sundance-communications.com Forums Member Forums Phone Booth Twits: Are these people for real?

This morning on the radio they were talking about how google has implemented "personalized search" for everybody, whether you turn it on or not. Curious, I googled it up (yes, ironic I know) to learn more. Among the dozens of useless search results were some links to "tweets" on the very topic of the radio report I was listening to... So, being a glutton for punishment, I clicked on one (my first exerience with twitter). Here is the stunning and useful information that I learned: Some guy named [name omitted] was listening to the same radio program I was. Amazing. That's it, nothing more.

Are these people for real? The news media is so ga-ga over twitter, you would have thought it was some incredibly useful resource. It is a joke.

Is there something I'm not getting here?

Jim
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Old and confused in a secure undisclosed location.

It would seem to me that TWITTER (ironically appropriate name) is, in it's own way, somewhat like '900' numbers. Useful and easily abused!

Twitter has some use depending on who is doing the tweets.

Our city's transit system just started to use it for notification on transit service changes due to accidents, fires, police incidents etc. You can see it here https://twitter.com/transitalerts

I'll probably put the twitter rss feed on my PC's start up page with the other news feeds. It will give me a good idea of what traffic will be like when I leave for work each day.

They are are also using text messages for bus schedule information.

One of these days I will have to upgrade my V120C cell to one that takes pictures, sends / receives texts etc to take advantage of the new technology.

Twitter, texting... what are we, 15 years old?

-Hal

I agree, I was so damn happy when I finally got a cell phone and didn't have to use a pager and look at the codes to see who I had to call. Now you can't buy a damn reg cell phone, everyone wants you to text them or tweet them, wtf is the cell phone part for? If you call me I'll answer if you text me I'll delete it.
Guess I'm just getting old and grumpy.

As far as the traffic most all cities have cameras on the freeways that you can just link to and see the traffic why on earth would anyone wanna tweet it?

Russ:

No traffic cameras up here in Winnipeg, City hall says at only 750,000 residents we can't afford them.

Your thoughts on the new cell phones is mirrored by an ad that MTS Mobility is running about two university students who can't figure out what the ringing sound is from their new personal communications device.

They seem to know what all the other sounds mean except the one for an incoming call. As the ad fades out you hear one of them say to the other, "it always does that 6 or 7 times and stops"

To me texting is a step backward. Like Russ said, remember pagers? I'm sure the kids today never saw one. If those pager companies only knew, they could have made two way alpha numeric pagers and made big money.

-Hal

Hal, believe it or not the custodians at the Student Union still have pagers, because cellphone reception is spotty. When we need them we just page them and they come to the office. Old school but it works.
Some of the guys have text pagers where the boss just sends an email and they get it on the pager's screen, for example 'please clean the spill in the 2nd floor hall'
I think the two way feature is turned off though.
This is what the ones they have look like:
https://www.oit.duke.edu/vvw/telecom/faculty_staff/pagers/pagerfiles/t900-200.gif

Now if they would make them look cool with touch screens like iPhones I think they would have something.

-Hal

As I told someone a while back that was bugging me to set up a Twitter account, "I don't care if you're clipping your toenails, bathing the dog, doing the dishes, or going to the grocery store, and how much of a loser do you have to be to care if I am?"