I think secretly, deep down, everybody wants a microblogging service. Lets face it, Twitter is awesome or have you forgotten about this bad boy. So now, I’ll stop plugging my blog in order to plug my brand new microblog: Travis Fantina Ramblings.
It all began reading over last month’s Dreamhost newsletter. They mentioned a wonderful new microblogging software called status.net. Licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License. So I looked up Dreamhost’s own Pet Status It’s basically Twitter for your server which got me excited because as I stated earlier everybody wants their own microblogging service.
So I’m pleased to introduce Travis Fantina Ramblings a brand new microblogging service that’s free to join and offers ten more characters per post then Twitter! It’s a counter part to this Ramblings blog, now instead of only me EVERYBODY gets to ramble. It’s not very useful, but it’s on my server now and I’m probably too lazy to ever remove it check it out, join up and start microblogging who knows we might even have the next Twitter on our hands (but I doubt it). It’s a fun little experiment and a way for me to waste more time.

Now you may be wondering, Travis, where the heck have you been? No hide nor hair of a blog post since December. The answer is simple, I’ve been fairly busy and the majority of my ‘public thoughts’ (those are thoughts that I deem worthy to post online) are not long enough to blog about. You’ll notice that my Twitter account is regularly Tweeting and my new Ramblings account will soon begin rambling regularly. If anybody finds a plugin that allows me to merge these accounts I would love you forever.

Seriously, I do miss blogging regularly. I missed the ‘Avatar’ craze (but if your wondering I liked it a lot), and there are several other reviews I meant to post but just never did: let me just say go see ‘Sherlock Holmes’ and ‘The Lovely Bones’ RIGHT NOW! Anyway I’m probably going to see both ‘Green Zone’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ this week I’ll try to post a review. I promise I’ll get back to regular blog updates (for those of you still not tweeting with the twits).

For now, check out Ramblings: The Microblog

written by Travis \\ tags: blog, fantina, Microblogging, Ramblings, Reviews, Status.net, travis, Twitter

This post is a continuation of Saturday’s which can be found here I recommend reading it first.

Ok so continuing where I left off Saturday night (Sunday morning technically)..

Twitter has a few neat ways to contact people, if you are “Friends” with someone (meaning you are both following each other) you can send that person a “Direct Message” which will only be visible to them. You can mention somebody by typing the @ sign and then their name (like @tfantina), this tweet will be visible to everybody who follows you and the person you mention will also be notified even if they don’t follow you. The highest complement you can give on Twitter is a re-tweet. If you like somebody’s tweet and want to show it to your followers just type “RT” then mention the person and paste their tweet ( “RT @tfantina ‘Some how I always cross the border during rush hour.’”).

So far I’ve covered the basics of Twitter, however it’s much more fun once you start checking the amazing apps that have sprung up around Twitter.

Some people will tell you to download a desktop app for Twitter like
“Tweetie” or “TweetDeck” however I don’t use either of these, however if you are tweeting from a smart phone or an iPod Touch I recommend getting an app for it. When it comes to apps here is a list of ones that I could not live without (this is relative we are talking about a micro blogging service);

Brizzley is a fun app that displays pictures and video in tweets (usually you have to click a link to see them), among other things it also allows you to organize people you follow into lists. I highly recommend it, it’s currently in beta however if you want an invite just drop a line in the comments and I’ll hook you up first come first serve.

Tinyurl is good when you have a super long URL that you have to fit into 140 characters or less (they usually shorten any URL to about 30 characters).

Twitpic allows you to post photos to Twitter from you cell phone or the web.

Tweetstats is cool if your geeky like me and want to know the statistics of your tweets (time of day you tweet the most, day of week you tweet the most, where most of your tweets come from, ect.).

There are hundreds of cool apps for Twitter, a good place to start looking is Oneforty.com they have organized most of the major apps for you to try, rate and review.

Sorry it took so long, Twitter’s a bit of a hard sell at first but I take it with a grain of salt and appreciate all the neat apps and trends.

Image: Pasquale D’Silva courtesy of Function

written by Travis \\ tags: blog, Micro-blogging, Re-tweet, topics, trends, Twitter

What is Twitter? It’s stupid! Why do you use it? Are you by any chance stupid? These are a few of the question’s I’m faced with when I tell people that I use Twitter. My goal with this post is to hopefully educate and enlighten readers about the wonderful world of Twitter.

What is it? Twitter a micro-bloging service, it allows users to convey short amounts of information (called ‘tweets’), in no more then 140 characters; this makes it compatible with SMS messaging from cell phones.

Once you join start following people. I know it sounds stalkerish but one has to assume that people aren’t going to post something on the public web that they don’t want everybody on Earth to see, if not why post it. This is not always the case but it’s there problem not yours. Twitter makes it very easy to find people; you can search by username, first name, last name, business or brand. In addition to my friends, I follow several people who’s tweets I find particularly interesting. With famous folk (like KevinSpacey and Oprah to name two) people like to create fake accounts in their names and post stuff, recently Twitter introduced verified accounts so you can tell if your really following Oprah or 14 year old in Santa Monica. As you start to follow more and more people you will get a feel for what tweeting style you like, some people tweet fifteen or twenty times a day others only once or twice a day. Some people’s tweets are more interesting then others, which brings me to my next point…

Don’t tweet useless junk!

One of the major stigmas surrounding Twitter is that it’s all really useless junk, people tweet stuff like “Eating breakfast”, “Going for a jog”, “Going to the bathroom”, “Washing my hands” and “Gross I touched my phone before washing my hands!”. True, all these tweets are under 140 characters, however that does not mean they should be posted. A quick and easy way to become a Twitter outcast is to post lots of useless jargon nobody reads or cares about. Twitter should be used to share stuff that you find funny, cool, interesting or enlightening. When I stumble across a neat blog or a funny video on Youtube that not to many people have seen, I tweet it. If I see something cool or something funny happens to me I tweet it. I don’t tweet boring junk that everybody already knows I do (like eating), and neither should you.

So, Twitter is a fun and quick way to share links, quick stories, and see what famous people are doing. However in my opinion the real genius of Twitter comes from two features, “Trending Topics” and “Search”. Trending Topics takes all recent tweets and arranges them looking for patterns; so lets say that the Yankees just won the World Series, a lot of people would be tweeting “Yankees” and “World Series” for instance. If enough people posted tweets with the words “Yankees” and “World Series” in them, they would both appear on the “Trending Topics” list. “Trending Topics” is a way to see what’s going on in the world as it happens. “Search” is also useful, but I don’t think you need that explained.

Click here to jump to part 2.

Image: Pasquale D’Silva courtesy of Function

written by Travis \\ tags: Micro-blog, Travis Fantina, Tweet, Twitter