Three New Android Phones Coming
Dell Adamo Laptop getting a lot of ink. Dell stakes claim to the world’s thinnest machine. Silverlight 3 the target of Microsoft attention. Cisco still in the news. Cisco embraces Open Source? Why? MySQL injection out of control. Three new Android phones coming. Windows 7 may not drive demand. Why not? Lots of weird start-ups showing off at SXSW event in Austin. UWB standards group shut down. Sigh. IDC says that the economic downturn will drive Linux sales up.
Click to listen: [audio:http://m.podshow.com/media/12115/episodes/147717/tech5-147717-03-17-2009.mp3]
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Windows 7 RC1 in May!
Apple supposedly bringing out cut and paste for iPhone! So what? Cisco brings out what they call a server-computer. SXSW conference appears to have overloaded the local 3G network from too many iPhones. Ha. Meanwhile Apple Mac sales down 16-percent. Decline will continue, they say. Creepy robot runway model developed. MSFT looks to have a release candidate for Windows 7 in May. Intel pulls license from AMD. Opera Turbo in the news. Inventor of the Web conned online. Oracle gives up on MySQL.
Click to listen: [audio:http://m.podshow.com/media/12115/episodes/147633/tech5-147633-03-16-2009.mp3]
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Managing Your Digital Life
A new website has launched that is aimed at helping people manage the stuff on their computers. It’s a project of Scott Bourne, a tech enthusiast who is a jack of all trades. I was first introduced to Scott’s work when I started listening to MacBreak Weekly a couple of years ago. At the time I thought he was just a tech guy but I quickly learned there was a lot more to Scott. He’s a former radio guy (with a truly great radio voice), an excellent photographer, a podcaster and more.
Anyway, the site is called Managing Your Digital Life. It launched about a month ago and will shortly be producing a podcast. It’s already got many tips on how to manage your stuff and they’re just getting started. It’s definitely a site worth keeping your eyes on.
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WOZ Breaks Foot!!
Google VOIP to be ported to Gphone. Too much news about iPOD shuffle. Google "behavioral-based ads." I discuss the history of direct marketing. Nintendo has sold 100 million DS’s! CBS to stream NCAA tourney. Woz breaks foot! US Air sued for $1 million over lost luggage. Dell releases cool looking computer. Lenovo rolls out a cheapie. Squarespace.com sponsors today’s show. Visit them.
Click to listen: [audio:http://m.podshow.com/media/12115/episodes/146693/tech5-146693-03-12-2009.mp3]
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Beginners Guide To Using #Hashtags on Twitter
I’ve been using Twitter for almost a year and though I’m not an expert by any means I have learned a lot about how it works. One of the features that I had a problem grasping was hashtags. It seems a bit weird at first but hashtags actually make it easier to follow conversations about particular topics.
What is a hashtag?
Have you ever read a Tweet that included the pound sign (#) followed by a word? Like #sxsw or #americanidol? These are hashtags. The pound sign is called a hash and the word that follows indicates a discussion topic (South by Southwest and American Idol in the examples here). When you put a hashtag in a Tweet you are marking that Tweet to be included in a group discussion on the topic mentioned in the tag. The idea of using hastags on Twitter was born from their use in IRC (which is a completely different topic).
How do I follow a discussion using hashtags?
There are several ways to follow a discussion by it’s hashtags but since they are not officially supported by Twitter you cannot follow them as if they were another Twitter user. That’s one of the reasons why newcomers find hashtags to be a hard concept to grasp. But the beauty of Twitter is that you can include hashtags in your Tweets and they get accepted like any other text. This makes them searchable from within the Twitter API like any other text.
In fact one way to follow hashtags on Twitter is by using Twitter’s own search tool to search on the hashtag you want to follow. This is the simplest way as long as you know the hashtag you want to follow. If you are using a Twitter client (as opposed to the website) the search tool will work similarly. A good Twitter client for following hashtags is TweetDeck which allows you to setup searches in their own columns and displays results in real time. Twhirl allows you to search on hashtags and integrates real time results in your regular feed. Both of these clients also support clicking on a hashtag in your Twitter feed to see other Tweets with that hashtag.
Another way to follow hashtags is to use hashtags.org. This website tracks hashtags used on Twitter in real time. The advantage of this website is that it includes a filter so you can see the newest or most popular hashtags. However a major disadvantage is that it only indexes hashtags entered by those following it on Twitter. (You can follow them here.) I prefer to use TweetDeck and Twhirl instead of hashtags.org.
How do I start using hashtags?
Hashtags are usually used for discussions related to events and topics that are current such as the two examples above. Odds are that if you want to comment on it then someone else already has created a hashtag. Search on one word variations of the hashtag you want to use to see if anyone else has used it (#idol, #americanidol, #ai, etc.). If noone else has used a hashtag for the subject then just start using your own. People are bound to follow along. In a case where you start a new hashtag you may want to Tweet that you’re doing so and ask others to follow along. “I’m using #americanidol to make fun of Seacrest. You should too!”
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