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If a picture is worth a thousand words: Flickr considered

December 18, 2009 in Art, Photography, Technology | No comments

I’ve been a happy Flickr user for several years. Like many, I love the ability to establish an online circle of friends and family with whom I can share my photos. But there’s a great deal more to Flickr than just sharing images and video among friends and family. Recently I’ve been exploring Flickr and finding that it is a wonderful source of beautiful and inspiring work. Furthermore, Flickr is a powerful social networking tool which can help any person transform snapshots into a conversation with global reach.

Art Library

Flickr is a product of Yahoo, and is similar to Google’s Picasa service. I have tried Picasa but was not as impressed with the interface or the community. Flickr has a free option or a Pro account option. I started with a free account but switched to Pro in a matter of days. The Pro Account costs only $24.99 a year and gives unlimited uploads and storage, stats on images, and much more, so it is most certainly worth the upgrade.

Flower East Maui

Once you have your Flickr account set up and have started uploading, there are a number of good tools that can help you organize and present your images. Images can be gathered into broad collections and more selective sets. Sets are useful for creating a group of images from a specific event, for instance, “Halloween Party 2009″ or “Shanghai Trip June 2008″. Also, Flickr has a robust image tagging feature that lets you add tags to images. Tags can be anything that helps identify the image. You can then browse your existing tags, and look at public images with the same tag. Images can be geotagged which enables you can associate the location the image was taken with the image. A simple drag-and-drop map makes it easy to geotag images, and you can then browser your images on the map by location. The most recent addition to the Flickr tool chest is a People tag, which allows you to identify individuals in images, much the way people can be tagged in Facebook albums.

It is worth mentioning that Flickr provides pretty reliable visibility protections which can be set on an image-by-image basis. This enables you to set the security level for an image’s visibility to family only, friends only, friends and family, or everyone. In your contacts, you establish how people fit into one or more of these categories. In addition to controlling the visibility of images, you have the same control over who can comment on images, and who can tag, People-tag, or add notes to images.

We all have heard and understand the wisdom of not putting sensitive, embarrassing or harmful images on the open Internet, — advice I strongly encourage people to consider. However, I do feel that when used properly, Flickr is a great solution to creating private family photo pools that enable the sharing of photos all over the world without making images of children or individuals public. Just use your better judgment.

Considering all these powerful features, the ability to upload and store unlimited images (with a Pro account) and the privacy features, let’s consider some of the more interesting uses. Here are two things that I recommend people do to get more out of Flickr:

Create groups. Numerous times in recent months, friends and acquaintances have asked me how they can create a single pool of shared photos or video of a single event that involved multiple people. One friend recently went on a group trip to China and wanted to set up a way to share photos with the other members of the tour. The same could be done for birthday parties, picnics, dinner parties or other event. With Flickr, there is nothing easier. If you’re taking a trip, tell the other people on the tour that you have a Flickr group and encourage them to join and share to the group. One person creates the group and sends invitations to others to join. Once members are set, anyone can add their photos to the group pool.

Join an existing public group. If you can take a photograph of it or with it, it has at least one group on Flickr. There are many open groups devoted to cities or other geographical areas, camera types (from the newest Nikon digital to pinhole, press cameras, or other). There are groups about Books, Cemeteries, people, animals, and weather. I am a member of several groups on Lomography, Holga camera users, just to name a few. ,

Shadowy Self-Portrait with hat and skaters

There are images taken from almost every spot on the planet from the last hour as well as photos and images from previous centuries.

Finally, because Flickr is a robust social networking application, it integrates effortlessly with all populat blog systems (thanks to the many eager developers who have written quality plugins for WordPress and other platforms, there are many great tools to chose from for any conceivable task). It integrates with Facebook, MySpace, and other services, and can even be connected by means of the excellent Geotagging features to applications like Google Earth. This means you can take a few simple steps toward connecting the photos on Flickr (yours and everyone else’s) with places you visit virtually. For those of you who are a bit more adventurous, you can even create your own simple Mashups with a little reading and some php.

I highly recommend those interested check out the following resources:

The Flickr Blog
Flickr Video Exploration
Flickr’s Camera Finder
code.Flickr which includes the Flickr API, which is essential reading for those looking to create their own mashups or Flickr aware applications. (PHP coders will find PEAR::Flickr_API and other PHP tools very easy to use and very well documented. I have not used other API’s but I can only assume they are equally good.)

I also recommend iPhone users get the Flickr iPhone App, which is not perfect, but makes it very easy to view your Flickr images on the go, and provides a nice way to upload images taken on the iPhone to Flickr.

In the meantime, get your cameras and scanners warmed up and, if you haven’t already, get yourself a Flickr account.

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How Jeff Bezos took on Orwell and Lost

July 21, 2009 in Books, Current Events, Ideas & Rants, Technology, Writing | 1 comment

The recent news that Amazon had deleted digital copies of Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindles got me thinking today. It really goes to show that when a company like Amazon put so much into a device (which is really a pretty cool device) and think they can get away with redefining the landscape of reading, writing, publishing and ultimately, all the forms of business surrounding these activities, that they will ultimately meet Orwell. Bezos made such a ruckus about the Kindle being so much more than just a gadget. The Whispernet delivery and the access to Amazon make it a service as much as a gizmo, Bezos argued.

So, when purchased content suddenly becomes “unavailable” what we have is a Digital Age / DRM case of “Out-of-Print”. Which is kind of funny that Amazon would, for all their effort to make print digital, find that they too are subject to the rule of copyrights, and instead of people being angry at the Orwell folks, we’re all pissed at Amazon.

So, I’m just going to suggest that those Kindle owners who are feeling angry about this, remember that no matter what Jeff Bezos says in the sales pitch, you bought a gadget. Now, put it away and go to indiebound, locate a nice independent bookstore in your area or online and buy yourself a nice paperback. I assure you it will make you feel better.

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Tags: Jeff Bezos, Kindle, Orwell

Thoughts on Sherman Alexie’s criticism of eBooks

June 10, 2009 in Books, Current Events, Ideas & Rants, Technology, Writing, blind/visually impaired | 1 comment

While I was reading up on the news from this year’s BookExpo America, I was struck by the comments Sherman Alexie made about Amazon’s Kindle.

As I’ve written at some length about the Kindle, I thought I’d continue my exploration into the eBook controversy and consider some of these criticisms.

At one of the panels, Sherman Alexie was asked about the Kindle and he stated that he thought they were elitist, priced far beyond the means of poor kids, and went further to state that he saw a woman on his plane while flying to New York who was reading a Kindle, and he wanted to hit her.

I really hate this kind of stuff. It reminds me of a time in the 1980’s when I went to see Hunter S. Thompson speak at the Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder, Colorado. I had, in my teens, been quite a fan of Thompson and his insanity, so I was very excited to go and see him speak. I tell you that I lost all respect and interest in the man there and then. He showed up over an hour late, ranted and raved incoherently for a few minutes, then took some questions which resulted in him throwing a glass and taking some verbal shots at a “lesbian” in the audience and leaving. It was, in a word, disappointing.

For some reason, I get a similar feeling when I read Sherman Alexie say stupid things about people reading Kindles. Not only does it miss the point entirely, it causes us to question him more than the point he was making, namely, technology.

As a technologist, I firmly believe that technology has to be tested. Part of the test is of course done by the people who develop the technology, but the real test comes later, after a market for the technology has been established. Alexie makes a very good point about the difficulty poor kids face in a world of expensive electronic reading devices. I’ve been researching the role of Libraries in the so-called “conversion to digital“ books, and it is very clear that if devices replace printed books, the role of libraries will change dramatically, and possibly in many less-then-favorable ways. I for one have no interest in seeing libraries unable to provide a full range of titles because they are in some way limited by restrictive Intellectual Property laws from distributing digital copies. I also believe strongly that writers must have the ability to benefit financially from their work. These positions are not at all balanced in the current structure of copyright law primarily because digital books, like MP3 files are uncontrollable in the same way that printed books and CD’s are controllable. Similarly, I see no value in any process which seeks to divide rich from poor, especially when it comes to access to books. One of the greatest achievements in modern society is the concept of the public library. I visit my own local library on a near daily basis, and I believe they are one of the most valuable and vital institutions mankind has devised. It is also arguable though, that the library of the future will take a more important role in distributing materials evenly and expanding the access of the general public, rich and poor, to books as well as to computers and technologies.

Do eBooks challenge the Library? Perhaps.

Mr. Alexie: Do Kindles make poor kids less likely to get at good books? Do they really add such a weight to the current social imbalance? Do you seriously think that expressing anger towards people who own them is a productive way to counter the technology?

One of the primary reasons why I took an interest in the Kindle stemmed from my work with blind/visually impaired students. I strongly believe that eBooks are key to making content more accessible. The answer is in the formats and the availability of texts in the mainstream (meaning that a blind person need not have a separate means for getting a book than a sighted person). Now, whether reading for school or pleasure, a blind student needs to add 5-6 weeks of advance time to get books. Many of these books have to be manually scanned, and then are delivered to the reader in some far from suitable proprietary digital format. Consider if a student could simply buy the book in a digital format and have a device which performed text-to-speech or was readable on a refreshable braille display? For these people, the ability to rely on the same mainstream formats as the rest of the world is huge.

I wish I could present Mr. Alexie with a similarly compelling argument in regards to socioeconomic inequalities. I cannot. A middle class person (when there was such a creature) who digests 25-50 titles a year would find that owning a Kindle was in fact economically beneficial. Consider that most hardcover, front-list titles retail for $24.99 or more and retail on the Kindle for $9.99, this presents a $15 dollar savings to the consumer. Save that on 25 titles and you’ve just reduced the cost of your investment by $375. As the 6-inch Kindle sells for $359, it’s a pretty economically sound purchase. (A new company from the UK called Interead has just gotten into the market with a device called Cool-er which is around $250 and more are sure to follow.)

Funny how two writers whose work I have been amazed by, Sherman Alexie and Mark Helprin would sacrifice themselves so on the altar of negative press. These are two of America’s finest living writers, and their opinions should matter. Alexie posted a response on his website which reads: ”Even as I’m being insulted by hundreds of strangers, I am grateful that the Internet literary world is a bit abuzz with discussions about the negative and positive aspects of eBooks.“ Again, I state that I support Alexie and will continue to do so regardless of the bad press surrounding this incident. He is a writer who brings insight and important questions to our world from a valuable perspective and a valuable place. I’m not quite so willing to say nice things about Mark Helprin because I happen to think his ideas go too far, but I will state that he is a remarkable writer, and his insights too matter very much.

My conclusion: eBook readers are in my opinion not the ultimate answer. Many of my reasons for saying this mirror Mr. Alexie’s criticisms. They cost too much. One interest is in control: Amazon. And I’d add: The device is limited by its exclusive link to Amazon content. It is far too much an interface to Amazon’s service. The real shift is going to come when Intellectual Property Laws (US and International) have matured to deal with digital content, and the devices are built commercially agnostic. No one business interest can represent the reading public, and any device which limits us that much is doomed to fail. And printed books, while they may become more expensive, will never disappear. They are too cherished, too much a part of us to be cast aside completely.

In the meantime, I continue to research and get opinions about the impact of digital content on libraries, and hope to post something worthy in the coming weeks. Comments are most welcome here.

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Tags: BookExpo America, Cool-er, Kindle, Mark Helprin, Sherman Alexie

“I really loved your book! Would you sign my Kindle?”

June 8, 2009 in Amusement, Books, Current Events, Ideas & Rants, Kids & Parents, Music, Technology, Thought for the Day, Writing, administrativa | 3 comments

OK. I’m a self-professed digital enthusiast. I’m a technology teacher and consultant. You’d think I would place myself firmly in the camp of digital over analog. MP3 over vinyl. Photoshop over the darkroom. Kindle over books.

Preposterous.

And yet… in a practical sense, I do listen to digital music, not records (in fact, I haven’t owned a turntable for years, and my old records have been gathering copious amounts of dust). I use a digital camera almost exclusively now. And I own a Kindle.

Back in the mid-1990’s I was happily working at one of the larger independent bookstores in the country and reading voraciously. There were no digital book readers. The half-millennial continuum of writing and printing remained intact. We in the book trade (even those of us with a strong interest in technology) were happily oblivious to the coming shift in the industry that would come from online retail and digital readers.

Now, that continuum is showing signs of stress. It is not broken, but it is suddenly becoming clear that the path has taken a new direction. Publishing is not the same. Book-selling is not the same. Books themselves are not the same.

What is a book?

If you had asked me this question in 1995 I would have had no trouble answering the question with confidence. A book is a physical object which serves as a container for written or graphical works. It is a collection of pages (arranged in signatures), bound along one edge between two protective covers. As physical objects, not all books are equal. Some are hard bound with nice thick pages. Others are cheap paperbacks with a very uniform, standardized feel. There are as many varieties of book in a physical sense as there are written books in a textual sense.

While I was working at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, I got great pleasure from attending book signings. Nothing thrilled me more than spending $25 (a considerable sum from my meager bookstore earnings) on a brand new hardcover and standing in line to have the author sign the book for me. In fact, as I worked there, I often got to meet some of these writers in the employee break-room or smoking area. And so I have a nice collection of signed firsts from such luminous characters as William Gibson, Kurt Vonnegut and Peter Matthiessen.

In these days of Amazon Kindles and Sony Readers, I’ve been trying very hard to keep up with the flood of thought on publishing, but lets face it, the Internet is far too vast to allow anyone to “keep up”. Some interesting posts include:

Follow the Reader: The Outer Limits of Publishing
A Newbie’s Guide to Book Publishing: More on the Amazon Kindle (author JA Konrath’s fascinating discussion of the economics of self-publishing on Kindle)
Kindle Notes And Highlights Now Accessible On the Web
Michael Hart, the inventor of eBooks, says the Kindle won’t go
Screenwriter of Complex Ideas Experiments With Kindle
and this favorite Got a Kindle, but miss that booky smell? This spray is for you

(These are just a couple of the more interesting posts I’ve stumbled upon in the last couple days)

Suddenly is seems that technology has propelled us forward into a highly convenient but awkward period in the history of books. Considering all the buzz surrounding these devices as technical accomplishments, and our relative inability to make any sense out of the legal foundations for the publishing industry, we should reasonably expect a very chaotic and fun period ahead. Already we have factions forming: The EFF, Creative Commons, Larry Lessig, Cory Doctorow, and others against a faction of reactionaries and nostalgics exemplified by Mark Helprin (see his May 2007 NYT Op-Ed), businesses (publishers, mostly, who cannot rightfully be called reactionary or nostalgic because they represent the commercial traditions of publishing as it has progressed for 500 years.) I don’t want to go over the ancient battles between RIAA and Napster, but all this is now part of the on-going discussion about publishing, Intellectual Property rights, and, ultimately, the ability for creative people to make a living off the IP they create as well as the ability for that creative work to sustain the consuming public and the publishing & retail industries which funnel these items into us.

Honestly, I’m not much of an oracle, but I do feel that the business model is faced with a vast army of tech-wise adversaries who have more and more tools at their disposal for rendering content, and that there is no way for the publishers to win. It just isn’t possible. They’d have to spend too much money fighting against a waterfall of free technologies designed to undo DRM and copy-protection. At least, this has been my way of seeing things for the last decade.

But now I’m coming to a new way of seeing things. Not only is it technically and financially unreasonable for the established business model (the publishers, and their advocacy groups like RIAA and MPAA) to control the digital content as they wish, it is suddenly becoming possible for creative producers and artists do more without publishers. It’s small, and it does rely on a delivery platform like Amazon.com (and believe me, they are a big business when it comes to working with little individuals) but still, they are there and a person can easily offer a title for publication there and expect to generate some income. The better and smarter the writer, the more they can generate.

But here’s the rub: Amazon. I can’t say I want to see all the established publishing houses go the way of the Dodo to see Amazon.com become the new face of publishing. As altruistic as JA Konrath’s blog on self-publishing sounds to us little people, to Jeff Bezos and Amazon, it sounds like a resounding advertisement for their business model. Sony have a far less capable device in my opinion, but their content model (especially the connection to Google Books) is advantageous.

What do we do now? Bezos declared “This isn’t a device, it’s a service.” when he was hyping the first Kindle. The device (that sleek white thing you paid $400 for) is basically nothing more than a very cool Welcome mat that beckons you into the cool stream of Amazon-only content. (I know, this is not entirely fair, because there are ways to have Amazon convert content to Kindle format for you at no cost.) But try self-publishing your novel for Kindle and not making it available via Amazon. Hmmm. Now I need an eCommerce system, a way to convert my novel from text to .azw Kindle format, and a way to make such a book relevant to a market where it doesn’t exist (no downloads via Whispernet, no “Folks who bought this also bought”, no Amazon at all. In the world of online marketing, Amazon are in the Pantheon, and it is not because of the things they say about themselves and the products they sell, it’s all a part of the mechanics of how they sell.

So here’s how I get the most out of my Kindle. First, I don’t use it all the time. Rather than purchasing some aerosol canister of book scent to spray and give me that whiff of physical authenticity, I still get books from my local library (I get lots, in fact). I have several interesting newer titles that I’ve purchased from Amazon which are always available and loaded on my Kindle. These I also access from the Kindle App in my iPhone (because nothing kills me more than having to wait an hour at a Doctor or Dentist office or waiting while I get my car serviced and not having anything interesting to read. I can tap right into my Kindle books from the device or my iPhone. I really like that.

Then, I load my Kindle up with tons of stuff from Project Gutenberg. I like to read to my kids, and so I have tons of classic Children’s books loaded on the device. Andersen’s Fairy Tales, Grimm’s, Lewis Carroll, Edith Nesbitt (who is a real find), L. Frank Baum and J.M. Barrie. I have loads of books — everything from Thucydides to Poul Anderson. In all honesty, nothing says “Happy Geek” like reading Frederich Schiller’s (complete) History of the Thirty Years War as a free eText on your eBook reader. In fact, all these titles are available from Gutenberg as mobi formatted downloads (mobi is a DRM free format that is a precursor to Amazon’s .azw format and fully supported on the Kindle. The only mild inconvenience is that I have to download the content to my computer and then plug the Kindle in via USB to copy the new content. But, with a nice SD card, the Kindle can accomadate a ton of books, and I load a GB of free mobi books on mine just to ensure I never run out of good reading. I still have ample room for Amazon purchases.

I have no regrets about buying a Kindle: I am still a proud card-carrying Library patron, and I’m pleased to now say that I think Project Gutenberg is not just a good idea (which it has always been), but a great place to get reading material. I hate reading off computer screens any more than I have to, and the Kindle is a great electronic approximation of the printed page.

Now all we need to figure out is how we can get authors to autograph our electronic books.

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Tags: DRM, Jeff Bezos, Kindle, Project Gutenberg, Sony Reader

Software and Writing

May 29, 2009 in Technology, Writing | No comments

While conducting a training session recently I was asked for my thoughts on software for writing. For some reason, I am always on the hunt for new software to help me accomplish relatively simple tasks. Chief among these are writing tools. So, I had more than a few thoughts on the subject.

For many, the discussion begins and ends with a word processor, usually the ubiquitous Microsoft Word. (I admit, most of my explorations in writing software have led me back to the plain word processor). But I’m trying a journaling application now by Mariner Software called MacJournal which enables me to write and organize items (particularly bits of research) and also to write and publish to a blog. I have to admit, I’ve been doing this manually up to now, writing in a text editor or word processor, then copying and pasting into the WordPress interface, or writing directly to WordPress in a browser. I’ve mentioned here that I have the WordPress App installed on my iPhone which I find wonderful for getting thoughts and short ideas started which I can return to later, but which I do not recommend as a stand-alone writing tool simply because the certainty of fat-finger typos on the iPhone. I find that a simple voice recorder app is also immeasurably valuable as it allows for a quick thought (or even more lengthy rant) to be quickly recorded on the iPhone and then either transcribed or reworked as text later.

Here’s an interesting solution for voice recording on iPhone which I use: Griffin iTalk and iTalk Sync (iTalk comes in both a free ad-supported version and an ad-less premium version and the iTalk Sync is free). The recorder part is easy to use and records at reasonable quality (but I’d not put any money on the iPhone microphone for hi-fidelity). But for simple voice recordings and interviews, it works very well. The iTalk Sync software allows you to connect to your iPhone wirelessly and transfer recordings in .aiff format to your computer. It is possible to import an audio file into MacJournal, but it requires iTunes or Quicktime to play it, so I just skip importing it into MacJournal, listen and transcribe. Then when I publish my post to the blog, I don’t have to worry that my silly audio notes are going to somehow appear linked and accessible to my blog posting by the hapless public.

I should mention that I have tried to see if I can use iTalk to record phone conversations, which, aside from being somewhat sinister, is also at times extremely useful when conducting phone interviews. It does not seem to work at all in that capacity, at least not easily. For this I generally use Skype from my computer and record with Audacity. Many people tell me this is not possible, but in fact, using a nice little bit of software called Soundflower, one can direct sound from one application to another. Simply download Soundflower, install it (requires a restart) then copy the Soundflowerbed application to your Applications folder. Set the output in Skype to a Soundflower channel and the input in Audacity to Soundflower. A quick check to ensure input from both Skype and the microphone input you are using are being recorded, and you are in business.

Aside from tools for blogging and research, I have to say that there are some other interesting writing tools worth looking at. DramaticaPro is what friends in the movie business generally recommend, but there’s also the fantastic open source solution Celtx which is far more than just a scripting package, but rather a fully integrated pre-production tool. I’ve played with it at length and must say I find it wonderful and very capable.

For other writing jobs, I like Scrivener which is marketed as novel writing software but is in fact a very nice general tool for research, scene blocking, drafting and manuscript formatting. I use it most often for writing and organizing my teaching lecture notes, but also have written stories and am using it presently for a longer work of fiction as well. What I like about it is its ability to facilitate good organization, which is not always easy to develop in the early stages of a project just using a word processor. Scrivener also has a nice full screen writing mode.

And finally, in closing, I’ll just say that I wouldn’t be caught dead without a trusty word processor. For most of us, including me, that is some version of Microsoft Word. But there are many other word processors out there, including OpenOffice.org Writer, AbiWord, Bean, –all open source — Nisus, RagTime, WordPerfect, Apple iWork, and several score more. (see Wikipedia for a more exhaustive listing or do a Google search). Whatever software you pick should present you with ease of use (meaning you should learn how to use it well enough to do what you need to without frustration) and should have ample flexibility with various file formats, fonts, templates, and other goodies to let you perform any writing task.

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Spring snows & the WordPress app for iPhone

April 18, 2009 in Technology | No comments

It was one of those days here in Colorado. We went to bed last night on what seemed a normal mid-April, spring night and woke to about 4 inches of snow. School was canceled, and it was really cold: I mean February kind of cold.

And, with the exception of a 20 minute recess in the afternoon (see the second photo) it snowed all day.

Oh, I’m writing this entry on my iPhone with the WordPress app. The photos were taken with my iPhone and added to the post with a single click (tap of the screen). This is the first time I’ve ever used this application, even though I downloaded it and installed it several months ago. I like it, but will keep it short because it is not ideal to type with one finger on an iPhone. The app requires you to enable the XML-RPC posting option under Settings=>Writing before it will work, but beyond that it is a breeze to set up.
The most valuable use of the app is as a way to start drafts, edit posts, review comments and handle other blog administration from your iPhone. I spend a great deal of my time sitting places wishing I could be working, and this is exactly the kind of application that I appreciate.

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Tags: iPhone, WordPress

Use #hashtags and get to the point on Twitter

April 17, 2009 in Technology | No comments

The longer I use Twitter the more I wonder: do I suffer from Attention-Deficit Disorder?

I’ve been looking for really good examples of how Twitter can be a powerful, positive communication platform. It has been very hard.

A few weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised when Neil Gaiman initiated the #200k competition. Essentially, this was a way for him to acknowledge the fast approaching 200,000th person following him on Twitter by asking followers to do something fun and creative. He posted two photographs on his blog and asked people to supply tweetable captions to one or both of them. He got a person to judge and put some fun signed memorabilia out as prizes. It was totally pointless, but creative, and oddly cohesive. Moreover, it lacked the usual celebrity “look at how cool I am for having so many followers” flavor. It is still somewhat surprising that a person could attract that many followers on the merit of their tweets (which obviously isn’t the case). It’s name recognition, star power and all that at work. But Neil is humble and takes it all in stride.

The most interesting twitter community I’ve witnessed was initiated by my friend Celia Brooks Brown who decided that she wanted to create a group of fellow gastronauts who would all use Twitter to communicate about food. It has been a very interesting experiment. Initially, she used a Facebook group as a launchpad, found a reasonable, unused hashtag #foodtwit, and asked people in the Facebook group to track that hashtag (simply enter “track #hashtag” in a tweet to have all tweets containing that tag forward to you).

What is so interesting to me about #foodtwit is that it has no star power factor driving it. It is simply a community of twits who congregate on some planet in the twitterverse known as #foodtwit because they like food, food blogs, and other related subjects. And, what’s more, it shows the potential to create a community on Twitter. I will say that there has not been widespread adoption of the #foodtwit hashtag among members of the Facebook group, but this could easily be remedied with a little education. It’s quite easy to track these things by doing a search on the hashtag and seeing the activity. But encouraging people to use the hashtag instead of simply following one another is a step not all Twits are quick to come to. However, those who use Twitter more and more will find that they grow tired of reading everything from some people. Using hashtags, you can not only avoid that, but you can tailor Twitter more to your interests and less to the people you follow.

So, here’s the deal, if you want to make good use of Twitter, learn first about hashtags. Simply following individuals is pointless unless you know them and really care about each and every tweet. Far more productive is to use hashtags in posts and track hashtags that interest you. I encourage this over mindlessly following people. If you are a blogger, find a hashtag (or initiate one like #foodtwit) that shares a topical relevance to your blog and announce new posts on Twitter.

Finding a really interesting and vibrant community on Twitter is indeed challenging, but possible. This is a small but significant victory for those of us who like intelligent, meaningful discourse. But beware, there is still plenty of pointless, boring drivel out there. The twitterverse is humming with the news that Ashton Kutcher beat CNN to the 1 million mark on Twitter. In fact, Ashton was apparently streaming live video of the countdown from his home. (I’m shocked that the networks didn’t interrupt broadcasting to announce this). You can bore yourself into a coma by watching a few seconds of Ashton’s Ustream if you want. What really gets me (and yes, I did watch a few minutes of his video) is all the talk about how revolutionary it is that he has a million followers before “mainstream” CNN. If Ashton isn’t mainstream, what is he? Power to the (pedestrian) people.

The good news is Ashton Kutcher did in fact donate $100,000 to Malaria No More by way of thanks for this “achievement”. Star power still carries the force of money power.

I’ll close this rant with a link to Why Twitter is Evil. True, true. But, I’m not giving it up any time soon.

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Tags: twitter

Errata (non grata)

March 30, 2009 in Technology | No comments

So, it appears that the Tina Fey I’ve been following on Twitter is not Tina Fey. Did I lose any sleep after making the realization that I’ve been duped? Nope.

It really just reinforces my point. Find something better to do with your Twitter account.

I am working on another Twitter related post that will cover the use of hashtags on Twitter to form communities based on common interest. A friend has just initiated a very interesting experiment bringing people together on Twitter. With her permission, I’ll describe the project in a way that may help others create similar “interest communities”.

I’ll tack on a link to a recent story from the Guardian UK: Ghost tweets: are celebrity twitterers for real?

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Tags: twitter

Kid-safe E-mail

June 5, 2008 in Kids & Parents, Technology | No comments

Mail Icon

I recently came across this article by Asha Dornfest at Parenthacks (published on pc.com) which I thought was worth posting. I am considering setting up an e-mail account for my nine-year-old, and I found this article addressed many of my most pressing concerns. I’ve still not decided how I’m going to handle this. I had been thinking of setting up an account on one of my Exchange servers and monitoring things that way, but there seem to be some far easier alternatives out there.

Read the article. Share your thoughts.

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Technology

If a picture is worth a thousand words: Flickr considered

How Jeff Bezos took on Orwell and Lost

Thoughts on Sherman Alexie’s criticism of eBooks

“I really loved your book! Would you sign my Kindle?”

Software and Writing

Spring snows & the WordPress app for iPhone

Use #hashtags and get to the point on Twitter

Errata (non grata)

Kid-safe E-mail

Random Quote

Categories

Friendly fire