Roz’s Micro Blogs from Twitter

This is my first ever test of a new kind of blog. Those of you who enjoy proper essay-like blogs, fear not – those will still happen. But when things get busy I don’t always have an hour or so to sit and write a long, thoughtful blog. I’d like to make sure I am keeping you in touch with final preparations – and Twitter (micro-blogging service) is the easiest way to do that. So here is the best of both worlds – I’ve found a way to gather up all my “Tweets” for 24 hours and post them as a blog. So here we go! I hope you enjoy these two contrasting perspectives on my life – the big thoughts and the minutiae, and sometimes the blending of the two…

• 21:28 Great time at Haleiwa Green Drinks tonight. Thanks to all for a special evening! #
• 22:18 Chillin’ post presentation. Playing pool at Kainoa’s. tinyurl.com/c5hdea #
• 22:22 Joel pulled his back while working on my boat. Then he found the massage chair at Kainoa’s. See pic [below] for major bliss #
• 23:58 So happy to be back here on the North Shore. Falling asleep to the sound of surf instead of the sound of sirens… #
• 07:18 Just back from early morning swim on Oahu’s North Shore. Beach deserted. Just as well because I can’t find my bikini so had to improvise! #
• 10:30 Back at the “uptown” office in Haliewa for a day online. Nicole off to town to meet @hawaii and @Bytemarks #
• 10:27 V cool! Testing sat2twitter, which I can use from satellite phone to geotag my Tweets and display to Google Map. s2t.me/d2c2bq #
• 14:13 Cover girl! Pic of me on front of Rowing News: The Rising Tide of Ocean Rowing. bit.ly/i0REv #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Some of this syntax might be a bit mysterious to those of you who are not active on Twitter. So just a few words of explanation:

Twitter = way of sharing thoughts, ideas, news and general drivel with anybody who cares to share. Updates can be posted via computer or mobile phone – or indeed satellite phone! Maximum length is 140 characters. A good lesson in brevity!

@ = this prefixes a username of someone else on Twitter. So, for example, @hawaii above refers to Ryan Ozawa, who goes under the alias “hawaii” on Twitter.

tinyurl etc = Tinyurl is a website that converts long website addresses into short ones – very useful when you only have 140 characters to play with.

# (hashtags) = there aren’t any above, but you might see them from time to time. They operate like searchable data tags. So, for example, if I wanted people searching on the word “sustainability” to find my Tweets, I would make sure that I included “#environment” somewhere in the post. But the hashtag at the end of each of the lines above is slightly different. If you click on it you’ll be taken over to the original Tweet on my Twitter home page. Try it and see.

By the way, you might notice above that I have been experimenting with ways to leave a trail of Tweets across the ocean, geotagged so we can plot them on a Google Map. I haven’t tried it out from my satellite phone yet but am optimistic that it will work. So you’ll be able to see exactly where I was when I posted a particular Tweet. Call me a geek, but I’m really excited about this!

I’m geek and I’m proud!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Track the Swine Flu Outbreak on Google Maps (geeksugar.com)
• Numbers Can’t Begin To Describe Twitter’s Impact (wired.com)
• ‘Paradigm shifting’ Twitter adds search (guardian.co.uk)
• Apperance on Andy Bumatai Show in Hawaii (geeknewscentral.com)
• Are Your URLs Too Long? (psfk.com)