badgergravling

London Twestival tonight…

September 10, 2009 By Dan Thornton

And then I’m having a family weekend, so updates will resume properly on Monday/Tuesday next week.

Details of London Twestival 2009.

I never fail to be amazed by the Twestival movement – it seems to get bigger and more spectacular every time, and all for a great cause. And it’s grown incredibly quickly, although the earliest events were always fantastically well run and offered, with hindsight, a good idea of what might be to come…

There’s a slim chance I might get away with tweeting discretely during ‘family time, so feel free to check @badgergravling.

Visual representations of your latest Tweets with Portwiture

March 31, 2009 By Dan Thornton

Portwiture is an interesting mash-up by Tyler Sticka, which grabs photos from Flickr which match the content of your most recent Twitter updates.

By inputting your Twitter username, a grid or slideshow is created, and you can select the number of photos, to grab photos by relevance, recency or how interesting they are.

And that’s it – as Tyler writes, it’s simply an experiment in mashing social services, using JavaScript framework jQuery and public APIs, some PHP and SlideShowPro. What is quite fun is that he’s suggested anyone who wants to discuss possible uses should do it on Twitter with the hashtag #whyportwit.

I ran my own Twitter account, and you can see the results.

Although there’s no easy embed option, an RSS feed is provided – it would be great if images could be linked to individual tweets – perhaps providing a business model if Tyler uploaded advertiser images, and then pulled them into the system alongside Flickr photos?

And if I could just embed it easily, it could become a really fun way to see Tweeple represented.

But it’s yet another example of the benefits of Open APIs and inventive people, which has fuelled Twitter so far.

Essential tools for working from the family home

December 29, 2008 By Dan Thornton

There really are two things which make it possible for me to work from home without having the money to build an office in the garden:
Sony MDR-V300 Headphones with Neodymium Magnet – Folding Design + https://www.last.fm/user/BadgerGravling

That and the fact I’ve got a bookcase partitioning me from the rest of the room and blocking the line of sight to the television (currently showing CBeebies to my partner and my 8-month old!).

Making charity happen via Twitter

December 19, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Twitter marketer and celebrity Laura Fitton (@Pistachio) has come up with a great charity campaign over Christmas, having realised that just $2 from each of her followers would mean $25,000 – enough for a water project for a school or hospital by Charity Water.

The impetus for this is the fact that 5,000 children die every day from the lack of clean drinking water.

And as a bonus, if $10,000 plus gets raised, it’ll be matched by Tipjoy and Betaworks. Plus all fees are being waived for micropayments via Twitter for this case by Tipjoy.

But Laura puts it far more passionately and eloquently than I can (plus there are more details on the charity, payments, and even an easy form to use), so

Go and visit the Well Wishes post on the Touchbase blog right now.

If that isn’t enough, Squidoo is also giving money to charity – Every time you tweet a message from the list of 21 charities, it’s a vote which means $1 is donated to that charity (one per person, per day), up to a maximum of $30,000.

Both might be slightly overshadowing my own Twitter charity pledge – @digitalmaverick and myself are racing to 2000 followers, with the loser doing a charity forfeit. Plus I’m giving £20 to a charity chosen by my 2000th follower!

A truism from MacLeod and a quick plug…

December 14, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Hugh MacLeod at GapingVoid is rarely wrong! Incidentally, I highly recommend his writing on Social Objects, How to be Creative, and The Hughtrain.

And to balance the amount of links deservedly pointing to GapingVoid, I just thought I’d mention that there is, in fact, a TheWayoftheWeb Facebook Page, which I hope will become a place where I can chat about ideas, aggregate any questions etc in addition to my network of fantastic people on Twitter.