Today Twitter announced a slew of advancements to their incredibly popular microblogging service. At the core they are bringing many of features found in 3rd parts apps like Seesmic and Tweetdeck into their default web interface at twitter.com. This is especially interesting in light of Wired Magazine's pronouncement that the web was dead. What they were really saying, with some degree of accuracy (sort of), is that the web BROWSER is dead. Citing a migration of functionality from the web browser to dedicated standalone apps, whether they be on the desktop, tablet, or mobile device. I'm still a big fan of browser based apps, and I'm not sure they are going away any time soon. Either way read more about the new twitter.com features in this Mashable article.
As you may know, I've been trying to sink my teeth into Twitter for a while now. I'm still not quite there but I'm enjoying it as an information resource more and more with each passing day. Lately I've been researching software products and engaging with vendors. The real time and transparent communication keeps everyone honest (unless a direct message is used). I encourage you to join the conversation and follow @srginfotech on Twitter.
For several months now I've been trying to sink my teeth into the whole Twitter thing. I must say I'm still trying, but I'm learning a lot in the process.
Some of the best things about Twitter are not the app itself, but the way the data (in the form of Tweets), is being captured and interpreted via third party apps. Take a look at Twistori and Twistori Desktop to see what I'm talking about.
Tweets and retweets are also being used to create the viral spread of a message. Earlier today I got this email from a New Orleans brass band:
"Bonerama gig on Pearl at Commerce, Dallas, TX 4/2/09. Follow @Bonerama and RT this msg by 6pm CT 4/1 to enter to win 2 tix for this show!"
Novel concept, but my suspicion is that that kind of Tweet will get old fast.
Matt and the rest of us (except Rachael probably) are having a hard time figuring out exactly what antimatter is. That's understandable. But this post is about something far more bizarre, perplexing and just plain difficult to wrap your head around - let alone, explain to someone else:
From: Matt's Dad
Date: March 5, 2009 6:31:45 PM
To: Matt
Subject: twitter
Hi Matthew hope all is well with you , have a question for you: What is twitter? thanks in advance love dad
The buzz on Twitter yesterday was all about everyone's favorite fruit flavored M&M look alike, Skittles. This has a lot of relevance for me because as a kid (OK young adult actually) my friends and I used to have competitions to see who could stuff the most Skittles in their mouth at the same time. To win you have to chew and swallow all of the Skittles. I digress. The new Skittles site is just a feed of all Twitter posts that reference Skittles. There are also links to a Skittles branded YouTube page, Flickr page, Facebook page, and Wikipedia Page. This is a full on fruit flavored Web 2.0 assault. Check it out.
The most popular platforms are always targeted for malware and viruses. Google, as you all know, is the most popular search engine on the planet. Malicious links and software are often designed to come up most often in Google searches as well as in sponsored links. Barracuda Labs did a study on malware and viruses distribtuted through search engines and found Google's distrubutes more than two times the amount of malware than Bing, Yahoo! and Twitter--combined!
The report and Downloadsquad point out that only 2% of the malware is 0-day, meaning malware that came out/was released to the public domain that day and that 98% of the malware is older-known malware. Downloadsquad also brings up an interesting question- why doesn't Google do more to block known malware?
Hopefully stories like this one will motivate Google to help combat malware and viruses.
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I found a recent article today on the security vulnerabilities in using two popular Web 2.0 technologies, Twitter, and Jott. I posted about Jott a while back, it is a web based voice to phone to email gateway app. Twitter is a web based app where you can update your current whereabouts and happenings in real time via web, email, or text messaging (sms). Both services use caller ID for verification and as you will see in the article, caller ID is easily spoofed creating a gaping security loophole. Read more.
Earlier this week Russian boxer Wladimir Klitschko challenged David Haye, Britain's World Boxing Association Heavyweight Champion, to a throwdown - on Facebook. His pointed an personal challenge to Haye is not the first of it's kind, and probably not the first via Social Media either, but I'm fascinated by the way Social Media has permeated all aspects of our culture, even professional boxing. The notion of a professional boxer creating the video, then posting it to Facebook is somewhat amusing, but that's what publicists are for. I plan to throw down my next digital gauntlet via the SRG InfoTech Blog, which will of course be published via Facebook and Twitter. Let the social smack talk begin!
One thing is for sure, Phish phans LOVE their phavorite band. So much so that since the dawn of the internet phans have used it as a tool to spread the word of Phish. In the very early days of the public internet, there was a predecessor to message boards and social networks, Usenet newsgroups. In 1990 only 4 bands had Usenet groups, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, and a small but popular college band from Vermont, Phish. There was so much chatter on The Grateful Dead Usenet group about Phish, that phans started their own Usenet group. Fast forward 20 years and Phish is now a cultural phenomenon whose growth paralleled the growth of the internet. Both the band and their phans have continually pushed the limits of technology to share music, pictures, and stories about the music and the community that surrounds it. Starting with their summer 2009 tour someone in the crowd has been using a jailbroken iphone and the live streaming service Ustream to stream the shows live. The Ustream page has both live video stream as well as a twitter feed of all Phish related tweets and twitpics. Go Phish!
As most of your know from previous posts, I've been struggling to get my head around Twitter. Well struggle no more I say!! A guy with to much time on his hands built his own toot tweeter. That's right, it's a magic chair that tweets every time he toots. And I thought my Toto Toilet was cool. Check it out.
Facebook once started out as a cool way to connect to friends in college. It was much cooler than MySpace (does anyone still use MySpace?), but in the past few years Facebook opened it's domain to anyone in the world. Today it's grown to over 350 million users, with over 200 billion page views a month. That is an advertisers dream come true! There are also over 2.5 billion photos uploaded per month... holy cow! I'd love to check out Facebooks servers storing all of that ;)
Congrats Facebook! You may have lost your original coolness factor, but you are still rolling in the dough!
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As everyone knows, sometimes web sites go down. Twitter is notorious for having performance issues, hence the creation of the fail whale. Even our beloved SilentPartner had it's wrestling match with downtime. Some websites never go down, and if they do, you know something is seriously wrong. Today, one of those websites, Google.com, went down. Not just Google and related properties were effected, but any site that used a Google service. For example, a site that integrated Google map data, or Google analytics tags were also slowed to a snails pace. It became so pervasive that the internet was buzzing with "WTF GOOGLE?!?" sentiment. Apparently it was all due to traffic being mis-routed through Asia, which in turn caused a traffic jam on the information super highway. Next time you really screw something up, just remember, you are not alone.
Every year, PC World magazine publishes a list of 10 web sites that you probably haven't heard of, but are set to take off in the coming year. Last year's list included Twitter and Hulu, and the 2009 list has some entries that sound rather exciting.
I just read a great story on downloadsquad.com about a website that will tell you what apps are free for the iPhone at the currnet time. Many apps that cost money will go free for a short period of time for promotional purposes and the below website will let you know!
The alert website is: http://freeappalert.com/
There you can sign up to be alerted via twitter, facebook, rss feed, or just an e-mail if you'd prefer. The site also tells you how much the application previously was, for bragging rights or to just know how killer of a deal free can be.
