Archive for the ‘Microblogging’ Category
by David Peralty on February 23rd, 2009
First off, I wanted to say, “when did Automattic become such a big company?” I remember looking at their employee list, and seeing a dozen names, and it has ballooned much larger since then, but thankfully, even though many of them don’t blog consistently, they keep a strong presence on Twitter.
Raanan Bar-Cohen – Media Engineer
Ryan Boren – Engineer
Sam Bauers – Coderoo
Anthony Bubel – Happiness Engineer
Lloyd Budd – Digital Entomologist
Jon Fox – Title Pending
Noel Jackson – Stylist
Isaac Keyet – Design Junkie
Marianne Masculino – Happiness Engineer
Nick Momrik – Happiness Engineer
Matt Mullenweg – CBBQTT
Donncha O Caoimh – Murphy’s Quality Control
Thorsten Ott – Bug Zapper
Andy Peatling – Social Engineer
Michael Pick – Lightbulb Engineer
Warwick Poole – Systemologist
Heather Rasley – The Deputy
Mark Riley – Support Maven
Joseph Scott – Bug Exorcist
Alex Shiels – Code Bloke
Andy Skelton – Code Wrangler
Matt Thomas – The Detailer
Jane Wells – Libation Engineer
Of course there are about four or so missing from this list, as they don’t seem to have a Twitter account I can easily find, and this list doesn’t even include the project focused Twitter accounts or other accounts related to these people. This is just their primary Twitter accounts, so if you have wanted to follow them, now you can.
Categories: Microblogging, WordPress News
by David Peralty on January 23rd, 2009
NETTuts has recently put out an article relating to integrating Twitter on your website. Since blogs are a type of website, I figured now would be a good time to go over some WordPress plugins that help integrate Twitter into your blog.
There are three sets of plugins, ones that display your Twitter messages on your blog, ones that allow you to push out notifications of your blog posts to Twitter and ones that create other interactions with Twitter.
Displaying Tweets
LifeStream – I use this plugin on what “should” be my company site, Digital Life News and I enjoy it. Fairly full featured, and backed by a close friend of mine.
Lifestream displays your social feeds and photos much like you would see it on many of the social networking sites.
Twitter for WordPress – I haven’t used this plugin, but I can see why it is popular. It shows your latest tweets in your sidebar.
Twitter Tools – Everyone knows Alex King is an amazing plugin developer, and so his Twitter Tools suite is no exception. It fits into both categories, allowing you to display your tweets on your blog, as well as pushing out blog post information to Twitter.
My favourite piece from his FAQ on the plugin:
What happens if I have both my tweets posting to my blog as posts and my posts sent to Twitter? Will it cause the world to end in a spinning fireball of death?
Actually, Twitter Tools has taken this into account and you can safely enable both creating posts from your tweets and tweets from your posts without duplicating them in either place.
MyTwitter – Another simple plugin to see your Twitter messages on your blog.
MyTwitter allows users to display their recent Twitter status updates (tweets) on their Wordpress site and update their status through the Options page. Includes customization options including number of recent twitters to display, formatting options, and stylesheets. It can be called as a function or used as a widget.
Twitter Feed – Looking a lot like your Twitter page, Twitter Feed is a nice widget for displaying recent tweets. It looks well featured, and highly configurable. An exciting way to display interactions with Twitter.
Pushing Blog Posts to Twitter
Twitme – If all you want is to push your blog post links to your Twitter friends and followers, Twitme should do that just fine. Last updated only two weeks ago, this plugin is still in constant development.
Twitpress – In the same vein as Twitme, Twitpress also takes blog posts, and automatically pushes information about them to your Twitter account.
Bird Feeder – Yet another blog post to Twitter plugin. This one was also recently updated, and is focused on fulfilling its single function as quickly, and as easily as possible.
WP to Twitter – This is the plugin I generally use to feed my blog posts to Twitter, and it has always worked quite well for me.
The WP-to-Twitter plugin posts a Twitter status update from your blog using the Cli.gs URL shortening service to provide a link back to your post from Twitter.
Other Interactions with Twitter
Tweetbacks – Created by a good friend, Joost de Valk, Tweetbacks brings responses to your posts on Twitter, back into your blog.
People are talking about your posts, and not only in the comments to your post. A lot of that conversation is happening on Twitter, and now, you can take that conversation right back to your blog! This plugin imports those tweets about your posts as comments. You can display them in between the other comments on your blog, or display them separately.
Tweet Tweet – One of the better known WordPress related figures, Donncha O Caoimh has created a plugin to back up your Twitter messages.
This plugin archives your tweets, and the tweets of those you follow in your database. It also stores replies from other people, as well as direct messages.
TwitterCounter – Much like people show off their RSS feed subscribers in a little “chicklet” box, this plugin allows you to show off the number of Twitter followers you have. Created by Ajay D’Souza and Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten.
TweetRoll – Much like a blogroll, or those friend boxes from various blogging communities, TweetRoll displays some of your followers in a fancy widget that will hopefully increase your subscribers and give attention to those you follow.
These of course, are but a few of the hundreds of WordPress plugins available to bloggers to interact with Twitter in different ways. There are services, full scripts, and more that can be utilized to closer tie your blogging and Twitter together.
What are your favourite Twitter related WordPress plugins?
Categories: Microblogging, WordPress Plugins
by Ade Magnaye on January 6th, 2009
If you guys get a Twitter direct message with a link, when clicked, brings you to a page that looks like Twitter and asks for your login details, do not login on that page.
Twitter is the latest target of a “phishing” campaign — an attempt by hackers to gather usernames and passwords through deceptive means. This particular scam sent out emails resembling those you might receive from Twitter if you get email notifications of your Direct Messages.
And lots of people have fallen victim to this scam already. Even Fox News, President-elect Obama, and Britney Spears were not spared.
Okay, I have to admit that I laughed when the hacked FoxNews made a quip about Bill O’Reilly’s sexuality, or when Britney Spears announced something about the size of her privates, but this is a serious problem here.
The Twitter blog offered some ways to recover your account if you have fallen victim to this trick:
…If you find yourself unable to login to your account with your username and password, please use the reset password link to regain access. This will send an email to the address associated with your account and you’ll be able to create a new password.
If you don’t receive the reset password email, please check your junk or spam email folder as it may be accidentally delivered there. If you are still having trouble logging in, please contact our support team and we’ll help you out.
So people, be careful about your DMs, and keep those accounts safe!
Categories: Microblogging
by Ade Magnaye on January 5th, 2009
If you’re young enough to have watched the hit 80’s TV show Doogie Howser, M.D., then you must remember the scene at the end of each episode. Doogie Howser, played by Neal Patrick Harris, would go to his ancient IBM PS/2 and write his reflections there. In fact, it has been jokingly said that he was the first blogger.
Now you can do a Doogie Howser and ramble with your daily thoughts with a simulated IBM PS/2 interface! Go to Twoogie to channel his prodigious wit into your own twitter-feeds. Read More
Categories: Microblogging
by Ade Magnaye on December 6th, 2008
Microblogging service Pownce, once touted as Twitter’s heir apparent, is closing down on December 15. The Pownce team has joined SixApart, and they will be bringing their technology with them. The team is now working on an export tool that will let users transfer their posts to other blogging services such as Vox, TypePad, or WordPress. Leah Culver writes on the Pownce blog:
We?re very happy that Six Apart wants to invest in growing the vision that we the founders of Pownce believe so strongly in and we?re very excited to take our vision to all of Six Apart?s products. Mike and I have joined Six Apart as part of their engineering team and we?re looking forward to being a part of the talented group that has created amazing tools for blogging and publishing.
Even though they will be coming up with an export tool soon, those who paid for Pro accounts have been told that they will be emailed soon with more information. On the Six Apart blog though, they’ve announced that Pownce Pro users will get a year’s TypePad pro account for free. As for the Pownce team, they seem to have settled into Vox. Leah Culver and Mike Malone has made Vox their new home. So Pownce is closing, Leah and Mike are joining Vox, but will the community join in? Six Apart hopes so. What’s your take? Leave your opinion in the comments.
Categories: Microblogging
by Ade Magnaye on November 26th, 2008
Those who have switched microblogs from Twitter to Plurk have been disappointed at the lack of Firefox add-ons available. Need proof? Off the top of my head, without googling, I can name a few Twitter add-ons for our favorite browser: Twitterfox, Twitbin, TwitKit, Twitterbar and so many more. Plurk, on the other hand, has very little selections to speak of.
Personally, I’m not a fan of Plurk’s horizontal timeline scheme, and I try to use the mobile interface as often as I can. In fact, I was able to devise a way to use the mobile interface solely. I installed Mozilla Prism and made an application out of Plurk. But constantly updating it manually can be a pain. Read More
Categories: Blogger Tools, Microblogging
by J. Angelo Racoma on September 18th, 2008
Microblogging service Twitter has recently launched its new design. While the redesign mostly concerns cosmetic changes, and not new features, the Twitter team states that the changes in user interface would make it easier to implement more improvements in the future.
The site supposedly loads faster, with Ajax optimizations. The layout has been streamlined, with the navigation tabs moved and some unnecessary or rarely-used elements done away with or hidden, for a simpler look.
If you have suggestions, comments or if you simply want to compliment the Twitter team for their work, do give them a shout out by sending a tweet that starts with @twitter.
“What about…[your favorite feature request / annoyance].” Please be assured the changes we’ve made here aren’t the only things we want to (or will) change. They’re not even, necessarily, the most important. The scope of this project was limited to light-weight front-end work.
They say they have more updates coming, and that they’re currently working hard on improving on the back-end.
Categories: Microblogging
Tags: design, Microblogging, twitter
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