Like many, when I first heard of the concept of Twitter, I was skeptical about the merits of the service. Ok, ok it’s more on the side of violently opposed than skeptical. I mean, we could already read the details of people’s lives on blogs, did we need more intimate up-to-the-minute updates in between blog posts? Is our attention span so diminished that we can only take the time to read information in 140 character chunks?

I could just imagine the monotonous minutiae that people would be “tweeting” about. I could literally imagine someone becoming a Twitter Shitter.

Then something happened that would change my mind completely. I started attending geek/tech social events in and around Portland and I met a ton of cool people most of which use Twitter in some fashion or another. After a while I observed that the community and the conversation that was held in person would continue and/or morph into a conversation in the Twitter-verse. So I created an account and started following people that I was getting to know at these meet-ups.

Ever since then Twitter has become increasingly useful. I think that I found it most useful at the wonderful WebVisions conference in Portland. Beyond the usefulness at conferences (where it first gained an absurd amount of popularity), I’ve discovered new TV shows via Twitter, learned about new local events, and I’ve even reduced my digg reading by a measurable amount. No reason to drink from the fire hose of news when your friends tweet about the stuff that you care about. It’s like a built in news filter.

It’s easy to get carried away with Twitter and follow thousands of people that you’ll never meet and you’ll never have a connection with (not that there is anything wrong with that). Honestly I’m not sure how one would keep up with all of the updates if that’s the route that you chose. For me, I’m starting small. Just following a select number of people here and there and increase when I feel like I have an attention surplus.

For those of you that are so inclined you can read my updates and follow me at http://twitter.com/eddorre.

I love the Boston Globe’s new photo blog called The Big Picture. The photos are of amazing quality and tell stories that words alone can’t describe. Definitely recommended.

What happens when you drive cross country from Tampa, Florida to Portland, Oregon? Well as someone that’s never done it, I wouldn’t have the foggiest, but my friends are doing it and they are blogging about it.

The timeline seems to be a bit off (from a normal blog) but Rick is one of the most unique individuals I’ve ever met, so I know that it’s a good read.

Blogging is becoming more ubiquitous everyday especially among
non-technocrats. I’ve been neglecting to do some blog droppin’ (think
name dropping) because…well…because I’m lazy. I’ll be doing some updates to the site soon

So here they are in no particular order:

• tristanjones.net


• terrarist.blogspot.com


• dofaz.blogspot.com

It’s no doubt that blogging has hit the big time. Adopted by the geek
community early on, today, anyone and anywhere (well almost anywhere)
can create a blog and write about whatever it is that interests them.
Some of these blogs are technical in nature, some are political in
nature, and there are others that are an online diary of sorts.

I read all kinds of blogs but the majority of the blogs that I read are
from people that I know personally or someone I know personally has
recommended the blog. With that being said, I like to read about the
person behind the blog as much as I like to read about their technical
accomplishments, etc.

Now, there are some in the geek community (and probably others as well)
that believe that certain genres of blogs or even types of posts have
no merit, that they are noise instead of signal. This argument
has been covered previously by my friend Jason Olson and I happen to
agree with him wholeheartedly.

I’m chagrined by this air arrogance and
elitism and it came to a head the other day when I read Chris Sells’
post The Scientists Never Survive This. In his post, he wrote “I can’t believe nobody* blogged about ”http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,15739502-13762,00.html" target="_blank">this
today!…" and he continued to write, "*by “nobody” I mean “nobody” I
read, of course — I sure it was all the news amongst the “dear diary”
set : )"

Perhaps it wasn’t his intention, but what’s the point of the “dear
diary set” comment? Is this another jab in the signal-to-noise ratio
argument? Even if he did suffix it with a smiley, I don’t believe it
matters. It’s the tone of the writing. It’s like kicking someone in the
groin, smiling and saying, “no offense” or getting a nice steak dinner
with all the trimmings and serving it on a dirty trash can lid. It’s
all in the tone or presentation.

I’m sure that some with the “dear diary set” would consider geek blogs
so mind numbingly boring and so inconsequential that they would rather
tear out their own eyes than read it.

I guess the SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) argument is nothing more than
people’s opinions. Chris has his and I have mine. On that note, ’nuff
said.

My friend Natalie, that for some reason reminds me of the character Carrie Bradshaw (in a cool, writer sense not in a Skeletor looking sense), has started a blog. I like her writing, it’s edgy, funny, intelligent and by the virute of being intelligent, it makes you think.