Tom Hapgood

Schooled on Twitter, so giving it a try

I’ve been schooled on Twitter via Twitter itself! Alan Levine tweeted about my too-harsh post, as I wondered about Twitter. Comments have come so far by Rachel, Brian, Alan (whose great comment is stuck in Akismet Spam hell right now!), Josh and some others.

So far, the comments from the Twitter users have basically been: “Step off, son!” They have a good point: don’t knock it ’til you try it. So I’ll try it. I still think it’s “All about me,” but sometimes in a good way, to a group of people who may care. One thing is for certain: if you use Twitter, it in itself has become a dear friend, and I just insulted a bunch of people’s dear friend!

So I’m naturally going to start using Twitter to understand it more. I’ll update this page with my progress. View both the constructive and less-than-constructive comments I received on the original post here.

Twitter users please note that I’ve tagged this entry as “Tools” as part of my penance.

The Twitter Life Cycle

Here is Alan Levine’s flickr diagram on how he became hooked on Twitter. Alan is the Director of Member and Technology Resources at the New Media Consortium. He went from thinking it’s stupid to being hooked. Is it inevitable? (By the way… I REALLY trust Alan, that’s partially why I’m in this quandary).

It’s official: it’s all about “me” (Twitter)

When you have a presence on the Web, there’s an assumption that someone will care enough to read it. From the early days of the gray-background “Welcome to my Web page!” to the incessant blogging of the minutiae of our lives and thoughts (like this…), many people are interested in updating their friends, family and the world on their activities and receiving some feedback via the comments link or old-skool E-mail. With chat, you synchronously carry on a conversation with someone that’s (probably) not in the same room and interact as a somewhat traditional human being. SMS, texting on phones and all that included. Then comes along Twitter. From what I can tell, it’s texting or chat in an asynchronous format, with no expectation of a reply, or at least not right away. People who twitter send out short bursts of text that deal with what they’re doing “RIGHT NOW,” often posted from a phone or some mobile device. It’s roughly similar, I guess, to your iChat status being set to the song playing in iTunes in its expectation that your buddies are interested in reading the title of what you’re listening to, but much much sillier. When shooting out a twitter message, all the people who are your “Friends” and “Followers” receive it probably instantly. “Doin the TWIt…..Doin the TWIT….baby,” or “i’ve got ten minutes to get to work. i haven’t showered yet. this is going to be amazing.” or “Signing off….” Am I alone in seeing the irony of taking the time to post that you’re very late for work or that you’re turning off your computer or posting about actually using Twitter? Am I old? Am I completely out of it? Comments welcome from Twitter-ers and non.

Coda: One-Window Web Development

Wow wow wow. If you hand-code Web sites, you must download the Coda trial and be amazed. As it makes something like Dreamweaver seem a bit old-skool (haven’t seen CS3 yet though), this might be the thing that gets me to switch. I used to use Panic’s Transmit with BBEdit, but like the all-in-one site management of something like DW. Coda is extremely slick…

Web 2 latest project posted (p4)

This project involved creating an interactive Flash experience that explores layering and juxtaposition of video and text.

• Ali Williams, “Sweet”
• Sean Borsodi, “Translucent”
• Billy Pope, “Sticky”
• Anna Vernon, “Shadow”
• Tony Williams, “Orange”
• Bertha Gutierrez, “Green”

Web 1 client chooses student’s design/code

Congratulations to Ali Williams of the Web 1 class in Fall of 06. Her design was chosen by the client, Dead Swanky hair salon, as their new official Web site. Her final project involved information architecture, client presentation, custom photography, page layout and standards-based coding. She will now work with the client to get the site up and running on their server.
[ link added: View the site ]

Journalism J-Days Presentation on Storytelling

I’m presenting at the Journalism Department’s J-Days event tomorrow on Digital Storytelling, or “How to Tell News Stories in the New Media.” Details behind the link above.

Typography Class Posters in Gallery

The Fall 2006 Typography class final project is in the Fine Arts League’s Spring 2007 show in the Anne Kittrell Gallery. The poster used a combination of computer and inkjet output with letterpress type and ink added at the end. The designers are Jen Alvirez, Michiko Bey, Tim Campbell, Samantha Fagan, Bertha Gutierrez, Hamilton Hedrick, Billy Pope, Brett Robinson, Anna Vernon, Shauna Vo, Nick Smith and Tony Williams. The reception will be Tuesday, April 10, 11:00 a.m.

Latest Advanced Web projects posted

What happens when you drink Tabasco sauce? Play football with yourself? Play “that hand/knife” game? Check out the Web 2 Advanced Web Design students’ latest project. They were to take a normal, household object and reduce it to some graphical and multimedia forms, as well as create an interface in Flash to explore their reductions. Here they are in alphabetical order, looking very good:

• Sean Borsodi
• Bertha Gutierrez
• Billy Pope
• Anna Vernon
• Ali Williams
• Tony Williams

Projects 1 and 2 have been posted too, on the Projects: Web 2 page.