In an attempt to get this site fired up again, I thought I’d post something about this twitter stuff I’ve started using. As usual, it’s been around for a while now but I’ve just gotten onto the bandwagon.

Twitter is kind of a micro-blog. Whilst blog posts tend to be a past description of events and somewhat wordy, a twitter is much more temporal, to the point and immediate. I’ve only got a few “followers” so far but am following 14 others. Haven’t yet had that light bulb moment, so am still unsure on how this will eventually be useful for me.

I have discovered that it’s becoming difficult to keep all my bits and pieces up to date. Between twitter, facebook and this blog, it quickly became overwhelming. So, with a few plugins and rss magic, here’s where I’m at now …

Twitterific

This is the desktop (Mac / Windows) tool I use to keep up to date with other people’s twits and to submit my own into the ether. It saves me from having to go to the twitter website to keep up to date.

Facebook - TwitterSync

This is the facebook app I use to automagically turn my twitter updates into facebook status updates.

Wordpress - Twitter Updater

This wordpress plugin automagically sends a twitter message whenever I make a new blog post. TwitterSync from facebook picks it up and then everything knows about my new profound posting.

I’ve wanted to do something like this for 11 years now. I could have waited until after the election but I just couldn’t help myself …

And then this. Ahhhh, relief at last!

On the timecapsule theme from earlier, Yahoo! have released their own electronic time capsule.

For 30 days, from October 10 until November 8, Yahoo! users worldwide can contribute photos, writings, videos, audio – even drawings – to this electronic anthropology project. This is the first time that digital data will be gathered and preserved for historical purposes.

Whilst not really a capsule which will be unveiled at a future date, the idea is somewhat interesting. It would be even more interesting if it were to be sealed and re-opened in say 100 years. Infact, the description makes it sound more like a piece of art than of history or anthropology.

The interface itself is also quite “artistic”. The viewer can roll the sphere around and randomly hit one of the panels. This panel represents a user/profile in the capsule. Whilst the site is built mostly in Macromedia/Adobe Flash, it does have some nice search and tagging facilities.
Finally, I would much rather submit some images to the archive, knowing that they would be sealed and unseen for some time to come. This for me is much more interesting. It also gives the future generation a point in time to reflect back on what was.

I’ll give the whole idea a little more exploration and perhaps submit a few things myself too.