August 2008

Four tools for tracking Twitter

by alec on August 31, 2008

Twitter is a river of commentary a mile wide and an inch deep. Ephemeral posts whiz by at a rate that make it nearly impossible to track, and yet any one of them could be an opportunity to reach out and connect to a friend or a potential customer, or to resolve a potential reputation destroying support problem. So recently I’ve been looking for more and better tools to help manage my use of Twitter.

Summize, acquired by Twitter and now called search.twitter.com, lets you search the Twit-o-sphere for posts matching your keywords. For example, yesterday I searched “Ken Blanchard” to find fans of Ken Blanchard and invite them to our call with Ken next week (part of the Calliflower Communiques series). Search.twitter.com allows you to search, right now, or take a search and encapsulate it in an RSS feed so that new tweets on your favorite topic(s) are delivered via your favorite RSS reader.

TweetBeep is an alerting system for Twitter. Similar to Google Alerts, with TweetBeep you can set up a series of keywords to scan on, and then be alerted by email whenever one of those keywords is entered into Twitter. For instance, I have keyword alert set for Calliflower, allowing me to know when people create Calliflower calls that I might be interested in, or post other messages about Calliflower.

TweetScan is another alerting system for Twitter. If you’re interested in creating applications that use keyword search on Twitter posts, it’s a great choice because it provides an API. If there’s a downside to TweetScan it’s that it offers only daily delivery of alerts.

TweetDeck is yet another way to keep track of topics of interest. TweetDeck is an impressive desktop application that keeps a database of all tweets it sees during the time that it is open. It allows for search terms to be created, and keep results in an auto-updating column.

I use all of these tools in differing circumstances. Perhaps the most valuable to me is TweetBeep; with timely (scan every hour) delivery to email it lets me stay on top of what I care about in the Twit-o-sphere from anywhere I have access to email. Without these tools, I’d drown in the fast flowing current of Twitter’s river of commentary.

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Why I will be voting against Stephen Harper’s Conservatives when an election is called.

by alec on August 31, 2008

I had two calls from the Conservative Party yesterday — one from a fund raiser, and another from a pollster polling on behalf of my local MP Pierre Poilievre. The fund raiser wanted money, and the pollster wanted to know how I was going to vote if an election were called. I told them both the same thing, which is that I won’t contribute funds or votes to the party while their policy on copyright remains Bill C-61. I’ve been delivering that message to party workers all summer long as they have repeatedly called looking for hand outs.

So what’s wrong with their approach?

As I’ve written previously, Bill C-61 would make most ordinary Canadian families into criminals. Rip a CD to a PC and allow your spouse to play it on her iPod, she’s a criminal. Keep a television program on your PVR too long, you’re a criminal. The list of offences goes on and on as the music and film industry have won a definitive victory in their battle to criminalize innocent and ordinary consumer behaviours. Not only that, but the industry holds the cards. The mere allegation of theft entitles them to levy fines pre-emptively, without giving the accused a day in court, and without recourse. We give murderers, drug smugglers, car thieves and shoplifters the right to a fair trial. Why not music “thieves”?

I’m nail-spitting angry over the Conservative copyright reform bill. I haven’t been this upset with the Conservative Party since voting Reform in the election of 1993.

I say get your hand outs from the music and film industry, Mr. Harper. I’ll be more than happy to see you and your government tossed out on election day over this issue.

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The important facts about Android Market are still unknown.

August 29, 2008

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown In between dozing on the couch last night while watching Barack Obama’s speech out of one eye, I caught sight of the announcement of the Android App Store Market, Google’s answer to the Apple App Store. Open to all, with no approval’s process, and designed to allow content as well [...]

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Nokia isn’t ditching VoIP after all!

August 28, 2008

All week long there has been a persistent story making the rounds about Nokia dumping VoIP support from upcoming phones. This scribe even played a part in spreading the story… and it turns out to have been untrue. Charlie, over on the Nokia Conversations blog, acknowledges that the VoIP client is missing from the N78 [...]

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Squawk Box August 28 – How communications technology is changing politics

August 28, 2008

This morning we talked about some of the stories that are emerging about the use of technology in politics. Barack Obama’s use of SMS to announce Joe Biden as his running mate, Microsoft’s deployment of a voter registration application on XBOX, and the novel ways that cellular phones are being used on the convention floor.

The other topic? Tomorrow is Skype’s 5th anniversary. How has Skype changed your world? the communications industry?

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Squawk Box August 28 – How communications technology is changing politics

August 28, 2008

The other topic? Tomorrow is Skype’s 5th anniversary. How has Skype changed your world? the communications industry?

Squawk Box August 28 [ 37:44 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Skype axes Skypecasts

August 28, 2008

With a single blog posting, Skype’s Peter Parkes closes down Skypecasts effective Sept 1. Fans of Skypecasts are up in arms.

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Squawk Box August 27, Mobile Roundup

August 27, 2008

* The iPhone 3G is close to outnumbering first gen iPhones by selling 6 million units since launch a scant two months ago. It took the 1st generation iPhone over a year to sell six million.
* Meanwhile, Android phones are still on the drawing boards as sketches of the T-Mobile G1 leak out. It’s one hot looking phone, but will they have the application infrastructure to compete with Apple…
* And SmartPhone and PocketPC magazine has announced that their windows mobile focused publication is… ceasing publication. A sign of the times perhaps?
* And finally… more new Nokia N-Series handsets. The N79 and N85 were announced this week. Coincident with that was a great piece by Olga Kharif in Business Week on mobile VoIP… at the same time as Nokia dropped the VoIP stack from these new handsets.

Squawk Box August 27, Mobile Roundup [ 55:03 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Ken Blanchard to appear on Calliflower Communiques

August 27, 2008

The Calliflower Communiques series continues to roll along. Next week we’ll be hosting the best selling author of the One Minute Manager, Ken Blanchard, as he talks about his latest book: The One Minute Entrepreneur. If you’re a fan of Blanchard, or business management books in general, you won’t want to miss this event. More [...]

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