So who has written ‘books’ or guides for Twitter? Who are their intended audience(s)? How shall we differentiate? What media are they in? Cost to use?
Some examples:
The Twitter Book- O’Reilly & Milstein
TwiTip (a list of books)
How shalt thou manage thy tweets? Consider tools, aggregators and others. Is it your outflow or inflow? How shall it be grouped? By location, related topic, work-vs.-play or a friend list’? Is it worth a re-tweet and to whom? A group (can we define in advance?) an individual or ‘the world’?
Aggregator
http://happn.in/about . I started a new twitter account adjacent to my ifarmurban blog. Immediately I had one follower, happn.in, which collects tweets relative to some major cities (like Seattle apparently). Now, I haven’t figured out if any of my tweets made it to their site, but it is an interesting method of gathering tweets around a locale.
Well, just how are ‘companies’ using Twitter? Nedra at Spare Change starts us off with a tantalizing list of possible usage categories. I noticed some variations when browsing a couple of government agencies I follow:
Providing Information/Early warning system: Washington State Department of Transportation:
@wsdot – main account
@wsdot_traffic -puget sound traffic reports
@wsdot_passes – mountain pass reports
@wsdot_media – media happenings
@wsdot_tacoma – Tacoma traffic
Blog/story link back=Providing Information at the Environmental Protection Agency:
http://blog.epa.gov/blog/
http://twitter.com/dipnote
Voyeurism into an ‘in group’ ongoing conversation. Is the goal to ‘personalize’ government? NASA:
http://twitter.com/NASA
(Original Posting 11/23/08) Wonder how the housing market folded? Friends of Ira Glass explain how the financial crisis happened in his audio file, Giant Pool of Money at This American Life http://tinyurl.com/5fl6z7. I caught this audible podcast episode early last summer as I faithfully downloaded my subscription at iTunes. It was worth revisiting again last week. (WARNING: episodes will take 1 hour each of your time)
Now they’ve followed up with Another Frightening Show About the Economy to explain more about how our economic crisis went global. http://tinyurl.com/497nkq
Locally, we’ve been talking about the head-turning affect in our rank/reputation research group. AFSATE above clearly describes the startling phenomena of (rapid) matching business strategies to keep market share. Did too many heads turn? In attempting business survival of the fittest, was lemming-like behavior the unintended consequence?
UPDATE: JUNE 27, 2009….AND there’s MORE! They added some more I had missed. Click to review.
(Original Posting 11/06/08) Exchanging illuminating videos with friends has its benefits. New find of Brasscheck TV and a slightly older vid explaining “How the Markets Really Work (from 2007)“. Interview style, this is an even more simplified explanation than This American Life below. (However, please note there are some racial inferences that would not be acceptable in the US.)
(Original Post 11/03/08) Exploring other multimedia storytelling explanations of our economic crisic led me to NBC’s Saturday Night Live, The Bailout.
I decided to yank out my lawn and start a wee urban farm. This is the before picture. Sod was hauled to back yard and piled to compost into future ‘beds’. Read about my further adventures in farming at: i farm urban.
I recently killed my Twitter profile. (As a recent graduate of UW Multimedia C Digital Communications Program, this could be grounds for excommunication.) For my defense, I offer from our research project last fall, “motivation to participate”. Unlike Facebook, those I know who participate on Twitter have work or school related to Digital products. The only area I found Twitter useful was receipt of select information finds by associates, related to digital products or news. One of the nagging frustrations of Twitter was reading portions of friends conversations. Not that I wanted to be a ‘lurking’, eavesdropping Twitterer. However, the act of conversation can be instructional and informative. Slicing it up into @’s that are not compilable is annoying. Twitter was successful for # group speak related to event/class commentary. Since I am a) out of school b) not within a specific company and c) have broader connections than digital work place at present, Twitter does not meet my needs at present and my social group is not heavily represented in this network. Jon Stewart says it all:
Rhythm and Movement: rhythm in art created by repetition of elements, similar elements or circular elements create flow. Jagged and unrelated ones create an unfinished look that the eye wants to finish and thus is more dynamic.
8 Golden Rules from Human Interface Design (101)
- Easy action reversal
- Practitioner center of control universe
- Clear options to reduce memory overload
- Diversity: menus, icons, & command sequencesNote to self: How about adding that layout concept map to a web page for navigation usage and make it pretty artsy?
- Consistency in action sequencing, terminology in action locations, décor
- Feedback loop: an action gets a response
- Dialogue closure: action sequences have beg/mid/end.
- Practitioner gets response that action has been completed
Suggestions for effective web design and tips on how to keep the noise down (by Margo)
Keep the design constant
Experiment within the obvious choices…where else could the headline reside?
- Rank the elements
- Determine minimal content
- Group related elements together & isolate
- Increase contrast of
- Style of text
- Color: less is greater than more
- SIZE: 3 max. Perform this choice last
EXAGGERATE one item only, not everything.
Based Margo Halverson’s article, Hiearchy and Contrast, I have reviewed my blog through a variety of styles to evaluate the strength of the designs available. One style, pundit flare, seems to be a better choice for contrast in all areas. Unfortunately, I don’t like it. There’s that emotional thing Norman talks about.
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