Twittering and Such

Over the past two weeks, I've been Twittering with the gang at PSU to explore this technology and see where it might lead. Twitter is essentially a social networking application from Odeo that asks, "What are you doing?" You can use IM, SMS, or the Web to interact with the application, and you get a running stream of what you and your friends are up to at any one time. Initially, most people are rather skeptical that it is even remotely interesting; but it's easy to get caught up in the stream of "stuff" coming through.

On my Mac, I'm using Twitterific, a handy little app that sits and updates you (and from which you can update, too). From home, I generally use the Web interface. I was using my phone at first, but it quickly became clear that my text-ing plan wouldn't handle the load.

Educational uses? I was intrigued by the fact that it can use SMS to update people. My reconception of our current syllabus builder would be able to use this technology to update students when their syllabus has changed. A quick text message letting them know what the change was would be excellent. Combine that with a few other changes I want to make (okay, more like a lot of changes), and the tool may garner broader use than it has previously.