How to get a Twitter feed in Google Reader Friday, January 09, 2009

Image representing Google Reader as depicted i...Image via CrunchBaseIf you happen to use Google Reader and have ever tried to add your twitter feed you'll know that they are incompatible. This is apparently because Google Reader doesn't support the authentication Twitter requires.

After wasting some time trying to use Yahoo Pipes as a conduit which was one solution thrown up on a web search, I finally thought I would try Feedburner which is the service that provides a RSS feed of this blog.

It was surprisingly easy and worked first time. Here's how.
  1. At the bottom of your Twitter home page on the left hand side, you'll see a box marked "RSS". Copy the associated link location by right clicking on the box and selecting to copy link location.
  2. Setup/Login into your Feedburner account
  3. Within Feedburner, go to "My Feeds", which is accessed at the top of the screen, and paste the Twitter link you copied into the field under the heading "Burn a feed right this instant".
  4. The link you copied in is password protected and so you now need to add your twitter username and password into the link as follows
    http://username:password@twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/nnnnnnn.rss

    where "n" at the suffix represents the numbers of your unique feed.
  5. Click the "Next" button adjacent to the Feedburner field you've entered the link into
  6. On the subsequent Feedburner page you can modify the resultant feed title and link if you wish to
  7. Click on the button marked "Activate Link". This makes your feed live and provides you with a feed url which you should copy.
  8. Back in Google Reader, add a subscription and paste in the feed url.
And that's it.

Given that Twitter no longer provides a feed via IM clients, you may find this an easy way to keep on top of your Twitter updates.
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posted by John Wilson @ 12:49 PM Permanent Link ,

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TinyTwitter - An excellent Twitter app for the phone Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBaseDespite my failure to become a Twitter cult follower, a number of friends from the blogging and tech world have repeatedly nudged me to have another try.

However, each time I've tried to play with Twitter, a technology barrier impeded me. Having a blackberry, I tended to use email to interact with Twitter when on the move [avoided SMS costs!]. However, the service I began by using simply died one day [Emailtwitter]. Thereafter, several people recommended Twitterberry but having installed it, I simply couldn't get it to work on my Blackberry 8800 for inexplicable reasons.

Finally I was pointed in the direction of Tinytwitter, and if you are both a Blackberry user and Twitter fan then I recommend it. It installed easily and worked immediately. It seems very compressive and its' ease of use did encourage me to post. It's still very early days and I confess I still haven't got the Twitter bug, but maybe I'll have an epiphany sometime soon.

My Twitter id is johndwilson
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Is Yammer a defensible technology Thursday, September 11, 2008

The winner of Techcrunch50, Yammer, positions itself as Twitter for business, with communities built around user email domains. i.e. @corporation.com. Indeed, any Twitter user will be instantly familiar with the service and it's features.

Unlike Twitter, users can only connect to other users from the same company but thereafter tap into the "news" stream from the company community/network i.e. every message from anyone in the same company, which is the default setting. You do have the choice to filter this by people or "tags" that you follow, the latter being a embedded keyword/code attached to a message by it's author e.g. a project name.

Similar to Twitter, you can also send message to specific users.

Importantly, as the Help section points out
I wonder whether this might temper the use of service by employees, concerned about who might see their messages. For instance, knowing your boss [or someone even higher up the company] is monitoring messages may discourage you from openly reporting problems/issues/news. As such, this might actually encourage use of back-channels instead, leaving Yammer to be a tame network that falls into neglect and see its' value diminish. Nonetheless, I can see an important role for such a service inside companies, being an excellent way to disseminate information quickly and succinctly, provided important information is not drowned out by too much noise and chatter.

You can interact with Yammer via a desktop application, an iPhone or Blackberry application, IM Client [AIM, Gtalk, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and Jabber], SMS and email. Of course, if you are in a big company you will probably be restricted to using SMS or email unless your IT department approves the use of Yammer and thus permits the installation of Yammer applications.

Unlike Twitter, Yammer have launched with with a business model that revolves around companies paying to claim and administer their network. Whilst there is no necessity to do this, you can imagine that companies will be keen to have some control over their network if it becomes an important communication tool.

The oddity is that Twitter didn't think of this [not a huge mind leap] and hence create a revenue stream for themselves. Yet, whilst Twitter could easily implement a few changes that would enable them to offer a very similar service, I suspect carving out a corporate offering within their existing offering could well run contrary to the service ethos. Moreover, users may well prefer two distinct worlds, rather like LinkedIn and Facebook, with a personal/social and a corporate divide.
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Emailtwitter - has it died? Thursday, August 07, 2008

I readily admit to not having fallen in love with Twitter, which probably puts me in a minority amongst "webbies". Whilst I readily acknowledge there are many excellent uses for the service, personally I found Twitter too "noisy". Hence I've used it relatively little for months.

Preferring email to SMS, I did make use of an email service called emailtwitter for a while that allowed you to post tweets and receive them via email. However, the service seems to no longer be active [home page no longer active] and I've yet to find a replacement. If you've any suggestions on what to use instead, I'd be pleased to hear them.

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Tentative steps with Twitter Thursday, October 11, 2007

Andrew Dubber encouraged me to overcome my scepticism and try Twitter ("everyone's doing it").

So I've enrolled and subscribed to a few people I know - Twitter lets you scour users by manual search or comparing your gmail address book. I also found a few more because they use the Facebook twitter application.

So I am signed up as John Wilson. Doubt I'll go as far as some with this, such as Steve Clayton who looks like he is going to have it integrated into his version of outlook with this

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Twittervision is mesmorising Thursday, March 22, 2007

I am not a Twitter user, nor do I particularly expect to become one since I don't actually comprehend who would want to monitor my regular updates on "What am I doing now?". Moreover, I don't have a particular fascination with monitoring what someone else is doing (unless of course they are working with/for me). Heaven forbid that my wife and I were to exchange details of our activities via Twitter - it's bad enough getting the daily summary ;-)

So, imagine my amazement when I had a glance at Twittervision, which was created by David Troy using Ruby on Rails in 4 hours, and was momentarily transfixed.

Quite simply, it's a real-time display of Twitter messages that are displayed on an interactive Google Map, which zooms to the location declared on the message. Now, I don't know any of the people whose messages where flashing up so there was no personal interest element here. Yet it was simply astonishing to see the volume of messages and their geographic dispersal flashing up as the graph zoomed round the world, not to mention the nature of the short "thought clips" from people around the World.

This will sound crazy but it was as if I was looking down from space and randomly reading the minds of people around the world. Different languages, time zones, interests, relative degrees of importance. It reminded me of a number of films where the star could listen in on peoples thought eg "What Women Want" with Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt.

But then I would blink and realise that these people were publicly declaring what they were doing to anyone that happened to be listening (now also watching). No concern for privacy or preserving their anonymity - especially odd given the debate ranging about personal privacy and identity cards etc in the UK. It was true voyeurism.

But even more surreal was realising that this public declaration was actually being done in "private" i.e. they were emailing/SMS/IM from their phone and doing something which was not discernible or audible to those around them. Imagine doing the same but instead doing it audibly to those around you eg to other passengers on the bus/train/tube or in the street/cafe/bar/restaurant - they'd think you were (even more of) a nutter!

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