We've been working with the fine folks over at Stamen Design to help us look at our data from a different perspective. They're masters of visualizing information in interesting ways--they worked on Digg Labs, for example. While we were working, a fun idea emerged and we thought it would be something worth sharing: Check out Twitter Blocks!
Blocks is an abstract, interactive, three-dimensional, Flash application for exploring your neighborhood or "block." It's also one of several interesting, alternative, or experimental ways to interact with Twitter we will continue to showcase at Explore Twitter—a new part of Twitter initially sponsored by Motorola.
Some friends have chimed in to let us know that our update form is not quite living up to its full potential. In other words, their posts aren't posting every time. We're looking at this right now. As soon as we can reproduce it, we'll identify and fix!
UPDATE Fixed! This issue was limited to people using www.twitter.com instead of twitter.com. We've fixed the routing and all is well!
Who from your Gmail address book is already on Twitter? You might be surprised when you try out our newest feature. Fred tried it and found some new people to follow. Duncan checked it out too. There's no time like the present, so try the new Gmail thingy we made!
Today we updated Twitter's Join page to use recaptcha. Now we can separate the humans from the spambots in style. ReCaptcha is not only fully accessible featuring an audio option, it also helps make information more accessible to the world with it's innovative book digitizing concept.
"About 60 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. Individually, that's not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we could make positive use of this human effort? reCAPTCHA does exactly that by channeling the effort spent solving CAPTCHAs online into 'reading' books." Learn more about how recaptcha works.
We've just added Profile Search to Twitter! Now you can search across profile information like name, location, bio, and url. That means you can find more people to follow. The search box is over on the right when you're signed in. Go ahead and find other Twitter-ers in San Francisco, New York, or Tokyo or find out your friends are already Twittering and you didn't even know it!
We're currently working with our hosting provider to identify a solution for some spotty performance today. It's not affecting everyone but it's annoying. We're currently investigating and we'll keep you posted.
Update (8/16 4:40p): After a long night and some more work this morning, we've resolved the slowness that was affecting most users. Sorry for the spottiness.
Yesterday, 14 year old Daniel Brusilovsky came by the Twitter office and interviewed me. Then he stuck around for lunch at Specialties and worked from an extra desk--he was coding up a new version of his site.
Daniel had some great questions about Twitter and asked them with authority. You can listen to our conversation here: Apple Universe with Daniel Brusilovsky. Thanks Daniel!
The Game Least Dangerous: "Two Saturdays each month Aric McKeown gets lost and locals in his social network must track him down. McKeown sends them clues through Twitter. For example: 'Bob Dylan has a lifetime ban.' 'Derived from an Aldous Huxley Title.' 'Founded by a circus performer.' (Answer: Brave New Workshop.) A bounty of riches await the first to find McKeown. Thus goes the aptly named 'The Least Dangerous Game,' a bi-monthly event invented and run by McKeown, who kindly made himself available to answer City Pages' probing questions."
Looks like the first ever London Tweetup was a success: "So last night was the first ever London Twitter Meetup. I think it’s ok for me to say it was a success because everyone I spoke to last night seemed to have fun and the buzz on Twitter this morning is that it was a good night out." Sounds like it was a lot of fun—would have been great to be there.
How the LAFD uses Twitter: "The fire department uses Twitter to post information about fires or other emergencies that it is responding to. These messages are then sent to users signed up to receive the information on their mobile devices."
It's a busy weekend in gaming with both QuakeCon in Dallas and BlizzCon in Anaheim. Unable to go? Fortunately, Twitter users are there to let you know the latest.
I'll be following Harpere who's covering all the announcements from Blizzard. (Woot! Another WoW expansion!)
And the Frag Dolls have the latest from Dallas including their search for the newest member of their pro gaming team.
Robert Scoble drew his line in the sand when he wrote "Twitter Rocks" for the sun and waves. iJustine took it as a challenge and created her own Goldsworthy-esque creation in the sand making the bold claim that she loves Twitter "more than Scoble."
Internet becomes lifeline, record: "Erica Mauter, for instance, found out about the bridge collapse via Twitter. The relatively new and popular 'microblogging' site, usually reserved for cheeky and banal mini-posts ('sunburn from this weekend is starting to peel'), erupted in the Twin Cities on Wednesday as local users tweet-ed almost exclusively about the accident."
We've been working with the fine folks over at Stamen Design to help us look at our data from a different perspective. They're masters of visualizing information in interesting ways--they worked on Digg Labs, for example. While we were working, a fun idea emerged and we thought it would be something worth sharing: Check out Twitter Blocks!
