I just came across a new Twitter feature “Jump to someone you follow” which is pretty cool.

It seems they’ve been trailing it for about a week now and it’s a nice little way to hope around the people you follow.

Currently it seems to only appear when you are looking at other user’s following (who they follow) page.

See it in action in short 15 second video below:

It seems like a great little project, which from the about page, it’s only a small part of a larger “top secret” project the developer is working on, but after getting the tweets on a map working, felt he had to share.

The site uses the browsers Geo API to find your location, with most browsers this will just be dependant on your IP address it seems, so as with me you get placed dead centre of the town/city your in.

It’s worth a look, and it’s cool to see those who are tweeting around you.

Twitter has become a huge part of millions of peoples everyday lives, and has embedded into almost every aspect of our society.

From News and TV shows reminding you to “follow us on Twitter” and use the hash tag to bus companies keeping users updated on their routes. In just 5 years the company has seen huge growth and has made some incredible developments and become a fantastic tool for collaborating, communicating and discovering awesome new things in real-time.

So how did Twitter come to be?…

Back in 2006 Jack Dorsey and others at Odeo began work on what was then known as Twttr, 8 days after programming work began the first tweet was sent from @Jack on March 21st “just setting up my twttr” – Seems incredible now, the tweet ID is 20, 5 years on they’ve stopped using incremental ID’s and the Twitter archives & databases are bulging will billions of 140 char tweets. Isn’t that just … well … AWESOME?

Twitter Inc., is now home to over 400 employees, and has been valued at $1 Billion and almost 200 million users worldwide. With an ever expanding user base Twitter seems to be an unstoppable force, much like other social media such as Facebook it seems destined to be with us for a while to come, with new features and better ways of working developing, such as Discover.Twitter.com.

Discover seems like a cool way to find new things and “discover” more on Twitter, they also have a great video with some great celebrity Twitterers including astronauts, Snoop Dogg, Piers Morgan (Not sure why) and Hillary Clinton.

One of my favourite of the tools I have looked at is “Blackbird Pie” developed by @Robinsloan and hosted on Twitter.com. The tool enables you to simple enter the URL for the tweet which it converts to some shiny HTML which you can then paste in.

Example:

Based on the Blackbird Pie tool there is also a very handy Blackbird Pie WordPress Plugin which enables easy integration so all you need to do to embed tweets is add ‘[blackbirdpie id=”35794693342101504”]’ or you can use the full URL ‘[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/dansgalaxy/status/35794693342101504”]’

[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/#!/dansgalaxy/status/35794693342101504"]

While there is little difference between them I do prefer the WordPress widget, seems to look just a little bit nicer and easier to use when writing posts. It also has the added benefit that it isn’t effected by WordPress constantly trying to remove the style tags, which can prove rather irritating when writing a post with them in…

I am as always keen to hear what you guys think! So leave a comment below on which you prefer, or if you have found an even better way to embed tweets in your own sites and posts.

I was intrigued to see that I seem to be one of the few selected to view the new version of Twitter… So why don’t we take a look?

So as you can see got a nice banner to view the new version.

Once we click this we are presented with the new twitter design with a overlay explaining a couple of the key new features. Including the ability to preview Pictures, Videos and replies right from within Twitter.

So lets break down some of these new features and take a look, firstly Video previews.

With this new version of Twitter the design encompasses a simple arrow on each tweet when you hover over and click on a Tweet which slides out and includes a variety of items related to the tweet. Including the tweet itself, the Picture / Video preview as well as tweets with the same tags, other tweets from the user, user avatars of users who have retweeted it and other similar related tweets.

The example we have on the right shows the video preview for @iamthealterego this particular feature seems to work well, the design is very clean and flows nicely, most importantly the video preview seems to work well.

Now taking a quick look (after searching for a picture in my feed) shows much the same as the video, as one might expect.

We have the picture showing on the right under the users tweet.

While both of  these might be considered a much needed feature of twitter no doubt the reasoning behind this development is to help keep users on Twitter.com instead of forcing them to open new sites, such as Youtube or Twitpic. This could however raise some concerns for sites like Twitpic, who mostly rely on Twitter.com traffic from the everyday users clicking on photos to view; which naturally leads on to further browsing of their site. This feature from twitter will possibly have a detrimental effect to sites like Twitpic.com who rely on Twitter and the way it worked to function. I will be interested to watch this and how the changes effect the Twittersphere.

Another great little feature I discovered is Twitter seems to be making better use of the Location info it associates with users tweets (who have some form of location tracking enabled).

As we can see it shows a nifty little map highlighting the users location and also a link to “View Tweets at this place”

Which simply enlarges the map to fit the full width of the area and lists the tweets from that location below.

While I could go into extreme detail about each new change, other than the obvious change of look these seem to be the main features which will effect your everyday viewing and usage of Twitter.com, instead I shall leave you with these key parts, and would like to hear your thoughts.

Also just to note, thanks to @iamthealterego, @Rogem002 and @Bennuk who have inadvertently become part of this post.

Twitter has become a massive force on the Internet, I am wrapped up in it and tweet obsessively (@Dansgalaxy) as well as managing many twitter accounts and twitter bots.

As well as this other (bigger) businesses are taking advantage of twitter and using it as a way to communicate with their users, often it can be hard to tell which accounts are official here’s a list of companies / celebrities twitter accounts which are worth a look.

Microsoft:

• @Microsoft – Main MS account being run and managed by the corporate communications team
• @MSWindows – Announcing Windows 7
• @WindowsLive – Official Twitter account of Microsoft Windows Live
• @liveframework – liveframework
• @livemesh – Sync, share, and access the information you care about—wherever you happen to be.
• @SharePoint – The official tweetstream of the SharePoint product group – managed by @LLiu
• @bizspark – Microsoft BizSpark – Software, Support, Visibility
• @zunemarketplace – Zune Marketplace is a store for the way you love music, with brand-new releases every week and a huge selection of music in every style imaginable
• @wmdev – Windows Mobile
• @microsofttag – Microsoft Tag
• @ch9 – listen to the cockpit, help us fly the plane
• @ch10 – Channel 10 is Microsoft’s online community for the technology enthusiast
• @ch8 – Microsoft’s community for students
• @mixonline – Come check us out at www.visitmix.com
• @MIX09 – The Next Web Now, pre-empted by @MIX07, @MIX08 and @PDC08
• @SiteNamedDesire – Want a copy of A Website Named Desire? This li’l birdie will tell you how. Wait for the tweets.
• @MicrsftTech4All – News from Microsoft Accessibility team, which strives for technology to be usable by everyone & complements our physical & cognitive abilities.
• @MSDN – Updates from the MSDN site team.
• @adCenterBlog – News, Tips, Tricks & Best Practices From The Guys At Microsoft adCenter

[ Most Microsoft twitter accounts sourced from on10.net ]

Tech News:

Twitter can be a great place to stay on top of the latest tech news, and I often use it as a basic RSS system, and am often reminded to check out TechCrunch.com or the Guardians tech articles when i see their tweets.

• @TechCrunch – TechCrunch.com is a great tech news blog with some interesting stories.
• @GuardianTech – Tech stories from the Guardian
• @Twit – This Week In Tech
• @NYT_tech – New York Times Tech
• @TimesTech – Times (of London) Technology News
• @Digg_Technews - Popular technology stories from Digg.com
• @msntech – Tech and Gadget news from MSN
• @BBCClick – The BBC’s flagship technology TV show.

News:

• @BBCbreaking – Breaking News stories from the BBC.
• @Reuters – Reuters breaking news stories.
• @SkyNews – SkyNews news stories.
• @GoogleNews – Breaking news stories and updates from Google News
• @CNNbrk – CNN.com is among the world’s leaders in online news and information delivery.
• @NBCnews – NBC News — a leading source of global news and information for more than 75 years

Twitter Bots:

Twitter bots are becoming a fun part of the Twitterosphere (Twitter community). Twitter Bots can be like marmite, you either love them or hate them as with most things.

Personally I love some twitter bots (particularly the ones i run) and tend to take the view of don’t like it don’t follow.

Here’s a few of mine and others which I follow which are worth checking out.

• @JacksonBot – Picks up tweets about Micheal Jackson
• @LMAObot – Picks up anything with “LOL”, “Lmao”, “ROFL” etc in it picks up some random and funny tweets.
• @IsDeadBot – Picks up tweets about all things er dead. Which can be more interesting than you might think.
• @NoteRobot – Retweets “Note to self” tweets, very funny and some random laughs!
• @LuvOrHate - Picks up on what people love and hate, again some random interesting tweets – Created by @aaronbassett.

Celebrity Twitterers:

There is no doubt that celebrities have jumped on the twitter bandwagon, be it for self promotion or simply to tweet their life.

I wont go into an extensive list of Celeb twitterers, as there are lots so instead I will share my favourite picks and share with you some great celeb twitter stalker sites!

@StephenFry is one of my favourite twitterers with some interesting posts and insights into an interesting mans life as he goes about his day to day tasks, from visits to the apple store to ponderings a must follow for twitter users.

@lilyroseallen is one of my favourite artists (I know maybe a little sad) but i do love her, and from what i can tell she tweets for “real” and isn’t using twitter purely as a publicity vehicle, which i like you get to see Lily Allen the person.

One of the difficult parts about the web is you don’t really know if the person you are following is the person you think it is, this is where Valebrity.com comes in. Valebrity enables you to “validate” celebrities online so you know who your following is who it says it is!

Worth checking out if you want to follow your favourite celebs.

Also came across a blog post on Mashable.com which is worth checking it out which has 25 celebrities accounts from actors, musicians, politicians and writers which is worth checking out too.

So take a look, follow people and get involved in the wonderful world of twitter!

Don’t forget to follow @Dansgalaxy for updates and randomness from the world of Dan.

Hmm, was just on my twitter page and it wasn’t showing my update total, so naturally i took a screen shot.

However they seem to be back now! yay! (at presenter i have tweeted 1,413 times.

And im sure theres a lot more to come!

So in true blogger style of self promotion.

FOLLOW ME!http://twitter.com/dansgalaxy

I don’t usually comment much about twitter, although i really should talk more about it. Particularly as it is fast becoming a very big part of mine and thousands of other peoples daily Internet lives, twittering every thought, meeting and encounter. It really is rather interesting how things like this can completely change people daily lives and out looks at the world around them… and the rest of us by simply sharing what we do with the world. 

Also i am sure people have noticed that the few posts i have done in the past couple of months have been me having a rant about YouTube which mainly is because YouTube is a big part of my online life and where i am getting a lot of my content both news, and entertainment from, as well of as course all my news feeds on my iPod which has increased my news consumption ten fold since getting it, i love it.

I have also started a new project online, which i won’t talk about much hear as i plan on devoting a whole post to it, hopefully will be fun, and already it seems pretty cool ^^.

Now to talk about the main topic of this post!

Vlogging every day in April

vlogging every day in April, I thought i would give it ago, so seen a few people talking about the challenge of making a vlog everyday in April, and as i want to make more YouTube videos it sounds like a plan, so i hope to be interesting…

Check out my YouTube Channel at http://youtube.com/user/dansgalaxyand also don’t forget to check out the collab channel i started a while ago – http://youtube.com/user/fiveawesomewebgeeks

Its all good, and definitely a bit of fun, that’s life i suppose.

Night all, or should that be morning?

Okay now i have to admit, i was kind of wanting to not release yet another blog post about twitter into the void of bits and bytes which make up the Internet, Twitter or a twitter related site or app seems to be mentioned daily on TechCrunch, and well its just over publicised. Of course part of it is the programmer in me screaming… ITS SO FREAKIN’ SIMPLE!!!!!!! in reality almost any reasonable web developer can create a basic form of twitter with a click of their fingers.

Before i go off on a huge discussion (yes a discussion with myself) just a brief overview of what twitter actually is…

 It’s a service which allows you to update whatever you’re doing, whenever you’re doing it.  

[ Quote lovingly borrowed from a friend -> http://gd-comic.com ]

I think the main cause of the huge success of twitter is the extremally easy to use APIs which enable developers to create apps, sites, gadgets and well ANYTHING which can do anything on twitter, which has lead to the explosion of websites which all use twitter.

Personally I use a twitter sidebar gadget for vista, which is okay, but sucks quite a bit  from a user friendly point of view and well it does my head in sometimes, which is why i started to redevelop it, and will hopefully end up with my own version. which i will of course release if its any good.

I think that twitter is a great service and would hate to see the day when google or Microsoft realise this and decide to buy it for an unbelievable amount of money. While generally I’m not a google basher, we need more standalone things like this keeps the Internet special

As you might have guessed, I’m a twitter user and some days it seems to be all i do, which is strange as usually i do something and then tweet about it…

So stalk me – http://twitter.com/dansgalaxy

Okay, so since i wasnt using Dansgalaxy.co.uk for anything for anything i have been meaning to move the blog over from blog.dansgalaxy.co.uk to the proper domain for a while now, and i finally found the time!

So now its a shorter domain to get to my blog

And no i didnt forget, i added the htaccess permenant redirect so all old links and everything should still work fine lol

After christmas, once i got my new laptop i will hopefully be launching the Five Awesome Web Geeks channel on youtube -> http://youtube.com/fiveawesomewebgeeks so hopefully you can find me and some other awesome geeks being geeky, and no doubt funny and random… so go and subscribe… even though there isnt any er videos er… yea im gonna get on that soon

Also been twittering alot and seem to have people i dont even know following me now so join in stalk follow me -> http://twitter.com/dansgalaxy

Dan

hey all,

not posted for a while on here, just to say im using twitter again, got my gadget installed addded it to my facebook, and an tweating quite a bit so… er stalk me @ http://twitter.com/dansgalaxy

hehe also i think i will move the blog to my main domain, im not doing anything to it (e.g. make the blog be on dansgalaxy.co.uk instead of blog.dansgalaxy.co.uk

 Pff wil have to be clever and put in all my redirects of course  ROFL

this is a hidious post spelling and grammer wise… sorry to all my old teachers who seem to have crept out the woodwork! lol