Twitter for Dummies

Twitter (twitter.com) is a free micro-blogging tool that allows users to publish a short post or update with a maximum of 140 characters (including spaces and special characters). This is mainly used for information sharing across friends or to the world. When a tweet is posted (can be through web, API, SMS), it is shared across all the followers instantly and if the followers have activated their mobile option, it would get updated to their mobile by an SMS.

Twitter is the catching up trend in today's generation. Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide. It is sometimes described as the "SMS of the Internet" since the use of Twitter's application programming interface for sending and receiving short text messages by other applications often eclipses the direct use of Twitter.

Twitter terminology:

• Tweet is a post/update
• Tweeple are the users of twitter
• @ symbol is a way of referring to another Twitter user
• A retweet - or RT - is when you share the tweet of one user with all of your Twitter followers.
• Reply is when you respond to a tweet from a particular user.
• Tweeps are twitter people that follow each other from one social media/network to another.
• Hash Tags or #
  Hash tags are words or acronyms that begin with the number sign. They are used when many people are tweeting about the same topic or from the same event.

Some stats of Twitter

• Twitter had a monthly growth of 1,382 percent
• Total unique visitors grew from 475,000 in February 2008 to  seven million 80,00,000 (Eight million) last month.
• In January 2009, 735,000 unique visitors accessed Twitter via their mobile device.

Some Interesting Facts about Twitter

• During the 2008 Mumbai attacks eyewitnesses sent an estimated 80 tweets every 5 seconds.  Twitter users on the ground helped compile a list of the dead and injured. In addition, users sent out vital information such as emergency phone numbers and the location of hospitals needing blood donations. CNN called this "the day that social media appeared to come of age" since many different groups made significant use of Twitter to gather news and coordinate responses.

• In January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 experienced multiple bird strikes and had to beditched in the Hudson River. Janis Krums, a passenger on one of the ferries that rushed to help, took a picture of the downed plane as passengers were still evacuating and sent it to Twitpic before any other media arrived at the scene.

• The Australian Country Fire Authority used Twitter to send out regular alerts and updates regarding the February 2009 Victorian bushfires. During this time the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, also used his Twitter account to send out information on the fires, how to donate money and blood, and where to seek emergency help.

• On April 10, 2008, James Buck, a graduate journalism student at University of California, Berkeley, and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested in Egypt for photographing an anti-government protest. On his way to the police station Buck used his mobile phone to send the message “Arrested” to his 48 "followers" on Twitter. Those followers contacted U.C. Berkeley, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, and a number of press organizations on his behalf. Buck was able to send updates about his condition to his "followers" while being detained. He was released the next day from the Mahalla jail after the college hired a lawyer for him.

• Also in April, public health departments used Twitter to provide updates on H1N1 cases.

Users of Twitter

Twitter is widely used among people in all walks of life. Organizations use twitter to publicise their products like @microsoft, @google, news agencies use to instantly update news like @Reuters, @BreakingNews, @Time, @Nytimes.

India already shines brightly with Twitter advocates like business man Anand Mahindra @anandmahindra film stars Priyanka Chopra @priyankachopra Gul Panag @gulpanag, @juniorbachchan , @vivek_oberoi director Karan Johar @kjohar25, Minister of State Shashi Tharoor @shashitharoor, upper house member Pritish Nandy @pritishnandy, news anchors Barkha Dutt @bdutt, Rajdeep Sardesai @sardesairajdeep Vir Sanghvi @virsanghvi, plus media outlets MTV India @MTVindia,@HeadlinesIndia and NDTV @ndtv and cricketers like Yuvraj Singh @yuvsingh09 just to name a few.


by
@hjasti


Source: Twitter Blog, Wikipedia & Others

Using Tata Indicom Photon Whiz (Huawei EC-321) in Ubuntu

Using Tata Indicom Photon whiz/ Reliance Broadband devices in windows environment is a walk on cake. But, in linux, it requires certain settings to make that model modem work. Though this is tried and tested in Ubuntu 9.04(Jaunty Jakalope) with Tata Indicom Photon whiz, it is applicable to all versions of Ubuntu. It is to be noted that Reliance Broadband uses the same model EC321, but the configuration file may vary with respect to username and passwords.

 

• Open Terminal in Applications >> Accessories >> Terminal (as shown in the image below)

               

• Edit wvdial (pronounced 'weave-dial') is a utility that helps in making modem-based connections to the Internet that is included in some important Linux distributions. configuration 
  sudo gedit /etc/wvdial
  
  
• Enter your logon password if asked for.
• If it says there's no such file, install wvdial by the following command
  sudo apt-get install wvdial
  
• after installation Edit wvdial configuration sudo gedit /etc/wvdial
  
• Add this below section of lines in the opened file
  
  [Dialer Defaults]
  Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
  Baud = 230400
  Init1 = ATZ 
  Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2
  Init3 = AT+CRM=1
  Stupid Mode = 1
  Modem Type = USB Modem
  Phone = #777
  ISDN = 0
  Username = internet
  Password = internet
  
  
  
• Save and Close the file
  
• Enter sudo wvdial in the terminal
  With all the above said configuration settings, the modem should now work in Ubuntu. Have a happy surfing :)

My dads article about weavers in local daily

The following is an article in local daily Vaartha by my father Dr. J Lakshmi Prasad appeared on 09/10/09. This is about weaver problems and their possible resolutions. PDF edition of this article can be downloaded from the below link.

 

PDF edition of this article : Download

How do I whistle with my fingers in my mouth really loudly ?

Don’t know how to whistle really loud with two fingers in mouth ?? Here is the answer for the above question, from Google answers… Follow all the steps below and you would definitely  can whistle in no time.

"Loosely touch the tip of your bent index finger to the tip of your thumb. 

Rest the bottom of your joined fingers (if you're using your right
hand, the thumb is to the right) on your lower teeth with the tips of
your loosely joined fingers pushing against the bottom part of your
tongue (which pushes back).

Your lips should be pressed down against your fingers. The joined
fingers make the "V" into which you blow (you should blow slightly
down).

It definitely makes a shrill sound that gets louder as you blow
harder. Of course, this method works best if your nails are short."

Source : Google Answers

Maximum PC's Browser Battle Article

Maximum PC's in depth review of stable and beta browsers educates well about all the exsisting and upcoming browsers. This is a great article for any one to choose a best browser.

excerpts from the review:

SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark

Celtic Kane JavaScript Benchmark

V8 Benchmark Suite

How They Stack Up

 

Source: Browser Battle: Nine Browsers of Today and Tomorrow Compared

Are we utilizing Gmail and Google Apps Mail to the full extent ?

This is an exhaustive post to bring to notice all the terrific features of Gmail and Google Apps Mail. Though this might not go into detail to all of the existing features, it covers those which i feel should be tried by everyone, if ignored or unknown, to increase their own productivity and management. Here they come

Labels :

 

Entry of Gmail with revolutionary mail storage space has created a ripple effect to its competitors to increase their mail space drastically and some made it unlimited even. I feel this changed the stereo type services provided until then. Apart from mail storage another revolutionary feature was Labels. Many wonder why gmail doesnt provide folders but labels instead, and even i saw many happy without folders nor even using the provided labels. In plain english labels can be termed as tags, With this we can infer that a single mail can be tagged with different tags. In the case of folders, a mail can be moved into only one folder which might not be suitable in many occassions. For instance take my case of a mail from a family member, I can Label it as Family, Folder does the same until here, but if the mail contains photos, i also need to add Photos Label, so that it can be found in both

 

 

Family and Photos. But with folders, one mail to one folder. With further addition of color coding to  labels, it becomes dead easy to identify our mails.

 

 

Filters :

 

Suppose if you want to mark mail from your boss which has words, immediate and urgent, with star and label it with name Important, you could do this within no time with filters. Go to Settings > Filters > click on Create New Filter

 

so, if you get a mail with the above criteria, you have no mail management work to do and can immediately concentrate on content.

 

Labs :

 

Labs are experimental features which can be enabled by the user, the user can select any number of such functionalities which suits him best. There are many such additive functionalities like offline access, Tasks, etc., there are also minor tweaks such as quick links, mouse gestures, custom keyboard shortcuts to name as few.

 

My feeling is that every one should try all the lab features, some are time saving, productive and even funny. Just give it a try in leisure.

 

Tasks :

 

This is a very very simple feature which can be enabled from Labs. (the above feature). Tasks list can be created and tasks can be added into the list. Once done tasks can be strikeout to mark that as complete.

 

 

Fetch POP mail:

With all the great features, Its very much beneficial if we could check our mails other than Gmail’s in its interface. Fetch POP mail is a boon for such requirement. I haven’t heard of Fetch POP in any web interface prior to the entry of Gmail. With such rich functionality Fetching other mails and Filtering them  with a label will be deadly. So no need of checking mails with numerous logins in different site.

 

 

Send Mail as :

We could receive other mails in POP, fine! What if we need to send mail from the POP received mail. Gmail does address this issue as well. Not necessary to login to different sites to send from another ID. Just a quick authentication to send mail from other id to check your ownership of the ID.

 

 

While composing a mail, select a mail id from which you want to mail to. That's it.

Keyboard Shortcuts :

This is inarguably the one of the best features of Gmail. Hit "?” in your mail, here comes all the existing keyboard shortcuts. Pretty simple, cool, rich and whatever, this feature makes the application indifferent to any desktop software. Further custom shortcuts can also me made by enabling a labs feature.

Spell check :

Spell checking in Gmail is great. But what makes it exemplar is that it could spell check in over 36 languages as of now. Sure that more will be added into this list. After composing mail hit on Check Spelling link and Gmail comes to your rescue and highlight any grammatical blunders you have made. 

Enlightened ?, wondering ?, excited ?, Yes if you aren’t aware of any of these features, try to use them and you will say that Gmail is awesome. One best thing i found in Gmail, for that matter any of the Google’s product, is that they continuously improvise and innovate. No saturation point for innovation isn’t it ? Thinking from the end user side is what makes Gmail success exceptional from any other webmail's. Rock on Gmail.

Importance of upgrading from IE 6.0 to …

It can also be read as upgrading from Microsoft’s clan of bundled software's in operating system. Back to the my observation, i have come to see that majority of the internet users, in my office at least, stick to using the IE 6.0. Very few, to be precise, a couple of them, tend to upgrade their browser to IE 7 and none to other browsers (Firefox, chrome, opera etc.). The major reason for this could be easily predicted that IE 6 is bundled along with widely used windows versions of OS (other than Vista).

Many might have no knowledge of a better browser that is miles ahead of IE 6 which they are using or might be they were hesitant to upgrade the browser because they are used to it. One well known fact is that unless we explore ourselves to novel software's we cannot be productive at work nor can be swift in our operations in day to day needs. And other point is that IE 6 is not developed for the year 2008-09, there were lot of improvements in technologies that make web a better way as compared to the time when IE 6 was released. Even now a days the web applications are even competing with the standalone installed applications, which could be said as a turning point in web.

If anyone hesitant of using Mozilla Firefox, Google chrome (mentioning only these two other than IE because they were standard browsers having a decent share in market) here are major advantages.

 

• Faster browsing.
• Secure browsing.
• Styles and Look and feel of websites.
• Inbuilt search with any of your favorite search engine without installing any toolbars.
• Tabbed browsing (can open multiple sites on a single instance).
• Can tap all the new features and updates by websites which use latest technology.
• Web pages have great look and feel (for ex. Gmail themes doesn’t work in IE 6).
• Use of various Add-on's  that make our surfing much better.

Here are download links for each of these both browsers if enlightened :).

 

Download Firefox 3
Download Google Chrome