Tweets - Our aggregated Twitter feeds

The observant regular reader may have noticed that there is a new 'block' on the right-hand side of this 'blog labelled Tweets.

For those curious as to what this is, let me explain.

I recently attended a 'Handheld Learning' conference where I was persuaded (against my better judgement) to get a Twitter account. Twitter is a micro-blogging service with multiple input channels, designed specifically to allow mini updates to be submitted. Twitter has a 140 character limit on each update, that phone text/sms messages are often limited to 140 characters is not a coincidence - Twitter updates can be submitted via sms, the twitter website, as well as a variety of other 3rd party applications.

As I generally don't spend much time writing to my 'blogs (I have four that I regularly don't use), I never really saw the point of having a micro-blog to ignore also. However I was pleasantly surprised, a micro-blog does not serve the same function as a 'blog, and is actually far better suited to the needs of those of us who don't have the time (or are too lazy) to 'blog 'properly'.

The 'rules' of micro-blogging are also significantly different. There isn't the space for a lengthy meandering trail of ones inner thoughts and angst. No time for long deep, dark, poetry that truly reveals the value of one's inner soul as having more merit than the cruel word gives it credit*. Instead a twitter update is supposed to be a short, punchy, to-the-point response to the question "What are you doing?"

Yes, there may be a tendancy to update too much on what one is thinking as opposed to actively doing, but as space is limited, you the reader don't have to put up with too much inner reflection - phew!

Also, if one 'follows' other twitter users (I follow several that work in a similar field to my own), you get some insight into what they are up to, a nice way to keep up with colleagues, friends, or even the awesome Stephen Fry**.

Right, so I've told you what Twitter is, but there's still that thing on the right that may need explaining. Amy, Ashley, and myself now have Twitter accounts. Amy thought it would be a good idea to import the latest 5 updates from each of us to display on the 'blog. Amy found some code that did it, and she pasted it into the site, all well and good. I decided however that it wasn't good enough. I wanted to take the three individual and separate twitter feeds and merge them into a single list. I wanted to have them appear in true mixed reverse date order rather than sorted by author before date. It wasn't too difficult to do, at least not at first. It worked in Firefox, then I found it didn't work in IE. I fixed it for IE, then it didn't work in Safari. Then I fixed it in Safari and one of our regular readers DARED tell me it didn't work in IE or Firefox for them. I checked, it does work, it works for me. If you the reader are having any problems, it's either the fault of your computer, or your eyes.

So, to summarise, the Tweets 'block' on the left contains the latest 15 Twitter updates from Amy, Ashley, and myself (5 each). There's a chance we might actually Twitter more than 5 times in a day, so if you don't want to miss out on our 140 character comments on the nature of existance, the taste of our dinner, or the colour of the sky, you'll have to visit this 'blog several times a day.

*You know that the cruel world is right, don't you? You don't have a soul. That thing you think is a soul is just your inner voice that's too terrified to realise that the universe is a huge place and your role within it is insignificant. So your poetry is ultimately futile, and your time spent writing it wasted. That time spent can not be recovered, you pointlessly wrote yourself closer to death. Deal with it!

**If you don't know who he is, you should be ashamed of yourself!