Twitter

With my laptop down until we get back to the States and with no cell phone service with internet access until we get back into Rogers territory, I'm using the Birdhouse application on my IPhone to record my observations as we go down the road. I'm trying to keep a journal on Henry's computer or on paper, but I'm behind several days. I'm finding that my notes on Birdhouse will help me when I get ready to do a more comprehensive journal. I plan to do more detailed blog posts with photos after I get back home and my computer comes back from being repaired.

If you're not already on Twitter, you can still follow my "Tweets." I tend to send a bunch of tweets at a time when we have hotel rooms with internet. It has been surprising how many small hotels in remote places have internet. I'm still a day or so behind because I find that I need to reword some of the notes to match the 140 character limit on Twitter. Sometimes my note was too long and has to be broken up into several tweets.

We spent last night in Twillingate, Newfoundland. We'll be working our way along the northeast coast of Newfoundland today. There are rookeries in the Avalon section of Newfoundland that we are hoping to see. I hope that Hurricane Bill won't rain out my photography opportunities at the rookeries.

Hurricane Bill looks like it will bring rain as the path shows it crossing southern Newfoundland as a tropical storm. It looks like BIll will rain on our parade, Apparently the east coast of the US is having strong waves that has caused beaches in New York State to close.

Twittersheep

Henry came in and pointed me to another Twitter related website: Twittersheep. I entered my Twitter name and this is what showed up:



In a way I certainly can't explain or perhaps even understand, Twittersheep analyzes your tweets and comes up with keywords that are repeating themes in your tweets.

Hum . . . this is interesting on several counts.

1. If this is what a computer visualizes as to what "Mary Ann" is all about, then what do my followers who don't know me think about who is Mary Ann Melton?

2. Are the facets of "me" that are showing up in Twittersheep as large words the things that I think are most important.

While I suspect I don't want to deliberately change my Tweets artificially to bring out certain kinds of words on Tiwttersheep, I do think this is an interesting litmus test as to whether I'm tweeting about the things most important to me.

By the way, you can enter any Twitter account and see the analysis on Twitersheep.

Twitter stuff

My husband started using Twitter before I did. It was a very useful tool when we were in Galveston experiencing and photographing Hurricane Ike. I've enjoyed keeping up with friends via the "Tweets."

Lately, I've been exploring the larger world of Twitter. I've downloaded the application TweetDeck to arrange the incoming Tweets so that like things are together. At the moment, its 10 columns are not enough. I have a column for Friends and Family, my photography friends at the Digital Image Cafe, All Friends, Direct Messages, Replies, Christian, Photography, Organize Clutter, Gardening, and Publishing. I would like more columns so I could have a column for birding, news, perhaps business or editorial.

I'm bookmarking some sites related to Twitter that I'm finding useful:

TweetStats keeps track of your average tweets/day, when you tweet, how you tweet during the days of the week, who you are replying to, what method you used to Tweet (phone, web, Tweetdeck, Tweetie, etc)

TweetEffect gives some information on which posts cause people to follow or unfollow you. (Funny, spell check doesn't like unfollow . . . guess we have a new word there - it is used by RSSfriends.) I suspect that a given tweet may or may not be the reason you lose followers. Some people follow in hopes that you will follow them. If you don't, they drop out.

Tweet Trail lets you enter a subject and it finds other people who tweet about it.

RSSFriends tracks changes in friends list or follower and unfollower on Twitter with an RSS Feed. Friends shows who you are folllowing, Followers tracks people as they follow and unfollow you.

Twellow - Twitter Yellow Pages

Local Tweeps You can search your area (or another) to find local people of interest to follow.