LINICKX.com

I've heard and read a lot of grumbling about how twitter/facebook status's pose security issues, and to be honest I'm not going to disagree; if I post an update stating "this big mac is cold" it's an indication that I'm in a macdonalds and not at home, the fact that the twitter timeline shows "from mobile web" or "from iphone appX" only re-enforces the issue.

Some recent news coverage on digg has prompted some "that's not the same for me!" type responses; just because you don't have a house full of video equipment doesn't mean you don't have something worth stealing, maybe you don't live alone or you house isn't empty when you tweet, would you want your loved ones put at risk?

The most secure approach would be not to tweet... but where's the fun in that? ... another step is to not post location based tweets... "this laptop is running slow" ... doesn't give anything away, I might be at home, I might not.... a lot of old-skool tweeters always recommend counting to 10 before hitting send (similar to the sleep on blog concept) to ensure that your current mood is appropriate for the web.

So now we come to why I'm posting, in the same way we obscure / hide information about what services we run on our computers / networks, is there a way to obscure the time at which we tweet? Well the tweet time will always be there - that's what twitter wants - but the content is up to us. I propose a last week hash tag - #lastweek- this tag suggests that the status isn't now, it happened at some point in the past.

Of course this approach is no more effective than leaving the light on when you leave the house, but it does add some uncertainty... if my living room light is on it could be because I'm sat in there, or it could be because I left the light on when I went to the restaurant... if I tweet "#lastweek meal at Joes rocked!" it suggests I'm not at Joes and where I am now is debatable.

What's interesting is that as with all things on the internet, this idea isn't original; there are posts tagged like this already, I wonder if these status's really did happen last week? With this is mind I wonder what my next tweet will be? "#lastweek blogging" maybe? :-P

Twitter Tools is for Twitter Tools

nick — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:59:00 +0100

Those with a keen eye may have noticed that my tweets / status updates didn't start with "is" until recently that's because posts that appeared here on my blog would look stupid and out of context, who starts a post "is" ???

To solve the problem attachedis a small plugin for Alex Kings Twitter Tools, it's a simple WordPress filter which prepends posts which begin with "is" with the author name, example:

is testing his new WP plugin.

becomes

Nick is testing his new WP plugin.

If I get some positive feedback I might publish this in WP's plugin directory.

Installation is easy, rename twitter-tools-is.txt to twitter-tools-is.php and save it in your wp-content/plugins directory, enable the plug-in the "normal" way and job done, no further configuration required!

Twitterings

nick — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:12:00 +0000

Those with a sharp eye will have noticed there are two "linickx" twitter accounts. I've had my main @linickx for some time, although I don't spam it all the time the linickx.com tweet integration and integration into facebook/mugshot/add_social_site_here.com is cool.

Twitter has been in a lot of main stream media recently, and I've noticed that it appears to be becoming a popular replacement for RSS, many non-technicals just don't "get" RSS but it appears that twitter is providing an alternative source of keeping up with news... rather than just answering the social question "what are you doing?" .

My blog will always have the most interesting content..... of course the definition of interesting is up for debate.... but in an attempt to reach out to those using twitter to follow blogs & news I've created another twitter account @linickxfeed; This second account is simply tweeting when I create blog posts... I'm not sure of the etiquette, should tweets from people be mixed with auto-magic stuff from blogs?

Hopefully this approach won't cause to much confusion, and If it does I'll just have to delete the account :) So....

@linickx - Are twitterings from Me, feel free to follow, direct message, send messages to @linickx and anything else you can think of.
@linickxfeed - Is a BOT, feeding from linickx.com not a person, follow only.