Current has joined forces with Twitter to Hack The Debate, providing real-time Twitter updates during Current’s television broadcasts of all four debates. Just include #current in your Tweet and it just might show up live on the air.
They’re kicking it off with the first debate which takes place tonight 6pm PST/9pm EST.
Twitter has also setup a special Election 2008 page that automatically refreshes with live election updates and hot topics.
“You’re No One If You’re Not On Twitter” by Ben Walker. Ben describes how the song came about through the process of niche songwriting.
Thanks to Dave Schumaker for the tip!
Can’t make it to Burning Man 2008 this year? Here are a few ways you can experience the event remotely through the wonders of the Interweb.
John Curley has been doing a fantastic job writing updates and posting photos to The Burning Blog, documenting the construction of Black Rock City this year and on through the start of the event.
Throughout the week people will be uploading photos from the Playa. Here are all the photos tagged “burningman2008” on Flickr sorted by interestingness.
Danger Ranger has been uploading some wonderful photos of Black Rock City.
Make sure to check out the great DPW Mug Shots series by Serra.
Current will be covering Burning Man again for the third straight year with TV Free Burning Man, uploading videos from the playa and streaming the burn live on Saturday, August 30th at 9pm EST/PST. This year they are encouraging Burning Man participants to come to the Current camp and make their own videos as part of their “Postcards From The Playa” program.
With the combination of the wi-fi cloud and proliferation of iPhones, there many updates on Twitter from Burning Man this year. Twitter Search will bring up all of the mentions of “burningman” and we recommend following our Burning Man friends @danger_ranger, @sfslim, @actiongrl, @josephpred, @tomprice, @spanktar and of course @theburningman.
HyperJohnGraham is running his live video stream of Burning Man from center camp and Burning Man has also mounted a live webcam on the top of the Burning Man office in Gerlach, where you can watch as people come and go from the event.
You can listen to a live audio stream of Burning Man Information Radio (BMIR).
The Burning Man IRC channel is located at #burningman on irc.freenode.net.
An OpenStreetMap has been created of Black Rock City using geotagged photos.
See Previously:
Maggie Mason wrote a great article on Twitter Etiquette for The Morning News.
With the usual exceptions, people on Twitter tend to fall into two main camps. There are responders, who use Twitter as a channel to interact heavily with other users, and broadcasters, who use it primarily as a micro-blogging platform.
These groups don’t necessarily get along. Responders will tell you that broadcasters are condescending talking heads who think they’re too good for the community. Broadcasters wish responders would take their nonsensical patter to a chat room, where they could natter on in privacy. Everyone agrees that members of the other group are total jackasses who don’t know how to use Twitter.
“Writing My Twitter Etiquette Article: 14 Ways to Use Twitter Politely”
via SFist
photo by mallix
Twitter recently made a video where they asked people “How Do You Use Twitter?”
Last Saturday at our impromptu mini Drinkup, I was talking to Adam Jackson about Twitter iPhone apps and he said that his favorite was the web app Hahlo. I had used it early on, but didn’t really think to much of it at the time, but the new 3.1 version rocks. Hahlo has set the bar when it comes to design and functionality and in my opinion it is the best iPhone app out there for Twitter.
Hahlo is developed by Dean Robinson, a web developer at the University of Newcastle in Australia. Here’s an overview of how it works and some of its features. Developing a great app like Hahlo is a lot of work, so if you enjoy using it, consider making a donation to help Dean keep making Hahlo even better.
Personally I think Twitter should buy Hahlo and hire Dean to implement its UI across the board, including web, desktop app, mobile, etc.
Check out Adam Jackson’s write-up on Hahlo for a list reasons why it’s the best iPhone app for Twitter.
Note: Halo is a web app, not one of the new native iPhone apps. To access it, go to hahlo.com using Safari on your iPhone. Hopefully there is a native app in the works.
Twitter has just announced that it has acquired the excellent search service Summize. The Summize website has already been setup as a Twitter branded sub-domain and the Summize engineers will be moving to San Francisco to work at the Twitter offices.
“Fail Whale Ate My Balls”, featuring the legendary Twitter Fail Whale, is the latest in the wonderful line of t-shirts available through Mule Design Studio’s Feed Store.
The Fail Whale shirts will ship mid-July.
Can’t get enough of the ubiquitous Fail Whale? Then join The Fail Whale Fan Club.
Speaking of epic fail, here’s the soon-to-be-deleted Fail Whale article on Wikipedia.
See Also: Twitter Fail Whale Makes Guest Appearance in Laugh-Out-Loud Cats
illustration by Mike Monteiro
Alison and Lloyd, the hosts of My Home 2.0, have created a Twittering Teddy Bear by performing surgery on an animatronic toy bear, adding a text-to-speech implant allowing the bear to speak real-time Twitter updates. Here’s the bear’s Twitter account.
Here’s live stream of the Twittering Teddy announcing Twitter updates. The bear is currently up for auction on eBay and the proceeds will be donated to Homeless Children’s Education Fund.
via Hack A Day
The Phoenix Mars Lander mission announced the discovery of water ice on Mars via their Twitter account. NASA has more info on this amazing discovery.
See Previously: Twitter Updates of NASA Phoenix Spacecraft Landing on Mars
UPDATE: Here’s the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats take on the ice news.
illustration by Adam Koford
Well it’s official, there are now more people following me on Twitter than are subscribed to Laughing Squid’s RSS feed. That should give a good idea how things are changing, especially in regards to the ways that people are getting their information.
Also FriendFeed is also quickly becoming big part of the picture, I now have over 4500 people subscribed to my FriendFeed Account.
The Twitter Fail Whale makes a guest appearance as a hobo in Laugh-Out-Loud Cats #862 along with a clever reference to Ruby on Rails.
illustration by Adam Koford
NASA’s Phoenix Spacecraft has just landed on the surface of Mars. Along with video coverage on NASA TV and photos from the surface being sent back to Earth, the mission is also being live blogged via Twitter.
More Phoenix Mars Mission info:
- Phoenix Mars Mission (University of Arizona)
- Phoenix Mars Lander (NASA)
- Phoenix Mars Lander (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
photo via NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Get Satisfaction has just launched Overheard, their new service that allows companies to see what people are saying about them on Twitter and in turn use that to improve customer service. See Adam Ostrow’s post on Mashable for more on the launch of Overheard. Here’s the Overheard page for Laughing Squid.
With Overheard, companies can support customer conversations across the Web. Overheard lists out recent Twitter posts (”tweets”) related to a company and allows any user – employee or customer – to convert a selected tweet into a rich, searchable Get Satisfaction topic. When someone replies to a tweet via Overheard, Get Satisfaction sends a public reply to that person to let them know a discussion was started in response to their issue.
Get Satisfaction also just launched a new Help Center feature to assist companies in building online customer communities.
The latest Diesel Sweeties web comic by R. Stevens deals with that all too familiar topic of Twitter downtime, aka “Something Is Technically Wrong”.
See Previously: Twitter, The Social Lubricant of the 21st Century
web comic by R. Stevens
Doctor Popular has created a really cool Laughing Squid background tile for Twitter, which he as uploaded to Flickr in both a light green and a neon green.
You can see it in action on my Twitter profile.
Speaking of Doc Pop, he will be performing at our big Laughing Squid Lucky 13 event on May 31st.
background tile by Doctor Popular
Innovative online shoe retailer Zappos.com has been taking Twitter by storm, with CEO Tony Hsieh personally posting to the Zappos account. They have been doing shoe giveaways and even setup twitter.zappos.com, which tracks mentions of Zappos on Twitter. In less than three months they are now at 94 on the Twitterholic charts.
Last night Tony and 20 Zappos.com employees were in San Francisco and they decided to host and impromptu party at Medjool, which was announced via their Twitter account. A bunch of people showed up, including recent Twitter convert MC Hammer. Zappos.com gave free drinks to anyone with “Zappos” written on their left hand and they also brought with them a bunch of Zappos.com branded drink glasses.
Here are a few photos I shot at the Zappos party.
photo by Scott Beale
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