Twitter

More text here …

The iPad offers a fantastic web browsing experience: starts up immediately and pages load pretty quick on home and work wifi.

However, I’m a bit frustrated by not being able to upload content from the iPad to sites I use regularly like Flickr, Blogger, WordPress, Scribd and Blackboard. Ok, apps exist that enable this but I pretty much need a different app for every site I upload to. Why can’t I just go through the browser?

I’m currently writing this on the iPad using the WordPress app. I’ll try other blogging apps too.

Let’s embed an image:

Here’s a tool that enables you to embed tweets into a website or blog post:

• http://media.twitter.com/blackbird-pie/

This is what is looks like:

It’s not displaying well on this KU-hosted WordPress blog (need to check out why) but works well on my Blogger one.

One of the behaviours we observed was students writing comments over 2, 3 and as many as 4 separate tweets. However, when 140 really isn’t enough there are a few tools out there that allow longer posts:

• http://www.xltweet.com

These are the areas I’d like to cover in the ‘advanced’ section of the pre-lunch workshop:

• Twitter ‘clients’
• scheduling tweets
• groups and Twitter lists
• displaying backchannels
• widgets
• polling tools

There are a few tools – some free, some paid-for – that allow you to set up a poll and tweet the link to it via Twitter. They’re not really Twitter polling tools as such as they sit on their own web site and can be linked to and embedded in a number of ways. However, they make the publishing of the link easy.

Here are a few we’ve tried:

• Twt Poll (http://twtpoll.com/)
• Poll Daddy (http://twitter.polldaddy.com/)
• Poll Everywhere (http://www.polleverywhere.com/)

Here are my top four tools for displaying backchannels (in order of preference):

• BackChannel.us (my personal favourite although it’s playing up a bit recently)
• Visible Tweets (Matt likes this one and I have to admit it looks great)
• Twitterfall (often used at conferences but I find it a bit busy)
• Twazzup (just come across this one – highlights, top links, word clouds and more)

I’m not including IS Parade in my recommendations although it is a thing of great beauty (if not fantastically useable ).

Finally, it’s possible to display a Twitter backchannel in a PowerPoint presentation. Try this out:

• www.sapweb20.com/blog/powerpoint-twitter-tools/

There are some useful tools that allow you to schedule your tweets. What this means is that you can compose your tweets on one day and publish them on a different day and time. Here they are then, a few of the tools we’d recommend:

• Social Oomph (formerly known as TweetLater)
• Hoot Suite (more than just a tweet scheduler)
• Twuffer (log in with your Twitter username and password)

I’ve created a TweepML group for workshop participants (Nottingham, 4th May 2010).

TweepML is a good way of enabling a group of users to follow one another’s accounts with just a few mouse clicks. It’s more work for the tutor to set it up but simplifies things for students.

Another good group using TweepML is Steve Wheeler’s learning technology professionals:

Tweetdeck seems to be the default client for serious twitterers but I’ve always found it a bit, well, ‘busy’. I’ve got Tweetie installed on my Mac at home and it’s got a much cleaner interface that I find preferable to Tweetdeck’s ‘Clapham-Junction-at-rush-hour’ style.

There are some really good web-based ‘clients’ though that offer a better user experience of Twitter and that are particularly helpful if you’ve multiple accounts or following a number of hashtagged conversations.

Here they are then, my top 5 with thanks to @teachlearn, @AJCann and @mojo_girl

1. Brizzly
   http://brizzly.com/
   
2. TwitIQ
   http://twitiq.com/
   
3. HootSuite
   http://hootsuite.com/
   
4. Seesmic
   http://seesmic.com/app/

5. TweetFunnel
   http://www.tweetfunnel.com