Filed under: Software, Odds and ends, Internet Tools
Twitter widgets, plugins and scripts - oh my!
I seem to be going gaga over web services lately. After dropping my .Mac personal blog for Vox, Twitter is another new-ish service that has also weaseled its way into my daily activities (they launched this past summer). While there are a few explanations for what Twitter really is and does, I like to think of it as a 'status message for your life.' At Twitter's site you can enter a few words or a sentence or two about what you're up to (much like the status message in your chat app), and receive updates when your friends change their status. But it doesn't have to stay at the site. You can embed your Twitter updates in your blog and use them as your Adium status. Twitter lets you receive updates on your phone or even over IM, and you can use both of those to send your own updates back to Twitter. It might sound silly before you actually try it out, but it can easily become addicting if you let yourself surrender to the fun and sign up.If you're getting hooked like me, some users have started a Twitter Fan Wiki to round up all the fun tools that are coming out of Twitter's quickly growing community. While there is stuff here for everything from Windows Smartphones to WordPress widgets and even Ruby scripts, there are some great Mac-centric tools that I really like. The first is the Adium plugin I already mentioned, which lets you embed your Twitter message as your available/away status in Adium. If you want to be able to use Twitter for both an away and an available message, be sure to give them different names, like 'Twitter Away / Twitter Available.' The next two are Dashboard widgets, of course. Twitgit allows you to see a list of your friends' status and enter your own, while Twidget is a straight-up box that simply lets you enter a status. Finally, there's Celly, which seems to do nothing more than pull down random Twitter status messages from across the public channel.
With these tools in your belt, you should be able to spend a lot less time when letting people know what you're spending your time on. Isn't redundant technology grand?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Simon Iannelli said 11:40AM on 12-15-2006
maybe it's just me but I don't have the need to tell all my friends all the time how I feel and I'm not interested in the minute-by-minute mood of my friends. Just a waste of time. I'd prefere to make phonecall with my friends when it's really important or go drink a good espresso.
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Floggy Bottom said 1:15PM on 12-15-2006
I don't get it. Why the fuck would I care about seeing what people are doing at any given moment? Jesus I hate all this web 2.0 crap. It seems like people are more interested in talking about doing stuff rather than, you know, actually DOING STUFF.
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David Chartier said 1:59PM on 12-15-2006
Well here's a different perspective for what it's worth:
1) It's really not that hard to, say, launch the widget in your Dashboard and type a sentence into it to let people know what you're doing. You can also set the service up so you can IM a Twitter bot and that also updates your status. So basically: the tools aren't hard or time consuming to use.
2) Using a service like this can update coworkers, visitors to your site, friends and family on what you're doing. Coworkers can know you're running a little late if you use Twitter as your IM status. Blog readers can also know you're a little late with a post, or won't be around to publish any new content today. Friends and family can find out on their mobile phones that you're running late to a holiday dinner, or that you're wondering what gifts everyone is looking for. The idea here is that you publish your status in one place, and all subscribed friends, site visitors and coworkers can find out about what your status actually is.
3) You don't need to update your status every 3 minutes, or every day. It's an open system that can flex to any way you want or need to use it.
Hope this helps!
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tim malbon said 2:47PM on 12-15-2006
I totally disagree that it's a waste of time. You don't have to be updating, or be updated by, everyone minute-by-minute. And you can set times when you don't want any updates at all. On the other hand, once you have a critical mass of friends using the service you find that your little sub-community learns to be self-regulating and will either tell you to shut up or 'leave' you as Twitter calls it. In real life you have the ability to tell your friends lots of things they are not interested in, but you quickly learn 'the rules'. Twitter is no different. I think Twitter is a fascinating tool and the previous comment has overlooked the feeling of present tense connectedness with your contacts and friends. There are a number of really interesting applications for this kind of service that I believe are yet to be explored - personally I would love Twitter to create a b2b service as an experiment, or to try something out with a brand or publisher - Twitter-enabled competitions and promotions, instant community around an event, enhanced corporate comms... all these seem to me to be very serious applications of the service that we are yet to see. My prediction: won't be long!
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Suw said 7:55AM on 12-21-2006
I just had a flash mal-ad served to me from the ad network which serves this site, and specifically, this entry. The mal-ad tries to make you think that your browser has crashed and that you need to do a scan, and will go through multiple pop-up boxes to try to make you download a virus. Watch out for SystemDoctor, ErrorSafe, and other 'system cleaner' type ads.
Macrumors had the same problem and you can read more here:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=257138
This is not your fault, it's a bad ad in the ad network, so I'm just leaving this comment in an attempt to be helpful.
BTW. Twitter is great. ;-)
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