Month: February 2009

The Twitchhiker: one man on a Twitter travel mission | Travel | guardian.co.uk

Meet the Twitchhiker. His quest – to see how far he can travel in 30 days relying solely on the hospitality and advice of the Twitter community, and raising money for charity as he goes

Twitchiker Paul Smith

Pleased to tweet you … Paul Smith on his twitchhiking travels

Since lunchtime on Monday, I’ve either been delirious with excitement or in desperate need of the toilet.

I’ve agreed to put my life in the hands of nearly 2,000 complete strangers in the belief that their support, goodwill and generosity will propel me across the globe. Equally, I could spend two days contracting pneumonia on a park bench in Byker.

This is the life that awaits me when I adopt my alter-ego of the Twitchhiker on 1 March. As you may have guessed by the less-than-creative name, the challenge owes its origins to Twitter, the social networking service seeping into the mainstream consciousness.

Twitchhiker was born among the aisles of Tesco, where the queues of dawdling customers had me yearning for a place far away. Having vented my frustration by tweeting on my mobile, I recalled a fleeting thought I’d had several months earlier: would the Twitter community support me if I tried to flee the North East and travel the world?

That was on Saturday. On Monday, I sent my first tweet about Twitchhiker. Stephen Fry took note five hours later, and today I’m being watched by hundreds of people around the world, ready and willing to assist me in my quest – to travel as far from my home as possible in 30 days, relying solely on offers of transport and accommodation from other Twitter users.

On my journey, I’m raising money for an amazing cause called charity: water, which wants nothing more than to ensure everyone on the planet has access to clean water. Even if I wasn’t fundraising, I sense Twitterers would recognise the churlish plight of an idiot and support me regardless.

By Paul Smith guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 February 2009 13.25 GMT

The Twitchhiker: one man on a Twitter travel mission | Travel | guardian.co.uk

Twitter trips: liveblogged travelling with the Guardian | Travel | guardian.co.uk

And lo, here is another online revolution that could well change the face of modern-day travel. Twitter is the micro-blogging site that allows users to post pithy, 140-character updates that can be received by people who are “following” them. On his comeback show on Friday night, Jonathan Ross grilled Stephen Fry about Twitter. Stephen, you see, finds the service terribly useful when he’s on his travels. Here’s an example from his recent trip to Sydney: “Had a great walk round the Botanical Gardens: now I’ve got about 30 twitmate-recommended coffee shops to try out: may be wired by lunch.”

Over the past few months the site has hit the headlines with users posting updates on breaking stories before the mainstream media has even got a sniff. Oddly, Twitter’s status has taken off, pun intended, via the medium of plane crashes. In December, when a plane crashed on the runway in Denver, one of the passengers posted the event in understandably panicked terms on Twitter well before the local media outlets knew anything about it. When the US Airways flight crashed-landed into the Hudson the other week, one of the rescue workers posted a “tweet” and pictures on the boat en-route to the floating plane.

By: Benji Lanyado guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 January 2009 12.05 GMT

Twitter trips: liveblogged travelling with the Guardian | Travel | guardian.co.uk

140 Characters | How Twitter Was Born

Twitter founders are working on a book about Twitter. The accompanying blog can be found here. Just in a time when Twitter is becoming mainstream….

Twitter was born about three years ago, when @Jack, @Biz, @Noah, @Crystal, @Jeremy, @Adam, @TonyStubblebine, @Ev, me (@Dom), @Rabble, @RayReadyRay, @Florian, @TimRoberts, and @Blaine worked at a podcasting company called Odeo, Inc. in South Park, San Francisco. The company had just contributed a major chunk of code to Rails 1.0 and had just shipped Odeo Studio, but we were facing tremendous competition from Apple and other heavyweights. Our board was not feeling optimistic, and we were forced to reinvent ourselves.

“Rebooting” or reinventing the company started with a daylong brainstorming session where we broke up into teams to talk about our best ideas. I was lucky enough to be in @Jack’s group, where he first described a service that uses SMS to tell small groups what you are doing. We happened to be on top of the slide on the north end of South Park. It was sunny and brisk. We were eating Mexican food. His idea made us stop eating and start talking.

I remember that @Jack’s first use case was city-related: telling people that the club he’s at is happening. “I want to have a dispatch service that connects us on our phones using text.” His idea was to make it so simple that you don’t even think about what you’re doing, you just type something and send it. Typing something on your phone in those days meant you were probably messing with T9 text input, unless you were sporting a relatively rare smartphone. Even so, everyone in our group got the idea instantly and wanted it.

Interesting Stuff

Read on: 140 Characters | How Twitter Was Born

Lorelle VanFossen Interview

Lorelle VanFossen

I did it again: I hit the publish button before I was ready editing…..Trying to embed an interview with Lorelle VanFossen here. Initially without success. After some time I succeeded, but see below.

Lorelle is from Lorelle on WordPress, a real nice and enthusiastic gal! The WordPress Advocate.

I had to take the link away as the video disappeared.

The interviewer is one of our Dutch Top Twitterati Vincent Everts, @Vincente

twittergrader

I found him via Twitter Grader, @Twittergrader. You know what? They count me Twitterati Numero Uno of my city, The Hague.

Update 1: Later I found another interview with Lorelle.

Update 2: Later in 2009 I met Lorelle IRL at the First WordCamp in NL. Hence a photo.

Update 3: Instead of Vincent’s interview here is an interview with Lorelle by Erno Hannink after WordCamp NL:

And after all the hassle I found the original back on Blip.tv:


Last edited by GJE on March 14, 2012 at 12:13 am

Guy Kawasaki on how to become Web Famous

Just a link to an interview with Guy Kawasaki (AKA Guy Kawastalki) by VatorNews – Guy Kawasaki on how to become Web famous.

The Product Kawasaki is about giving (and tweeting about):

  1. Good advice about entrepreneurship and marketing.
  2. Good advice for start up business.
  3. Interesting links, pages, photos, absurdities etc.

Just find interesting content on Alltop.com, Stumble upon or similar sites and tweet about it .

Answer your e-mail. Yes, that is time consuming, but I don’t wear short skirts and work the party circuit.