1.19.2009

It's been a while, so I figured I would get a quick post in. Life's been flying by and I need time to catch up haha. Classes are picking up pretty hard and I added two internships this semester. One is working in with this newly started business in Valpo and the other is with Dawdle.com. Add those jobs onto the radio station and I'm a pretty busy boy.

Speaking of the radio station, I had the really neat opportunity of interviewing Zach Braff a couple weeks ago on the day of the season premiere of the new season of Scrubs. I didn't really know this before hand, but he is apparently a really big celebrity to most people. I had more people ask me questions about him and the interview than when I had a chance to interview Woz, which the inner nerd in me found utterly ridiculous.

Anyways, here is a link. I would love for you to leave a comment or send me an e-mail to Cameron@CameronBanga.com. I really want to know what you like/hate about the interview and how I can improve.
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Follow me on Twitter!
www.twitter.com/cameronbanga

1.02.2009

I wanted to throw a quick guide together for those who are interested in using Twitter, since I have been getting some questions about it as of late. If you really know me, then you are most likely aware of the fact that I am a HUGE proponent of the service and I want every single person I know to use it.

So what is Twitter and why should you use it? If you're on Facebook (and I'll assume you are if you're even somewhat interested in checking out this guide), I want you to think about what the purpose of a Facebook status is. Do you change your status often? Do you ever find yourself checking out what your friends are up to? It can be addicting to know what your friends are up to at any given time, can't it?

Twitter works essentially the same way as your Facebook status, except it works a lot better with your cellphone (you use that a lot, don't you?). You can have your updates posted on your blog. You can even have your Twitter sync with your Facebook status, so that way your status will update when you tweet (a common word for a Twitter post, you'll catch onto the lingo quick enough).

Frankly, there are a lot of ways to use the service and it's hard to explain to someone who has never tried it out. Hopefully, this little beginner's guide will give you a small look into why Twitter can be so dang cool. Let's start by taking a look at the sign up process.

When you first visit Twitter.com, you'll find yourself at this landing page. After your initial account creation, you will enter your user name and password to log-in. If you don't have an account yet, you just need to click the big green "Join the conversation" button to begin.

The sign-up process is fairly simple and similar to other websites that you may have joined in your internet career. In Twitterland, it's fairly common to use your real name as a user name. When looking for things to avoid in a user name, remember that each tweet (the slang word for a Twitter post, you remember that, right? you're catching on already!) can only be 140 characters long and it is advantageous to keep your user name short (I should have thought about that when I chose CameronBanga, oh well, no going back now). You also may want to refrain from using underscores (they look like this _) because those tend to be hard to type in on cellphones and you want it to be as easy as possible for friends to get in contact with you.
Now that you have successfully signed up for a Twitter account, let's take a look at what you need to know about your home page. Mine may look a bit different than yours right now and that's alright. You can always tweak the colors and look of the page like I did, but the basic principles always remain the same. At the top left corner, you'll see a huge Twitter logo. Click on that at any time to return to this home page. Below that, you'll see a huge text box asking you "What are you doing?" With this box, you enter in tweets (I don't have to explain the word anymore, right? see, you're catching on super quick). Your tweets can be as basic or extravagant as you would like, that's the beauty of Twitter. The only rule is, your tweet can be no longer than 140 characters in length. You can tweet one hundred times a day, five times a day, about important events in your life, or about the lady in a funny hat next to you at the grocery store. It doesn't matter at all, but you do need to keep it under 140 characters in length. You may think that this limits your artistic freedom to express what you truly feel, but it really doesn't. Brevity is key and just may be Twitter's greatest strength. Below your tweet box, you will find the timeline of tweets for the people you follow (we'll talk about how to follow later). In Twitter, you follow your friends, family, or just people you find interesting. Imagine a person you follow to be similar to a Facebook or MySpace friend. This is just a big list of everything that they are tweeting in real time. Check this out and keep up with friends often, because that's the main point of Twitter. Taking a look at your friends' tweets would be like checking out your friends' Facebook statuses. Moving further along the tour of your home page, you will find a little menu bar on the top right of the page. Here you can view your profile, find new friends, or change your settings. Below that in the blue box on the right, you will see the number of people you are following/following you. You can also check out your @replies (what is that? we'll discuss later as well), direct messages (again, we'll talk after the tour), favorite tweets (you can favorite tweets that you find to be super hilarious or useful for easy findings later), as well as a tweet roll for everyone using the service in the world.

So we've taken the tour, you have a user name, but you don't have anyone to follow. Now you need to use Twitter's search tool or get a user name from a friend that you know on the service (as a general note, everyone's Twitter page can be found at twitter.com/username. for example, I can be found at twitter.com/cameronbanga). Once you get to the page of a friend or company you would like to follow, you'll be presented with a page that look's similar to this.
This is my soon to be friend, Darth Vader. You may have heard of him, since he was a big movie star long ago in a galaxy far, far away. The page looks similar to yours, except fo a big "Follow" button below the avatar. If you want to follow a person (and I really want to follow Darth Vader), then click that gray button and you'll be presented with this screen.
Now, everything Darth Vader tweets will be in the timeline on my home page. Everything is starting to make sense now, isn't it? The more people you follow, the more tweets in your timeline, the more fun Twitter becomes. Go find some friends and follow them on Twitter, but keep reading this guide after you're finished because I have some more important things to tell you about your favorite new web service.

Check out your settings menu (you can find that in the menu bar on the upper right portion of any page on Twitter) and set up your device for your mobile phone right now. Trust me. Twitter is an experience that you get the most out of once you immerse yourself in it. Click the Devices tab and set up your mobile phone (the site has instructions for you, they are real easy to follow and you should be able to set it up in now time by yourself). You can now send(just send a text message to Twitter's text number, 40404) and receive tweets through your cell phone (well, not exactly receive yet. there are a couple steps that we need to do first which I'll talk about in a minute). Remember that standard text messaging rates do apply, so be careful if you don't have unlimited texting. Twitter itself doesn't charge you a penny for this service, but you can go through a bunch of text messages real quick by receiving or sending tweets. Like I mentioned earlier, you do need to go through a couple more steps before receiving tweets on your cell phone. Let's go back to Darth Vader's page.
Remember this screen from when we followed him? If I want to receive Darth Vader's tweets to my mobile phone, I need to click the little bubble next to On below "Device updates." This may seem like a pain in the butt, but it makes sure that you only receive text message updates from people you really want to recieve them from. It may not seem like a big deal at first, but you will soon find yourself following a bunch of people and it may become somewhat overwelming to receive everyone's tweets to your cell. Are we done and will I receive Darth Vader's next tweet to my cellphone? Not quite. Let's go back to our home page.

Scroll down the page the little and below the pictures of everyone you are following, you'll see a couple more bubbles under "Device Updates." You need to make sure that the bubble next to phone is blue and filled in. Now, I will receive Darth Vader's (and any other people I set up for) tweets on my cell phone. I can reply to those from my mobile phone as well. Wait, what is a reply you ask? We'll let's talk about that right now.
When you hover over any tweet in your home page timeline, you will see a hollow star and arrow appear. The star allows you to favorite a tweet. By clicking on it, the color of the star will become yellow and you can find that tweet in your favorites page. By clicking on the arrow, you can @reply to a tweet.
@Replies are Twitter's way or specifically aiming a tweet at a specific person. Here, I let Aaron know that I enjoyed his suggestion. When he clicks on the @Replies tab on the right part of his home page, he can see every tweet that has ever been directed to him. You can use @replies to answer questions, as I just did. You can also use it to tell other Twitter users that you are hanging out or doing something with a specific person, as in this example, "Hanging out with @hcassin and @adamamin. Going to see a movie." As you can see, it's better to have a short user name so that when people @reply you, your user name doesn't take a whole bunch of characters out of the 140 character tweet limit. Twitter also allows for direct messages, which are private between you and the person you are direct messaging with.

So now you can maybe just start to see the benefits of signing up with Twitter. It's a great social networking tool and allows you to keep up with tons of friends through short tweets. You can learn a bunch more about people you know and work with while also having an amazing way to get in contact with them as well. So now that you know the basics, what else is there to learn about the service?

There are lots of great tools and services which help make the Twitter experience ever better. As a I mentioned before, Twitter is best when you fully immerse yourself in the experience. You need to use your phone, a desktop client, TwitPic, etc in order to gain the full benefit of Twitter. Let's take a look at some of the other Twitter tools that you can use.

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application that gives you a fully functional client on your desktop. Here you can make tweets, see your timeline, see @replies, create groups, and follow popular trends without needing to hit your web browser. Once you start following a bunch of people, you will enjoy groups and easy viewing of @replies to keep up with all the tweets flying your way.

If you want to see what other people are saying around the Twitter universe, check out http://search.twitter.com. Here, you can enter in a key word and see what others are saying about any topic. It's a great way to keep up with popular topics in the news or to see what people are saying about the company you work for, your favorite sports team, the weather, or anything else.

On an iPhone or iPod Touch? Check out Twitterific or the many other Twitter apps available on Apple's Application Store. These apps allow for more functionality on the small screen.
TwitPic is a website that lets you easily post pictures in tweets. Just sign in using your Twitter user name, follow the instructions, and you can send images through e-mail or text message which will be posted by link as tweets from your Twitter account. It's a great way to break from the 140 character threshold, since a picture is worth a thousand words. And I'm pretty sure that if you had a thousand words, you would also have more than 140 characters.

There are tons of applications and websites which help you get more out of Twitter and you can definitely check those out and learn about them on your own as you use the service more and more. Hopefully this guide helped you take your first steps into one of my favorite web services and if you have any questions, feel free to send them to me at Cameron@CameronBanga.com.