California Eye » Twitter

Karl Rove following Nye-Gateway on Twitter

Featheriver — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 02:25:21 +0000

Karl Rove

My jaw dropped when I saw the notice from Twitter that Karl Rove was following me. I thought “You must have hit the big time somehow.” Then, “Why would Karl Rove follow me?”

I still don’t know why he is but he is. Maybe he likes to read this blog, though I can’t imagine he would find much on it he would like.

Anybody got any theories?

Support Healthcare Reform: Tweet Your Senator

Featheriver — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 03:34:27 +0000

Unique. President Obama is asking all Americans to send a Tweet to your Senator. You can access the website to send your tweet here.

The instructions on the site are:

We’re calling and writing letters — and now there’s a new way to contact your representatives.

Enter your zip code in the box below to “tweet” one of your senators to tell them to support real health insurance reform this year.

Please use all the hashtags provided so we can track your tweets on the map to the right.

Just below those instructions is a Twitter button. Click it and it will take you to your Twitter page. There will be the following message already entered for you to send. Just click the Update button and viola your message is sent to your Senator.

Exploring Bing the new search engine

Featheriver — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:16:27 +0000

There are more and more search engines one can use. Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, Answers, Creative Commons, eBay, Wikipedia, Twitter Search, are all on my computer, and now there is Bing.

I’m going to try out Bing for awhile and see how it works. I use search engines a lot, looking up information I use to write blog posts is a frequent reason I use search engines. I have, for a long time relied on Google, which is probably the grand daddy of search engines. It is hard to beat.

But the browser one uses to surf the internet is closely tied to the search engines. I formerly used Internet Explorer 7 which worked well. Then Microsoft upgraded it to version 8. I upgraded but have found it crashes on me as often as not. So I switched to Firefox version 3.5 which has been much more reliable than IE 8. Google now has another browser called Chrome. I’m going to use it for awhile and see how well it performs.

For one who does a lot of work using the Internet Search Engines and Browsers are important. Researching using Search Engines is really an art. Learning how to construct the search terms takes some thought and planning to zero in on the particular topic being sought.

I spend a lot of time looking for ancestors in my family tree and for writing this blog. I have an interest in such things, many don’t. We’ll see how it all goes.

Time on Twitter

Featheriver — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:38:00 +0000

Time Magazine has some articles on Twitter this week one of which is how Twitter is changing the way we live.

They even cover the top 10 celebrity Twitter feeds:

Britney Spears: http://twitter.com/britneyspears

Snoop Dog: http://twitter.com/snoopdogg

Dalai Lama: http://twitter.com/ohhdl

John Hodgman: http://twitter.com/hodgman?page=1

Claire McCaskill: http://twitter.com/clairecmc

Lance Armstrong: http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong?page=5

Shaquille O’Neal: http://twitter.com/THE_REAL_SHAQ?page=1

Arnold Swarzenegger: http://twitter.com/schwarzenegger

David Lynch: http://twitter.com/DAVID_LYNCH

Demi Moore: http://twitter.com/mrskutcher

Ashton Kutcher: http://twitter.com/aplusk

So, if you want to become a follower of any or all these celebrities, be my guest.

Even members of Congress Tweet. Times are changing, fast. Using Twitter is one way to reach younger voters. Old people don’t Twitter—young people do. Politicians are being to learn that if they want to tap into the new generation they have to learn how to communicate with them—and cast away their quills and ink in favor of the modern way to keep in touch with their constituents. Twitter is changing the way of politics.

Twitter is also changing the way America does business.

RT ReTweeting 101

Featheriver — Sat, 30 May 2009 14:28:50 +0000

It took me some time to understand exactly what RT meant in Twitter. I had tweeted a tweet about something. Then I noticed someone had put an RT in front of my tweet. I wondered why and what did that accomplish. RT means “retweet” in Twitter talk. I had in my head it meant “reply to” but I was wrong.

I tried to figure out what the reply was to me from whomever put the RT in front of my tweet. I never got a message.

Wandering around the Internet I found the answer. Let me try to illustrate just what this RT is all about. Let’s take Twitterer A and Twitterer B.

Twitterer A has 10 people who “follows” A’s tweets. Twitterer B has 10 more different people who “follow B.” That means those people who “follow” Twitterer A get to see every tweet A sends out (except Direct tweets). So when A writes a significant tweet about something of interest, Twitterer B (who follows A) thinks the tweet should interest the 10 people who follow B. Since the 10 people who follow B are different people than follows A Twitterer A simply RTs A’s tweet. That results in 10 more people get to read A’s original tweet bring the total exposure of A’s original tweet to 20, rather than just the original 10 followers of A.

See how a single tweet can become geometically increased to a wider audience?

If I didn’t make sense here, go read The Art of ReTweeting. There you will learn about some etiquitte applicable to RTing.

Imagine that the Nye County Democratic Central Committee used Twitter to communicate with the 9000 Democrats in Nye County.

Why conservatives and liberals differ

Featheriver — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:08:43 +0000

Actually, I prefer the term “progressives” to using “liberals.” The word liberal is used as negative connotation when conservatives use it.

But that isn’t the reason for this post. Nicholas Kristof, of the New York Times, has an article today which I picked up on from reading his tweet on Twitter this morning. He contrasts behavior and feelings as experienced by conservatives and liberals.

conservatives are more likely than liberals to sense contamination or perceive disgust. People who would be disgusted to find that they had accidentally sipped from an acquaintance’s drink are more likely to identify as conservatives.

“The upshot is that liberals and conservatives don’t just think differently, they also feel differently. This may even be a result, in part, of divergent neural responses,” he writes.

One of the main divides between left and right is the dependence on different moral values. For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm. For conservatives, morality also involves upholding authority and loyalty — and revulsion at disgust.

That rings true to me. I see liberals as more “spiritual” than “materialistic” conservatives. Conservatives are far more concerned about their money than liberals.

The upshot is that liberals and conservatives don’t just think differently, they also feel differently. This may even be a result, in part, of divergent neural responses.

How about that? Perhaps liberals and conservatives are wired differently.

The larger point is that liberals and conservatives often form judgments through flash intuitions that aren’t a result of a deliberative process. The crucial part of the brain for these judgments is the medial prefrontal cortex, which has more to do with moralizing than with rationality. If you damage your prefrontal cortex, your I.Q. may be unaffected, but you’ll have trouble harrumphing.

“Flash intuitions” indicated knee-jerk reactions. Perhaps both liberals and conservatives jump to conclusions without rational thought.

So how do we discipline our brains to be more open-minded, more honest, more empirical? A start is to reach out to moderates on the other side — ideally eating meals with them, for that breaks down “us vs. them” battle lines that seem embedded in us. (In ancient times we divided into tribes; today, into political parties.) The Web site www.civilpolitics.org is an attempt to build this intuitive appreciation for the other side’s morality, even if it’s not our morality.

Kristof may have a valid point here.

Using Twitter to Communicate with Washington

Featheriver — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:16:17 +0000

Twitter is an effective means of communicating with Washington politicians, news organization, even C-Span. [Huffington Post] It will even work to increase the ability of communicating with the Nye County Democratic Central Committee. All they need to do is sign up on Twitter, then notify all 9,400 Nye Democrats and ask them to “follow” the Central Committee. Of course the Central Committee has to Tweet something to follow.

Using Twitter

Featheriver — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:56:00 +0000

The more I use Twitter the better I like it. There are multiple ways to use and benefit from Twitter.

Chris Miller on The Social Networker wrote:

In the last week or so I broke 5000 tweets. Was there a parade or confetti? Nope. Nothing came from it when I first broke 1000 followers either. What I did suddenly realize is how it changed my workflow as well as what other changes I need to think about.
Here is what I did learn from 0-5000:

Twitter is about having communication with anyone. Cross balanced with some broadcasting of thoughts, links and stuff
Twitter transcends multiple platforms like no other tool right now. SMS, web, desktop clients, mobile clients and huge numbers of add-on tools
Twitter can be a central communication point flowing downstream into other services
Twitter can be an aggregation point collecting flowing data from other services
Twitter allows you to have meaning in what you say or just randomly chat and communicate. It becomes how you use the tool, not what everyone else uses it for
Twitter is a moving wave that you cannot surf on. You must dive in and come up for air to get the most benefit
Twitter needs to be constantly data mined to get the most out of it
Twitter serves everyone in different ways and don’t be offended when someone doesn’t like how you use it
Twitter has an api that isn’t having any limits right now. Remember the company I posted that has their manufacturing machines tweet their statistics into private feeds that then get consumed. This saved tons of man hours walking around collecting these same stats manually
Twitter will have a revenue model that we all won’t agree with at some point. When it happens look for a wave of complainers
Twitter uses hashtags as a sorting and locating mechanism, not as a game

Here are things I am changing for 5000-9999 and then re-evaluating:

EverythingTwitter is moving into it’s own Twitter account. It is growing fast and needs to be it’s own breathing entity that you can follow for the best and latest Twitter tools. Corvida may still have updates in her own personal stream, but we will leave that whole idea up to her
I will engage in more conversation as that is where most of it is taking place. I have not logged into public IM accounts in, what a year? I am sometimes on the one for TheSocialNetworker but only because Google is set to log me into Google Chat when I check mail.
I have a semi scheduled routine to trim up who I follow. Information overflow can ensue too quickly
I will continue to look for the best desktop, mobile and web interfaces for my needs, not what everyone else says is best. It is why we throw new tools out each day. There is too many cool new ones all the time
I am pushing more links through Diigo and sharing through Google Reader. I know Google Reader needs some help in the social network space, but it makes following hundreds of feeds too easy. Plus on the BB in a crunch. Get on it and add my as a friend on both of those.
I keep trying to use Friendfeed more for viewing, but like the splitting of these couple tools for feeds and just tweets. I have rooms, groups and lists in Friendfeed already, but maybe I need more
Microblog companies that are popping up need to focus more on what service they can bring to a group or enterprise and stop being direct competitors. You will then start winning your own race

(before you ask: I make it a point to test a tool for a week or two straight unless it really just disappoints me right away. So you will see me in Twhirl most of the time. I just finished two weeks in Tweetdeck and have to go back. Seesmic isn’t ready just yet. Then Chrome/Firefox for Google Reader. Bit.ly for URL shortening and Diigo tools for social bookmarking)
I am going to keep adding more and hopefully some of you comment with your own education from your first tweet to now.