also trust my Twitter and Seesmic friends to reflect zeitgeist and offer their expert opinion.

What I need is a website where I can get a roundup of what the Twitterverse is buzzing about, what’s being discussed on Seesmic, what’s being blogged, rated, bookmarked and so on.

I’d still like to read ‘professional’ editorial and interpretation but this and the user generate content would complement each other in order to present a holistic vision of - in this case - SXSW.

I wonder if this is the approach established news publishers will need to move towards in order to survive changing perceptions of authority and the inevitable mainstream establishment of user generated content?

What do people think? Does anything like this already exist?

Popularity: 99% [?]