Somewhere in my travels I thought I saw a project that uses Sinatra and some very RESTful URLs to do blogging via email. Now I can’t find it.
If you’ve seen this as well – leave a message in the comments.
If I can’t find it in a couple of days, I think I know what my next project is.
🙂
Update 13 Dec 2010
Anil Dash asked for something like this almost 8(!!!!) years ago.
This weekend, I opened up my Twitter account and read each message I had posted.
Then I deleted it.
And I kept reading and deleting until Twitter stopped showing me my messages – sometime around October 2009.
I started with more than 7200 ‘tweets’ and according to Twitter, I’ve 6,587 remaining.
Now if you visit /garrickvanburen you won’t see any of them. Seems as though Twitter has decided that anything I’ve written prior to, say, October 2009 is no longer available [1]. But – if my profile says I have 6,587 ‘tweets’ – where are they?
I even searched for them via search.twitter.com;
” Older tweets are temporarily unavailable.”
If they’re not accessible – shouldn’t the number be 0?
I’m completely fine with Twitter being temporary. I think it should be (that’s why I mass deleted them anyway). I don’t think Twitter should be indexed by Google or Bing or any other service. The question is – how long should a give ‘tweet’ be accessible?
Nine months seems as arbitrary as 140 character limit and killing off basic auth in August.
So, how long should a ‘tweet’ live?
If Twitter’s goal is to capture the zeitgeist in real-time, how long does it take for a moment to pass?
5 minutes? 1 hour? 24 hours? 1 beat?
Update 25 June 2010: As of this morning, my Twitter account reads ‘0 tweets’. Makes me feel that Twitter doesn’t see any value in keeping the old stuff around and accessible. Feels very Logan’s Run. Not sure how I feel about this yet.
This morning, I heard a broadcast radio discussion on the future of television .
First off – the host made the assumption that cable television is some sort of necessity. Wow, if that’s the case – we’re living in the age of abundance.
Second off – I’m listening to this on the radio.
Isn’t that kinda like BP discussing the future of rail?
Either way.
In my household, chances are there’s a Facebook window open more often than a TV is on or a radio is on.
Facebook is compelling for all the reasons TV wants to be. Unfortunately – TV has a lot more work to do to make me care about characters. My Facebook (and I’m sure yours as well) is already filled with people I actually care about. People that impact my daily life directly – outside of Facebook.
The gulf between the stories, concerns, and issues my people and those broadcast TV, radio, or newspaper are publishing is wide, and growing.
It’s as easy to spend your cognitive surplus watching Facebook auto-update as it is watching the latest ultraviolent television production (broadcast or cable).
I haven’t even mentioned Facebook’s video support yet. 🙂
Update: Then there’s the bit about considering maintaining Facebook activity a part-time job in the same way TV is. 🙂
And that’s just one problem with the proliferation of ‘twitter this’, ‘Facebook like this’, etc buttons.
Yes, this is a refresh of the “The Problem with Badges” essay I wrote in 2006.
Moments ago, the tow truck from New Gate School dragged away our 13 year old Dodge Neon. This is the car Jen and I bought days before we were married and was our only car for 9 years.
Moving across 3 states. At least 1 cross-country drive. More iPod adapters than I can remember.
Cleaning the glove compartment was like high-speed review of all those years – through proof-of-insurance cards, garage receipts, and cassette tapes.
Three years ago (almost to the day) I asked, Which Car Should I Buy?. That was when our – then 10 year old – Dodge Neon had just surpassed the threshold where anything other the regular maintenance was no longer worth the investment [1].
When I originally asked about a a new car – I was envisioning a vehicle; equally compact, fun, distinctive, and with as much life in it. Something like a Cooper Mini, a VW Rabbit, or a Audi A3. But I asked you, because nothing called out ‘buy me’. What I didn’t anticipate 3 years ago was needing to fit 3 car seats in the PT Cruiser.
This week, we picked up the Neon’s replacement: a 2010 Dodge Grand Caravan.
While it doesn’t fit all the criteria I originally outlined – it hits quite a few.
Plus one more I didn’t expect back then.
1. Shortly after this, it surpassed the point where regular maintenance was also no longer worth it. Issues left for the students at New Gate; dead starter, dent in rear fender, oil leak, missing hub cap, broken tail light, froze up rear brakes.
After maintaining years of awkward, inconsistent URL shortening behavior because of some vague argument about SMS capabilities – Twitter has announced links passed through their service may or may not be shortened to t.co.
This is a win for the casual users of Twitter that still send & receive URLs through the service.
A great talk & animation on motivation for all the slower, smaller, better-smelling horses out there.