Krishnan's weblog – an assortment of things. A scribble pad. A hybrid microblog. Mostly bread crumbs of an internet journey.
Try saying this out loud 5 times fast:
“The best breath test, tests breath better”
In the recent past, people have told me that they don’t understand the point in using twitter.
With 3 tweets in 7 months so far, I dont really count as a (major) twitter user either. But, I thought I could always write up an explanation about the advantages to help people decide. So, here are a few things about twitter to help you understand why i think it is the next big thing.
To help those who’ve never used twitter, let me start by posting my Twittle screenshot.
Twittle is a light weight client software that I’ve been using to read news from OneIndia regularly.
One quick look at image tells the following:
1. 35 minutes ago, I was solving puzzles at http://www.greylabyrinth.com/.
2. 5 minutes before I wrote about Greylabyrinth, Oneindia.in tweeted about the arrest of Muthalik in Mysore.
3. 20 minutes before that Prakash wrote about a documentary he watched – in New Jersey, I suppose.
I know about all this without reading an email, without seeing a website or even a RSS feed. How cool is that?
Now, if you think of a twitter page as yet another webpage that you need to open to learn about what a friend is doing, then it perhaps doesn’t appear as attractive/intuitive. Now if you want to know what I’m doing, it does not matter if you have to type http://pkrishnan.net or http://twitter.com/pkrishnan into your browser, it feels like the same effort.
Now if you understand that you can get real time updates from me -and-your-other-friends-and-even-companies – by clicking this little “Twittle” icon sitting in the system tray, voila, Twitter worked its magic on you.
So twitter is about real time updates from multiple sources all delivered to an icon in your system tray. Like most services, twittering is only as fun as your client software or friends can make it. Now if you live in a cave and your friends help you kill your prey everyday, you’ll be better off learning about slingshots.
I use Twittle because I dont write much and I am mostly a “read only guy” – but if you have specific needs, you might want a client with at least a few more features like Pwytter.
Most of my friends who are online 24×7 still dont use twitter as they seem to think instant messengers are faster. But then, with instant messengers dont get you a webpage on which you can prove that you said or didn’t say something.
Twitter is the fastest way to publish information publicly but the penalty you pay is size, and I may add that the layout options on your twitter page are really limited.
Most of what is on blogs are for public consumption and most of instant messaging is not for public consumption.
To me, twitter is the perfect fill for the sweet spot between friends who are close enough to beat the crap out of us on messengers and those long distance old buddies who deserve more attention than our occasional email or blog post.
There is a lot of hype about Twitter right now. Many new services and applications are cropping up daily. You might want to spend some time on these and might want to differentiate those which will stand out in the long term. By the time you’re done evaluating, I’m sure you’d be a Twitter expert already.
If you bring twitter into your life, this is a list of things you’ll be doing.
Among others, the invisible power of twitter comes from:
1. Real time – as fast as few second updates delivered to your twitter client
2. Direct – straight from the horse’s mouth
3. Two way communication – better than just reading, you can respond quickly if you choose to
4. Brevity – yes, it is important to intelligent people.
5. Multiple devices to communicate with – Desktops, Laptops, Mobilephones, PDAs
6. Speed – dervied from 1, 4 & 5
7. Greater spontaneity and better thought tracking – derived from 6
So as you can see, there are clear advantages. There is actually more to it, but these are the key differences that matter to most people who just want to keep in touch with friends.
If reading all of this made you understand twitter any better, happy twittering!
Well after a year of its launch, Mother Diary’s probiotic milk has finally made it to the shop in my apartment complex.
A bottle sells at Rs.10, is 100 ml and is based on the symbiotic combination of LA-5 and BB-12 which Yoplait has done long ago. Though presence of BB-12 is written on the bottle itself, curiously, Mother Diary’s own website does not mention BB-12.
The website also only mentions “billions of bacteria” without exactly specifying “how many billions of what” in each serving.
Each serving (of Mango flavour) is loaded with 12.3 grams of sugar for 100 ml and some fruit pulp, but it sure doesnt taste as “addictive” as Yakult. The date of packaging is printed on the cap of each bottle and you will need to add 21 days to determine whether or not you can consume it.
I clearly felt as if Rs. 10 bought more with Mother Dairy than with Yakult- there is 50% more milk per bottle!
Once upon a time, there was WordStar 4. Then came MS Word and with it came Mathtype, Mathmagic and Equation editor in Word 2007.
None of these gave me the joy that I had when I discovered PHP Math Publisher and WPMATHPUB.
Now my Wordpress powered sites can have equations in them for free! 
Using a blog client software with WordPress MU does seem to be problem. After 30 minutes of googling, I still couldn’t find one thing that provided any conclusive answers.
I’ve always been a Scribefire fan and wanted it to work with WP MU.
The WP MU forums already have this post on how to make Scribefire work.
To date the solution seems to have remained the same. I tested this out on WP MU 2.8.1, Firefox 3.0.11, Scribefire 3.4.1 on a site that does not use wild card subdomains.
These are the steps:
October 26, 2009 – there will be no Geocities!
Brings to me the memories, fond and otherwise, of extended well-past-mid-night sessions of setting up my “first free internet site”.
WP-MU 2.8.1. was released yesterday, just one day after WP 2.8.1.
I upgraded one of my sites to 2.8.1. The site seems to be working alright.
But the dashboard shows signs of trouble.
Does any one else have this problem? What causes this?
I was at work, in a situation where I could not express shock or grief, when I first heard of MJ’s death. I just had to pretend as if it didn’t matter and conduct business as usual. Later that day, I walked jogged/walked 8 kms listening to Jackson for over an hour.
Everyday since then, I played a few of his tracks and I guess it never sank into me that MJ really died. I didn’t rush to buy his albums, since I already had most of them – but I did make a mental note to myself to collect some of his videos. MJ danced as well as he sang and I need to have his videos to keep.
In the last few days, some people told me how much they loved him and some people told me how they thought his acquittal on the lack of evidence didn’t prove anything. I didn’t know which side to take.
Though I didn’t watch his funeral on TV today, many sites I read seem to be carrying news about his funeral.
I guess I’m coming to understand that a state of denial wont last forever.
I never cared to know or understand the legal things surrounding Michael, but I can say with certainty that I was a fan from the first track and I loved the music he made.
The only thing I regret is that I never sent him fan mail, not even once. Not that it would have made a difference to him, but it would have made a huge difference to me. One thing I must learn from Michael’s loss, is to appreciate when I can.
Learning Daily is a personal blog that is just as random as my thoughts. The navigation bar at the top and the search box may be the only things that will help you find something.
My present interests lie in sustainability, peak oil, debian, Web after 2.0, creativity and epistemology. I learn daily. I learn about everything under the sun and even those beyond it. I am a perpetual student whose believes that wisdom is the real reward for learning.