I am the ghost of groovymother.com. Woooooo!

This is an old page from Rod Begbie's blog.

It only exists in an attempt to prevent linkrot. No new content will be added to this site, and links and images are liable to be broken. Check out begbie.com to find where I'm posting stuff these days.

Filed under 'twitter'

March 9, 2012

Biologic: A Playful Social Network Browser for iPad

Cellular loveliness from Bloom. Makes for a delightful second-screen.

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December 15, 2011

Twitter by Post

Analoguey loveliness.

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October 12, 2011

April 26, 2011

Are You Following a Bot?

Atlantic article on the Web Ecology Project’s ace Socialbots game, where teams of software bots “played” to influence regular Twitter users.

“There’s a lot of potential for a lot of evil here,” admits Hwang. “But there’s also a lot of potential for a lot of good.”

February 16, 2011

Tim Hwang - Exterminate Exterminate

Tim’s 5-minute talk at last week’s Ignite SF, covering his recently run social-battlebots contest. Must watch!

January 14, 2011

The science of the hashtag

Great analysis by Robin Sloan of a sizable Twitter hashtag meme. Size of followership != size of readership.

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January 9, 2011

Exquisite Tweets from @RodBegbie, @junelin, @clizzin, @LaughAtlantis

or “Things to bear in mind when taking advice from a small, Asian girl”

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November 2, 2010

Dropbox - Virals

Splendidly implemented viral flow from Dropbox. Hand holds you through spamming your Twitter & Facebook feeds with the carrot of extra free storage.

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August 8, 2010

ReTweeted

ReTweeted

This weekend, I got retweeted by a top chef from off the telly (after praising the creamed corn at his new restaurant)(!), and one of my all-time favourite indie musicians of all time (after buying a t-shirt from her). All hail the power of Twitter.

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April 27, 2010

Apple //t

Top notch hack — Wiring up an Apple //e to display messages (and avatars) from Twitter. Tempts me to break out a ZX Spectrum emulator…

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January 29, 2010

San Francisco's Answer to Westboro Baptist Church

Made me sad that I didn’t know they were in town until they were already here. I’d have loved to have protested outside Twitter with a “God Hates Failwhales” sign.

January 18, 2010

What Would Martin Luther King Make of Twitter?: Baratunde Thurston

Thoughtful and funny piece by Baratunde Thurston.

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December 31, 2009

Tweeteorites iPhone App

Features push notifications of your tweets being faved, so you can have your ego stroked IN REAL TIME!

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December 17, 2009

Twitter’s down, so I guess I’ll have to post this to this olde blog thing I still have kicking around.

Twitter is down, after reportedly being hacked by Iran.

I guess the hackers are pissed at how few people still have a green avatar.

December 1, 2009

themeleon :: Twitter Profile Designer by COLOURlovers

Lovely lovely lovely! I’ve been using COLOURlovers patterns to decorate my Twitter profile for some time. Their new “themeleon” lets you customize and tweak in-place then upload directly to Twitter.

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September 14, 2009

August 24, 2009

The Snake Tweeting Its Own Tail

This evening, @cheever saw an automated retweet by @02138now of a tweet by @Sooz containing a picture of me wearing the Twitshirt of the tweet I posted last October which helped me leave Current.

He, of course, twittered about it. And I just bought his tweet as a t-shirt.

Congratulations, Twitter, for building one of the world’s leading “What t-shirt is Rod Begbie wearing right now?” systems.

August 9, 2009

tr.im R.I.P.

Another URL shortener gets shuttered. As it turns out, unless you slap frames and shite over the links you bounce users to, there’s no business model. Another example of why I run rdbgb.us: I am solely responsible for keeping the links in my Twitter posts alive, without having to worry about a third-party collapsing.

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June 26, 2009

Web Ecology Project: The Iranian Election on Twitter: The First Eighteen Days

Great report from a group of Boston-area smartfolks led by Tim Hwang, on what’s been going on on Twitter over the last few weeks.

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June 18, 2009

The Real Lessons From Twitter

By Tony Stubblebine, who was at Odeo when Twitter launched. “Rails was never the problem”.

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June 10, 2009

Orphaned Tweets

“When people sign up for Twitter, post once, then never return.” There’s a whole lesson in User Experience right here!

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June 8, 2009

TwitterCounter Stats for rodbegbie

TwitterCounter Stats for rodbegbie

Can you spot the day that Twitter changed its algorithm for displaying friend icons so that early adopters such as myself didn't get disproportional prominence?

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June 6, 2009

tweetpo.st

tweetpo.st

I love the way tweetpo.st/ translates @usernames when updating your Facebook status with your Twitter posts.

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April 21, 2009

brdfdr.com (Birdfeeder)

Dan Sandler’s research project, creating a protocol for distributed microblogging. An improvement on identi.ca, as he built a Twitter gateway to help bootstrap. Will definitely be playing with it tonight.

April 20, 2009

atebits - Tweetie for Mac

Tweetie has been my iPhone Twitter app of choice for some time. The new OS X version seems equally lovely. Not going to tear away folks with seven-column Tweetdeck setups, but it seems to be a good step-up from Twitterrific.

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April 14, 2009

Spreading like wildfire: Twitter, Amazon and the social media mob

I saw this unfold on Sunday, fairly sure it was a storm over an Amazon user error. Man, the Twitter crowd sure like their torches and pitchforks.

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April 13, 2009

The Tweets Of Roland Hedley

“Proposal: World media mock N. Korea missile dud 24/7. Shamed Dear Leader shoots top scientists, crippling program for years. Flaws?”

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March 18, 2009

Mac Lounge

Alpha version of a new OS X Twitter client. Still a bit rough around the edges, but has a bit more oomph than Twitterrific (and isn’t as complex and desktop-real-estate-consuming as TweetDeck), so I’m giving it a shot.

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February 19, 2009

My new favourite Twitterbot

My new favourite Twitterbot

@Cardinal_Fang.

February 11, 2009

Twitter is…

Twitter is…

What Google search autocomplete thinks of Twitter.

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February 3, 2009

TwitPicGrid

Stream of photos posted to Twitter. Crappy cellphone cameras aplenty, but it’s fascinating to watch.

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January 26, 2009

BBC NEWS | Stephen Fry's 50,000 followers

Stephen Fry explains Twitter.

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January 10, 2009

Twitter / twitTheTwits

Roald Dahl’s excellent “The Twits”, 140 characters-or-so at a time. It’s only just started, so you can still catch up. Tremendously happy-making.

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January 6, 2009

Weak Password Brings 'Happiness' to Twitter Hacker

Full details on yesterday’s Twitter hack. Twitter’s admin interface was available offsite to all their admin users, one of whom has a weak password, plus their monitoring didn’t notice a dictionary attack going on. Oops.

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January 5, 2009

Obama Phished?

Obama Phished?

Looks like the president-elect's Twitter credentials have been compromised.

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December 20, 2008

Twitter Venn

Enter words and see how they overlap in Twitter usage.

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November 16, 2008

Twistory

Stream your Twitter output as an iCalendar feed. Makes for interesting viewing, comparing your output with events on your calendar.

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October 29, 2008

rodbegbie's first tweet

A chance to revel in my earlyadopteritude.

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October 7, 2008

It’s like my entire life has been leading up to this moment…

It’s like my entire life has been leading up to this moment…

The real winner of tonight's debate? ME! For managing to spread my "X loves Y like a basset hound love cheese" attempt-at-a-meme to an unsuspecting debate-viewing audience.

October 6, 2008

September 25, 2008

Production Control Room

Production Control Room

During a test run of Hack the Debate.

Our operators are standing by

Our operators are standing by

This is either the Twitter-scanning nerve-center of the Current TV Hack the Debate coverage, or we're having a pledge drive.

September 23, 2008

Twitter / TweetTrak

Twitter’s “track” service (which texted you whenever a phrase was uttered) has been disabled for some time. Luckily, an enterprising soul has reimplemented it using Twitter’s search API, and it works a treat. Follow @TweetTrak to get started.

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September 18, 2008

September 15, 2008

Current + Twitter = Hack the Debate

A little project that’s been going on here at Current Towers - During the presidential debates, we’ll be diving into Twitter and putting the *real* debate up on national TV in real(ish) time. (And who’s that handsome avatar halfway through the promo…?)

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Ahh good ol’ Tricky Dick. #current

Ahh good ol’ Tricky Dick. #current

Screenshot from the Current TV Hack the Debate promo. (Words put into my mouth by persons unknown).

Current will be screening the US presidential debates live on TV, with relevant tweets overlaid in real(-ish) time. It promises to be a hell of an experiment (not least for our broadcast team!) First debate: Friday September 26th.

September 12, 2008

Hack Day Display

Hack Day Display

Kent Brewster's Hack Day Display, pulling in the latest photos from Flickr, and tweets from Twitter.

June 29, 2008

Fail Whale sculpture - a set on Flickr

Quality! A 3D-sculpture of Twitter’s almost-ever present beacon of FAIL!

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May 19, 2008

Favrd. Trickle-down egonomics for the twitter attention sp...

Digest of the most-favourited tweets, with a “webcock-free” twist. Some great examples of what can be achieved with 140 characters.

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May 6, 2008

Twitter Charts

Nice plotgraph of your Twitter posting habits.

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April 26, 2008

@TrackThis: Track FedEx/UPS/USPS/DHL Packages using Twitter

Get DM’d on twitter (and thus on your IM, email or phone if you’ve got DM forwarding enabled) every time that package you’re waiting for moves.

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April 22, 2008

Rands, suffering from “The Groovymother Effect”

Rands, suffering from “The Groovymother Effect”

(Thanks to Dan for pointing this out to me)

March 24, 2008

Rod Begbie's twitter conversations - Quotably.com

Clever attempt at threading Twitter conversations.

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March 20, 2008

ze's page :: colorwar 2008

Ze’s explanation for the colorwars on Twitter.

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March 19, 2008

Twitter / zefrank

Ze Frank is causing splendid hijinx on Twitter. Let’s go Sepia Team!

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February 11, 2008

Commuter Feed

Crowdsourced traffic reports, via Twitter. Of course, there’ll need to be another site tracking all the accidents caused by folks texting accidents to this site while driving…

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February 6, 2008

Twitter Blog: Highlights from Superbowl Sunday

I love that the Wall-E trailer caused a spike.

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January 27, 2008

favotter

Collator of favourited Twitters. It’s a bit wonky (it only gathers together favourites by certain users), but there’s some fun stuff in there.

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January 14, 2008

Pistachio: Twitter is my Village

Great post by Laura “@Pistachio” Fitton. Exactly sums up why Twitter is so lovely: “For a contrived, weird and techy way to communicate, Twitter’s “passive conversation” fosters very natural, gradual relationship-building.”

December 14, 2007

T-Mobile Shuts Down Twitter Service for Good?

T-Mobile is blocking SMSes sent to Twitter, claiming it is “not an authorized third-party service provider”. This is interesting — if users are paying for text messages and SMS packages, does the phone company have any right to block delivery?

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November 16, 2007

plusplusbot

Tracking irc-style karma across Twitter. plusplusbot++

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November 13, 2007

Top 10 Random Quotes from Twitter

“An aggregation of humorous, weird, inspiring, newsworthy or just plain cool random status updates from Twitter.”

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November 8, 2007

Foamee

Lovely beer-sharing via Twitter. The coasters for sale in the store are plenty special too.

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October 19, 2007

3 Fantasy Twitterers: Replies to @CathleenRitt

If you could follow any three possible twitterers, who would you choose? I’d go for @yooouuuk, @sjobs and @bez.

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October 16, 2007

Twitter: Oauth

Blaine at Twitter has implemented OAuth authentication, the first (I believe) live implementation on the web. I hope to have this rolled into Twadget in the next week or two, so I can stop asking for usernames and passwords.

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October 6, 2007

Post-home-run Tweets

Post-home-run Tweets

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September 17, 2007

Twitter / Techcrunch40

Live snark from Arrington’s backslapfest.

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September 9, 2007

September 5, 2007

necoランキング

An explanation for all those weird Japanese cat tweets I was seeing on Twitter’s public timeline. Appears to be some kind of virtual pet living in Twitter.

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September 3, 2007

User Generated Features

Adam Green: “What I’m seeing on Twitter, however, is true social construction of software features. Users are coming up the ideas, and implementing them through adoption.”

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August 11, 2007

Twit-B-Q

Twit-B-Q

This afternoon's New England Twitter/web/podcast geek meetup.

July 14, 2007

Pickleview on iPhone

Live baseball game tracker for iPhone. Uses Twitter as a chat channel.

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July 9, 2007

PocketTweets: Twitter For Your iPhone

Attractively-done Twitter front-end for iPhone. Really wish Twitter had a proper authentication API, so I didn’t have to keep giving my username and password to third parties.

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June 1, 2007

Log4Twitter

log4j logger which posts to Twitter. Inevitable, perhaps, but still funny.

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May 30, 2007

Twitter Blog: Are You Twittering @ Me?

Twitter add a page listing all the times someone @s a message at you. I found a couple of times someone I’m not following has responded to me!

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May 13, 2007

twitternanoformats » home

Oh, good lord. Trying to cram more context (or, if you prefer, noise) into the 140 characters allowed in a Twitter post.

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May 6, 2007

Twitter Launches Mobile Interface

Minimal web interface for mobile devices.

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April 19, 2007

twttr sketch on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The origin of Twitter (or Twttr as then was) in papery form. Seems I was quite accurate when I first saw it and described it as “the way my friends and I used to use our AIM Away messages to pass on information and injokes.”

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March 18, 2007

twittervision

Twitter posts plotted on a world map in real-ish time.

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March 8, 2007

Ambient Intimacy

A good explanation of what’s so lovely about Twitter, in a way I can explain to folks without sounding crazy.

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March 6, 2007

Twitter / johnedwards

John Edwards’s campaign is Twittering his campaign stops.

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February 10, 2007

Firefox Twitter Plugin

Uses OpenSearch to post to Twitter. I didn’t realise you could POST using the Firefox search bar — This introduces opportunities for all kinds of cool hacks.

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January 28, 2007

Twitteroo

Windows Twitter client. Very “inspired” by Twitterrific.

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January 8, 2007

Twitter / bbcnews

Handy — BBC News’s RSS feed being Twittered.

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December 19, 2006

Twitter / condi

What’s the Twitter equivalent of a “Fakester”?

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December 9, 2006

Liminal Existence: On Twitter

“Having “community” is extremely important; far more so than our productivity.”

December 8, 2006

Creating Passionate Users: The Asymptotic Twitter Curve

There are currently four posts on the Twitter public timeline (including one from me) saying “Reading Kathy Sierra’s article on Twitter”. The lower graphic on “flow” is alarmingly true for me.

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November 24, 2006

Twadget — The Twitter Vista Sidebar Gadget

I’ve knocked out a sidebar gadget for Vista which displays your friends’ statuses on Twitter.

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November 23, 2006

Ben Ward » Twitgit for Twitter

Nice unobtrusive non-interrupty Dashboard widget for tracking and posting-to Twitter.

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November 19, 2006

Twitter / rodbegbie

I’m having lots of fun with Twitter. My “Emergency Snark Broadcast System”, if you will.

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About This Site

This is an archive of groovmother.com, the old blog run by Rod Begbie — A Scottish geek who lives in San Francisco, CA.

I'm the co-founder of Sōsh, your handy-dandy guide for things to do in San Francisco this weekend.