Internet Barf

Easy ways to spot Twitter Spam

• You get a @reply message from someone you don't recognize
• The message sent "xx min ago from API" (see below)
• When you try to view the Tweet (not the link) it might be deleted
• All of the tweets from this account say the same thing (see below)
• All of the links go to the same place and they are all ads (or worse)

Whoever these people are I assume they are somehow creating random Twitter accounts and making them look just real enough to get by the Twitter police (profile pic, "real" name etc) and then trick you into clicking these links so that they get paid for the ads to follow.

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Inside the Minds of Twitter Users

Mashable has a post today called "Inside the Minds of Twitter Users" by Ann Handley of MarketingProfs.com. You should check it out before reading on.

The survey of 432 Twitter users was conducted by MarketingProfs on Twitter from 4/8 to 4/15, 2009. The data was collected and analyzed by Allen Weiss, MarketingProfs CEO, Professor at USC’s Marshall School.

I enjoyed reading the post although I thought it was strange that only 432 Twitter users were surveyed.

I must have missed the survey and since nobody asked me for my opinion I'll make it 433 Twitter users here:

"You should follow people who follow you"
Mildly Disagree
I say mildly because of course I look at people who follow me, and I might follow them back. If I do, it's not because they followed me. It's because I am interested in seeing what they have to say. And that doesn't mean that I won't unfollow them next week. I think I am going to make my own version of the napkin flow charts that I have seen others make about this.

"People you follow should follow you back"
Strongly Disagree
Never. As I mentioned before if I am following you it's because I am interested in what you have to say, what you do for a living, who you are, or any number of other things. If I followed everyone who followed me, just because, my network would be a useless mess.

"People who have a large number of followers are smarter than those who don't"
Strongly Disagree
Umm no. Britney Spears has 1,113,126 followers, nuff said. You don't need a bunch of followers to have a great Twitter network. It's your network, do whatever you want with it. I don't believe that Ashton Kutcher enjoys Twitter any more than I do even though he has 1,344,5456 more followers than I do.

"People who have a large number of followers are more respected than those who don't"
Strongly Disagree
I don't use Twitter to get respect. I have a life outside of Twitter for that. Ashton Kutcher can commission a billboard and go on Oprah to get to 1 million followers and beyond and I still don't respect him anymore than I did three months ago. I shouldn't make it sound like I have anything against Ashton Kutcher. In fact, I respect him just for using Twitter in the first place. He doesn't tweet much about his newest movie, or TV show, or other self promotion. He and his wife tweet normal things that normal people do in their funny, normal lives. Every now and then they might drop a plug for a project or a good cause, and good for them. That makes them real, rather than just soul-less celebrities. And for that alone, they get my respect.

"I feel bad when I tweet something and nobody responds"
Mildly Disagree
I say mildly because it is always nice to see @replies come in and I can almost guarantee that if you have ever @replied to me you get extra points on the follow flow chart. That being said, @replies are not my main goal when tweeting. I am here for me. This is me. If you don't agree, if you don't like me, or if I have offended you, the unfollow button is a click away. I am well aware the there are plenty of people who follow me who don't agree with some of my views but most of them hang around just to lurk. And that's fine too. Afterall, that's how I started.

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Dinner at my Mom's house tonight [pic]

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SB I-15 near Point of the Mountain, UT @ 8:26am

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Made pancakes for breakfast today

With a few hints from my wife, I decided to make pancakes with Xander today. We were all out of the box mix so we hit the net for a recipe. We used this recipe from allrecipes.com

They turned out great.

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@treywallis I just looked up DJ Lance...

in response to: http://twitter.com/treywallis/status/1385499383

The minute I looked that up Xander said: "Oh yeah that guy is a total freak." Check out the little Asian dude gettin his freak on!

Which, of course took us on a journey of funny YouTube videos that landed at Daler Mehndi and the Tunak Tunak Tun dance. I love the internet.

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Extreme Sheep LED Art [vid 2:45]

This totally reminds me of Lite-Brite when I was young. My brother has an Australian Shepherd, He's gonna love this.

Extreme Sheep LED Art

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Flying from SLC to MEM today. I did not check a bag. This is all of my belongings for 6 days [pic]

This started from a conversation with @treywallis about an upcoming international trip proposing the idea of only packing one bag and carrying it on. My first response was "are you crazy?" he went on to explain that it is very feasible if done right. We talked about packing, the right bag, and doing sink laundry in the hotel. So now I find myself facing an extra (and ridiculous) checked bag fee and a flight with a transfer to IA Summit 2009 in Memphis. So which is more risky, forgetting some item or not having room for frivolities, or losing everything for who knows how long?

I'm taking the plunge.

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SuperNews! Twouble with Twitters

I thought this was funny. I hear this from people who don't use Twitter all the time. It's even more ironic that this was posted on current.com the same network that aired the 2008 Presidential Debates with a live Twitter stream overlayed on the boradcast.

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Local Sound construction timeline 01/24/09 - 03/14/09

I spent yesterday helping my brother at Local Sound Studio in Salt Lake. We put up some insulation and then put up drywall on one of the main walls. Mark is also keeping a record of this project on his Posterous blog. I'm still trying to figure out what the best way is to edit all of this stuff together and post it on the web is. I really want to get it figured out before IA Summit next week since I hope to capture some cool media there as well.

This is first video was taken over the span of about 9 hours while we worked. I posted it to Viddler and then made some notes along the bottom. The beginning and end shots are panoramics that I stitched together before and after.

I created this with Windows Movie Maker which seems to be a very simple way to get video from one place to another with minor complication.

I created this with Picasa and posted it to YouTube using the upload function from within Picasa. This seemed to have less functionality than Windows Media Maker but it was much easier to use.

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