WebMamaPapa

Vacation time with my wife! Someplace with a view and close by so I wouldn’t need to blow it all on travel expenses.

The above comment is a brief excerpt that can be published  using a free new microblogging service called Plinky.  A “prompt” is posed to members daily asking a simple question.  How much detail you provide in an answer is up to the author and the content can be displayed on Twitter or your blog.  Try it out, it might be just what you need to stay inspired when you have writer’s block.

Whether you realize it or not, the latest phenomenon sweeping the social media space is a “microblogging” site called Twitter.  So I don’t get ahead of myself, social media is a general term encompassing many Internet social networking sites. While their functionality varies widely, the one thing they have in common is the ability to meet, interact and engage with people on the web. You might have heard of Facebook which is now so mainstream that it has now counting my mom as a member.

Facebook allows members to post a public profiles, hosts interactive widgets, spawns social groups and acts as a resource for finding old flames and lost friends. Twitter on the other hand is unique in that it only allows brief excerpts of text called “tweets” that members use to interact, 140 characters total to be exact; it is definitely not for the long-winded writer. You’re wondering why I haven’t posted the URL yet for the Twitter website aren’t you? It isn’t by accident, unlike just about any other site I can think of, once enrolled you will rarely need to visit ever again. Actually, to make best use of the service you will use platforms developed by other companies such as TweetDeck & Twhirl.  You following me?

So, here’s a little hype before you’re underwhelmed by the Twitter website -

• Currently there are on average over 1.6 million tweets daily in Twitter
• Participants include notable figures such as President Barack Obama, Hall of Fame Receiver Jerry Rice, Actor John Cleese, and Mogul Richard Branson to name just a few
• Formation of online “twestivals” with over 100 cities participating
• Governments are now using Twitter for emergency alerts & traffic notices

Without further a do, here is an example of a relatively typical Twitter user page, in this case it is mine.  You will see my latest “tweets” who my “followers” are and a brief blurb about me, on the surface not very compelling if you ask me.

So now  you’ve decided to try you hand at Twitter to see what the fuss is about for yourself.  You sign up for a free account and now what?  The silence is deafening; if you post something, who will read it? Out of the millions of tweets, how to you decide who to “follow” so you can read their messages?   To be honest, it is a bit like sliding into the swimming pool slowly, one toe at a time.  You might be lucky and have a friend on Twitter who can introduce you to others.  More likely, you will need to use the search function to find people talking about subjects you’re interested in.

In my next post on Twitter, I will discuss  the next steps for actively engaging twitterdom.  In the mean time, check it out and start bumping around and familiarizing yourself.

Visit Twitter

I’ve been hearing about a wireless memory card for cameras that allows users to upload their photos to their computer automatically. There is very little competition this type of item so it took no time at all to identify their name and website; the company is called Eye-Fi and they are located conveniently nearby in Mountain View, CA.

Eye-Fi Wireless Memory Card

Since up until recently my camera used only CF cards and the Eye-Fi card is built on the smaller SD format, I was out of luck for my own use so I got one for my father-in-law.  Seems he would shoot and shoot his digital camera but never knew what to do with the photos so they would just stay on his camera indefinitely until I came over to take them off and burn them to CD which he would then take to Walgreens or Costco.

The benefit to the Eye-Fi card is that the photos are sent wirelessly to your computer automatically once the camera is in range of the wireless network.  Eye-Fi also has versions that send the photos also to one of many online photo-sharing/printing sites such as Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug, Costco etc.  In his case, we used his Costco account because he frequents their store anyway and he can just pick up his prints while he’s there.

I finally had a chance to get my hands on a new camera and my very own Eye-Fi card and will discuss my experiences in the next few posts.   In the mean time, check out the following video which explains how Eye-Fi works and a new video upload feature they just launched.

P.S. Special thanks to a reader @Scrambler99 who pointed out that the post would be more helpful if I had mentioned the price.  Generally speaking, the most basic model that uploads photos only to your computer runs about $80.00.  Prices go up from there to about $130.00 for the model I purchased which includes the geo-tagging service that I will discuss later.