Lately, I have had a lot of fun playing around with Twitter and learning how this new communications channel can best be leveraged. In the past week, I have created two new Twitter news wires:
For the New York Times news wire I took the RSS feed from the Times Wire webpage and “fed” it through TwitterFeed.com. This service takes the content from any RSS feed and redirects it to a Twitter account(s) you designate. Obviously, you need to “own” the Twitter account you redirect the content. TwitterFeed has continued to improve over the past year since I first discovered it and I’m hoping that Mario, the Founder, will consider using Yahoo! Pipes API to add a auto-translate feature. I know that I could create a “pipe” over at Yahoo! but I have found that the output isn’t that clean and reliable.
For the Inside Sochi 2014 Twitter news wire, I am using Bit.ly’s excellent new feature for multiple accounts. I have been using Bit.ly as my URL shortener of choice for a while but was reticent about setting-up separte accounts for each Twitter account I wanted to send tweets. So it was a very pleasant surprise yesterday when I saw that I could add a bunch of different Twitter accounts and still use a single browser bookmarklet. As a side note, I am attempting to demo CoTweet.com but due to some rendering bugs related to foreign language fonts, it’s not working well for me. The guys over at CoTweet.com say a fix is on the way and so I’ll be interested to compare it to Bit.ly.
I am particularly excited about this news wire for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games because there is currently a dearth of information, in english, for the event and I am hoping that this Twitter account will grow into something larger and more official. I purchased the domain www.insidesochi2014.com last week and I am planning to build some more social media goodness onto that domain. It’s a bit disappointing for me that the official Sochi 2014 website uses so few social media communications channels. If you can believe it….. they don’t even have an RSS feed for their News section. On the other hand, I am interested in working with the Sochi Olympic Committee so this may actually be an opportunity.
…and lastly, I am very proud of my newly developing skills with Fireworks CS4 (Photoshop’s sibling). I created the Twitter icon at the beginning of this post on Wednesday night. I did a bit of research and found the correct “Twitter font,” downloaded it, and then copied over the right hex color. The I added a bevel and a white Stroke to each letter.
It’s great to be able to design web graphics yourself because they play such an important role in setting the right tone for a website. For a couple more examples of my graphic design see the three round icons at the top of the left-hand sidebar. The coolest feature is the ability to make the backgrounds transparent. (By the way, if you are viewing this webpage in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 browser, then you REALLY need to update it immediately. I can’t emphasize enough how much one’s web experience sucks on IE 6. Thanks to Christian Olofsson (who, by the way, is eagerly looking for Twitter followers – click link to see why) who showed me last night why IE 6 is the bane of web designers everywhere (I happily use Apple’s Safari browser and the Firefox browser both of which are compatible on Windows and Macs) and for the life of me can’t understand why everyone doesn’t also). Here’s the link to update to IE 8
I hope you enjoy these two new Twitter news wires as much as I enjoyed creating them. If you have any suggestions for more Twitter accounts I should create, please let me know.
Have a great weekend and I’m hoping that a little of the sunshine here in Krasnodar can find its way to Boston, where Summer still hasn’t really arrived.
PS: Installment #2 on Istanbul Notes will be coming tomorrow and it will look at lodging options on the European side.
PPS: I almost forgot…. my “main” Twitter account is @timothypost and if you STILL have not signed-up for Twitter, come on over and discovery why, “Twitter is fun.”
