its all gone custom these days… your own dailytwitter
I have been giving some thought to the concept of extending the tools i am building into the public domain - so they will enable the user to create their own dailytwitter page.
In such a way that a user can create something such as london.dailytwitter.com, or davao.dailytwitter.com - the concept is simple, give an audience the means to create their own newspaper - its not a new concept, the whole blogging scene created this capability, so i am not bring anything new to the party. The exception i feel is that i am able to provide the users with the means to filter and build their own view of the twitter social network.
Make sense? I hope so, as i am excited at the prospect of being able to provide the means to potentially create a new focus for twitter.
dt
alive and kicking
Its been a while since i took out wordpress from the dusty corner of my Mac Book Pro and decided to write a few words for my blog. In fact its been far too bloody long - however, i am still active and still working on this project - having lost focus for a while, progress has been made.
There have been quite a few sites springing up here and there that i have noticed that are beginning to offer some semblance of order around the tweets that emanate from twitter (during the up time) and these appear to be basic sites that lack many of the features that i was hoping to see - such as recommendations, customisation and effective filtering.
Filtering is key to removing half the dross, in fact three quarters of the dross that appears in the public timeline - this is not an easy task.
Twitinks is making good steps in that direction, by editorialising the content - not scaleable, as you run in to deep water when you branch out in to other content genres.
Tweetwire.com appears to be some form of syndicated RSS from Summize.com. just a dump of tweets that need a little tweaking - nice one - check it out - tad US centric, but is interesting concept.
Oh and i found this thing called Scoopler - a blog, with the site in the making - hasn’t got far yet - but sounds interesting - think there will be some cross over with www.dailytwitter.com once it launches.
Summize i find interesting in that it is bringing together the conversations, and you can search on a key word - but yet again the filtering is pretty awful and searching for say ’scuba diving’ just brings back a whole heap of content that is intelligible and lacking context.
So my point is that there is a better way to filter the conversation, and it isn’t about trying to filter the conversations - it is about identifying which conversations to follow - that is the key here. So think a while on that notion, that rather than trying to filter all the noise, just listen to a proportion of it.
I hear you say ’so how do you find the right conversations’?
Well besides making sure you have your ear to the ground in the right places, its more about asking everyone in the conversation who they recommend - that way you get to crowd sourcing. Gedit? Hmmm….
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groovy design, nice GUI, easy to use
I came across digsby on twitter recently from a post from a tech geek @pk2004 - have a look see what you think - its interesting little widget that lets you do a heap of things to keep in touch with your friends. If i get time i will have review later today and update this post.
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out with the old - new dailytwitter designs
Having spent a little too long away from the likes of Photoshop and Illustrator i took to my Mac Book Pro recently and have found new vigour and drive to build this site and start to put into place some alpha code which will bring about the creation of a working site. Having found a potential developer in San Diego to help out on a mutual favour basis, i should have this up and running in the next few weeks.
So without further a do, here is the mockup of the homepage - one thing i am missing, and i have the designer in mind to help me create this, is the brand/identity which it will surely need.
The design is based around a simple modular approach of having discrete channels for collection of tweets. Whole principle has now also included the idea of having each user create and add their own tweets, as they see fit rather, than have the editorial picks. This makes for a much more interesting set of options not only for the user but for dailytwitter…
Am not going to write bucket loads about the design, just take a look see your self and drop a comment, with ideas, thoughts and banter. HTML version coming out soon, so watch this space.
this was the @dailytwitter
twitimonials - recommendations via twitter
I recently came across a great little application that @williamkelley had developed for twitter - which is basically a recommendation mechanism/engine for twitter users. I tried it out following a few chats with @williamkelley and found it to be a great little tool that had a lot of potential within the twitterverse.
@williamkelley is a developer working out of the San Diego on a number of ideas and concepts usually to be found at www.tentoeleven.com
Twitter has a great API and the @ev and guys have done a fab job of opening this out from the outset to the development community - who have embraced this and created a range of tools, applications and services.
www.tentoeleven.com is one to watch and bookmark, as i suspect there will be some great little apps coming out of this hub and hive of activity very soon…
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so whats the editorial policy?
I have been thinking over the past few days about how www.dailytwitter.com should position itself as a newpaper for microblogging citizen journalists - assuming such a rare breed exists in this world.
There is a old school of thought that would like to see the newspaper put out its own editorial message to build a loyal audience based on the fact that the audience is lazy and unable to find the information through their own means - now typically every news organisation works on that principle, whether to create its own style, drive political messages/brainwashing into a populous or just control what information they diseminate.
And we have another school of thought that would happily let the reader find, collate and build their own news from a variety of sources which typically is reserved for an elite which
a) are able to find the information they need
b) understand the technology
c) be able to make judgement calls on what is fodder for the masses versus intellectual debate for the literati.
So where does dailytwitter stand on all of this, well as a typical cynic, skeptic and all round troublemaker, i would prefer to provide the basic means for the individual to make their own choices, with a little editorial help in sourcing content and tweets - this isnt to say i would be biasing the news, content or editorial tone - i would rather have a quality approach that removes some of the dross that is evident in a lot of the material i have seen to date.
Now this could be a simple recommendation mechanism, thumbs up or down, to indicate the relevancy of the contributors or sourced material is up for debate - but in esssence i want to be able to provide a means for the user to choose what they read, who they read and where the material is sourced from. This may not be a day 1 thing, but it is on my list of to do’s as I develop the paper.
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wandering nomad - twitters from davao
Big things happening in Davao! I learnt something new today and thought i would share it!
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a wandering nomad!
Davao is the largest city on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. It is the country’s largest city in terms of land area, occupying 2,444 square kilometers. It was the city’s birthday earlier in the week and judging by the smiles across all the faces, it looks like everyone had a great time.
Check out http://huneesoinsane.blogspot.com for some coverage of the event and pictures too!
There is also an interesting post on Social Media Etiquitte
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Ping.fm
Managed to grab one of the beta codes from the tweets flying about on twitter - big thanks to @chrisbrogan for this. Ping.fm is one of those interesting sites that at first glance it looks simple to use, then when you actually begin to use it - it not just simple, its ridiculously simple!
In short, you can send updates through to all your ‘micro’ blogging platforms in one go - Tumblr, Pownce, Facebook, Twitter and even Jaiku can receive the same update from a single ‘Ping’. Makes it very consistent way to communicate to a varied audience through one simple application.
You can also send through updates to the AIM Client, and as soon as they maybe add others it broadens the offer so much - and you can also send updates out through email with your own personal ping email address.
Its fast, reliable and really really simple to use.
Tweets from the verse:
Amusing quite from @buzz on Ping.fm
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twitter in the community
twitter in the community - is a great blog posting really extols some of the benefits of twitter in a local community. Take 15 and have a read. dt
dailytwitter homepage first designs
Have spent far too long talking about some of the ideas that i have been wanting to get into the twitter community, so i think its time to start to get some visuals and designs up there with a little annotation. This is the first visual i am posting a first stab at some layout, features and basic styling for the site.
The aim to to get some feedback from the twitter community and to start to share some of the ideas. Clearly I need a willing audience of citizen journalists to kick start this, I have a few at the moment - but i guess more will follow once the ball starts rolling.
The whole idea of the site, for those of you who haven’t been following this blog is to a create daily newspaper with various editions around the globe packed with hot tips, news, gossip, entertainment, secret places, hot places to eat and places to see in a major city. With an active and growing twitter community to help build the content, my main aim is to start to provide some order in the way of channels and themes.
For those of the web 2.0 community who are not as tech savvy as the rest of us, i am hoping www.dailytwitter.com will become a place where i can group and theme all of the social comments, thoughts, ideas and suggestions that are part of the huge social mechanic that twitter is driving.
Here is the homepage as it stands, it needs more work - i need some basic branding and the like, but it should give you a sense of what i am looking to achieve. As ever i am open for comments, suggestions and ideas.
Remember the tweets that are in the draft design are not representative of the channels or themes, i just needed some copy!
HTML version coming soon with some real twitter feeds.
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What is this about?
A content snack of twitter tweets from around the world.
Find out more email
info@dailytwitter.com
dailytwitter tweets
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Word of the day
ubiquitous
\yoo-BIK-wih-tuhs\, adjective: Existing or being everywhere, or in all places, at the same time.
