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I just finished reading this article on NYtimes.com about the Phoenix lander and the team using twitter to answer questions for the public and keep kind of a public relations mini-blog. Pretty freakin’ cool.

I’ve been using Twitter since around June of 2007 I think, and while it’d be more useful in a bigger town for the mobile services, it’s pretty neat in general. You can check my updates here.

How cool would this be in the class room? Imagine you’re in an elementary or junior high science class and your science teacher is pretty knowledgeable of the web. He creates a MrSmithsClass twitter account for use in the class room where students can ask him questions about homework or he can post assignments or extra credit work.

Now imagine he tells you that you can ask him questions about the Phoenix lander. He makes a list of the top 10/20/whatever questions his students asked and asks @MarsPhoenix, who proceeds to answer questions. It may be through the internet but that’s an opportunity for young minds in the middle of no where to ask real questions and communicate with an actual NASA team.

Maybe I’m just a geek, but I think that sounds amazing.

education nasa, phoenix, Twitter

Near the beginning of the month I had made two blog posts in relation to API. One of the things I wished I could do was to have a status update across multiple social sites, from Facebook to Twitter.

Well - you can. Facebook has apparently included the ability for applications on it’s site to push info into the status area. Although it’s not quite as easy as checking a button in your profile settings, it’s simple enough. All you have to do is use the application TwitterSync. TwitterSync will take whatever update you post on Twitter and change your Facebook status accordingly. Furthermore, if you wish it can filter out certain commands so that it doesn’t pull certain tweets. For instance, if you’re blog updates your Twitter page with a link to the post and a notification that it’s been updated and you don’t want it to be posted on your status, you can enter a keyword and it won’t post any tweets containing that keyword.

In addition to that, I’m now using Google Talk to update my Twitter page, so I don’t even have to open up a browser. Simply send a message to the Twitter account on Gtalk and it sends it.

Nifty stuff. Get on board MySpace??

technology API, Google Talk, Social Network, Twitter

Following up on my previous post on API’s. . .

If Facebook and MySpace would open up a little bit, imagine how nice it would be to send your status across multiple services. For instance, I like having Twitter for it’s stand-alone “what am I doing” style status. It would be nice if I could tell Facebook and MySpace to import a status RSS feed from Twitter, which it already has available for anyone to use. For you still not quite up to speed on web trends, that would basically pull anything I posted on twitter to be displayed on Facebook and MySpace so I didn’t have to login to multiple networks.

Why isn’t this happening now? Probably stubborness to keep you on one social network and not drift to others. Most of these sites make the majority of their revenue serving adverts on your pages - just like TV commercials but the majority of them have content and services you don’t have to pay for. Now I honestly don’t think it really would have a huge impact on revenue to add this - infact, I know I’d rather use a service that was more open to making it easier for their users.

Unfortunately, services like Pownce, Twitter, del.icio.us and more aren’t being utilized by average internet users. Don’t get me wrong - these sites have a large database of users, but they’re still not touching your average teenage to adolescent userbase in areas like the midwest - and while I know few users in my area taking advantages of these services, almost everyone has both a Facebook and a MySpace. If the demand was there, I’m sure we’d see even more support across websites and services.

There’s so many ideas that would be very neat if implemented to provide support and data across networks. Unforunately, data always has a price and everyone wants it, no matter how mundane it seems to you.

And one last thing, as a side note. Facebook and MySpace are virtually the same anymore - including both having applications which you’ll see rolling out on MySpace very soon. I’ve been tinkering with the opensocial API (I signed up for the dev program after writing my last post on API) and it’s easy enough to use that I’d put a pretty good wager on you’ll start getting those invites you hate on Facebook in your MySpace inbox any day here.

technology API, Facebook, MySpace, opensocial, Pownce, social networks, Twitter

It’s not much fun to write in a blog when you’re always stuck at home because of the weather or continually writing for school - so I apologize for the lack of creative thinking in here. Latest updates? None - it snowed at the beginning of the week for the billionth time in a row.

What’s kept me occupied? My PS3. When I’m not busy with school, lately I’ve been playing Devil May Cry 4. If you’re looking for something to tide you over until the release of Metal Gear Solid 4 or Grand Theft Auto 4, check it out.

And last but not least, if you’d like to stalk me web 2.0 style (let’s be honest, could you really resist?), you can check out my updates at twitter. Yes, I’ll actually use it from now on.

Anyways, the debates on in a bit here. Gobama ‘08.

gaming Obama, PS3, Twitter