Pebbles From Paradise

Not Twitter, But Strategic Profits!

You may think I’m obsessed with twitter, but twitter is just one of the node networking strategies that pebblesfromparadise.com uses to maximise its visibility. I also post comments on any blog that I think merits a teaspoonful of my grey-matter.

One such blog to receive such attention is that of Internet ‘maven’ Rich Schefren. Schefren has risen to prominence in three separate industries, retail clothing, hypnotherapy, and for the past four years Internet marketing. You can read his biography here.

It was when I started posting the occasional comment on Shefren’s blog that I discovered MyBlogLog. Schefren’s comments pages have a neat whazzoo added that will ping MyBlogLog and extract your profile image from where you have uploaded it and insert it into a little square next to your posted comment. Naturally I had to have my image so included so I signed up for MyBlogLog, which takes a matter of seconds and is a free service.

Voila, my fizog now appears on all of Shefren’s pages where I have commented. Well not quite? You see when you set up your MyBlogLog account you need to provide details of all your web sites, and have them validated as belonging to you, which involves posting an item or inserting some code into the header. Then when you post a comment provided that you use the e-mail address you have provided to MyBlogLog, and also supply one of your authenticated web site addresses you should be O.K.

A word of warning, however, I tried supplying my twitter address as my web site address in some recent posts. This doesn’t work, it messes up your link, you don’t even connect to your twitter page, and your face won’t appear in your comment either!

Where To Obtain A Twitter Mail, It’s Free, And Expands Your Twitter Options!

You may consider that I have been making light of twitter during the previous three day’s posts. (Moi make light of life, never!). Indeed you may wonder if I am serious about the possibility of twitter eroding our language to ‘tweets’, which is the official name for a twitter-post?

Well I confess that I am not serious about tweets, but some people who seem to take life very seriously, are!

Stowe Boyd, a business strategy and information technology consultant has invented the ‘TwitPitch’, (you might think I jest, but no, it really is true, even if seems that Boyd is attempting to understudy Sir Ken Dodd).

Apparently understudying for Ken places such demands upon Boyd’s time that the only way to get to communicate with him is via twitter. Writing on his blog he advises:

1. All companies who would like to have a meeting with me, need to send me a Twittered description of the product. Yes, please Twitter it to me at www.twitter.com/stoweboyd. Yes, one tweet, 140 characters less the eleven used for “@stoweboyd “.
2. Optionally, send a supporting twitpitch with one link, and no other text. Could be to anything: website, video, press release, Rick Astley, etc.
3. Then, twitter me one or more suggested times/place to meet at the event, using the times on the calendar, and a location in the conference building I won’t have time to visit your nearby hotel or offices.

This really cuts through the ordure, I wonder what kind of tweets Shakespeare might have made? I guess 140 characters of text-speak is quite a lot. Does Stowe Boyd have a life, I wonder?

P.S. Lest you think that phone texts, your computer terminal etc are not enough to get your message onto twitter, now you may tweet to twitter by e-mail. Twitter mail is your place to start!

Screen-shot of a Twitter Page

Apologies dear reader, for yesterday I revealed more than I intended about Twitter. Indeed in pointing you to my twitter url I also gave away that twitter also seems to be broadcasting compressed versions of all my journal entries form many different sources.

These collated entries may also be read in your RSS feed reader, I recommend Bloglines.

Actually it’s not twitter per se that is doing this job, but a different application called twitter feed.

Twitter feed changes the whole way in which twitter works so that increasingly entries such as ‘picking my nose on the metro’ are being replaced by compressed blog entries. This means that people can receive brief details of all your projects by mobile text message, on their computer screen, and who knows what else. Maybe someone soon will create a twitter-ticker that feeds news of all your friends on the foot of your T.V. screen when viewing via your TiVos?

You see blogging has now become so compressed via Twitter and Twitter-feed that no longer need you read lengthy posts here you may instead simply digest what I have to say by reading a note such as this one: “Family Business: Why You Shouldn’t Count On Your P.C. Much Longer!: Family Business: Why You Shou.. http://tinyurl.com/62urhu”

That’s much better init?

Anyway, I’ll get back to just how absurd this gets, plus a little about English language reform tomorrow.

My Twitter Logo

Yesterday I was discussing how the movement for the reform of the English language has been spurred forward by the constraining size of the little window on your mobile phone.

The small size, and the fiddling keyboard, (which may be abbreviated to ‘FKBD’ in text speak), demands that, those with frankfurter fingers or in colder climes where men wear mittens, use their letters sparingly.

This trend has apparently now invaded the internet in the form of Twitter.

For those who don’t know, twitter.com is a web site where, via your mobile phone, computer, TiVos, or similar device, you may inform the world of your ‘movements’. Such messages as “Having a cuppa with Gran”, “Bored in Starbucks”, or “Did a timely No: 2″, can now be broadcast to every Internet user in our global village.

Indeed, and for those who must be in the know, Twitter will also send a text to your mobile telephone whenever one of the friends you are following does a No: 2 too! You may follow my poos here and it won’t cost you a cent, unless you have news of Moi texted to your mobile phone, in which case your carrier might expect a cut. But it’s worth it innit? Even this crap will appear on Twitter in a few minutes, but in a highly compressed form.

Of course it wasn’t long before this ‘good thing’ could be made into an even better thing. But I’ll save that information for tomorrow. I bet you can’t wait.

A Wonderful Book For A Lad!

As a small boy I knew nothing of language reform, I just knew that I couldn’t spell, that adults told me that this was a bad thing, and I discovered at school that sometimes my inability could be painful.

Imagine my surprise one Christmas when my eldest brother Nick gifted me a copy of ‘The Reader’s Digest Junior Treasury’. This was a wonderful book packed with stories such as ‘How I Rode With Wyatt Earp’, ‘Cochise’, and ‘The Day I Drove To Market With Grosvenor Cleveland.’ The latter may have had a different title but it was the story of a small child accepting a lift on a buggy with an ex-president of the USA. Clearly times were different then, but I digress.

Within the book my eyes feasted upon a short article by Dolton Edwards titled: ‘Kaos in ce Klasrum.’ I reproduce it here:

“You must have often thought English spelling is harder than need be. Just look at words like cough, plough, rough, through, and thorough. The great writer Bernard Shaw wanted us to change our alphabet. Here’s one way of doing it.

In the first year, for example, we would suggest using “s” instead of soft “c”. Sertainly all students in all sities of the land would reseive this news with joy.

Then the hard “c” would be replased by “k,”, sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up the konfusion in the minds of the spellers, but typewriters kould all be built with one less letter.

There would be great exsitement when it was at last announsed that the troublesome “ph” would henseforth be written “f”. This would make words like “fotograf” twenty persent shorter in print.

In the third year publik interest in a new alfabet kan be expekted to have reatshed a point where more komplikated tshanges are nesessary. We would urge removing double leters whitsh have always ben a nuisanse and made speling more difikult.

We would al agre that the horible mes of silent “e’s” in our language is disgrasful. Therfor, we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ merily along as though we wer in an atomik ag of edukation. Sins by this tim it would be four years sins anywun had used the leter “c,” we would then urg substituting “c” for “th.”

Kontinuing cis proses year after year, we would eventuali hav a reali sensibl writen languag. After twenti years wi ventyur tu sa cer wud bi no mor uv ces teribl trublsum difikultis. Even Mr. Yaw wi beliv wud be hapi in ce noleg cat his drims finali kam tru.”

At the time news of Mr. Shaw’s wish to modify the English language came as a welcome relief, but unfortunately my teachers couldn’t agree and so George-Bernard’s wisdom came to naught. As I grew older I too forgot about reform of English and I started to spell correctly, the British way.

In Turkey, however, English language reform is alive and well. Frequently I see the word ‘Fotograf’ posted across the frontages of photo-processors. Indeed all manner of English words have been reformed by Turks for the benefit of tourists visiting here. The main source of language reform, however, hasn’t come from Turkey but at the insistence of technology.

When was the last time you inserted punctuation into a mobile phone text message?

“@TEOTD U CN C WT IM SAYN TIC CUA”