Yes and no. Twitter is replacing instant messaging and chatrooms. It’s an open method by which for people to communicate instantly with others. It’s also about the overheard conversation although that term has disappeared.
What does “overheard†mean? Well simply that whenever two people discuss a topic hundreds of people are following this conversation and when they decide they have an opinion they can cut in. They do have that 140 character limit though, so they need to get to the point is efficiently as possible.
When that isn’t possible then they can do the next best thing. Write a comment in a blog post or even write a blog entry of their own where the conversation that took place on twitter is synthesised into a more digestible chunk of information.
As a result twitter is changing people’s blogging habits but the question is why people want to chat publicly rather than in an enclosed space. Today people like transparency.
Disclaimer: This is a post from the 28th of Octobre 2008. 
When you like to control the information that is available to you through feedreaders the one that I have found most useful is google reader. It allows you to navigate using keyboard shortcut keys rather than the mouse. As a result you are able to navigate more effectively through the sometimes hundreds of posts.
For a while now, about three years, I’ve been looking for an app that gives us the convenience of google reader whilst on mobile devices. For a while I had the N95 and ipod touch, the ipod touch and the miniS and now the Iphone and N97.
The problem I kept having is with keeping everything up to date on all the devices. I didn’t want to read through twenty articles on a mobile device only to have to wade through the same articles a second time when I arrived back at the main computer I use for content processing.
That’s where MobileRSS for the Iphone and ipod touch comes into it’s own. It is a simple, intuitive way to go through your google reader feeds whilst mobile. Select the view you want, whether using “show new” or “show all”. Show all will give you several thousand posts along with all the key words you’ve added, something that is not so easy to manage.
The “Show new” tab however is great. When I pick up the phone and update all my feeds it gives me all of the new posts in an easy to process format. I have the option to view all feeds if I desire or to see each feed one at a time.
As you know some information sources like to post dozens of posts a day whilst others like to post just one or two a day. Those that post once or twice a day are usually the first ones I’ll read. This is because they’re more specialised, more thought out posts. As a result they’re more relevant.
There are two three ways to navigate through the content. The first is by selecting the list view. You see the headlines you want to read. In the second view you can read article by article and click the up or down icons to get to the previous or next posts. You can also drag the article from the one you’re reading to the next one. This speeds up the process by minimising the number of button presses.
When I am reading each article I can add notes, keep unread, star, share or even send it to to a number of other places. As a result I can share the articles I find of interest according to the way I think other people prefer to share.
The options for sharing are email/facebook/twitter/readitlater/instapaper and delicious. This means that I can share content within seconds, rather than minutes, anywhere I am, whether in a traffic jam or waiting to pay for the day’s shopping.
Another advantage is that it’s always on. Whether I have wifi or 3g I have access to all of the latest articles. I’d recommend using it. See whether it makes information gathering and sharing easier for you too.
Yesterday I was up above Leysin climbing the Tour D’Aï via Ferrata. It was an opportunity for me to take 360 photos of Via Ferrata. The beauty of panoramic pictures is that they provide you 360° of vision both vertically and horizontally. It means that you can get a sense of size and scale. You can look at the person exploring the via ferrata and how precarious their situation is as easily as you can admire the beauty of the landscape.
[vrview img=”https://www.main-vision.com/richard/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/R0011307_20160701130638.jpg” pimg=”https://www.main-vision.com/richard/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/R0011307_20160701130638.jpg” width=”500″ height=”400″ ]
Another great aspect to 360° photos is that you can show specific bits of via ferrata and show where the challenging bits are. “Here is where the via ferrata is overhanging” so that you can assess whether you have the strength and courage to try that section or “Here is how high up you are” and so you get a sense of whether you would be paralysed with fear or enjoy yourself.
[vrview img=”https://www.main-vision.com/richard/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/R0011321_20160701133926.jpg” pimg=”https://www.main-vision.com/richard/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/R0011321_20160701133926.jpg” width=”500″ height=”400″ ]
Most via ferrata are like the one that you see in these images. You have what I call staples, pedals and occasionally direct contact with the rocks. In other places you have spikes or you have to pull yourself up along the cable. With these images you see how well equipped the via ferrata is and you are not going in to the unknown. This is good when taking less experienced people.
A side effect of 360 pictures is that you capture a self portrait of yourself in situ over and over again. It is by nature of the medium rather than desire.
When people write about friends should they post their twitter profile page or the websites their friends are working on. I’m asking this question because whilst reading a post today I was interested in the ability to follow these friends and see what they’re up to rather than read the website.
Reading a twitterstream is quick. 140 Characters are read almost instantly and adding someone that sounds interesting is instantaneous. As a result I’m far more likely to follow and read a person’s blog if there’s a consistant reminder both of what they’re doing and who they are as a person.
It’s about time. I’m a scanner. I scan through content rather than trudge through it. If you’re linking to twenty people and you link to twenty blogs then there’s no way I’m going to have the time to read all this content. I’d saturate extraordinarily quickly. Following another person on twitter takes seconds to do and I’ll track these people. Point me to a blog and there’s a chance I won’t take the time to look.
Has anyone had a similar reaction to twitter vs. blogs? Do you write about a group of friends, all of whom have twitter accounts? If so have you linked to their blogs or to their twitter profiles?
Today’s topic is quietness. As the weather was bad, and as there is no reason to leave the home unless you have to work, or to go for a walk everywhere was quiet. The roads were quiet, with few cars, the paths between fields were quiet. Even the motorway was quiet, as you can tell from the image above. It took just seconds for traffic to be rare enough for me to take this image.
On a normal weekend, you’d have hundreds of cars on this stretch of road. People would either be coming back from the mountains or commuting along this stretch of motorway to cross Switzerland.
Walking outdoors was pleasant because there were no people to avoid. It was unpleasant because today has been cold, windy and grey. That’s why no pedestrians were out. Even the dog walkers were home.
It might finally be the right time to start taking interesting pictures of deserted streets.
This weekend I went on a social media binge. A social media binge is the moment when you forfeit sleep and the rest of reality for a few hours as part of the social media.
For the purpose of this particular challenge I set myself two pass times. The first of these was to twitter and the second was to seesmic. If you read previous posts you’ll find out what twitter. As to seesmic that’s another story. It’s close to being instant messaging with videos.
Normal video chats are live. I talk and as I talk you can respond and interrupt me. In seesmic you talk, type a title and share the video. After that another person speaks, presses stop and posts. Over the period of a few hours many more posts appear and as they do so the conversation evolves exponentially. All of these videos is available to every over member so there is a great degree of overheard conversation. This overheard conversation is where the fun begins.
I’ve seen girls dancing, guys act like zombies, discussions about literature and social media. I’ve seen so many things that it feels like the social media equivalent of a music festival. Watch seesmix clips on youtube to get a better idea.
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First video comment to my blog {seesmic_video:{“url_thumbnail”:{“value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/AT3paykwkj_th1.jpg”}”title”:{“value”:”First video comment to my blog “}”videoUri”:{“value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/cVb9eNlzgu”}}}