All a Twitter: good read

Monday, July 27, 2009

My previous post displayed me at my sarcastic best, with a cheap jibe at a book I hadn’t actually read. When I actually started reading the book, I soon discovered this…

This Book Is Written in More Than 140 Characters

Yes, I’ve heard that joke. I’ve heard it often. If you are at a book signing and are thinking of asking me, “So is this book written in more than 140 characters?”, please reconsider. The fact that this book is as thick as it is and has thirteen chapters should be the hint that there is a bit more to Twitter than you might expect.

And just tonight, as I was writing this, someone cracked that joke. So, please, don’t make that joke. It’s just not working for me anymore. Thank you in advance.

...and felt suitably embarrassed.

Well, the case for the defence rests on the fact that there is an awful amount of new-agey, geeky, shallow idiocy written about Twitter - amazingly, not all of if by Tim O’Bookshifter - and I just expected this to be another bloated hagiography. Well, I was wrong.

“All a Twitter” is actually rather good. Tee Morris explains the mechanics of Twitter as a web application, and critically examines various tools you can get hold of to enhance your experience. But beyond that it takes a reasoned, balanced view of the “why” of Twitter, and encourages readers to decide for themselves what benefit they could get by joining in - or not.

You may think that Twitter is something that young people today waste their time on, or you may think that it is the biggest revolution in personal communication, like, EVER. Or you may think that it is a healthy social lifeline for the millions of people who spend their waking hours, at work or at play, in front of a computer screen.

You may also be turned off by the crass levels of self-promotion which various public and insider figures have indulged themselves in. Well, the author deals with them, gloves off, and makes it clear that their egocentric behaviour reflects themselves, not the wider community.

Personally, I’m still not sure if Twitter is for me - and especially vice-versa, but I’m better informed now than I was on Friday. Wherever you stand, if you’re at all interested in this social phenomenon, “All a Twitter” is a remarkably interesting, well written and thought provoking book that deserves a wide audience.

And yeah, it’s written in more than 140 characters.

140 characters in 312 pages!

Friday, July 24, 2009

Due to necessity I’m back on Twitter. I still don’t like it, but I need to talk about it with some degree of confidence so I’d better get back up to speed on it.

Checking out some shortcuts, I came across this:

Now, it may or may not be any good. And it least it hasn’t got Tim O’Reilly written on the front. But really: 312 pages to talk about a service which lets you send 140 character messages ?  As Sven remarked, it must use a really big font.

(Note: I see the author has anticipated this sort of smartass comment. Well ok, I’ll read it. And if I like it I’ll write a nice review)

Meanwhile, on the ‘B’ Ark

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

I’ve been tasked with “doing something with Twitter” on the project I’m working on just now, which is still under wraps. Well, I’ve “done stuff with Twitter” before, and I’ve been on Twitter. And I found it creepy and really, but really disturbingly superficial.

But anyway, I’m supposed to be being paid to do what I’m told, so I though a quick refresher might help, and I’m reading The Twitter Book by Web 2.0 Cult High Priest Tim O’Reilly (who I also find creepy and superficial) and Sarah Milstein (who she?).

The book design follows a sort of playschool format, with big letters and big pictures on small pages, which I guess is the designer’s wonderfully subtle way of referring to Twitter itself. Whether or not that is a good thing is somewhat open to question.

By page 120 of 240-ish my eyelids feel like steel shutters and my body is invaded by narcolepsy. It is so, so, so dull. It really doesn’t help that it parades the same old Web 2.0 names in cutesy referential ways, or that all of the examples have a very strong gee-whiz San Francisco air about them.

Above all, it is so remarkably self-glorifying, self-referential and vapid. Which, actually, is well matched to the subject, I guess.  “Be interesting to other people”, preach the authors. They could start by taking their own advice to heart.  Well, I’ve got a message to all you Twitterers: the ‘A’ Ark is coming real soon now.

Things to do in Denver when you’re dead

Friday, June 26, 2009

Read Steve Kilbey’s blog.

There’s

nothing

like it

on the planet.

Makes me look forward to being 54

Cult of Mac

Monday, June 08, 2009

Well I think I’ve reached the height of absurdity. I’m standing on in windy street (Howard, I think) in San Francisco, towards the end of a queue (or “line” as they call it here) stretching at least 1km away from the entrance of the Apple Worldwide Developer conference. At least 75% of the people in line don’t look like they could even walk, or waddle, 1km without collapsing. Or at least stopping for a burger.

And why? Well i suppose, and hope, that it is for the Keynote, 2 hours of vapid marketing to be lapped up by the slack-jawed followers of L Ron Hubb, er, sorry, S P Jobs. Not that it’s his fault none of these geeks has a life. I imagine he can’t stand them. They’re not a pretty sight.

So what I am doing amongst them? Well the idea was that I’d get a crash course in the intricacies of iPhone programming, and maybe steal some good ideas, since I’ve run out of my own.

But so far, I just feel like I’ve landed on the wrong planet