Playing with a Twitter Client - Twhirl

This week I'm using the 23 Things as an excuse to play with using a Twitter Client.



Earlier this year I used Flowgram to make a little history of microblogging where I talked about the different products that tried to fill twitter's niche and the different tools to use with Twitter, Adventures in Microblogging . Flowgram is an online screencast making tool, with the difference being that the user can interact live with all the screens shown.

In the Flowgram, I mentioned that I hadn't had much time for Twitter Clients - that is pieces of software that let you access twitter without using a web browser, and allow you to do much more fancy things when you post or read tweets. The 23 Things is an excellent time to test my "tried it but didn't like it" prejudice.

Twitter and Facebook

I use Facebook because I have to understand it for work. I don't use it to keep tabs on what my friends - real or imaginary - are doing. I have used it to send casual messages to "friends" that I would otherwise be too timid to email officially. Very occasionally I will use the chat function if someone I know is on at the same time.

Twitter has changed my life. I am on it almost constantly. It keeps me in touch with librarians all over the world, the Perth web community and international social media specialists. I have found a cleaner, obtained birthday entertainment for one of my children, get useful links pushed out each day, watched over twenty international conferences via the tweet streams of my friends, vented, sympathised, been incredibly silly and become up to speed with all sorts of random issues that later I discover are very useful.

I have embedded a twitter badge for my work twitter account in my work blog. It tells people when I am on campus and how to contact me each week.

I love this slideshare set that was created by Michael Sauers when some of my librarian friends tried to explain what Twitter is like ...

Twitter is like...

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: cil2008 twitter)

Oour feet in the 23 Things workshop today 26 November 2008

Things 13, 14, and 15

I joined Flickr when we first started the MULTA project back in June 2006. Since then, I have uploaded 572, but 387 have been this year - and 174 since the start of the month.

I'm using it more and more as a public diary, and a social tool and having much more conversation with others using Flickr.

One of my favourite photos from the last month is this one from the kids' section of the Botany library in Auckland:

My most frivolous set is the Minifigs go travelling (Set). My sons each gave me a minifig (lego person) to take with me on my travels. They were very helpful. I'm taking photos so the boys can see what their minifigs have been up to.

Minifigs are almost eaten by an amorous rat and pig 2.

I also contribute to theLibrarian Shoes (Pool).

Elizabeth shows me her other shoes

I think that using Friendfeed has made me use Flickr more, as I keep seeing fabulous photos in the feeds from my contacts and then friending them on Flickr.

For my image generator this week, I went to the Generator blog recommended in Amanda's post and chose the (product name) baby generating site . I gave it a photo of my husband and me from which to create a baby. It is a nifty way to advertise a product that I am sure you will be able to guess from the results below. Click on the mouth and it makes baby noises....

Thing 11 and 12

THING 11

I did my searches on the term "cerebral palsy". Most people (I would hope) would use more than one term and narrow down the aspect they are searching for.

I found that:

• del.icio.us Was a rather blunt instrument, although much of the focus was on childhood cerebral palsy and family issues, which I'm most interested in.

• Connotea Retrieved "popular" scholarly articles of the soft education, general overview kinds, rather than hard scientific medical studies

• CiteULike Retrieved scholarly articles with much more medical focus.

• Murdoch University Library catalogue subject search A list of LCSH subject headings

• http://www.library.uq.edu.au/ Book records, faceted searches, a tag cloud and enough to make me feel there were threads to follow to get to exactly what I wanted.

• google Wikipedia entry first and then Australian entries. - because google knows who I am and where I am. The ads on the left hand side always annoy me - although I'm not sure there are any searchers who are naive enough to believe they are actual search results.

zuula - I like the ability to pick the search engine, but again a rather blunt instrument.

• kartoo - I'm a very visual learner and I find this suits my style really well. I find it very easy to narrow down the search and find exactly what I wanted - even finding suggested topics that I hadn't realised I want via serendipity. Do I use this in my everyday life? Nope. Maybe I should.

Thing 12

I have been using delicious for a couple of years now - and I use it almost daily. Unfortunately I use like I used photocopying when I was a student .... I presume that if I use delicious I will actually read or go back to the items linked there. I never do really...but I live in hope...

I added 23katethings to my network. I can see this working for groups of teachers sharing their resources. I tend to use Friendfeed to pick up links from my friends on delicious.

I did discover when I did this that I have 9 fans - and real people that I know - but I'm wondering whether it should fan them back, and what the point would be...

Video and voice in gtalk via gmail

Yup. Video and voice are now integrated into gtalk in gmail - but not yet via the gtalk stand alone client. A Skype-killer I would think?

Cindi-cam via gtalk in gmail Uploaded to Flickr on November 13, 2008 by sirexkat

I remember going to the Science and Technology discovery centre (Scitech) 15 years ago and seeing an “amaaazing” and expensive device to allow video telephone calls - with a screen refresh rate of about 10 frames per minute.

google video chat w/kathryn Uploaded to Flickr on November 14, 2008 by cindiann

As Cindi pointed out, all it needs now is screen and ap sharing functionality….and it’s still useful how you can do this in a window while working on a google doc together …. or anything else. Me? I want to see split screen conference calling so you can have three or four people video conferencing at once.

Do like.

Pasting into wordpress without getting gobbldygook code

Here's how you cut and paste text into a Wordpress post without inserting gobbldygook code at the same time.

The screencast can take a while to load, so it is easier to:
1. Press the play button
2. Pause the playback while it downloads, then;
3. press play when you have the whole screencast downloaded.

Things 9 and 10

I find Google docs extremely useful to store my travel itineraries. I can print them out to carry with me, always have an online copy to check details and times. I share them with my husband so he knows where I am at any time. If I am going to lots of places on a trip, I will create a google map too so I can check where I will be.

I use PBwiki extensively for work projects and things like the WA Library Unconference. I should get around to creating a MediaWiki installation on the webhosting I have for work , but I find that it is easier to have separate wikis that other people can "own" as much as I do. I do use the backup facility for PBwiki to ensure the data is safe - as I don't like the idea that if PBwiki company goes under, then I lose my data :(

I also like using the original version of PBwiki as a place to experiment with what is produced by the embed code from other web services. For example, I was playing with Stickam, video conferencing site with a mob of other librarians when I noticed we could embed our live output - so I whacked Jason Griffey's channel into a PBwiki wiki: Libcasting. When we were live, it looked like this: