If you’re like me you would have only recently heard about Twitter. Twitter is a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, instant messaging service or on the internet.
Twitter first came into my inbox in early August via a press release about filming of the Sony Bravia Play-Doh TV ad in New York. By the time I worked out what it was the shoot was finished along with twittering about it. I finally decided to join up to take part in a Twitter experiment associated with the Australian Blogging Conference on Friday last week.
So here’s how it works. You sign up at www.twitter.com. You have the option of using instant messaging services (like GTalk) and your mobile phone to receive and send messages. Then you add people to your ‘follow’ list using email addresses.
Little did I know that Twitter had been online since July 2006, the creation of co-founder Evan Williams of Obvious. Evan of course is known for his development of Blogger along with Meg Hourihan.
Twitter is likely to become a standard tool for politicians and journalists. Senator John Edwards has used Twitter to update people on his presidential campaign trail. Someone thought it would be a good idea for Kevin Rudd and John Howard.
1. Get quick human answers
2. Share briefings on conferences and news
3. Friendsourcing - accessing a network of friends and acquaintances
4. Micro Attention Sharing - small mini blog entries
5. Direct people to good causes
6. Stay in touch with what friends are doing without being intrusive
1. Use Twitter as a To-Do list
2. Personal or professional messaging service
3. Provide a newsletter
I’ve managed to connect Twitter up with my Facebook profile and as a special feature in the Pacific Highlander sidebar. The Facebook application doesn’t appear to be updating instantly but I’m sure that problem will be ironed out. If you’re interested in following my evolving stream of consciousness visit my Postkiwi Twitter profile. I imagine it could be useful to have a number of Twitter profiles to be used with different networks or for different purposes. But I’m not in a hurry to head down that track quite yet.
The Duncans.tv suite of web sites is coming up for renewal of hosting agreement in March. The postkiwi.com suite is probably due for renewal now. So when Duncans.tv was suspended twice in this last week for taking up too much CPU bandwidth I started thinking about options for the future.
Should I place both domains with the same host? In which case it would make sense to buy a deal as a ‘reseller’.
Should I get into a dedicated server deal? That would get around some of the spiked usage issues.
Or should I just find out what’s causing the spikes and fix it?
I’ve got a few theories. Apparently it’s the index.php file that’s causing the problem. That indicates that there’s something in the header, sidebar or main index template that’s churning through the bandwidth, taking up to 35% of the server’s capacity. Possibilities include scripts for cache and preview, and plugins for related posts, most commented posts (the most recently added plugin) and democracy polls. Maybe it’s just the blog statistics monitors that cluttered up the sidebar until this afternoon.
So… anyone got any suggestions on hosting deals? Or php solutions?
Have you seen the “Did You Know” “Shift Happens” video presentation - gone viral in the last few months…
This collection of facts and questions was originally put together by Karl Fisch as an eight minute PowerPoint presentation for staff development at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado. Fisch used content from David Warlick, Thomas Friedman, Ian Jukes, Ray Kurzweil and tied it together with music from Last of The Mohicans.
Scott McLeod adapted the presentation by removing many of the school-specific slides (shortening it to 6 minutes 5 seconds) and reformatting it in a number of formats, including Quicktime, WMV, streaming flash movie, downloadable flash movie, AVI video, YouTube (as above) and PowerPoint with mp3 audio file. Scott has them all online at his Dangerously Irrelevant blog.
Did you know . . .
Sometimes size does matter.
If you’re one in a million in China . . .
There are 1,300 people just like you.
In India, there are 1,100 people just like you.
The 25% of the population in China with the highest IQ’s . . .
Is greater than the total population of North America.
In India, it’s the top 28%.
Translation for teachers: They have more honors kids than we have kids.
Did you know . . .
China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world.
If you took every single job in the U.S. today and shipped it to China . . .
China would still have a labor surplus.
During the course of this 8 minute presentation . . .
60 babies will be born in the U.S.
244 babies will be born in China.
351 babies will be born in India.
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs . . .
By the age of 38.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor . . .
1 out of 4 workers today is working for a company they have been employed by for less than one year.
More than 1 out of 2 are working for a company they have worked for for less than five years.
According to former Secretary of Education Richard Riley . . .
The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004.
We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist . . .
Using technologies that haven’t been invented . . .
In order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.
Name this country . . .
Richest in the World
Largest Military
Center of world business and finance
Strongest education system
World center of innovation and invention
Currency the world standard of value
Highest standard of living
England.
In 1900.
Did you know . . .
The U.S. is 20th in the world in broadband Internet penetration.
(Luxembourg just passed us.)
In 2002 alone Nintendo invested more than $140 million in research and development.
The U.S. Federal Government spent less than half as much on Research and Innovation in Education.
1 out of every 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online.
There are over 106 million registered users of MySpace.(September 2006)
If MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th-largest in the world (between Japan and Mexico)*
The average MySpace page is visited 30 times a day.
Did you know . . .
We are living in exponential times.
There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on Google each month.
To whom were these questions addressed B.G.?
(Before Google)
The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population of the planet.
There are about 540,000 words in the English language . . .
About 5 times as many as during Shakespeare’s time.
More than 3,000 new books are published . . .
Daily.
It’s estimated that a week’s worth of New York Times . . .
Contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.
It’s estimated that 1.5 exabytes (that’s 1.5 x 1018) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year.
That’s estimated to be more than in the previous 5,000 years.
The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years.
That means for a student starting a four-year technical or college degree . . .
Half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.
It’s predicted to double every 72 hours by 2010.
Third generation fiber optics has recently been separately tested by NEC and Alcatel . . .
That pushes 10 trillion bits per second down one strand of fiber.
That’s 1,900 CDs or 150 million simultaneous phone calls every second.
It’s currently tripling about every 6 months and is expected to do so for at least the next 20 years.
The fiber is already there, they’re just improving the switches on the ends. Which means the marginal cost of these improvements is effectively $0.
Predictions are that e-paper will be cheaper than real paper.
47 million laptops were shipped worldwide last year.
The $100 laptop project is expecting to ship between 50 and 100 million laptops a year to children in underdeveloped countries.
Predictions are that by 2013 a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computation capability of the Human Brain . . .
By 2023, a $1,000 computer will exceed the capabilities of the Human Brain . . .
First grader Abby will be just 23 years old and beginning her (first) career . . .
And while technical predictions farther out than about 15 years are hard to do . . .
Predictions are that by 2049 a $1,000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the human race.
What does it all mean?
Shift Happens.
Now you know . . .
