Twitter Tools

One thing that makes Twitter so addictive (and useful) is the add-ons...here are a few...

TwitPic.com - This allows tweeters to share pictures. This application syncs nicely with the iPhone...take a picture with your phone and then Tweet about it...link the picture to the Tweet.

Twitterific - An iPhone app that allows you to use Twitter from you iPhone with ease. Its very simple...download the free app, set the app up with you current Twitter account info and Tweet away. There is also a Twitterific Premium app that sells for $3.99...I don't have any info on this app because I tried out the free one first and liked it fine...

Twitterfeed - Easily turn your Blog post into Tweets.

Qwitter - Huge potential for businesses. This basically lets you know when someone that was following you stops, via e-mail. Very useful for a business that is tracking customers or how advertising may be working.

EarthTwit - This is a cool application that allows you to use Google Earth to update your location or share some favorite places...or use it to keep track of someone...fun? freaky? you decide.

Twitter Uses

Tweet...A general statement on how Twitter is used...everyway imaginable.

Within say 24 hours of creating my Twitter account I had a retail sales rep sending me Tweets. One of the ones that I found useful is updates on sporting events and tickets. Twitter has created another medium for free advertising. Much like the social networking sites, Twitter allows people to keep intouch with friends, businesses, and...well anyone or company that they can find. News feeds seem to be making some waves on Twitter. Just noticed that you can follow you favorite (or least favorite) celebrity...this seems to be very popular and is becoming a sort of press release in the celebrity community (interesting). This doesnt even scratch the surface, Twitter is being used by every type of business, organization, person...endless...Tweet

Twitter

Let the Tweeting begin! I finally created a Twitter account (very easy)...a school assignment / research was the trigger. After browsing the Help page I ran across a few key items...

One thing that is good to know...be careful what you Tweet! A Tweet cannot be changed once it has been posted. Not the end of the world because there is always the delete option (which I have already had to use) that allows you to remove the Tweet and start over.

Some things are better left private...Twitter allows private Tweets or messages that can be sent to a specific person.

Twitter or Facebook...have your cake and eat it too. Twitter has a facebook application that allows you to sync your Tweets and your facebook status, now no one has to miss out on all of the great things that you do.

Privacy...Ok maybe its not a good idea for your boss to read everything that you Tweet...set your account to Private. This will force people to send you a request to allow them to see your Tweets.

Followers / ing...Followers are just what you would think, people following your Tweets, or you following their Tweets. Follow anyone that you want...anyone can follow you as well, but you can block them and they can block you as well.

Opera

Opera Software is a Norwegian Corporation that is known for its web browser. The browser offers many of the expected browser features such as web page displaying, email, chat...Opera only has a very small portion of the web browser market, however on mobile devices Opera has a much larger market share (~40 million). Opera also has solid support in the gaming market.

Add to Wikipedia...Anyone

I knew it was easy to add to Wikipedia, but I wasn't expecting it to be this easy...simply create a login. I created a login, clicked "Edit This Page"...and there it was...basically a text editor where I could add whatever I wanted. This is what is probably the most surprising...what I added was already viewable as soon as I hit save. I'll have to look back in a week to see if it is still there or not...scary easy. Maybe I should be questioning some of those sources...

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo_diet

iPhone Development

Everyone seems to have an idea for an iPhone App...including me. It was really great to learn that overall the process is really not that hard. Unlike many other areas of software development Apple is actually working with and encouraging development for their product. In addition to learning about the development process for iPhone Apps, we were also given a preview of augmented reality applications: for more information on this checkout http://acrossair.com/. Imagine this...you are standing in-front of two restaurants wondering hours of operation, phone number, maybe menu items or specials...simply hold your iPhone up...in a few finger touches all of the above becomes a possibility. The only downside? Looks like the 3gs (and above) will support this; so no luck for previous generations.

Blue Ocean Strategy

The Blue Ocean Strategy focuses on creating new market space as opposed to competing in the “Red” or current market space.According to the Blue Ocean authors traditional competition-based strategies (red ocean strategies) while necessary, are not sufficient to sustain high performance. However the idea of simply “creating” a new market space seems a bit…optimistic and simple minded. True, if one can find an untapped market that business is likely to flourish, at least until some red competition moves in. Finding this untapped market is what most businesses hope to do even if they are already completing in the red ocean. Finding that Blue Ocean market is more of a wish or hope than a business strategy…Apple in the last few years has hit combined the blue with the red by creating products such as the iPhone that reinvents an old product (cell phone) creating a new market for cell phone shoppers. However, this is only a temporary blue ocean b/c the competition is working to catch up (and will catch up), so should Apple simply move away from this product or should they continue to develop it and compete with the others much like they have with their Macs. Macs entered into a red market but have done very well…good concept, just doesn’t seem like a great overall business strategy. To succeed, a business must be able to find that blue ocean, but if a business cannot compete while search for that blue ocean product idea, success will fade as their boat drifts into the red ocean.

iphone apps for students - article

Top 10 Iphone Apps for Students
This article explains that iPhone Apps are not just fun and games. Students can choose apps that are useful for organization, studying, homework help, and conversions. Convert, now one of the top iPhone apps, does conversions for pretty much anything...angles, area, temperature and force...etc.The artilce is focusing on the high school / college student it seems with apps like Algebra pro and homework helper. I think thatthe top ten list could make use of the GPS / location features and create an app with a special map of a campus (this would be a huge benefit on the UGA Athens campus which is huge and very spread out) that would include buildings as well as give some kind ofinformation of what is in those buildings (MLC: student use computers, coffee shop...etc). After reading this article I came up withprobably 5 additional apps that I think would benefit college students much more...now to develop them!

Application Deployment

Over the last few weeks I have been developing a web application written primarily in Adobe Flex. Flex is a language based on Adobe Flash and is very useful for quickly creating RIAs. So...with my application created I set out to deploy the application on the web...this turned out to be a bit more difficult than I had planned. I was thinking 45 minutes and I would be able to see my application and it would be working perfectly. Three hours later and probably 50 Google searches, I finally had a website. So what did I take away? Plan. Make sure you understand the language, figure out what you need to deploy and application, and ensure that the web host that you are using supports the language.