This tickled my funny bone when I read it.
via @LilPecan
Braindead TechCast EP43: Twitter owns the day & no we don’t have a Steven Segal fixation
Wow, we finally got to do a show, even if it is getting posted a little late but like yesterday Talkshoe decided it wanted to be a royal pain in the ass but I was finally able to get in and do what I need to make tonight’s show already for your listening pleasure.
Much of tonight’s show is taken up by the obvious discussion that comes out of a day that was all about Twitter and their Chirp developer conference. Even though there were more than a fair share of buzzword and kumbaya there was a lot really interesting information that will take some time to digest.
The show ends up with Sean being able to get a bit of a rant off his chest that had to do with Conan and the Steamy awards.
Oh, and the Segal reference .. well you’ll just have to listen to the show to find out what the hell that is all about.
Posts referenced in the show
When Your Web Service Lets You Down – Sean P. Aune
Twitter Announces Live Social Graph Streams – Jesse Stay
Twitter Adds New Terms of Service to Its Developer Platform – Jesse Stay
Twitter’s @anywhere and Why it May Be Too Techie for Their Audience – Jesse Stay
(as you can tell Jesse had some of the best posts on the event that weren’t centered just around the hype and the numbers – good job Jesse)
Enjoy the show
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Implementing @anywhere is pretty damn simple
As most anyone in the tech world knows today was a pretty big day with Twitter making some pretty big announcement of which was the immediate availability of their @anywhere platform for bloggers to implement on their blogs.
For those that don’t know what the @anywhere platform is a quick search on Google will get you all the answers you need but the short answer is this from the @Anywhere developer page
Twitter @Anywhere is an easy to deploy solution for bringing the Twitter communication platform to your own site. Add follow buttons, hovercards, linkify @usernames, and build deeper integrations with “Connect to Twitter.” @Anywhere promotes a more engaged user base for your site.
Now I got to admit I was a little reluctant to try ind implement it as I was expecting some sort of long drawn out process getting the required API key and to be honest the sign up page to get one was a little confusing. Then I came across a post someone I was subscribed to had shared in GReader that made the process a snap to understand.
So a big thanks to Nick O’Neill at SocialTimes for putting together a video walk through of what you need to do to get the API key and how to insert the required javascript code into your theme. It took me literally 5 minutes, or less, to get installed on this site.
At this point I just have the linkify users and hovercards options installed which you can see by hovering over my @stevenhodson Twitter user name. I will be taking a look at the other options that @anywhere provides at some point and will let you know how it goes.
Twitter versus Twitter and those stuck between
As is the wont of the tech blogosphere there is a lot of hand-wringing and reading of the tea leaves following the the release of the ‘official’ Twitter app for the Blackberry as well as the purchase of Tweetie for the iPhone. Everyone it seems has an opinion on what should not have come as a surprise to anyone whether it be developers or the ever ready to express an opinion at the drop of the hat tech bloggers.
While TechCrunch likes to point to past posts of this year and say that the writing was on the wall anyone worth their salt saw this coming lang before these latests move by Twitter let alone some post in February on TechCrunch. I am not saying I am alone in this but even as far back as early 2009 I wrote that anyone tho thinks that building a business on top of some other company’s API is a good idea had better think again.
That doesn’t mean that there weren’t some good opinions expressed in light of Twitter’s move. Primarily I would point to posts written by: Louis Gray, Jesse Stay, Charles Hudson, and Mathew Ingram. The majority of them though, and to be honest I include my post over at the Inquisitr, came out bemoaning this attack on the developer ecosystem that surrounds Twitter.
It’s easy to target Twitter as the big bad company that is out to eat the lunch of the very developers that helped make the company, and its service, what it is today. What isn’t so easy though is to understand the crossroads that the company is finding itself at. After all Twitter isn’t just a company, it is also the creator of a totally new and unique communications platform and it is with those two things in mind that we have to try and make sense of the tea leaves.
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