This tale is brought to you by Bluehost, or rather the lack thereof. My account was down yesterday for about 12 hours. I have no illusions that anybody even noticed, but for me it was frustrating because I had a post brewing and I couldn’t write it. Now why couldn’t I write it and post it later? I’m using Windows Live Writer right? Well no because I’m using the Mac side of my MacBook Pro much more lately and there’s no WLW on this side of the grass. I’ll have a post about the Mac vs. PC thing soon I’m sure. (Yes, I know there is a thing called a text editor, but I’m spoiled you know).

Now it may have been a good thing I didn’t post yesterday because it was going to be a rant about how some people are essentially blaming the less well off for the current economic crisis. I’m talking about, among others, that horse’s ass Rick Santelli and Phil “nation of whiners” Gramm. Again, maybe it’s just as well because I can move on now and still get to call Rick Santelli a horse’s ass. Twice!

So just to prove John Lennon’s posit that life is what’s happening when you’re making other plans, I was off doing something completely different than writing a political rant. I was seeing what people were saying about web hosting companies. I was able to listen in on other conversations (and rants) about their web host. Wondering whether the grass was greener, I was seeing that it wasn’t necessarily. How was I listening in on all this? With TweetDeck. If you don’t know what TweetDeck is, it is an Adobe Air application that gives a different view of the Twitter conversation. As I’ve mentioned before, TweetDeck allows you to track multiple conversation with its built in search feature and view it in a separate column that you can track, just like you track what your friends are saying.

As the screenshot above illustrates, I am able to see anyone on Twitter talk about either Bluehost, or another company I am considering, MediaTemple. I have seen both kinds of comments from “I love Bluehost” and “I love MediaTemple” to the more likely “Bluehost/MediaTemple is teh suck” – knowing full well that negative comments will more likely appear on Twitter. Mine did.

What did I learn from the TweetDeck comparison? Ok, so go figure, the grass isn’t always greener. Mentioned also in these conversations was a service called Mosso, that had largely positive reviews. Also, it comes as no surprise that Mosso is more expensive than either Bluehost or MediaTemple. So here’s a summary of what I learned:

• Inexpensive web hosting companies have down-time
• You (for the most part) get what you pay for
• People like to vent/complain/rant
• It’s good to know other people (even those I don’t know) are having similar issues

Thanks TweetDeck, I sure do love you. I think I’ll go tweet that. There.

To which they replied:

To which I snapped back:

They actually answered back:

The question this begs is, who is “Safari Answers”? Are they tech support at Apple? Apparently not if they are directing me to Apple’s forums. Is this someone who is just passionate about Safari? Maybe. Their profile includes the web address to Apple’s Safari page. Hmm. Whoever they are, they calmly, rationally responded to my expletive containing tweet. I did put my little smiley in there to let them know when I was finished, I meant no ill will.

Safari Answers must see other similar comments about this as evidence is here, here, and here. My response about “stop doing it in the first place” is warranted, I feel, because I have checked that Safari box and gone to Tools and chosen “Ignore Selected Updates” before. It seems to come back even when you’ve attempted to ignore it previously. So Apple, if you’re listening, don’t offer up other programs when you’re trying to keep the other software on my computer, that I did want, up-to-date, but that I didn’t need because I don’t need the “App Store” because I don’t have an iPhone, and I hate the fact that you advertise it as half-price and you shouldn’t get away with it so stop it because it pisses me off!!! Thanks for listening.

EPILOGUE: Two last bits. First, I got the original “Safari Push” on my home theater PC, and tweeted accordingly. I got another push on the computer that I am typing this post on while I was in the middle of writing it! I chuckled. Second, this whole tweet and response thing does expose a problem with Twitter in that the reply system is a bit broken. The “in reply to” link at the bottom of the tweet only links to the last tweet by that person, not the actual tweet that it was related to. It would be nice to get that working better. Twitter? You there?

The question for a while now has been is it worth downloading the AIR “player” and then installing the individual programs? Is there anything compelling out there to use? I can now say that it’s a definitive YES! The point of these programs is that they are small, and quickly installed. To use the programs, they require that you have a live connection to the Internet, but they function on the idea of working “in the cloud“. So after you get Adobe AIR installed on your computer, go install the following programs:

TweetDeck – I’m getting the feeling that this is going to be the next “must have” program, next to using Twitter of course. TweetDeck is one of the many (thousands?) Twitter intermediaries that pull in Twitter posts (tweets) and display them in a unique way. It’s still in early beta (0.151b as of this writing), but it already has some uniquely great features. It allows you to get a handle on how tweets get viewed. TweetDeck sets up as many columns as you need to view your tweets how you want to. The first column is usually the “all tweets” column, but you can move the columns around. You can set up groups by picking individuals that you follow and giving that group a name. Then you see their tweets in another column. You can create another column that is a search term. I used the term “edupunk” and now I get a column that updates automatically with tweets that have the word edupunk in them. You can have still more columns with replies to you, or direct messages. A recent new feature is the ability to collapse the view to a single column. I expect great things from this program.

Adobe Media Player – Now you might be saying, “who needs another media player?”, and you’re right. However, this is well done, and if you use Adobe software on a regular basis, there is enough Adobe content to make it worth it. Add to that clips from TV shows and some “HiDef” content, and it makes for a worthwhile download.

Destroy Flickr – OK, I don’t get why there’s the hostile name because DF is all about a pretty interface for viewing Flickr photos. Photos just look better on a dark neutral grey background, as opposed to Flickr’s all too white web page. Again, it’s a quick install of an Adobe AIR program and you have the many viewing options, called canvases. It remembers where you have been and saves those views in a history, called workspaces. You also have control of uploading and downloading photos to and from your Flickr account. UPDATE: Note the comment from the creator of DestroyFlickr, Jonnie Hallman, below. I got the name wrong on the first go-round. Sorry!

If you want to check out other AIR applications go to freshAIRapps and see just what the potential for the AIR platform is. Note: Because of a current negotiation with Adobe of the use of AIR in their website’s domain, another location for the FreshAIRApps may be at Refreshingapps.com.

This is actually pretty funny. I am now presented with yet another chance to have fun at Jon Udell’s expense. First, some background. Many of you know, we were honored to have Jon talk at our Faculty Academy ’06 edition. We were quadruplely (???) honored when he had very kind words regarding the Teaching and Learning crew here at UMW. We continue to keep Jon in the "minds that inspire us" category. So imagine how tickled I was to see how persistent Jon was in trying to follow me on Twitter, as demonstrated by my Hotmail account (my Twitter email address of record). Sure looks like Jon is spamming me something awful. Well, truth be told, it’s actually Twitter not working right (how’s that possible ).

The other fact is that I recently discovered Jon was on Twitter more regularly. There was even this recent cryptic message from Jon that actually turned out to be a basis for a blog post. Jon being on Twitter is to me a good sign that it is an appropriate tool to be using in my work. I want to know what Jon is working on and Twitter gives me access to his and other great minds, including my colleagues here at UMW.

I direct messaged Jon on Twitter telling him that I would un-follow and then re-follow him to see it that fixed things. We’ll see, but Jon you should know, it’s an honor to be spammed by you!

Why are conversations important? Because many times they force you to see things differently and think about things in new ways. Now, who you choose to listen to is important as well. For this post I have just listened, quite literally, to Dave Winer. He is thinking out loud (yes, literally) about a service that allows people to record an audio “tweet”, complete with an imposed limit of a 200k audio file. Winer, by the way, is someone I listen too because he is a smart guy. He is one of the key players in the invention of RSS, and also a key player in the development of enclosures in RSS. Enclosures are the things that enables podcasts to work.

So when a smart person talks, I like to be there listening to him/her. I feel like I’m at a party listening to Dave and some colleagues flesh out this idea of a Twittergram. Is it going to work, or will it fail? These are questions that are unimportant now, and Dave feels that the naysayers should shut up for a while and let the conversation and the smart people get to work and see what happens.

The audio Twitter concept already works from the user standpoint, as long as they have Greasemonkey and the del.icio.us mp3 userscript installed . . .

Note the blue play button that appears when viewing a linked mp3 file in Twitter. That’s the del.icio.us mp3 script in action!

Twitter is coughing up hairballs less than 24 hours until Faculty Academy 2007. And with lots of twittery goodness planned, we hope those cats work fast.