NETSPEAK

Expanding world of Twitter

This edition of NetSpeak takes yet another look at the expanding world of Twitter, the social messaging service.

From being a status update tool, Twitter ( http://www.hindu.com/biz/2007/03/26/stories/20070326000 91700.htm) has evolved into a much sought after communication platform.

The Twitter phenomenon reverberates across cyberspace and is being embraced by a number of segments including business, politics and education.

Businesses use it to send alerts to team members, keep in touch with customers and the like. Till a few years ago, a web page was sufficient for a business organisation to communicate with the public.

Later, customers started looking for the organisation’s blog as well. Now, a web savvy customer expects business to provide a regular stream of twitter updates too! An enterprise just cannot afford to avoid the Twitter landscape.

Many educationists find Twitter an effective teaching aid to engage students. The ‘Twitter experiment at UT Dallas’ ( http://www.utdallas.edu/~mar046000/usweb/twitterconclusions.htm) that used Twitter extensively to facilitate intense discussions and interactions among students is a good example. Twitter can be used as a presentation aid as well.

Recently this author used Twitter to post live the links and other search commands described during a presentation. This enabled the attendees to easily access the links directly from the Twitter page.

Another important application of Twitter is its use in tracking and finding content. Millions of messages on almost all subjects pass through the Twitter radar. By tuning in to Twitter database with an appropriate keyword, one can filter out relevant tweets.

To facilitate this process several Twitter-based search tools are in place. ‘Twitter Search’ (http://search.twitter.com), the search service from Twitter is a good one to try out. Besides this, several third-party search applications exist — like Topsy (http://topsy.com/) and Crowdeye (http://crowdeye.com/). Twitter messages or tweets are generally sent via the Twitter page or cell-phone SMS. There are several other means for sending/receiving tweets.

Feature-packed third-party twitter clients that enable us to manage twitter messages efficiently are mushrooming. Many such applications are based on Adobe’s AIR ( http://www.adobe.com/products/air/), a platform meant for developing net applications. This means that before installing the AIR based Twitter client, you need to install the freely downloadable AIR module as well. One such twitter client that has become the darling of Twitter users is TweetDeck.

TweetDeck provides a simple user-friendly interface that helps you easily manage tweets. The tool segregates tweets and presents them in separate columns such as ‘All Friends’ (tweets from friends), Mentions (reply tweets) and ‘Direct Messages.’

As already mentioned, the Twitter database is an information goldmine. TweetDeck’s ‘Twitter Search’ facility is an excellent means to track/find information. For instance, if you wish to follow the latest developments on a subject, access the ‘Twitter Search’ option and create a column with an appropriate string.

From now onwards, whenever a tweet with this string hits Twitter, TweetDeck automatically notifies you and displays it on the column, presenting relevant tweets as it happens.

A business can also use this facility, for instance, to track what others say about it.

This valuable feature is very addictive and once you start using it you may get glued to it.

Another significant feature of TweetDeck is the facility that offers a direct link to certain popular Twitter based services (like 12seconds.tv). This (http://12seconds.tv/) is an on-line video update service, similar to Twitter. This service lets you record on-line a video clip of a 12-second duration and post it immediately.

Video recording and posting can be done with your browser and a webcam (or any other video recording device). TweetDeck allows you to record/post video directly from it. When you post a video on to 12 seconds via TweetDeck, a tweet on this will also be passed on to your Twitter account.

We have featured several specialised education video hosting services (like Academicearth). MBAVid ( http://www.mbavid.com/) that hosts videos pertaining to business management is another one of this kind that is worth exploring.

The Youtube channel of BerkmanCenter (http://www. youtube.com/user/BerkmanCenter) is also a good place worth scouting for videos with educational value.

If you wish to improve your English language skills, take a look at ESL Basics (http://eslbasics.com/) that posts English language tutorial videos almost on a daily basis.

Netspeak has featured several tools meant for downloading videos from popular video hosting services such as Youtube.

As new video hosting services continue to emerge regularly, a generic download tool that can download from different video sources could be useful.

The open-source software xVideothief (http://xviservicethief.sourceforge.net/) serves this need with ease.

Once integrated with your computer you can use it to download videos from around 50 video hosting services such as youtube, google video, dailymotion, blip and the like.

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