Technology Mashup

Chris Brogan is saying "log into Twitter and change your password" and over on Chris Pirillo's blog is clear (if worrying) news that a "Phishing Scam is Spreading on Twitter".

The very simple advice is:

Avoid the 'red sock' error

Put red socks into the wash with white underwear and invariably you end up with pink underwear. I’m sure we’ve all done this by accident, although hopefully few have done this on purpose (remember we don’t judge here!). The result is (again I hope) an embarrassing garment that would not be worn on first dates or formal occasions. If you vehemently disagree please explain in the comments section, but for your own protection you may wish to ‘sail under anonymous colours’. Enough with frivolity of the analogy I hear you say, and I open with this colourful ‘visual’ reference to imprint the fundamental requirement of ‘behavioural separation’ on blogging and other Social Media platforms.

I suspect I have just created a sense of confusion at the end of paragraph one. So let’s dive in and explain the context:

The Networking Potential

I wanted to say a little today about the potential to leverage blogs for Social Networking.

"Ratios are for Gears!"

Two topics I have been thinking about recently on Twitter are Ratios and Twitter Authority. What are Ratios I hear you ask?

You can probably tell from a lot of the blog posts from this week that I have an increasing fascination with Twitter (and a long-established fascination with platform scalability in all its forms).

Cellular networks are the traditional ‘victims’ of New Year calls and SMS traffic, you will all be receiving Happy New Year SMS’s well into the first week of ’09 as the queues drain!

Twitter has previously been a tad flaky on scalability, although this has been greatly improved over the past 6 months. I’m fascinated none the less to see what result the increased popularity of Twitter has on its scalability as we roll passed midnight and into the New Year. I am convinced that Twitter is more part of an American ‘sub-culture’, and therefore I predict most pressure will come on the US time zones. If Twitter is to become ‘the new phone’ how many years will it take before it off-loads the SMS and cellular call load from existing mobile networks?

I became aware last week on an "app" for Twitter known as DM Fail. The usefulness to humanity of such an invention is questionable, but I suppose as we trawl cyberspace trying to make sense of the Information Age we will discover many weird and wonderful ideas, and let’s face it although this "app" seems dumb, there are many worse culprits.

So DM Fail basically highlights where a Twitter user attempted to send a Direct Message (DM) to another user, but got the syntax wrong. It strikes me as analogous to laughing at society column pictures snapped by the Paparazzi of stars leaving limousines and we get a brief glance at their undergarments. Indeed it all smacks of immaturity and perhaps even voyeurism.

I’ve been jamming a lot on Twitter over the past week, suffering from what I think will be the first medically pronounced case of Twittercosis – a psychosis induced from excessive microblogging, caffeine and limited sleep.

The ‘T-Cosis’ (pronounced Tea-Cosy) as I like to shorten it has miraculous powers in terms of fuelling pointless creativity. A point in kind comes from some of my non-inventions of the week. Please, nobody take these seriously enough to try and implement them…

1.    TwitterSynth – Yes, as the T-Cosis was developing the first thought was a microblogging interface to a virtual synth. You would Tweet music phrases in a MIDI like language. Imagine having a Twitter sequencer! Follow me if you want to play in my forthcoming TwitterOrchestra

This is a quick test to check if Twitterfeed is configured correctly on this blog. To elaborate on that a little, you can set up Twitterfeed to automatically pick up and Tweet blog post updates using RSS...

Do's and Don'ts of web2 outposting:

The ping.fm aggregator service seems to have been 'parked'. I was happily using it yesterday, and today I'm getting re-directed to a GoDaddy hosting page. What has happened? This seemed like a successful and useful service to me.