Twitter of the Future

by JWMcGregor on October 26, 2009

I had a dream last night that caused me to wake up at 4:30am and race out to write down some thoughts. The dream was about a marketplace where everyone was shouting out to the crowd and selling the same product. I saw flashes of the bull pit at the New York Stock Exchange. Some thoughts dropped in which I got up and wrote down. While I was writing a had a tangent which was to do with twitter.

I saw a tag cloud of tweets
A massive cloud of tweets where tweets pop in and out. and you are wading through with phrases coming at you from all directions. some are advertisements some are links some are thoughts. Some are insane.
It’s the new marketplace The hawkers deal in electrons instead of cabbages.
You are in the vortex you are immersed in it, catching the phrases and the colours and the light and shade. And there is sound that is mingled, and comes in and out as you navigate through .

“Come and get your widgets here buy one get another for half price.” “Special today only.” The voices go with the tweets. There are pictures and vids as well. little two dimensional landscapes floating past in a three dimensional application interface.
The cloud is not real but it may as well be because there is no computer screen. The screen is the cloud. The sound is perfect and it surrounds you. fading in and out and matches your travel.

It’s confusing, just like the largest market square in the universe. What an interesting concept. !

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Brizzly: a new killer twitter application

by JWMcGregor on September 29, 2009

brizzly-app-logo
Deceptively simple.
That is what I have come to think now that I have tried the new twitter interface application which goes by the name of Brizzly. After managing to wrangle an invite to the beta I logged into the application. I have been poking around for a few hours now playing with the functions of the application. The following are my observations, likes and dislikes from this experience:

Settings:
Standard and Wide format. gives you the ability to shrink the display space or widen it up. I really liked this. Both Formats were quite adequate however i preferred wide format which seemed to be the default anyway.

Up to 5 twitter accounts can be added. I was unable to test this. call me dumb but I could not figure out how to log out of one twitter account as was instructed. without getting disconnected from the application. this feature still has some way to go.

I would like the ability to change the look and feel of the application in this section. A couple of colour schemes would to choose from would be nice. Sorry guys, you have not even released this en masse and you are already hassled for more features!

The Terms of Service. is probably fairly standard, I amk a little concerned that they say that they may pass information on to third parties. there should be an opt out somewhere in the settings section for this.

The help section is the same as everyone else’s in the industry. pretty useless. But what do you really need to know? I liked the API section and will be playing with this functionality more when I have more time. here is an example:

http://pics.brizzly.com/thumb_sm_5Y3jpg produces:
Sydney Harbour Bridge during dust storm
cool! and also very useful.

The Main Screen
Trends and News
very well thought out. This is a very useful feature and could be considered the ace in the hole for the application. A human touch added to the interface definitely distinguishes it above that of the twitter web interface.
Trends are explained as well which for non Americans especially is a big bonus.
Timeline
Tweets are presented in a fairly normal way. There may be more whitespace or something but it seems a little cleaner and easier to read.
Media in Timeline.
One of the best features is the ability to see media right there in the timeline. I have seen pictures and video in the timeline. The first time I nearly fell off my chair.
vidintimeline
DM as chat.!
Isn’t that what we wanted all along? Dm has so much potential but seems to be completely underutilised. The Brizzly boys have come up with this chat like box that give you the ability to use DM just like you would use IM. I was able to test this out and was really surprised how well it worked.
Other features

  • Drafts – you can save the tweat for later.
  • Pictures – upload your pics, tweat them then look at them in the pictures section. from here you can use the API to add them to blogs , email or other web pages.
  • Saved Searches – Your saved searches are easily accessible right there in the left hand menu.
  • Groups - I did not use this feature, others may find this useful.
  • As a 64bit ubuntu user I have been limited by the ability of Air apps to catch up to this O/S so I have been unable to use tweetdeck.Brizzly is a lifesaver to me. After using brizzly for the past couple of hours I would definately use it in preference to any appliacation i have tried so far including Tweetdeck and Twitter web interface.

    As I said in my opening line, Deceptively Simple. The design is very elegant as to make it appear so. Full marks to the designers. I am sure the few minor bugs I noted will be fixed before the application gets too much older. My prediction is this application will go viral and get a huge fan base. I am one already.

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    Give me back my Avatar – is 11 the new 7?

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    I recently wrote a post asking Twitter to give me back my avatar and background. Since then I posted followup basically saying nothing has happened since. A few days back I got sick of looking at my twitter page in its nude state and decided I had waited long enough, so I redressed [...]

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    August 17, 2009

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    tweetfollow.com tacky tacky tacky!

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    Shannon and Derek – twin tweet breakup – BARF!

    August 10, 2009

    Breakup Announcements. This is apparently a part of a new trend of celebrity tweets. Words cannot describe how cheesy I think this sort of thing is.

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