An original post by Keith! I think it’s one of the best guide to someone who doesn’t know what Twitter is!

Twitter is hard to explain to those that aren’t using it.  For a long time I have avoided sites like MySpace and Facebook but I’ve always had a blog, a cell phone, and email.  Those three items made me feel connected.  If I had something to say, I’d blog it.  If someone wanted to reach me electronically they could send a text message or email.  Lastly they could just call me.  Little did I realize how disconnected I was until later on.  It took Twitter to really show me how disconnected I was.  After becoming a Twitter fan I started to spread the word.  Some people I convinced to start using it.  Others are still holding out.  Maybe this will be enough to put them over the edge.

Not Until They Use It

I remember when I first told Alan Stevens about Twitter.Com.  He reluctantly joined and said "oh great, another social networking site".  It wasn’t long until he started to see Twitter’s potential though.  Alan’s first tweet was on Oct. 25th at 11:04 PM.  About a day later he said this and as we can see he was starting to get it and work his way through it.

I met Alan at the TechEd conference in Orlando, FL earlier in in June.  We met up again at DevLink in Nashville, TN and we talked a lot in the speaker’s room as a matter of fact.  After Alan joined Twitter I started to get to know him better.  I think his major break through with Twitter came about a month later. 

By the way, for those of you that aren’t computer programmers, TDD stands for test driven development.  It is a methodology that developers should use to test their code, but a lot don’t.  Alan’s point is that until people use it, they won’t get it.  I guess he was doing some self retrospection at that moment.

The Twitter Battle

A few weeks ago I found myself in a battle of sorts.  It was a Friday night and several of us were hanging out the night before a conference.  Twitter kept dominating the conversation.  It was amazing at how much more stuff I knew that was going on around me just because of Twitter.  During the conversation I picked my phone up and tweeted (the action for posting to twitter) that I was down the street from the hotel hanging with a few fellow speakers.  In literally 1-2 minutes later my phone rang.  It was Alan Stevens who was also speaking at the conference.  "Dude where are you guys at?", he said.  I told him and within a few minutes later Alan and another speaker Michael Neel showed up to join us.  Wow.  Name me another medium that connects people that way so quickly.

Once Alan and Michael got there (both twitterholics), the conversation was twitter, twitter, twitter.  Doug Turnure finally caved and said he would give it another go.  A few days ago he posted this to his blog:

After a lengthy discussion, and Keith’s *value prop* on it, I’m twittering again. I haven’t decided whether to thank Keith or yell at him about it. But it’s a lot of fun, especially when you’re at an event and trying to find people.

Doug was at Mix08, a large Microsoft conference in Vegas, when he wrote that.  Are you starting to see the connections now?  Twitter is about "What you are doing".  For me Twitter is about what I am thinking, or what I am reading, or what I think about given a certain topic.  Sometimes I post links I find interesting.  Sometimes Twitter is conversational if someone posts something that is controversial.  Sometimes it is about replying to friends with one liners (cough cough, @RossCode and @mjeaton).  It is what you make out of it in a sense. 

How Twitter Has Changed

My Twitterversary (the anniversary date you joined Twitter) will be on May 18th of this year.  I can’t believe it has been almost a year.  Since I joined Twitter it has evolved into a lot of things.  There are desktop applications like Witty Twitter which is an open source project several of us contribute to.  I even made a simple one click install of it so anyone that wants to install it can. Click the link below (it will install Witty Twitter and keep itself up to date on your machine).

http://keithelder.net/software/witty/witty.application (requires .Net 3.0 BTW!)

Having a single URL people can go to to use Twitter has proven very handy in getting people to adopt it.  There are also mobile applications like Tiny Twitter for Windows Mobile and even spin off sites like http://tffratio.com which allows users to track their friend-follower ratio.  A couple of my Tweeps (friends you follow on twitter) came up with it and started it.  We haven’t seen the end yet, more sites and ideas are popping up everywhere.

Tagging

Recently at the Mix 08 conference (which I didn’t attend) I was following key notes as they happened and knew where friends were hanging out and which sessions they were going to.  How?  Hashtags.org.  A Twitter hash tag is a pound sign in front of a noun.  Like #mix08 or #food and so on.  Hastags.Org organizes all the things people twitter about into one place.  I doubt we see many more #mix08 tags since #mix08 is now a thing of the past.  What is interesting about the Mix08 tags is how it spiked and then disappeared a few days later.

Not Enough Reasons?

I’ve already given anyone with a sense of curiosity enough reasons to give Twitter a try.  However, I know there are those of you that are holding out.  For those of you, I give you the best video I have found that explains Twitter.  Just remember that no matter how much stuff you read about it, you won’t get it UNTIL you start using it. 

Source: The Elder

Other notable tech companies that made the top 10 in this years most valuable brands list were IBM (no. 4, valuation: $66.6B), Apple (no. 6, Valuation: $63.1B), China Mobile (no. 7, Valuation: $61.2B), and Vodafone (no. 9, valuation: $53.7B). Ten of the top 25 brands are technology brands. Amazon is no. 26, AT&T is no. 28, Cisco is no. 30, eBay is no. 54 and Yahoo is no. 81, falling from no. 62 last year. Yahoo’s brand value went from $11.5B to $7.9B.

Here’s Top 20:

1. Google ($100 B)
2. Microsoft ($76.2 B)
3. Coca-Cola ($67.6 B)
4. IBM ($66.6 B)
5. McDonalds ($66.5 B)
6. Apple ($66.1 B)
7. China Mobile ($61.2 B)
8. GE ($59.7 B)
9. Vodafone ($53.7 B)
10. Marlboro ($49.4 B)
11. Walmart ($41 B)
12. ICBC ($35 B)
13. Nokia ($35.1 B)
14. Toyota ($29.9 B)
15. UPS ($27.8 B)
16. Blackberry ($27.4 B)
17. HP ($26.7 B)
18. BMW ($23.9 B)
19. SAP ($23.6 B)
20. Disney ($23.1 B)
21. Tesco ($22.9 B)
22. Gillete ($22.9 B)
23. Intel ($22.8 B)
24. China Construction Bank ($22.8 B)
25. Oracle ($21.4 B)

Source: TechCrunch

Moniker made more than $2 million in domain names at the TRAFFIC auction, with Ad.com taking the highest bid. Bottledwater.com took the no. 2 spot at $45,000 and Athletic.com received the third highest amount, selling for $40,000.

$1.4 million may sound like a lot to spend on a domain, especially given the current state of the economy. But Ad.com is a two-letter domain that is easily pronouncable and actually means something, so it’s definitely valuable in the domain market. And a recession doesn’t seem to be stopping companies from spending the big bucks for desirable domain names so Turakhia may be able to flip Ad.com for a profit. Travelzoo bought Fly.com for $1.8 million in January. Vibrators.com was sold for $1 million a back in November and A&T’s YellowPages.com paid $3.85 million for YP.com in December.

Source: TechCrunch

Apple has just brought out a brand-new third-generation iPod shuffle that is almost twice as small as the previous model. The device also has an exclusive new feature called VoiceOver that allows your shuffle to speak song, artist and playlist names to you.

The new iPod shuffle looks nothing like its predecessor. It comes in two shades – silver or black – and has no more buttons! (It looks a bit like a fancy cigarette lighter.)

The new shuffle is truly tiny: smaller than an AA battery and the redesign means that all of the controls are now placed on the earphone cord instead of the body.

The VoiceOver feature speaks 14 languages, including English, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish, and even tells you how much battery life you have left.

Priced at 75 Euro including VAT, the new 4GB shuffle holds up to 1,000 songs and starts shipping today.

Source: SiliconRepublic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDw3azfZWI#t=31m08s

Notice the “#t=31m08s” on the end of the URL? That link will take you 31 minutes and 8 seconds into that video. Linking to a particular minute and second can be really helpful – for example, that link takes you straight to where someone asks Eric Schmidt a question about Twitter. From there, you can listen to his answer, where he says (among other things):

“We’re in favor of all of these new communications mechanisms. I think the innovation is great, Twitter’s success is wonderful, and I think it shows you that there are many, many new ways to communicate, especially if you’re willing to do so publicly.”

Source: Matt Cutts

YouTube also led the large growth in online video watching, accounting for 91 percent of the incremental gain in the number of videos viewed compared to December. Fox’s MySpace also experienced large growth: from 444 million videos viewed in December 2008 to 552 million in January 2009, with Yahoo, Viacom and Microsoft’s properties following in places three to five.

The alleged YouTube killer, Hulu, is also growing, but at a much slower rate: from 240 million videos viewed in December 2008 to 250 million in January 2009. Hulu is still closed for most international viewers, and the lack of global buzz around the service might ultimately hamper its overall growth. If we compare the number of videos viewed, in just one month, YouTube has grown nearly two Hulus in size, so there’s a lot of catching up to do for Hulu.

Source: Mashable

A U.N. report published today states that six in ten people (60%) of the world’s population has a cell phone subscription. The driving growth trend is coming from poor, developing countries. This 60% figure is up from just under 15% in 2002.

Internet use has more than doubled to 23% in 2008 up from 11% in 2002. Only 1 in 20 people in the same poor countries have Internet access, however in rich countries the fixed broadband services increased to almost 20% market penetration, while on average only 1 in 20 worldwide have high speed Internet. Mobile broadband has also shown its fastest increase, with 3% of people worldwide having it on average, compared to 14% in rich countries. Fixed line subscriptions (home phones) have increased at a slower rate, from 1 billion in 2002 to 1.27 billion in 2009, meaning cellular phones outnumber direct-wired phones in excess of 3:1.

The 106-page U.N. report also ranked countries by how advanced their information and communications technology (ICT) is. The order went as follows:

1) Sweden
2) South Korea (getting nation-wide Gigabit broadband by 2012)
3) Denmark
4) Netherlands
5) Iceland
6) Norway

The United States came in at #17, with Hong Kong at #11, China at #73 and India at #118, both of which have a high technology base but whose ranking was affected by their large populations and poor, rural areas. Myanmar’s militaristic government gave that country the only cited decline over the same period, with Internet bandwidth dropping 90%. This came following the Internet being shut down at times, along with several bloggers being jailed for published content.

Source: TG Daily

Up until today, it’s been a little tedious to send large or multiple attachments with an email. You had to select each attachment individually and you never knew how long it would be before those bigger files were ready to send.  Uploading multiple attachments at the same time just got enabled. Gmail has warded off the tedious job of uploading files one at a time. Now Gmail will let uploading multiple files at a time, albeit, the maximum limit of attachments remains 20MB only. If you want to send a few files from the same folder, simply hold down the Ctrl key (Cmd on OS X) and click on each file you want to attach to your message. You can also hold down the Shift key to select a continuous list of files. A definite time saver.

You’ll not only save a few mouse clicks selecting files, but you’ll also see progress bars on each file as it uploads.

Source: Gmail Blog

Its seems like the financial crisis over the world really has not affected to the Austrian jeweler Peter Aloisson,because he created a record for himself by designing the world’s most expensive phone Apple iPhone 3G Kings Button.

The Apple iPhone 3G Kings Button’s main operating button is integrated with high quality 6.6 carat diamonds, this impression itself of the phone is very attractive. This exquisite phone is made of solid 18-carat yellow gold, white gold and rose gold. It flaunts a white gold line encrusted with a total of 138 brilliant cut diamonds of the best quality.

The new Apple iPhone 3G ‘Kings Button’ is the most luxurious phone to date. The phone is definitely for those who dare to defy the current credit crunch. The Apple iPhone 3G ‘Kings Button’ for 1,636,000 ($2,517,345) (approx. Rs 12 crore). I’m going to start saving up right now. ;)

Sony’s big news announcement at CES involves a very tiny package. But don’t call it a netbook. Sony spokesfolk were adamant that–even though the newcomer packs an Intel Atom processor and 2GB of RAM–this superslim P-series computer is a lifestyle machine. The distinction sort of makes sense, too: At the $899 starting price that Sony expects the unit to command when it ships in February, it had better do more than be small.

Small it’s got down: Weighing 1.4 pounds and measuring about 1 inch thick, the pint-size PC can slide snuggly into a coat pocket or purse. But inside the P series are such impressive components as a 60GB hard-disk drive (you can invest in a 64GB or 128GB solid-state drive if you prefer), a battery that promises 4 hours battery life (8 hours with the optional battery upgrade), 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Qualcomm’s Gobi chip set for wireless broadband. That’s on top of what you’ll find inside any computer that sports an Atom processor: two USB ports, a headphone jack, a display/LAN adapter connection, a Webcam with built-in mic, an SD Card slot, and a Memory Stick card slot. Technically, I think that outdoes the MacBook Air. And all of this goodness sits inside a slim, screwless case that will be available in several colors.