Published December 27, 2024
ITV recently aired a show called Tiktok: Top 100 2024. I probably don't need to explain what the programme was about, the title leaves very little to the imagination. It was hosted by comedian Joel Dommett, who did a lot of the heavy listing, as he counted down the top 100 videos, alongside sharing facts and figures about what else is successful on the video sharing app, and how rich …
Published January 29, 2023
I’ve only been on Mastodon for just a couple of days but already been very curious about the discussion over ‘quote tweeting’. On Twitter, the quote tweet is a much-used feature that allows you to embed a previous tweet in your own and add thoughts. It was brought in to help users share other posts without eating too much into your own character count. This hasn’t been a feature on …
Published January 25, 2023
Wahey, I'm on Mastodon! You can find me here and I hope to be using it as a full on Twitter replacement and actually engaging with it rather than falling into the on-again-off-again pattern that I had with the bird one. My path to Mastodon has essentially been: Oh, something's up with Twitter, it'll probably be alright though, continue as usual All anyone talks about on Twitter now is the …
Published December 29, 2022
Yesterday, I wrote a very short post about photos of the moon that didn't have a lot of point to it other than 'wahey, photos of the moon!' I realised that previously, I might have just tweeted something like that, but I don't know if you've noticed, Twitter is going through some stuff right now. Some people are sticking with the social networking site, others are abandoning it for alternatives …
Published March 21, 2014
We've recently invested some time and energy in using Flipboard to share posts, pictures and shows from Sidepodcast, which meant having to learn to use the crazy thing. Primarily an app, Flipboard allows you to browse through content from Twitter, sites and various web locations in a gorgeous looking magazine style. There's absolutely no doubting that it's a good way to peruse content. I found it quite hard to get …
Published January 30, 2014
I joined Pinterest recently. I know this isn’t groundbreaking news, finally signing up to a social network that’s been around since 2010. I tried signing up once before but they didn’t have my preferred username so I had to go away and sulk about that for a bit. Pinterest, in my limited experience, appears to be one of those social networks that is different things to different people. I can’t …
Published October 27, 2013
TV and film does very well on Twitter. Besides live tweeting essential events and posting instant reviews to films you've just seen, there are also the endless accounts packed with quotes (I follow some Friends and some Simpsons ones), and those that go a little beyond that. In the past, I've seen a few "recreation lists" whereby someone sets up a few accounts to do the back and forth that …
Published February 27, 2012
Last time I checked, the new Formula One season was still something like 80+ days away. The beautiful off-season stretched luxuriously ahead of us and there was all the time in the world to knuckle down to some projects. Then I blinked. Now there are 20 days left. That's like, three weeks. The off season is all but over and what do I have to show for it? Well, actually, …
Published November 12, 2011
365 F1 Stories chronicles a tale from Formula One's vast history for every single day of the year, with a variety of different topics on offer. From driver birthdays, to important races, to those little moments you might have missed, there's plenty on offer in the books. If you're not completely convinced, or have bought the books but haven't read through them all, there's a quick way of getting a …
Published October 15, 2011
Google have confirmed that they're axing a few more of their side projects, including the terrible Buzz and the less terrible Jaiku. I was a big fan of Jaiku in its days pre-Google, using it as an alternative to Twitter. As Mr C commandeered the @sidepodcast Twitter account, I was looking for another way to represent Sidepodcast in social networks. I headed straight towards Jaiku, and was impressed with what …
Published July 23, 2011
I'd spotted this book creeping up the charts but ignored it, because I figured it was a rant about how Twitter is bad for the world. A recommendation changed my mind and so I gave it a go. As it turns out, it is a rant against Twitter, but only from a self-confessed Twitter addict. Grace Dent loves and uses Twitter a lot, and has plenty of experience to guide new and old users through the weird world of the microblogging social network.
Published April 13, 2011
I have often expressed my frustrations at Twitter, and continue to have a love/hate relationship with the microblogging platform. At the moment, I'm more on the love side, though, and anything that makes it even more amusing can only be a good thing. Yesterday, I was introduced to the concept of That can be my next tweet! It's a site with one of those annoying URLs that is impossible to …
Published January 21, 2011
Twitter is a strange beast, isn't it? Everyone uses it differently. For some, it is a means of promoting their work. For others, it is a place to follow comedians and laugh at jokes. Some use it as a replacement RSS feed, following those streams that are simple "new blog post" updates. Others use it as a way of keeping in touch with the family. A handful of people follow …
Published July 16, 2010
We all know that I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter. I swore off it for a while, and when I returned I left the design as a default wallpaper - one you can get to under the settings tab. I looked on as many, many people put photographs and custom backgrounds on their Twitter account, and I never really felt the need to do the same. Since the World …
Published April 20, 2010
(Note: I really wanted to call this post 'Don't Cross the Streams' but I knew people would be mad it wasn't about Ghostbusters.) I am so very up to date with TWiT podcasts now that I have even impressed myself! I was just listening to this weekend's episode of This Week in Google, and there was a section of it I found really interesting. About half an hour in, they …
Published February 16, 2010
Just a couple of things to note: I gave Chrome a try, I did, honest. I set it as my default and I used it for a couple of days. I really like the transition when you drag a tab to become a new window. Beautiful. I missed the Copy Link as Text Firefox plug-in something chronic. And when I was doing some F1 Minute stuff, Chrome was copy/pasting in …
Published January 14, 2010
Ah, hmm, well, this is quite embarrassing. I quite recently wrote a post about swearing off Twitter, and naturally, after making such a fuss about it... well... I'm back on Twitter. So, moving on. It appears that my old installation of Smarter Than... was hacked and the feed essentially ruined (thanks to John for alerting me to the fact). Something weird was happening with the site a while ago as …
Published January 5, 2010
A few weeks ago, I left Twitter. I was a sporadic Twitterer anyway, but I did like reading the updates from everyone and keeping up with people I otherwise probably would not. I gave it up for many reasons, but mostly because all the changes that have been made recently take away functionality for the way I use Twitter. They are obviously focusing on the general public now, and that …
Published December 26, 2009
Mashable has a brief article about a new advert taken out in the USA Today newspaper from chewing gum company Trident. Supposedly the tweets were discovered naturally, rather than the writers being sponsored to talk about the gum, and everybody was consulted to make sure they approved being included in the ad itself. A bizarre concept of micro-blogging turning back into print media.
Published December 10, 2009
I saw this story ages ago, was going to blog about it but promptly forgot. A father looking for his long lost daughter bought a domain of her name and set up a simple message saying: When you read this, please send me an email. Of course, nothing happened for a long time, but eventually the girl in question, April Becker, googled herself and found the site. She emailed the …
Published September 7, 2009
Here are a couple of Twitter bits and pieces I have found that I wanted to share - when Twitter does good. Cabbie's tweet reunites lost Blackberry with owner - a simple tweet saved a lot of headaches, which is a really nice story. However, the way Twitter is organised at the moment makes this kind of thing really unusual, as you have to be searching for something specific and …
Published July 29, 2009
There are studies emerging all over the place regarding who actually uses Twitter and what they get out of it, and it seems as though the powers that be are starting to take notice. The social networking site has long since ceased to be a place where you answer the original question "What are you doing?" In fact, I just had to go and check the website itself to see …
Published July 14, 2009
I was recently perusing the Podcasting News site and found an article with some new media tips from Trent Reznor. Now, I am only vaguely aware of Mr Reznor, not being a Nine Inch Nails fan, myself. However, it was the tips themselves that fascinated me. And by fascinated, I mean baffled. It starts off well. Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace - it’s dying and …
Published June 17, 2009
I've noticed a couple of posts recently, in my feed reader, that suggest apps that will help to keep track, and even publish your own lifestream. I sat back for a minute, and thought, how many social networks can there be? I know there are some niche ones out there, book clubs, wine groups, things like that. But how many actual social things are there? Then I discovered one of …
Published June 14, 2009
It seems like social networks are suddenly starting to realise that if people are going to put their lives on the internet, then they might want to have a proper identity. Facebook have introduced what appear to be called "vanity URLs" to your profile. It seems a bit mean to say that having your profile accessible by something with your own name rather than a bunch of random numbers is …
Published June 13, 2009
There are a plethora of Twitter apps for mobile phones, and I know the iPhone is over-run with them. As a G1 user, the Android platform has less options, but there are a few worth looking at. The one I have settled on is Loquacious, which is actually a paid for app. It's only a couple of dollars, though, so that didn't put me off. There's a 14-day fully featured …
Published March 21, 2009
Way back when, Twitter was hugely unstable and we all defected to identi.ca. Now, Twitter has bolstered it's infrastructure, and even with the mass invasion it still seems to be holding up nicely. So, I started watching people on Twitter, then I set up my identica username on the site and shared the dents/tweets across both platforms. Now I'm starting to think that Twitter is the place to be, and …
Published February 8, 2009
The BBC seem to have gone a bit doolally over Twitter. First it was Jonathan Ross spending at least ten minutes discussing the micro-blogging site with Stephen Fry. Then Radio 1 picked that up and ran with it, with at least three of the DJs signing up for Twitter accounts, maybe more. Whilst it's good to see radio branching out even more into the online world, this seems like a …
Published September 2, 2008
The new look. Yes, okay, you can still view via the 'old Facebook' but presumably this will not always be the case, and I'm not a fan. It takes ages to upload photos. I tried to put up 5 pictures and it literally took half an hour. I timed it and everything. Messages from groups. I join groups to visit occasionally, have a look around, see what's in the discussion …
Published August 28, 2008
Just wanted to point out that I'm currently in the midst of loving identi.ca. If you're fed up of Twitter's flakiness, and want something a little bit prettier, then identi.ca could be for you. I'm busy posting there at the moment, amazed at how many 140 character sentences I have come up with already, having only been registered for a week. If you're interested in following me, head to identi.ca/christineb. …
Published May 22, 2008
Design revamp for '$100 laptop' I always thought the old one looked like a cartoon, and whilst aimed at kids, I found it quite off-putting. The new one looks beautiful. *** Twitter: Something Is Technically Wrong Well, I gave up already. *** Gyllenhaal confirmed for 'Prince of Persia' Firstly, I didn't know there was a film. Secondly, that Gemma Arterton is everywhere right now, and I still haven't seen her …
Published February 27, 2008
Twitter appeals to the short-form writer in me. I used to run a site called 101 Words, which essentially a short post every day about random stuff, but that was crucially 101 words long. Exactly. It became quite an art to fit all your thoughts for the day into 101 words. Twitter is the same kind of thing. There’s something about having a short space to get your message across …
Published January 1, 2008
The thing is, I didn't set up my Facebook account, it started out as a promotional tool for Sidepodcast. It still is that, but now I have started to take more of an interest in the whole social networking thing. I logged in and today, of all days, it wished me a Happy Birthday. Because as it wasn't specifically about me when it was set up, the account's birthday was …