Twitter API Tools

I found a great website that lists 50 different applications using the twitter api. It includes links to each application and includes a tutorial on how to code it.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/02/twitter-web-designer-and-developer-toolbox-api-and-tutorials/

Here is a tutorial on how to make your own website display your twitter updates. This enables you complete control over the look and feel of you website. This would be nice to use if you did not want the twitter feed to stick out like a sore thumb on your otherwise custom page.
http://tutorialblog.org/how-to-make-a-unique-website-for-your-twitter-updates/

Here is a tutorial on how to display two different twitter feeds on the same page. This would be nice to use on a website where you collaborate with someone else.
http://tutorialblog.org/how-to-make-a-unique-website-for-your-twitter-updates/

This guy came up with a solution for publishing events to his google calendar using sms messages. How does this relate to twitter? Well he used the twitter api to recieve his sms messages and then used a php script to make some changes and then used the google calendar api to record the event. This would be nice to use since I do not have a smart phone to log in to google calendar from anywhere.
http://dotjay.co.uk/2008/feb/php-twitter-google-calendar-sms

Steve Reynolds has posted a nice tutorial on accessing the twitter search API. This allows your website to search twitter automatically for predefineded search criteria. That way you can display what other people are saying about you or your products.
http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/02/using-jquery-php-ajax-with-the-twitter-api/

Twitter - Business Uses

Twitter is great for businesses that run lots of specials or have constantly changing prices. One company that I love, Newegg.com, which is one of the largest online retailers, uses twitter for price updates and sales. I have also seen a few promotions where they get people to tweet about newegg and then they are entered into a drawing for one of their products like a flat screen tv. It is a great cheep way for a company to advertise. Since the company does not have to pay for the twitter service their only cost is employees time and whatever they are giving away. They don't even have to use their own bandwidth.

Some companies, including newegg, also use twitter as a customer service tool. If a customer mentions @newegg in one of their tweets the newegg staff can see that and respond accordingly. They can send a message back with links to their customer service department, phone numbers, or they can give them appropiate directions on how to resolve the issue.

http://twitter.com/newegg

Twitter- Initial Setup and Overview

I set up my new twitter account (@scottrmurphy) last night and then got carried away reading everyone's tweets about the flooding in Atlanta.

Some things I learned while reading through help:
*You can search for people using full name or twittter user name.
*Using twitter advanced search allows you to search by location, or time period, or updates to or from a certain person
*They have integrated support from gmail, yahoo, AOL to search through your friends lists and see if your friends are on twitter
*Sends updates to your phone via text message and allows you to send commands back to twitter such as sending a private message and nudging people

Editing a Wikipedia Article

I have never edited a Wikipedia article before today although I have used the service countless times to look up information. The editing process was pretty straightforward and easy. They use a simple text editor similar to the one I am using to write this blog post. I posted an external link to cite one of my edits and that initiated a security measure that I had to jump through. It was a simple image with text that I had to type into a text field and submit. This is to keep people from developing automated programs to spam links on pages.

You can see the edits I made here:
Athens, Georgia -Bus
Athens, Georgia -Air

Opera- The Underdog?

Market Share:
According to W3C Schools latest statistics Opera controls about 2% of the browser market share. To put that in perspective Apple controls about 3% with its Safari browser. I do need to mention however that these statistics come from their log files. Since they are a website for web technologies they get more people visiting with alternate browsers so their stats maybe a little misleading from what the general public uses to access most websites.

Mobile Market Share:
Opera is the top mobile web browser according to GlobalStats StatCounter. They control about 25% of the market where Apple controls about 22%.


Features:
*Kiosk Mode - locks down public computers
*Opera Link - synchronized browsing on multiple devices/computers
*Performance - adaptive memory technology for old computers to function better
*Rendering - support for some HTML5 and CSS3
*Opera Dragonfly - Developer tools to debug javascript and css

Educational Resources:
*University tours and seminars
*Web standards curriculum - 50 plus articles to learn web standards from beginner level
*Educational forums - for students & faculty to discuss web trends

iPhone App CrossAir

Chuck Hudson from Aduci came and presented some tips and business insights based on his experience with Apple and the iPhone. He showed us some of the things he has learned over the years and shared with us some things to think about before writing code on an application. One of the things that stuck out to me was his ideas on different ways to monetize applications. (App Price, Lead Generator, “Lite” and “Premium” Versions, Advertising, Generated Revenue, Packaged with a Product, External License Key, External Commission, Paid Inline Content (new in 3.0), Others yet to be explored…) He also showed us one of the coolest apps I have seen yet for the iPhone. It is a new breed of applications called Augmented Reality. The iPhone is location aware with its built in GPS and compass and allows the developer access to very specific information on where the phone is and in what direction it is facing. This information can be used to overlay information about nearby businesses or subway stops directly on the screen. Directly placing this information over the cameras image allows the user to know exactly which direction a store is and also how far away they are in relation to their current position. There are a couple of different applications based on this idea of location awareness, even some cool looking 3d games. The company is Across Air.

XML - eXtensible Markup Language

Overview
XML is a language for storing and transporting data. It is powerful because it knows what the data it is transmitting is. Each piece of data is labeled as to what it is which make it perfect for transmitting data from one application to another. The data is pulled out of a database at one business and can be transmitted to another business using a different database or application and that application can read the data and it knows what the data is. For instance a list of data [athens, 30605, ga, 706] does not mean much if you don't know what it is. XML requires every piece of data to be labeled. So that same data would be sent with a label [athens (city), 30605 (zip), ga (state), 706 (area code)]. That is not the right syntax of XML but you get the point. Each piece of data has another piece of data that describes what it is.

Uses
There are many business applications. Most businesses today have databases that store information about their customers and their inventory among other things. A typical database does not display infomation in a visually appealing manor nor is one database used across all businesses. XML solves both of these problems. It first is a medium for data exchange. Data from one company's MySQL database can be sent to another company's Microsoft SQL database and another company's Oracle database. In much the same way XML also serves as a medium in which the data can be stored in one place but displayed in different ways depending on how the client wants to access it. For instance this data can be displayed in a simple list in a web page or it can be organized into a complex table and color coded and converted into a pdf file. This allows for there to be a distinct difference between the data layer and the presentation layer.


Required Files

.xml - where data is stored
.xsd - where data types are defined
.xsl - where presentation of data is described

Webstartup Strategies

A look at some key questions for new web start ups: business model, market, finances?
http://website101.com/Business_Plans/start-up_planning.html

Some tips on if you really need a business plan and if so how to go about writing one.
http://website101.com/Business_Plans/business_plan_basics.html

One persons take on how most new social media web start ups are born and subsequently die.
http://gigaom.com/2008/05/09/the-5-stages-of-a-consumer-web-startup/