Flow – Page 2 – Sol Young

What you miss in the flow

Posted on April 4, 2008 by Sol Young with 16 Comments

(interior picture from The Towers of Numar, by Michael Gagne)

It’s been almost two weeks since I started using Twitter as a primary source of news, links, and other fascinating bits of information. The approach has been awesome and I’ve discovered a ton of people and sites which I now return to. It’s been eye opening.

But I’ve been missing sites previously frequented. The time I’ve spent in the flow cut in to time spent reading feeds and visiting sites. And while my Google Reader feeds are grossly limited compared to the nearly 5,000 people I follow on Twitter, there is still some attachment and familiarity that goes missing.

I share my Google Reader items as a feed (RSS) or on a page (HTML), and of course it’s aggregated on my FriendFeed. I am ‘sol‘ on Twitter.

Posted in Education, Flow, Twitter

All incoming Twitters are saved and searchable in Gmail

Posted on April 3, 2008 by Sol Young with 1 Comment

I came by this as a latent side effect from switching to my flow method of using Twitter. It seems a lot of people want a quick and easy way to save their Twitter stream and be able to search it later…

To do this, you need to set up Twitter so you’re getting (or also getting) your updates via a GTalk/Gmail account. It’s very easy:

First – set up Chat in Gmail

1. If you don’t have a Gmail account, get one! After logging in, go to “settings” and hit the “Chat” tab.

2. Choose to “Save chat history in my Gmail account”.
3. Save this setting.

Second – set up Twitter to send notices to your Gmail account

1. In your Twitter account, go to “Settings” -> “Phone & IM”.
2. Enter details for your Gmail account.

3. Save the settings.
note: Only updates from Twitterers you follow and are selected for IM updates will be sent to your Gmail account.

Last – Log in to Gmail and keep that browser open

1. Choose to Sign into chat. Your Twitter updates will start arriving in Gmail.
2. Keep a tab or window open. If you log out of Gmail, or close the browser or tab, the updates will stop arriving since Twitter only sends updates to users that are logged in. Simply keep a browser tab open (very easy to do if you’re already a Gmail aficionado).

Posted in Flow, Gmail, Google, Twitter, XMPP

Flow – Day 9 – I switched to iChat for Twitter XMPP

Posted on April 1, 2008 by Sol Young with 4 Comments

386 – 7 minutes

When following a lot of friends in a flow environment and using XMPP, one sees the above numbers in less than ten minutes. I’d been using Adium, but Adium doesn’t smooth scroll between each received tweet. It constantly jerks messages upwards and has made it virtually impossible to have a meaningful experience. There are often times when I want to read each incoming tweet. A good, smooth, reading experience was needed.

iChat has a slightly smoother hit at each received message, and is therefore much more enjoyable to read. The interface is customizable enough, but nothing quite as nice as some of Adium’s minimal themes.

I was mostly hesitant to switch since Adium has outstanding AppleScript support. I’ve been thinking of prototyping something (given a couple hours – someday). Apparently iChat has something even better which I should have known about… Callbacks! A script can fire for each received message.

This will make dynamic, real-time, filtering a reality.

The start of something very cool…

Posted in Education, Flow, iChat, OS X, Prediction, Reviews, Social Networking, Software Development, Twitter, XMPP

Flow – Day 9 – Open it up

Posted on April 1, 2008April 1, 2008 by Sol Young with 2 Comments

I’m used to the speed of the flow and it’s slow. It’s time to open it up and look for five-figures…

Useful link: flow entries

Follow me on Twitter: sol

I read the flow of XMPP Twitter traffic with breakfast and in the evenings. I then scan it when checking email or if I catch a lot of added traffic on the IM window. The part which most people don’t understand is how this translates and how it’s even immaginable to distinguish signal from noise here.

It’s easy. I’m now following over 4,000 fellow Twitterers (Twitterites? Twitterans?). The TPM (Tweets Per Minute) ranges between 20 and 35. This equates to the Twitterers I’m following announcing, approximately, once every two hours (obviously some are once a day and some are every 10 minutes).

Reading the flow at this rate is easy. You have tweets coming in 24 hours per day, but you absolutely can’t follow it the entire time. Feeling like you have to read every Twitter announcement your friends send is the first psychological obstacle to get over. Once you get beyond that feeling of needing to maintain control, you free yourself to dip in to the news of the moment as reported by everybody.

To ensure I’m not missing any messages specifically to me, I keep a browser tab open (usually immediately to the right of my GMail tab) to the Twitter Replies page.

The main trick to keeping a strong signal is being selective in who you follow. By tuning this early, you avoid needing as much filtration later. To date I have only filtered out a single spammer account.

One last point is that some feel this approach is a pull technique in which I’m getting, but not giving back. I disagree. I submit my status and the special news and information I come by. I encourage people to follow me so they’ll be able to have an insight in to my thought processes and activities.

Given the present rate of flow, I see 10,000 as the next step. It’ll take a while to get there with a selective approach. In the meantime I’m interested in metrics and whether Twitter will continue to be a best source of this data.

Any service could provide an XMPP flow… Imagine Facebook, MySpace, Pownce, etc, offering an XMPP feed of updates. FriendFeed with an XMPP flavor would be incredible.

Posted in Education, Facebook, Flickr, Flow, Pownce, Prediction, Social Networking, Twitter, Web Services, XMPP