Twitter down??

It seems to me either Twitter is down or they are having some serious technical issues.

This morning Twitter has been very slow when looking at profiles and I have received no updates via IM or SMS. I have just gone to look at my profile and my browser just hangs.

Maybe it is because all of the BRW staff have joined up and are experiencing the latest and greatest.

Update: Well it seems Twitter is back up

Update 2: Well it seems Twitter is back down 😦

Twitter update and bots

First up I am really enjoying Twitter, can’t really explain why maybe it is the “real” social interactions going on. However I enjoyed it far more when I received SMS updates of what my friends were doing, this seemed to have died over the weekend. I feel like I have been left out in the cold without the SMS updates. I send a note to Twitter support and strangely did not hear back (Evan any ideas?).

Another thing the BBC News bots really interested me in how simple they were to create.

So over the last few days I have hacked together my own bots.

First up a bot providing Australian ABC News updates, http://twitter.com/abcnews, it provides twitters of the top stories running the the Australian ABC News website.

After I got this one going I thought it would be great to be able to follow the cricket, so I created a ABC News Cricket bot, http://twitter.com/cricketnews.
I hacked up Mario’s Perl script, converted it to php as I could not get it running on my hosting provider (due to missing Perl modules). I also grabbed bits from Victoria’s WordPress Updater plugin, fsockopen commands as CURL would not update Twitter through php.

If you are a Twitter user check them out.

I need to clean up the code and will post it in the next few days.

PS. I hope the ABC don’t get upset.

PPS. Sorry for the typos, it is 4am and I can’t sleep.

Update:  It seems when you update via the Twitter API the updates are not sent to via IM or SMS to followers, or is it just me?

The windsurfer and user experience

This post is part rant and part non-rant about two topics that I feel passionate about. First up windsurfing (which becomes skiing during the winter months but that is another story), and the second user experience.

First up, I was windsurfing again yesterday, 20 knots winds from the south to south west, a bit like now, and it rocked! Water starts coming together nicely even starting to get the feel of when it will work and when it won’t. Once I was up a couple of times I was going like a “bat of hell”, ok maybe not as fast as the 29 other guys out there but it was fast for me.

During the afternoon a few things happened. The first two whenever I put my feet in the foot straps or hooked in my harness, WACK! I was in the water. Reason I was not using the board correctly and I need a lesson.

Second up once on a plane I started to get the feel of the board under my feet, adjust the weight a little and I started to change directions. Overall a fantastic user experience, I was in control! It was not all clean sailing but I am still learning and not surprised. The afternoon ended after about 1.5 hours of pure fun, even when I was being thrown through the air off my board.

Now contrast this with my upgrade experience with Windows Media Player 11 in the morning. I booted up my home PC, was prompted for a new WMP so decided to upgrade, we were to create a video from the cricket on Friday night. Went through the upgrade process, forced to reboot, something that always sucks but anyway. Once rebooted we did not open WMP directly instead I went into Movie Maker which uses WMP embedded. Made the movie in about 20 minutes work for BJ and I, the camera work is crap but it was a last minute idea.

Now after showing it to the family it was lunchtime, went up stairs turned on the XBox 360 for some tunes and NOTHING. The XBox could not connect to the PC, crap the upgrade must of done something! Back on the PC (while the BBQ was on) I opened up WMP 11 and was prompted to reset up my Windows Media Sharing, WTF! Went through the process turned the sharing back on, authorised the XBox done, now back for the tunes over lunch.

Still nothing.

Down to the PC more fiddling, adjusting the firewall settings, could this be it? Still nothing. Now this worked faultlessly BEFORE the upgrade, there was no mention of changes to my Windows Media Sharing during the process (not that I saw). Grrrr!!

Back up to the XBox and begin resetting up the networking, then I see it! When WMP turned back on sharing it changed the name of the share. Back to the XBox changed the settings to use the new share and we were back in business.

The issues with the upgrade were that WMP changed my settings and did not inform me the user what it was doing. I don’t mind if I know and then things don’t work its the not telling me that gets me, Robert Scoble agrees. Nor did the upgrade leave my system in the state it was before the upgrade, sharing turn off and a new name for the share.

Crappy user experience and the sort of thing that makes people hate upgrades from Microsoft. Being a bit of a geek I had problems, but what about the average job, it is just too hard.

Digital Photography and Flickr

During the Christmas break we bought a new camera, a Canon PowerShot A710 a very nice piece of kit.  Not the smallest camera on the market but in my mind one of the best, before you get into the SLR range.

  • 6 x optical zoom
  • Optical image stabiliser
  • 7.1 Mega pixels
  • Optional lens conversions
  • Lots on in built options
  • VGA Movies

I really like photography always have so it is great to be able to take pictures again that are of reasonable quality.

The only problem I have is I take way too many pictures and have a hard time determine which ones are the good ones.  The outcome I think is too many pictures on Flickr.

Cisco Sues Apple Wow who would have guessed!

As I said yesterday the lawyers will be busy over the next few days. Obviously things weren’t all that sweet with the Apple/Cisco relationship, Cisco is now suing over the iPhone.

The thing is forget the legal definitions most of the world sees Apple as already owning the iPhone brand given the iMac, iPod, iTV (now Apple TV), everything i is Apple.

Cisco responds to the Apple iPhone

Overnight Steve Jobs announced the a mobile phone, not a huge surprise there. But I was surprised it was called the iPhone given the recent Linksys announcement.

Based on this news release from Cisco is seems there has been a lot of discussions going on between the two companies and the Jobs keynote has basically committed Apple to agree to the Cisco terms for the use of the trademark.

I can sense that some lawyers have been working very long hours and will continue over the coming few weeks to sort this one out.

Update: Time has a great article showing why the iPhone is different.  But there are a few things missing these have been documented around the place, some in the Time article others which of course I have not bookmarked!  Some are lack of enterprise support, lack of ability to sync wireless, lack of wireless downloads across the network, no 3G support.  All will be solved and Apple will most likely make a killing out of these little things.

Who is the best company in the US to work for?

Google.

Well that’s according to Fortune’s latest listing of the Top 100 Companies to work for in the US. What are the perks of working for Google:-

  • Free Food
  • On-site car washes
  • Company subsided hybrid car purchases
  • On-site hair cuts
  • On-site gym, massage, personal concierge
  • Free on site laundry for geeks who don’t have time at home
  • Motorized scooters for moving around the campus
  • Pet friendly

Oh and between 1am and 4am you are allowed to go home 🙂

Other interesting companies who made the top 100:-

  • Cisco
  • Starbucks
  • Ernst & Young
  • Adobe Systems
  • Yahoo
  • Microsoft
  • PricewaterhouseCoopers
  • Procter & Gamble
  • IKEA North America
  • and a fair number of health care providers

If you are a recruiter and you are trying to target someone at one of these Top 100 companies it would pay to review the list to see what will differentiate your organisation. If you are not on the list, have a look and see what makes a Top 100 company.


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