Earlier today at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) I talked to Bill Pytlovany (creator of WinPatrol) and Mike Brown (creator of Flow). Bill P. actually gave me a 1GB wristband with WinPatrol on it. We chatted for a few minutes about the PDC, the Microsoft MVP program, and the work we do.
Twitter - the latest killer app
Five minutes before our talk I had never met Bill and Mike. I actually went to the Starbucks at the Los Angeles convention center following a message from Bill announcing he'd give out his wristbands to whoever showed up. Bill sent this message through Twitter (www.twitter.com). Since not everyone knows about Twitter, here's the definition from Wikipedia -
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.
Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Twitterrific or Facebook
During the whole conference, I've been using Twitter and searching for the terms #PDC, #PDC08, and #PDC2008. When I checked, every few seconds, there were 2-3 new messages from folks attending or interested in the sessions and technologies announced at the PDC. This allowed me to know which sessions from the PDC were now online, get links to blog posts on the latest technologies announced at the PDC, or even get a 1GB wristband from Bill (Channel9 actually gave away tickets to tonight's Lakers game through Twitter!)
I used a few applications to constantly check if there were new tweets related to the PDC:
- Most of the time, wi-fi worked great at the Los Angeles Convention Center during the PDC. This allowed me to run Firefox and point it to Tweet Grid, getting new tweets Ajax style.
Tweet Grid - click on image to enlarge
- Mike Brown mentioned TweetDeck today, an AIR application for the desktop that allows you to view your main Twitter timeline (those who you "follow") and any Twitter search you can think of. Here's a screenshot with Tweetdeck searches on #PDC, #PDC08, and #PDC2008
Tweet Deck - click on image to enlarge
Twitter is heavily used today by developers and tech journalists such as Leo Laporte (who oddly enough was the first to create a different Twit) and Robert Scoble (who made the mistake of not attending PDC 2008 by choice). I don't know if Twitter is ever going to become mainstream, but I greatly saw how useful it can be in the last 4 days at the PDC.
If you don't have a Twitter account yet, sign up for one at www.twitter.com - it's free and you'll love it!
Additional Twitter Resources and Tools -
- On the Web
- Twitter itself - http://twitter.com
- Twit Grid - http://tweetgrid.com/
- Twit Grid example: 1x3, 10 tweets per column, PDC searches:
- Tweet Scan - http://www.tweetscan.com/
- Tweet Scan is a real-time search engine for Twitter, identi.ca, and eight other sites
- Sample scan on the tag "pdc": http://www.tweetscan.com/index.php?s=pdc
- Tweet Works: http://www.tweetworks.com/
- Start groups and discussions from Twitter.
- Twitter Map: http://twittermap.com/
- Plots Twitter user locations on a map
- Twitt Earth: http://twittearth.com
- Shows twitts in a 3d model of the world; a screensaver for Windows XP and Vista is also available.
- Curse Bird: http://cursebird.com/
- A real time feed of people swearing on Twitter (not for kids!)
- On the Desktop
- Tweet Deck - http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/
- Excellent AIR based desktop client - see your timeline and additional searches (see screenshot above).
- Twhirl - http://www.twhirl.org/
- Cool AIR based desktop client.
- Twitteroo: http://rareedge.com/twitteroo/
- Tweet Deck - http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/
- On the Phone
- Tiny Twitter - http://www.tinytwitter.com/
- The application I run on my Windows Mobile 5 phone (the PPC-6700) to get my tweets on the run.
- Skyfire - http://www.skyfire.com/
- best browser for Windows Mobile Phones
- Worked great at the PDC with Twit Grid - allowing me to check the PDC related tweets on my phone.
- Tiny Twitter - http://www.tinytwitter.com/
- Pictures from your Phone
- TwitXR: http://twitxr.com/
- Share pictures from web or phone directly to Twitter (and also FaceBook, Flickr and Picasa)
- You can use email or full mobile apps, available for iPhone, Windows Mobile, Nikia and Motorola phones.
- Twit Pic: http://twitpic.com/
- Another Twitter tool that allows you to share pictures from your phone or the web with automatic posting to Twitter.
- For Mac users
- Twitterrific - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitterrific
- URL Shortening
- Twitter only gives you 140 characters - when posting links on Twitter, you can use these tools to shorten long URLs
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