Twitter?

[David W. Fenton]

Is anyone using Twitter?

There was a recent NY Times article that finally convinced me that
it could possibly have truly useful applications:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/technology/internet/14twitter.html

Many of you may not know it, but in real life I'm not just a geeky
programmer, but also a musician. I play in a viol consort:

http://tearesofthemuses.com/

And this past week we gave two concerts. As a test run for some
upcoming performances, I set up a Twitter account (@DavidFenton) and
twittered the second of the two performances. You can see the
results at:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=#teares

I'm wondering if any Access developers have any ideas about how it
could possibly useful for us in communicating with each other. For
instance, I have a Bloglines subscription to Tony Toew's RSS feed
for his marvelous Access blog, I think I'd like it if I got tweets
form Tony about other issues.

Twitter has been described as "micro-blogging" and I find that
attractive. I often have thoughts that are not worth me writing a
post on my blog (or somewhere else), but that I think others might
find provocative/illuminating/interesting, and I think Twitter is an
outlet for that.

Yet, now that I've actually signed up with a Twitter account, I
don't find that those ideas occur to me very often.

Is anyone else on Twitter? I'd be interested in following any of you
whose work I've already come to respect, and would be willing to try
following strangers, too.

But be forewarned: for me, at least, my Twitter stream is a mixed
bag of all sorts of topics, certainly not limited to Access.

Anyone?

 

[Arvin Meyer MVP]

I don't use any of the social networking sites, and I find those using
Twitter even less concerned about security than many. If all of the twits
were private, I wouldn't have as much of an objection as I do. OTOH, I
don't use IM or text messaging either. I would waste too much time instead
of getting work done.

 

[Guest]

I don't use any of the social networking sites, and I find those using
Twitter even less concerned about security than many. If all of the twits
were private, I wouldn't have as much of an objection as I do. OTOH, I
don't use IM or text messaging either. I would waste too much time instead
of getting work done.

 

[Guest]

I don't use any of the social networking sites, and I find those using
Twitter even less concerned about security than many. If all of the twits
were private, I wouldn't have as much of an objection as I do. OTOH, I
don't use IM or text messaging either. I would waste too much time instead
of getting work done.

 

[marcel]

Is anyone using Twitter?

There was a recent NY Times article that finally convinced me that
it could possibly have truly useful applications:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/technology/internet/14twitter.html

Many of you may not know it, but in real life I'm not just a geeky
programmer, but also a musician. I play in a viol consort:

http://tearesofthemuses.com/

And this past week we gave two concerts. As a test run for some
upcoming performances, I set up a Twitter account (@DavidFenton) and
twittered the second of the two performances. You can see the
results at:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=#teares

I'm wondering if any Access developers have any ideas about how it
could possibly useful for us in communicating with each other. For
instance, I have a Bloglines subscription to Tony Toew's RSS feed
for his marvelous Access blog, I think I'd like it if I got tweets
form Tony about other issues.

Twitter has been described as "micro-blogging" and I find that
attractive. I often have thoughts that are not worth me writing a
post on my blog (or somewhere else), but that I think others might
find provocative/illuminating/interesting, and I think Twitter is an
outlet for that.

Yet, now that I've actually signed up with a Twitter account, I
don't find that those ideas occur to me very often.

Is anyone else on Twitter? I'd be interested in following any of you
whose work I've already come to respect, and would be willing to try
following strangers, too.

But be forewarned: for me, at least, my Twitter stream is a mixed
bag of all sorts of topics, certainly not limited to Access.

Anyone?

 

[David W. Fenton]

I don't use any of the social networking sites, and I find those
using Twitter even less concerned about security than many.

I don't know what you're referring to here. Can you unpack that a
bit?

If all of the twits
were private, I wouldn't have as much of an objection as I do.

Private tweets defeat the entire purpose, though there are direct
messages built in as a feature of the system (but you can send them
only to users who are already "following" your Twitter stream).

OTOH, I
don't use IM or text messaging either. I would waste too much time
instead of getting work done.

I've never used IM, either. I don't send text messages on my cell
phone either (and hate receiving them).

But today I set up a group Twitter account on Tweetbots.com. The way
it works is that I can authorize the members of my viol consort to
send direct messages (i.e., private messages) to the group account,
and the Tweetbot website will rebroadcast them as public messages in
its Twitter stream. The result is that all of us can contribute to a
single Twitter stream, sort of like a group blog.

This has potential use for our viol consort. I can see other uses as
well.

I'm still wishy-washy on whether or not this is all a good thing or
not. I see benefits and downsides, but you can't really understand
either of them until you've tried it out firsthand.

 

[Arvin Meyer MVP]

I don't know what you're referring to here. Can you unpack that a
bit?

Sure. If I sent a message like, "I'm going to the mall now" Everyone can see
that I'm not home. That coupled with, "my new 52in LCD TV is fantastic"
Opens the door for a would be thief. Or perhaps a rapist if I were a woman
and said that in the evening.

Private tweets defeat the entire purpose, though there are direct
messages built in as a feature of the system (but you can send them
only to users who are already "following" your Twitter stream).


I've never used IM, either. I don't send text messages on my cell
phone either (and hate receiving them).

I have text msgs blocked. I don't get them at all.

I'm still wishy-washy on whether or not this is all a good thing or
not. I see benefits and downsides, but you can't really understand
either of them until you've tried it out firsthand.

I disagree. I do not have to try out playing in traffic to realize that the
dangers outweigh any possible thrill I'd get.

 

[David W. Fenton]

Sure. If I sent a message like, "I'm going to the mall now"
Everyone can see that I'm not home.

Ah! See, I can't conceive of "security" as applying to anything not
online -- you mean IN REAL LIFE! Fancy that!

That coupled with, "my new 52in LCD TV is fantastic"
Opens the door for a would be thief. Or perhaps a rapist if I were
a woman and said that in the evening.

Well, certainly one has to be careful what one tweets, just as one
has to be careful what one posts on Usenet or blogs. The immediacy
of it no doubt causes people to be less careful, but I suspect
that's going to be something people learn to manage eventually, just
as (most) people have eventually figured out how to behave properly
when using a cell phone in a public place.

[]

I disagree. I do not have to try out playing in traffic to realize
that the dangers outweigh any possible thrill I'd get.

On this one, I think you're completely wrong. I can recall
evangelizing for tabbed browsing back when Mozilla/Firefox offered
it and no other browser did and those who hadn't tried it couldn't
wrap their heads around the benefits. I think social networks like
Twitter have many of the same aspects, in that what you get out of
it is often not obvious.

And, of course, the vast majority of tweets are not worth reading.
But that's just a matter of choosing to follow people with a high
signal-to-noise ratio -- not really that much different from any
other forum, no?