Twitter

If a web service is being covered by David Pogue and major news sites, produces over 199 million search results, and it is used by the President and Britney Spears then it's safe to call it mainstream.

Twitter, available at twitter.com, is ostensibly very simple. You can "tweet" 140 characters at a time, what some call a "microblog". Your tweets are available to anyone on the web unless you protect them (which sort of misses the point). You can follow other twitterers and if they also follow you, you can send them a message directly. And, that, technically, is really all there is to it.

What gets complicated are all the ways people use Twitter, proper Twitter "etiquette" (twittiquette?) and the myriad of Twitter clients. There are oodles of articles on all those topics and tips on getting started, so I'm going to write about how I use it.

My account: zazerh_news just to follow news and zazerh as myself, following everything else

How I access it: with Tweetie on my iPhone, Twitterific or Spaz on OS X, and rarely, via the web

When/how often I read my feed: Often I'll browse headlines first thing in the morning unless I have to rush off. I'll peruse it from my phone while waiting for something somewhere (e.g. in line). Many of my OS X use Growl to flash little notification on the upper right of my screen, so sometimes I'll see them flash by as I work. Of course, if I'm crushingly busy, I tend not to check it all.

What I tweet about: I try to avoid answering the actual question Twitter asks ("What are you doing right now?"), unless it's interesting or funny. I'll sometimes "retweet" other people's interesting tweets, pass on interesting links with TinyURL (or some other link shortener) or what I think of a movie or book, make a witty (I try) observation, post a picture with TwitPic, or rarely, reply to another tweet. You get the idea.

How often I tweet: Usually once or twice a day, unless I gotta lot of interesting going on. From following other people, you tire very quickly of people twittering every five minutes if it's not very high quality.

Who I follow:

• for news, CNN @cnnbrk, Newsweek @Newsweek, NYTimes @nytimes, MacRumors @MacRumorsRSS, to name a few.
• the few family members and meatspace friends of mine that are on Twitter
• web developers like Paul Boag @boagworld
• web celebs like Veronica Belmont @veronica and Wil Wheaton @wilw
• political figures like Ahhhnold @schwarzenegger and Obama @BarackObama
• software vendors I use like @CulturedCode (they make Things)
• services like @TrackThis and @FuelFrog
• podcasters like LeoLaporte @LeoLaporte and @GrammarGirl
• musicians I like, such as Ingrid Michaelson @ingridmusic and Trent Reznor @treznor
  
• tech notables like Tim O'Reilly @timoreilly and Craig Newmark @craignewmark
  
• actual celebrities, like @TinaFey
• deal finders like @woot and @gotodaily
  

Other uses: I feed my tweets into my Facebook status using the Twitter facebook app. Twitter is also a great way to find out what people are talking about right now, such a disaster, a live event, movies out right now, what have you. It's surprising how unsuccessful it can be to Google for some of these things... so try http://search.twitter.com and you might be surprised at how useful it can be.

Overwhelmed yet? Take it slow. Read David Pogue's introduction. And a word to the wise, Twitter can be flakey!

Application: Firefox

Alright, we have to get the big stuff out of the way first...

The web browser is a big part of most people's experience on a computer these days, especially as more and more applications migrate to the web.

My web browser of choice is Firefox, because it:

• is mature... it's been around since 2004 (that's old in Internet years); version 3 was released in May of 2008
• is stable... although I must add "mostly", as in an ironic spasm, it just crashed as I was writing this post. Yay, technology!
• is secure... vulnerabilities are patched quickly!
• has good performance, including how much memory it uses and how fast it loads pages (although some browsers are sometimes faster)
  
• is full featured and arguably, innovative... Internet Explorer was sort of resting on its laurels after kicking Netscape's ass until Firefox came along
  
• is available on most platforms, including Windows, OS X, Linux, etc.
• is free (although nobody really pays for a browser)
• is standards compliant, which is geekspeak for following the "rules" for translating the source code into the site the user actually interacts with, which is better for everyone except people who have to use a site designed for a non-compliant browser (ahem, Internet Explorer 5)
• is open source, which means the code is not owned by a company such as Apple or Microsoft (and so is less likely to die along with such a company) and oodles of smart people can openly work together on making it better
• has a rising market share, up to second place at around 20%... the more popular a browser is, the more web sites will be tested against it
• is certifiably geek approved!
  

... but for me the kicker is the plethora of Firefox extensions available, also known as Mozilla Add-Ons, which allow you to tweak your version of Firefox to fit your needs or preferences by adding features or changing the interface. Much more to come about those! (Note: other browsers certainly do have extensions, but not nearly the variety that Firefox has available, as far as I know).

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good browsers out there and new ones arriving all the time (e.g. Chrome by Google). Competition is a great thing, but it would take a lot for me to leave all my extensions behind. It may yet happen though!

So if you're still poking along on the browser that came with your computer... give Firefox a try!

Heard about it from: Way to long ago to remember, undoubtedly a geek
Get it from: Mozilla! Be sure you upgrade to version 3 if you haven't already!