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Our recent work with National Geographic, the MetaLens Virtual Earth Viewer also got some good use and some press in the Coloradoan newspaper.  David Wright, National Geographic’s Director of Professional Products, used the site we created to post a photo journal of the recent effects of a tornado that hit nearby Windsor, Colorado.  It was a great use of the site in raising local awareness of the devastation the tornado left in its wake.  If you’d like to donate to the Windsor Relief Fund, visit the City of Windsor website to find out how you can help those in need.

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srdny76 I just learned I was steps away from a vegan ice cream parlor yesterday! Yay! There’s a vegan ice cream parlor!

caseypatton ate some sweet, sweet moe’s bbq tonight.

CheesecakeBree Tired… but I have a few things I need to do before bed. (It’s not late enough for me to fall asleep anyway.)

girliegeek if your friends won’t tell ya you got spinach in your teeth, WHO WILL?

Truly scintillating, I know.  But, I’m trying to figure out how useful Twitter can be beyond reporting the mundane details of your life for all the world to see.  At first I thought, maybe this is a good replacement for instant messaging.  You can type something in and instantly message, well…everyone else on Twitter (or at least those who want to follow your life).  Is this effective communication?  Not sure.  Maybe, just maybe Twitter can be put to good use after all.  Good meaning: productive, useful, not wasting your time, not tying you to technology when you can be doing something else with your time (work or dare I say, even fun stuff like going outdoors!).  Here’s my list of potentially good uses for Twitter:

1. Emergency response: People can use the relatively low bandwidth messaging of Twitter to send messages to entire response teams instantaneously.  No mixed messages.  No dropped calls. Everyone on the team gets the Tweets (it’s what Twitter posts are called).  Very effective, and they can be tagged with locations as well.
2. Conference back-channels: OK, so maybe not super productive, but if you’re at a conference, you can provide live commentary about the speakers, their lame PowerPoints, their incorrect statements, bad haircuts…you name it.  Not only are you sharing with other conference attendees, you’re sharing your commentary on the conference with others who may not have been able to attend.  Plus, it’s great for adding some fun and excitement during really bad PowerPoints (it worked really well at Where 2.0 recently).
3. Task tracking: OK, not exciting, but useful…use it track your daily work tasks.  “Started working on foo functionality”…”Finished working on foo functionality”. Boring to the world, useful to you.  Plus, if you’re team is all following, it provides instant status updates on your tasks…and you thought daily stand ups gave good visibility into task status!!!
4. IN/OUT of office: OK, another not real sexy use, but it’s good for in/out of office status with location info.  Especially good when you’re on the road.
5. Promoting you blog posts: Slightly self serving, but effective.  You can let people know when you have a new blog post up.  Hopefully, you’re blog is compelling enough to have established a good subscriber base and you don’t need to resort to this tactic…but worth a try if you’re trying to build your blog base.  Probably good for directing traffic to a website too. I’ll test this out and let you know how many people visit this blog and our website after posting the addresses on Twitter.
6. News Reader: Some online news sources now issue Tweets.  Good for those people who like their news items short and sweet…can you say Short Attention Span Theater? Check out CNN, BBC and many others.
7. Quick feedback: On project teams, use it to do voting.  Post an idea and ask your followers or team members to vote on it or comment on it.  Really good for geographically dispersed teams.
8. Live coverage: For real time events or for folks who do field work, provide live coverage of what’s going on to your followers (OK, a lot like #2, but I’m trying to get to 10 here to make this whole argument worthwhile).
9. Release/Build notifications: Notify team members or customers/clients of current software releases or builds.
10. Job candidate backgrounds: Alright, this one may be borderline, but if someone is interviewing with you for a job, check to see if they Twitter.  If they do, check their Twitter feed to find out a little bit more about them.  You may not want to know that they are part of the Society for Creative Anachronism…but hey, it could be useful.

Whew, made it to 10…didn’t think I’d get there.  I’m sure there are plenty of other good uses for Twitter and I’d like to hear them if you have some ideas.  Hopefully, Twitter works out better than instant messaging.  When I think about IM’ing, I think about people taking longer to say less (just pick up the phone and talk to me).  I think Twitter is potentially more useful than IM but we’ll have to see where it all goes.  However, if I have to constantly wade through Tweets like these:

PhilippaJane trim milk hot chocolate and marshmellows- helps me through today

I might be more inclined to spend my time checking out I Can Has Cheezburger…it’s much more entertaining.  BTW, if you want to follow me on Twitter, check me out at http://twitter.com/ChrisSpagnuolo…but I’m not promising anything!!!

more cat pictures

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UPDATE: So, a few people wanted to know my high score. Here it is:

No related posts.

While I was checking out one on of my favorite blogs/websites (Guy Kawasaki’s How to Change the World) I noticed  a button on his site that linked to Guy’s Visual CV.  It was way cool.  Visual CV is a new online Visual Resume site.  Not only can you include the usual resume fodder, but you can add portfolios, videos, writing samples, audio clips, code samples, links to your websites…you name it..for FREE.  So, if you’re out looking for a job consider using this instead sending a paper resume.  As a hiring manager, I’d much rather get rich content like this than a lame Word resume.  And if you’re not looking for a job, it’s a great way to promote yourself to your customers and clients.

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According to a recent article in Smithsonian Magazine, a research team captured a group of adult and juvenile these birds in Washington State and flew them to New Jersey.  After placing radio collars on their backs, the birds were released.  The adults headed straight toward their usual wintering grounds in the American southwest.  The juveniles, who were making their very first migration, head due south toward Florida.

How did the adults know where to fly?  The researchers say that the sparrows instinctively fly due south on their first migration and along the way, they build a mental map of their wintering grounds that allows them to return there from any other location.  The adults had a mental map of their flyway and were able to follow it to return their wintering grounds.  So, how’s that for an avian cartographer (that’s a bird map maker to the rest of us)?

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1. Map My Ride:Combines my two favorite passions, Maps and Cycling.  If you’re into running, check out Map My Run as well.
2. Runstoppable:Combines my two second favorite passions, Maps and Running
3. WikiMapia: The user community can enter info about different places.  I love the whole Wiki concept.  Combining it with geography is awesome
4. FlickrVision: Combines two of my favorite sites, Flickr and Google Maps
5. AP News: Recent AP News headlines on a map showing where the story is from.  Maybe Miss Teen South Carolina could find out where “The Iraq” is now.
6. Wines and Times: Find wineries and wine events anywhere in the U.S.  Great, easy to use interface.  If you prefer beer, check out Beer Coastr.
7. Platial: A great social mapping site
8. Flight Tracker: Real time flight status and location of any commercial flight.  Geeky…not sure how useful it is.  But cool.
9. The Great Whale Trail Map: Follows the migration of humpback whales.  Nothing too gee-whiz about the site, but I love humpback whales and think this site helps raise public awareness about the unfortunate whaling that still occurs in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.
10. MapleCroft Maps:  Awareness building via visual data representation. What is really cool about their maps, besides the tremendous breadth of issues they cover, are the additional resources linked to the map.  Includes more than 30 topical maps on various issues such as carbon resources, climate change, corporate governance, greenhouse gas emissions, natural disasters, pandemics, renewable energy use, aid, child labour, digital inclusion, displacement, education, HIV/AIDS, landmine risk, malaria, military expenditure, political risk, poverty, tuberculosis and water.  Simply amazing!  (Saved the best for last).

If you have a favorite Google mashup (or any web mapping site) I’d love to hear about it.

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1. Where 2.0: Adrian Holovaty, EveryBlock
2. Where 2.0: Lior Ron, Google
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