TwitterThreads.com - what I've been looking for. Almost.

I just searched on "twitter" and "threads" in google. What I found was TwitterThreads.com. Simple, huh?

It's not 100% what I had envisioned: My vision was probably something more like expandable threading by author sorted by date of most recent update. The TwitterThreads version looks like it shows all posts that you'd normally see if you were following someone, but limited to a single day's posts.

This is pretty much what I wanted to build, with a few additional features... Other things I thought of were [+]/[-] Expand/Collapse functionality, an option to configure the number of days shown, and read/unread functionality of some sort.

There is also a mobile TwitterThreads site. On my ancient Treo 650, this is a beautifully elegant and simple interface. It may become my new twitter interface on my phone.

Something both interfaces are missing are direct links to "reply-to" and "favorite" individual tweets. I was also a little disappointed that the timestamp link on each tweet went to the person's home instead of direct linking to the tweet on Twitter. This makes the lack of reply-to and favorite functionality more of an issue for me. If the timestamp had linked to the individual tweet, I could reply-to or favorite through the Twitter web interface.

Overall, I am still thrilled to see that someone has implemented this idea. Like any programmer geek, I would have liked to be the first, but I wouldn't really have made the time to throw something like this together.

Finding distances between two zip codes in PHP

I found this script to calculate distances between two zip codes from PHP (requires MySQL). According to this Idealog post, the calculation relies on a text file of Zip code lon/lats from CFDynamics, available on the downloads page.

I have yet to try it; however, I have a specific implementation that I was needing it for. Does anyone else have a better way to align searcher's proximity to location-based data? I'd like to classify by city, but I'm sure that is a lot more of a gray area than allowing the searcher to specify a specific radius in which to search or letting the resource specify maximum distance to travel.

Added 2008.11.30:
I love Twitter. A few hours after posting this, I received a suggestion that I could get longitude/latitude from Google Maps.

On code.google.com, I found the following question: I need to convert addresses to latitude/longitude pairs. Can I do that with the Maps API?

Yes, this process is called "geocoding." The Google Maps API provides two methods for performing geocoding. If you wish to geocode from within your Google Maps API application you can do so using the GClientGeocoder object. Alternatively you can send geocoding requests directly to the HTTP geocoder.

I suspect that the delicious bookmark plug-in for Firefox 3 is not keeping me logged for two weeks.

Not only that, but whenever I'm required to log-in to bookmark a page, the plug-in does not continue on to actually creating the bookmark.

This morning I was forced to log in. I believe the loss of information is coinciding with Firefox updates. Anyone else have this experience?

Home PC:
2008.11.15, 9:15 AM
2008.11.29, 2:29 PM
2008.12.14. 6:16 PM

Work PC:
2008.11.26, 10:01 AM
2008.12.11, 5:08 PM

Updated 2008.11.29: So far, no glitches. However, I still dislike the fact that the log-in prompt prevents tagging and you have to have to select the tag icon again after logging in.

Updated 2008.12.11: Looks like everything's fine, just that I'm overly sensitive to having to login.

Reading List by Amazon

It looks like LinkedIn has found a way to make itself relevant for day-to-day use... The Amazon Readling List provides a way for you to post what you're currently reading, want to read, or have read. You can also see the contents of other people's reading lists--in your network, in your industry, or all recent updates. Your reading list will automatically appear on your LinkedIn Home and Profile pages.

So far, I only have one book listed. I'll probably start adding to this reading list from my Safari bookshelf list, and all the various other lists that I've been compiling over the last couple of years.

You can get to my LinkedIn profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/twilliampowell

Reading List Application full view:


On your LinkedIn Home:


On your LinkedIn Profile:


Adding from featured applications page.

Remember the Milk is on Twitter!

This may be old news to many RTM/Twitter users, but it was a pleasant surprise to me today.

As I was perusing the Remember the Milk keyboard shortcuts, I noticed that at the bottom, under "Services", Twitter was listed. So I clicked on the link, and the "Services / Remember the Milk for Twitter page" came up, where I could enter my Twitter id. I was presented with a verification code for the next step.

From there, I typed "follow rtm" and then "d rtm [verification code]".

Now that all that is set up, I can interact with Twitter through direct msg:

"d rtm pick up the milk"

"d rtm call jimmy at 5pm tomorrow"

"d rtm !complete call jimmy"

All the instructions and some command examples are at: http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/twitter/

Of course, I'm still learning how to even use the RTM Date Formats.

Added:
Of course, since I can txt updates to Twitter (40404), I can add tasks for today by texting
"d rtm pick up the milk today"

I don't need a laptop or notepad to record my "action items" anymore. This is awesome.

Added 8/23:
Thanks to @louisvilllesoup, I looked into sending tasks from e-mail to RTM inbox as well... this is a pretty robust feature set.

A much simpler setup is importing a list via e-mail, which enables adding a list in bulk to a specific list (e.g., personal) by specifying the list in the subject line and list items on individual lines in the message body. A downside to this method is that signature lines and legal disclaimers get added (per line) to your to do list. I'll need to research if there is a way around this.

On comments and blogs

A tweet by @JasonFalls reminded of this topic.

Have you ever been in a large meeting where someone asks a question that is uncomfortably inappropriate? The perceived anonymity of the internet only seems to only embolden such tendencies.

Copywrite, Ink.: Allowing Anonymous: Communicators Divided - The business and communications justifications for allowing anonymous, allowing moderated comments, or allowing no comments at all. I would tend to agree that considering "[allowing] no comments at all" myopic is a bit harsh, for two reasons:

1. While the average lone miscreant is relatively harmless, many organizations might (justifiably) consider themselves potential targets of coordinated attacks.
2. The more popular the blog, the faster the comments degrade into flame wars. I avoid the comments on digg.com and several news sites because I've seen mildly provacative devolve into vitriolic hatred and ignorance--sometimes over something as benign as a story about a local basketball game.

I do, however, like this final point:

However, and I cannot stress this enough, I do advise communicators and public relations professionals to never make anonymous comments or, if they do, they need to be prepared to answer for such posts in a world where no communication is really private. Not anymore.

Of course, my feelings might be partially influenced by the Unedited Voice of a Person:

Do comments make it a blog? Do the lack of comments make it not a blog? Well actually, my opinion is different from many, but it still is my opinion that it does not follow that a blog must have comments, in fact, to the extent that comments interfere with the natural expression of the unedited voice of an individual, comments may act to make something not a blog.

Joel Spolsky draws from this to make the point that you get a few insights, followed by a spew of noise/filth that no one would say out loud if they had to take ownership of their words.

Finally, xkcd illustrates:



Especially on YouTube:

The trouble with Twitter

The Trouble with Twitter

The trouble with social networking... (see The Social Brain Hypothesis, page 184, column 3)

British anthropologist Robin Dunbar [...] noted in 1992 that humans—like other primates—can handle only 150 relationships. If we try to add many more connections, our little brains get overloaded.

The conclusion from a ballpark example...

Thus Twitter has a real value of $12.26 per user. Compare that with Facebook, which has a perceived value of $300 a user—or at least it did last year, when Microsoft purchased its 1.6% stake for $240 million and the site had 50 million users.

Even with this example, there is the difficulty of inserting the ads... In messages? On the front end interface?

The growth of Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia

I love these graphs. That's all. An increase of 2,000 articles per day on Wikipedia. Even if you managed to read 3,000 articles per day, you'd spend 2 years just reading the current set, and in that time, Wikipedia would probably have doubled in size.

Massive local mashup of news, events, flickr, Craigslist, Twitter, etc...

Alas, my town (Louisville, KY) isn't one of the city choice at the moment, but this could be the next evolution of web 2.0, social networking, mashups, however many buzzwords you can rattle off.

Fwix | Local

This is definitely something that I want to keep an eye on. There's serious potential here.