Walt at Random

Suppressing the “bah humbugs” for now…

Since I picked up a text-oriented cell phone in time for ALA (but it will mostly be off, and only people I’ve arranged to meet with will get the number), and

Since I said in COAP2 that “I think Twitter was made for conferences” even if you’re not the kind who would normally be twittering up a storm (see pages 4 & 5), well, then, to follow my own advice…

I have a Twitter account. waltcrawford: What did you expect? I have notifications set to web-only, but I’ll turn them back to phone notifications before I leave for ALA Annual. If you think you’ll want to know where I’m likely to be, or want to set up a meeting, maybe you want to follow me (I barely understand this stuff–heck, I got the reply and all that for phone verification, but the verification screen still shows up). I guess you’re supposed to invite me as a friend if you think I should be tracking your activities there–is that right?

And if you do want to meet (for job offers or whatever), let me know. I do plan to check the phone periodically, even if I’m still too “disconnected” by nature to leave it on all the time. And that teeny little QWERTY keyboard isn’t wonderful, but it works OK with one finger. (Too small for thumbing–I wasn’t about to pay for a Blackberry-equivalent.) Send me email–waltcrawford at gmail.com.

Actually, I think the fastest way to “follow” me involves “waltcrawford1” as a user ID. Again, I’m not entirely sure…

Update: I believe that if you have a Twitter account, sending the message follow WALTCRAWFORD1 (case may or may not matter) will add you to my list. I will send at least one message in the next few days, if only to make sure that my phone really does send them properly.

Update 2, a day later: This is mysterious stuff, and I’m beginning to think that’s par for free web services. Yesterday afternoon (Tuesday), I decided that I really should send one Twitter from my cell phone to make sure that the setup work had all gone properly–even though I had gotten a text reply (well, two of them) that suggested all was well.

Sent the message. Checked Twitter 5 minutes, then half an hour later. No message. Retried the setup confirmation again. Tried a message. No message… Did this a couple of times.

Finally clicked on the “Delete and start over” button. Entered my cell # in slightly different form–even though the responses had been, apparently, correct with the other form. (Prepended”+1″ this time; it’s just not clear whether U.S. users need that.) Texted the (new) authentication string again.

Two things happened differently: The reply from Twitter did not ask me for a nickname/username, and the (new) authentication string disappeared from the setup screen.

Well, that looks promising, sez I. So I text one more Twitter from the cell phone. Ten seconds later, there it is on my home page (and presumably on the pages of seven followers and that person who is apparently a Follower for every Twitter account).

Great! I’m set. Wasted a buck or so worth of messages, but that’s OK. (Actually, I went ahead and signed up for the $10/1000 message “per month” plan for ALA, and will drop back to the nickel-a-piece messaging in July. I can’t imagine getting and receiving anywhere close to 1,000 messages during the conference, but can conceivably imagine hitting 200+. Or 10, as the case may be.)

Here’s where it gets a little bizarre: A few minutes later, checked my archive–and there were all the other messages, including the repeated verification string. And a while later, the “friends” screen showed all those other messages as well.

Conclusions? None, really. My apologies to the seven people getting six or eight odd messages. For now, I’m “add”ing anyone who follows me–but I’ll turn off some of them (temporarily) before I switch from Web-only to Phone for notifications, based on whether I think it likely that they’ll be at ALA.

Enough blather about twitter.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 11th, 2007 at 5:21 pm and is filed under ALA, Technology and software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.