50 Uses for Twitter

Jun 8, 2008 | blog

twitter Awhile back, I’d started a list of "101 Uses for Twitter", but never seemed to get past 27 for some reason.  Of course, it had been last autumn since I brainstormed on it.  While I don’t think that I personally could come up with 101 uses, I’m sure there are many more than that.

So I thought about this again for awhile this morning and did think of 50 uses that I’ve seen or participated in.  So here is a list of 50 uses for Twitter, I’m thinking of more as I write this, so maybe there is a chance at that "101" post sometime.

  1. Keep in touch with my Twitter peeps friends
  2. General news item links
  3. News & links on my industry or area of interest
  4. Fast answers to quick questions
  5. Professional networking
  6. Links to nearly everything
  7. Marketing
  8. Personal branding
  9. Corporate & product branding
  10. Haiku’s
  11. Making friends
  12. Feel "plugged into the web and it’s various personalities"
  13. Replacement for instant messaging applications
  14. Chat tool
  15. Promotional tool for my blog
  16. Providing new reading opportunities
  17. Fun stuff!
  18. Meeting new, interesting people to communicate with
  19. Collecting links
  20. Finding sites related to social networking
  21. "To listen in on my contacts rants"
  22. A web worker "water cooler"
  23. Micro-blogging
  24. A personal "techmeme"
  25. Lightweight text broadcasting tool
  26. Easy way to annoy your spouse
  27. Promotional tool for my brand
  28. Ranting
  29. Idea generator
  30. No-cost non-profit announcement system
  31. Bring a sense of community to your home office
  32. Tracking status of friends
  33. Status message generator for other social networks
  34. Frustration generator (at least when it is down)
  35. Thought publisher
  36. Promotional tool for my organization
  37. Following public discussions
  38. Travel guide
  39. Controlled discussion between friends
  40. Uncontrolled discussion between friends with viewers
  41. List generator
  42. Meeting agenda generator
  43. Coffee shop locator
  44. People search
  45. Promotional tool for my company
  46. Product reviews
  47. Trip planner
  48. Backchannel for events
  49. Feedback generator
  50. Authentication mechanism

So what are you uses for Twitter?  I’m sure I didn’t capture them all, so add your ideas and things you use Twitter for below.

10 Minute Review: Acrobat.com

Jun 7, 2008 | blog

image Just a quick weekend look at Adobe’s new "online office" product – Acrobat.com.  At least, that’s how I found it referred to in some of the news bits today.  Overall I was impressed with the first release of Adobe’s Acrobat.com efforts.  With a slick, Flash based interface, it has good performance and is visually appealing.

They seem to be starting out with some good features, but are missing many.  Zoho is closest to providing an online office suite that compares anywhere near Microsoft Office.  Adobe is starting out with a word processor, document sharing ability with a generous 5GB of space, a document to PDF conversion tool, and a really nifty web conferencing application.

Adobe Buzzword beta The word processor, called BuzzWord, is what you’d expect.  It has the basics and is similar feature wise to Google Docs.  PDF conversion is straight forward, you can upload a doc to convert and it saves the resulting file in the My Files applet.  File sharing is accomplished from the drop-down context menu and provides the ability to embed the doc into a site.

Adobe ConnectNow beta The most impressive app included here is the web conferencing, called ConnectNow, which has features similar to WebEx.  Adobe provides each user their own room, assigns a conference phone number to it, allows for desktop sharing, meeting notes, group & individual IM, and WebCasting with an optional web cam.  Good stuff.

Just a couple bullet points:

  • Look & Feel: Wow – the Flash based interface is impressive
  • Consistency: Needs some work, changing applications launches too many windows
  • Integration: Very little between "applications"
  • Functionality: Depends on feature – some are quite rich, others very basic
  • Features: Document sharing, Word Processor, PDF Conversion, Web Conferencing

Overall it’s a good start.  There is a long way to go to compete evenly with Google Docs & Spreadsheets, but then Google doesn’t have a web conference tool.  It’s not going to compete with MS Office, or any of the others for some time.  With that said, however, if you want to convert some documents to PDF, host documents that you can link to in email or from a website, or a decent free web conferencing tool, it might be a good adjunct to your current solutions.

Happiness CCI

Jun 5, 2008 | happiness

  • Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid: $55,000.
  • Ford Escape Hybrid: $33,000.
  • Toyota Prius: $25,000.
  • Yamaha FZ1: $9,500!

Realizing that one can affordably satisfy a mid-life crisis, kick traffic’s ass, have fun, and STILL get over 45 MPG: Priceless!

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