While I’m on the bleeding edge in some areas of technology, I’m not in others. Latest example: Twitter. I’ve been on twitter for a while, but rarely used it; but now everyone from my thesis advisor to Google Newsbot are on Twitter. Twitter, through its short posts, follow/following metaphor, and realtime nature, does seem to be a good way to communicate what people are up to in short sound bites. So I guess it is time for me to actually start using the darn thing.
I use Google Reader to follow a variety of blogs, including Lifehacker, so I knew that there was a Twitter Gadget for Gmail Labs‘s Gadget feature (specifically the Add Gadget by Url feature). If you haven’t used Gmail Labs or the Gadget feature, don’t worry; the Twitter Gadget site has detailed installation instructions.
Once I close the Twitter window, I don’t open it again for weeks or months. I’d hoped that widget would help me twitter more, but, alas, the real important and functional features of Gmail – labels, chat, etc – push the Twitter client way, way down to the bottom of the page, so I rarely see it. TwitterGadget also has an iGoogle widget, but I rarely use iGoogle. So I’m still not plugged in to this thing in any meaningful sense.
But, well, occasionally I do twitter, but how can I surface this information to the rest of you who don’t twitter? The Library of Dresan is supposed to be the primary repository of all my information – you shouldn’t have to go to twitter.com to find out what I’m up to. Fortunately, Twitter has a variety of widgets, including one for Blogger. I’ve experimentally added this to my blog – making the need for a redesign even more pressing.
But, for now, I’m ready to, uh, tweet.
-the Centaur
