Dawgs off twitter?

Saw an interesting tweet come across and the first thing that came to mind was the NCAA and the Athletic Department has started the clamp down on using twitter. I hope this is not the case, but like many we, as fans, learned a lot about the guys and gals we cheer for. They didn't really say anything that was already known. They were out there tweeting about the upcoming games and talking to the fans. Nothing wrong with that.

But with the NCAA, common sense does not apply, as we have all seen in the past. 

So I'll leave it up to you and your comments to pass judgement on what this tweet by Trey Thompkins' really means. 

Now that this has been said, here is my take. 

I think it was a few tweets that came out recently about hanging with an NBA guy and a possible recruit, but I'm not an insider nor do I have contacts with insiders.

But if you want to still follow a few of the guys, just out this link - Dawg Tweets

Buy the extra seat

via cheapostay.wordpress.comPREFACE : As someone who does not fly daily, weekly or even monthly, I don’t have the experiences of flying next to one of our larger persons. But there have been times when I have been next to those that barely get into the seats or down the aisle. So on with the story. Also I believe that the airlines need to make the seats bigger because as a society we are bigger and not just fat. I'm nearly 6 foot 4 and 220lbs. I fit in the seats, but my legs are wrapped around my ears. 

NOTE : I’m not a Kevin Smith Fan.

As we saw earlier this month, Kevin Smith of Clerks and Silent Bob fame, got the boot from a Southwest Air flight from Oakland to LA. The big buzz was how he went about telling everyone about his treatment. In this case, he turned to twitter and his millions of followers.

The story started as he was booted for being a fatty. Well as the story evolved, that may have not been the case. It is starting to look like Southwest Air may have screwed the whole situation. Kevin Smith posted the story to his blog.

Now this situation really brought to light the obese situation when flying. Many airlines have started charging/forcing the larger customers to purchase an extra seat. United Airlines and SouthWest Air are just two that have implemented such a policy.

Now, some may not agree with these policies, but I do. This is not just a tax on the obese, but it is a safety issue. Imagine you are in a window seat of a three seat row. The person next to you is of normal size and the obese person is in the aisle. Do you think they can get out of that seat in a timely manner to escape the plane? Do you think that their issue may prevent you from leaving the plane quickly? What if they were in the exit seat, can they handle the situation? I’m not going to answer those, but those are the questions that should be asked.

Will this extra seat help any of those issue, maybe not. But it will give a little extra room to maneuver on the way out. This goes along with the exit aisle, those that can not do the job, are asked to move. So if you can’t move in the seat to open the door, you need to move.

When it comes to the price of the extra seat, I do not think a full price seat should be charged. I feel the proper value would be 1/2 price of the seat that they purchased.

My understanding of airplanes, weight is a critical issue. They are balanced. Do I think one person will make a difference, no. But the airplane is set based on a standard weigh of passengers. This goes towards the maximum takeoff weight. So there a single person could make a difference.

So I leave it up to you to decide. Remember if you don’t like a policy, act with your wallet.

Do you Curl?

Each time the Winter Olympics come around, I look for a few select events. The one at the top of my list is curling. The first year I watched, I was like most, thinking, this is a sport? But now I find myself watching each event, even if the US is not playing. For me, it’s like Team Handball in the Summer Games. The under appreciated game.

Well if you give it a chance, you may find that you are drawn into it. Its a game of stamina, strategy and a little luck. This is also the sport where in an interview leading up to the games, a former Olympian said curling athletes were the most likely to eat pizza and drink beer (looking for the article). So give it a chance.

BTW in the prelims in Vancouver the US lost to Germany 7-5. The US team plays again tonight.

Vancouver Curling Schedule - http://www.vancouver2010.com/olympic-curling-schedule-results/

Curling Twitter coverage - http://www.nowpublic.com/sports/vancouver-2010-curling-games-live-twitter-coverage-2577229.html

Let me know what you think about curling and what other Winter Olympic sports should I watch. I’m not talking about the “Primetime” sports. I want the unique ones, like Nordic Combined (yes I watched it, very exciting finish).

Localized Twitter Trends on Web Twitter

I was logging into the twitter web client today and noticed a new feature. Localized Twitter Trends. Not sure how long this option has been around, but looks to be a useful feature as it expands.

I know a few months ago they allowed you to share your location and opened the API to this setting. Now clients like Tweetie2 can access this feature. So when I came across the web based localized trends, I jumped right into it. I'm betting it won't be long before twitter clients add this feature.

When you log into the web client, down by the trends sections, you will see a little bubble if you have not already set it. Click set and away you go.

Alert Bubble

Twitter LocationFor me, the downside is not being able to pick local and national or worldwide at the same time. Hopefully the Twitter folks will expand this.

Here's to continued development of the twitter APIs. As features like this can be really useful in todays world.

HoopDawgs on Twitter

To help spread the love for the hoop dawgs, here are some of the guys and gals on twitter. Some have privacy on, so you may not be able to view their stream. Also I know the guys have apparently had some smack talk about who has more followers.

The Guys

Travis Leslie - #1 - http://twitter.com/TLeslie1

DeMario Mayfield – #2 - http://twitter.com/DMayfield2

Matt  Bucklin - #12 - http://twitter.com/Bucklin12

Connor Nolte - #20 - http://twitter.com/ConnorNolte

Tyler Whatley - #25 - http://twitter.com/TylerWhatley

Jeremy Price - #50 - http://twitter.com/BOMBEKLOT50

Trey Thompkins - #33 - http://twitter.com/HThompkins33

Coach Mark Fox - http://twitter.com/coachmarkfox

The Gals

Angel Robinson - #33 - http://twitter.com/angelrobinson33

Jasmine James - #10 - http://twitter.com/Jzmnj10

Also you can follow my list of Hoop Dawgs at - http://twitter.com/alanashley/ugabasketball – Here I will add any new players that I find

Twitter Lists - A Users Take

Well Twitter is adding to the feature list again. This time, they give us lists. This is a feature that 3rd party applications have had for a while, such as Tweetdeck groups, Brizzly and others. While the others handled this on their end, now we have a true central location for this information.

What does this mean for my Tweetie or Tweetdeck client. Well, first they should be able to tap into the List API from twitter to pull that information. With that they should also be able to update the lists via the API. This will greatly improve the mobile access of twitter.

I have now played with the list feature and I'm still tweaking the feel, but here are some things to think about when you set up your lists: 

• Currently you can have only 20 lists
• You don't need to have everyone you follow in a list. 
• Make your lists valuable to others, such as by location or topic.
• Decide if you want your list to be public (available for others to follow) or private (available only to you)

So, now that you have a list, what does it do for you. Well if you follow only a handful of persons, you won't see the total benefit. The list feature is for those that follow hundreds or thousands of persons. I know I follow some that I'm only interested in a few of their posts. This is mainly from the news tweets out there. So now I can filter those out of my stream on twitter.com by selecting a list that does not contain those IDs. So what are some of the benefits of lists :

• Removal of the SUL (Suggested User List). The new gauge I believe will be how many lists are you on. This will reflect true value. This is why I said earlier that adding everyone you follow to lists may not be the best approach.
• Quickly find like mind persons without following them by following someone else's list. Downside is those in the list you follow do not show in your stream. I'll address this later.
• Quickly scan the topics that you are interested in. For example, I have a group for my Dawg Fans, then on game day, I can view that list and it filters out all other content. 
• Set Private lists that you can use locally, but are not available to anyone else

Since it appears Twitter is still tweaking the concept of lists, there are a few bugs, at least they appear to be bugs.

• If you unfollow someone they stay in your list.
• Can't select multiple persons to add to a list, you have to select one by one.
• If you follow a list, even those with public profiles do not flow into your stream like I would expect.
• Not all assignments to lists takes. You may have to repeat several times.
• Private list assignment doesn't reflect on the persons profile. 

So what would I like to see from the lists. 

• I would like to see a description field added to a list. Makes it more searchable.
• Speaking of search, they will need to add a list search feature.
• Easier edits of lists
• Totally open API for lists (verdict is still out on this one until lists go live for everyone)
• Ability to see which users you don't have in a list. 

So here are my lists, the lists themselves my not change in the near future, but the content within the list might.

How does social media and Networking help you?

Since the inception of social media and social networking as part of "Web 2.0", there have many that tell you how to get the most out of it.  So what I want to look at is how it has helped you. I'll start by showing how it has aided me from time to time. Before I go down that road, lets do a quick breakdown of Social Media and Social Networking, although the true debate on the differences can be left to those "true" professionals.

What is Social Media and Social Network, my take?

The distinction between Social Media and Social Networking does not contain a defined line in the sand that delineates the difference. As the Web 2.0 movement has progressed, the blur factor has increased to the point that many refer to Social Media as the new media (old school news turned to online presence) side of the house, while Social Networking still has that feel of a large online party.

Not to spend too much time on this aspect of the post, but here is my quick take on these two engines of the Web 2.0 world. Should it be Web 2.0 still, I think it's somewhere around version 2.7.

First lets take a look at Social Media. This could be looked at as the business side or journalistic side of the house. Think of all the blogs, podcasts, wikis and so forth that contain information that other turn to. This blog could be considered to be part of the social media circle.

For Social Networking, this of the Twitters, Facebooks, Friendfeeds of the world. This is where the online communities come together to share the information from social media including there our takes on life and the world.

Now to the fun stuff.

How does Social Media and Networking help you?

In your day to day lives, I'm sure many of you turn to these social hubs for information, entertainment or just plain ole time suck. So my question is, Has it helped you out in a specific instance. To help spur your thought process, let me show you some prime examples from my life.

From Social Media

When my wife was pregnant with our twins, I turned to the blogosphere to detail the experience up to birth and shortly there after. At which time, I decided to go for a true website with photos, stories and notes. This was a great release for me during this time. The post at that blog made on December, 26th was the defining moment, where it gave me the greatest release. It allowed be to tell the story in my words at my time.

Moving forward, this blog in and of itself has turned into my own personal journal detailing many aspects of my life and thoughts. And for those that write, you know that this can free the mind that later allows it to process the "real" issues in the world without having those other thoughts clouding things up.

From Social Networking

By now, many have discovered the world of Facebook and found all those people that you never really talked to in high school or college, yet you still friend them. Well that's a story for another day, so let me stop now before I tangent off in another direction. So how has this helped me.

To start, I was "volunteered" to help lead the planning of my 20 year class reunion. While people have done this for generations and had successful gatherings, planning in todays world is a bit more complex. People move, families retire to Florida and some just disappear so there was the challenge for a few of my fellow planners. How do we find everyone. Well right off the bat, we turned to Facebook. We created a group and a fan page, we did hours of searches and in the end found nearly 160 of our 279 classmates. Final count may have actually been higher, but some that we found would never register or sign up for anything, so they were a bit harder to count. Without Facebook, I do not believe we could have gotten the word out as well, seeing as we all had full-time jobs and lifes even before reunion planning.

This reunion even had some aspects of the "social media" role as well. We developed a website using the myevents.com service. This got us into the Google Index and quite a few found us that way.

So this was just one example where the "social" services helped me out.

So here is your turn, please leave a comment on how the "social" services have help you? Did you land a job? Find love on online? Expand your knowledge base? Fill in the blank.

So until next time, may you web stay social without getting the bugs.