Posted by Dave Mark on Oct 14, 2009 in
TV,
Twitter,
celebrity Drew Olanoff is a very insightful fellow. He grabbed the twitter name @drew before anyone else could. He’s also unlucky. He has stage 3 Hodgkins Lymphoma.
But Drew is also courageous and funny. Soon after learning about his diagnosis (read the post, worth it), Drew started blamedrewscancer.com, a site that encourages you to tweet one of life’s annoyances with the hashtag, #BlameDrewsCancer.
To help raise money for the fight against cancer, Drew decided to auction off his Twitter name and donate the proceeds to the LIVESTRONG Foundation, which helped him in many ways. He expected to pick up maybe $10,000 or so.
Enter Drew Carey.
DrewC, who tweets under the name DrewFromTV, agreed to donate $25,000 for the name. But he didn’t stop there. According to CNN, Carey said, “I was in such a good mood that I raised it to $100,000.”
Even better, Drew raised his bid to a cool million, if DrewFromTV gets a million followers by December 31st.
So follow DrewFromTV and help raise $1,000,000 for the LIVESTRONG Foundation.
– Dave
Tags: Drew Carey, Drew Olanoff, IBlameDrewsCancer
Posted by Dave Mark on Aug 13, 2009 in
Twitter Biz Stone, founder of Twitter, posted this picture on his blog today:
This is a paper-based prototype of the retweet-enabled version of Twitter. Here’s a link to the post itself. Here’s a quote from the blog post:
Let’s say you follow @jessverr, @biz (that’s me), and @gregpass but you don’t follow @ev. However, I do follow @ev and the birth of his baby boy was so momentous that I retweeted it to all my followers.
Imagine that my simple sketch is your Twitter timeline. You’d see @ev’s tweet even though you don’t follow him because you follow me and I really wanted you to have the information that I have. (The star, reply, and retweet options only show up when you hover over a row on Twitter.com which is why you don’t see them all the time.) Also, if you find my retweets annoying, then you’ll be able to turn them off.
The Twitter team is still working on the API. Once that’s done, look for developers to start adding retweeting to their apps. Next, folks like you and me will bang on the apps and applaud/complain about the functionality. Hopefully, the complaints will cause some tweaking, followed by app updates, followed by retweeting heaven.
Can’t wait!!!
– Dave
Tags: Biz Stone, Retweet API, Twitter
Posted by Dave Mark on Jun 15, 2009 in
Twitter About a month ago, David Pogue, technology columnist for the New York Times, tweeted out a request for puns. I tweeted back one of my favorites. Time passed, never heard back. No problem, that’s the nature of Twitter.
Tonight, imagine my surprise when @pogue sent out this tweet:
TONIGHT’S MEDITATION (RT @davemark:) A great pun is its own reword.
Hey, that’s kind of cool. Even cooler is the fact that Mr. Pogue has more than 450,000 followers. Awesome, baby!!! You sir, rock.
– Dave
Tags: @pogue, David Pogue, New York Times, Twitter
Posted by Dave Mark on May 25, 2009 in
Twitter,
hacker From securitywatch.eweek.com, this article describes a phishing exploit using Twitter and TinyURL. Here’s the skinny:
In this episode of “When Malware Writers Attack,” senior technology consultant Graham Cluley blogged that he received a message saying he was being followed on Twitter by someone called “3XNJTVJG0SYIKDH.” This person was already following nearly 400 people on Twitter, and had only posted one update:
“check this guy out [followed by a tinyurl address]“
The tinyurl actually leads to the site tvviter.com. That’s right, Tvviter, with two Vs. Clicking on the link leads to a site that poses as Twitter.com and will prompt visitors for their username and password.
Careful out there, twitterverse. Thanks, Allen, for passing this along…
– Dave
Tags: hack, scam, Twitter Phishing Exploit
Posted by Dave Mark on May 13, 2009 in
Twitter,
food There’s a group of four guys, two brothers and two friends, pretty good cooks, decide they want to start a business. They can’t afford the up-front cash required for a restaurant, so they buy a 1965 bread delivery truck, paint it, outfit it with a fridge, sink, and food-warming system. Add in campy costumes, nicknames, and some patter and you’re good to go.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Merlindian, as the truck is known, travels around Washington, DC, settling in on an available parking space. They then send out a tweet with their location and their customers come running. The key here is good food, food worth finding. And Twitter.
– Dave
Tags: Fojol Borthers, Food Truck, Twitter, Washington D. C.
Posted by Dave Mark on May 7, 2009 in
Twitter Thought this article was interesting. 12 web-based tools, along the lines of tinyurl and twitpic, all for the benefit of Mr. Twitter. My fave? This one: http://friendorfollow.com. Shows you who you follow who does not follow you back.
– Dave
Tags: twitter tools
Posted by Dave Mark on May 7, 2009 in
Search,
Twitter Twitter has no advertising. Twitter is free. So why are they valued at more than $200 million?
Search.
It’s the data set that is being created by you and me as we tweet. And it’s especially the links that we tweet. That data is owned by Twitter and it has value to folks who know how to mine it. Here’s a blog post that does a good job of explaining all this. A good read…
– Dave
Tags: Twitter search
Posted by Dave Mark on May 4, 2009 in
Apple,
Twitter,
app store I ordered Tweetie a while back. Tweetie is my new Mac and iPhone Twitter client. Thought there are a few features I wish they offered, some slight tweaks I’d like to see to the UI, Tweetie has grown on me and I now couldn’t tweet without it.
I charged the $14.95 on my credit card (well worth it!) and this morning I got this email:
Dear Dave Mark,
This notification is just a friendly reminder (not a bill or a second charge) that on Apr 20, 2009, you placed an order from atebits store. The charge will appear on your bill as “fsprg.com”. This is just a reminder to help you recognize the charge. You will not be charged again.
————————————
Order Summary
————————————
Order ID: ATE090420-XXXX-YYYYY
Tweetie for Mac
Order Grand Total: $14.95
————————————
Our customers have found this notice useful in confirming otherwise unknown credit card charges, as “fsprg.com” may not be easily recognizable on your bill.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your business and look forward to serving you in the future for all of your software needs. Again, this is just a friendly purchase reminder, no response or further action is required.
If needed, a receipt for your purchase can be found here:
https://sites.fastspring.com/atebits/order/invoice/ATE090420-XXXX-YYYYY
(You may need to cut and paste this link into your browser if you cannot click it)
** THIS IS NOT A BILL AND IT DOES NOT INDICATE A SECOND CHARGE TO YOUR CARD **
This is only a reminder that a previous purchase you made should be appearing on your credit card statement shortly.
Sincerely,
The Customer Service Team
My guess is, at some point in the past, there was some confusion with folks not recognizing the charge on their bills. To me, this response is perfect. Let the customer know what’s coming, make it clear that this is just a notification and not a second bill. This email made me feel closer to Tweetie as a product and Atebits as a company. Well done, Loren, well done!
– Dave
Tags: Atebits, Customer Service, Tweetie
Posted by Dave Mark on Apr 20, 2009 in
Twitter An interesting alternative to Twitterific, From atebits, Tweetie is a Twitter client for Mac OS X and is now live. Now using Tweetie for Mac and iPhone. Gorgeous interface. A few features I haven’t figured out yet, but very nicely done!!! Check it…
– Dave
Tags: Tweetie, Twitter client for Mac OS X
Posted by Dave Mark on Apr 3, 2009 in
Twitter,
blog The question came up. Who has the most followers on Twitter. According to Twitterholic, here’s the top 10:
# Name (Screen Name) URL Followers
1. CNN Breaking News (cnnbrk) http://cnn.com/ 781,404
2. Britney Spears (britneyspears) http://www.britneyspears.com 688,797
3. ashton kutcher (aplusk) http://blahgirls.com 665,522
4. Twitter (twitter) http://twitter.com 634,612
5. Barack Obama (BarackObama) http://www.barackobama.com 581,185
6. Jimmy Fallon (jimmyfallon) http://www.latenightwithjimmy… 531,920
7. theellenshow (TheEllenShow) http://www.ellentv.com 514,795
8. THE_REAL_SHAQ (THE_REAL_SHAQ) 512,703
9. The New York Times (nytimes) http://www.nytimes.com/ 490,821
10. Lance Armstrong (lancearmstrong) http://www.livestrong.org 488,486
As you’d expect, the list is celebrity heavy, with Britney Spears the top person on the list. A celebrity gossip site is #12. Not sure what this all means, but I thought you might find it interesting. Thanks to Rune Madsen for the pointer…
– Dave
Tags: most followers, Twitterholic, twitterholic.com
