Linden's Pensieve

This semester, I’m teaching Composition I for OTC online. It is an adventure for sure. I’m just now starting to get used to answering the varied and informal questions I’ve been getting in my OTC inbox, and I’m taking a professional development course that shows instructors how to make the most of multimedia like images, [...]

Today, we are releasing an eBook, “A True Beginners Guide to Getting the Most Out of Twitter” (PDF), which puts all of the great guides, links, and resources in one nifty PDF file for you take with you offline and share with others as much as you’d like.

We learn about new Twitter tools and resources every day, but there are so many, you can easily become overwhelmed. We’ve categorized them by function and given them a brief description. We hope you’ll find them useful, too.

Sarah (@sarahjoaustin) and I (@xgravity23) are publishing our True Beginner’s Guide to Twitter this week and today you can find the third section, Twittering on the Web, at Your Desk, and On the Go, on Sarah’s blog. If you want to start from the beginning, check out Basic Twitter Functions and Advanced Twitter Functions. You’ll [...]

Today’s post, the second of four, is a collaborative effort by Sarah (@sarahjoaustin) and me (@xgravity23). Yesterday, you learned the basic functions of Twitter and in this post, you’ll learn advanced Twitter functions. In the next two posts, you’ll learn how to use Twitter on the web, at your desk, and on the go; and get our recommended Twitter tools and resources.

Once you’ve been on Twitter for a day or two and you’ve nailed down the basic Twitter functions,

After one particularly fruitful Google Talk conversation with Lorraine, who was getting ready to start promoting her local AIGA chapter on Twitter (@AIGAKC) but who had no idea how to use Twitter and even less time to play around with it, I realized that there is no really good beginner’s guide to using Twitter

Like many before him vehemently raging against a new idea, Alexander Zaitchik has obviously not used Twitter. So often, criticals consider the newest demon only long enough to find fault. They don’t maintain a curious or open mind to give it a fair chance. Twitter is quite often likewise written off immediately without any exploration.

Web 2.Oh. . .really? author, Craig Stoltz, wrote a blog post about how, despite having edited “miles of copy in [his] day,” Twitter has won him over by constantly asking him to sharpen his editing skills.

After all, writing a rich story in only 140 characters is not for the faint of heart. It takes ruthless editing, careful attention to detail, semantics, reference, and punctuation.

A couple weeks ago, I published a guest post on A Fool of Myself about Twitter, the micro-blogging site that is sweeping the web. Today, I came across several articles presenting unique uses of Twitter that I enjoyed reading about, and I hope you will too.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address Twitterized

Carter F. Smith at Kicking and Screaming asks if Lincoln could have delivered the Gettysburg Address (which is 271 words) on Twitter (which limits posts to 140 characters), what would it look like, an interesting, if not a bit silly, proposal. And so, Smith proposes Lincoln’s 140-character Gettysburg Address.

Move over browser-based bookmarks! Make way, Del.icio.us! Diigo is here, and it’s changing the way people use and, in true Web 2.0 fashion, interact with the Internet.

Let’s start with a little history lesson.

Waay back in 1996, when Beth and I laughed to tears while trolling in chatrooms, when I created the “xgravity23″ nickname I still use today, the Internet was just gaining popularity. Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator both offered users the ability to keep track of favorite sites via bookmarks. Unfortunately, bookmarks are only accessible from the computer you saved them on.

Along came del.icio.us: Suddenly, your favorite sites are with you wherever you go. In the end, unfortunately, del.icio.us is just a bookmarking site. You can tag and write a short note for each bookmark, but that is about the limit of interactivity between you and the sites you save.

Then there was Diigo