Travellers at East Surrey Hospital...

...spotted yesterday evening, still there this morning...

Update - you have got to love Twitter, I've already heard back from the police and the council...they are working with the land owner to resolve the situation... ;)

Honestly, you leave the internet...

...alone for two days and what happens? 57 (no exaggeration) Swedish Hip Hop fans start following you on Twitter (with absolutely no explanation whatsoever - well, none I can understand anyway)...what on earth I can have done (apart from keeping completely quiet) to tempt them is quite beyond me...

Still...Välkommen (I guess)! ;)

In other news, as you can probably guess, I'm back up in town feeling a little better (although Thomas is still quite poorly - especially at bed time - and Flyingpops needs to catch up on her sleep) but hopefully things are on their way back to normality... ;)

Twitter & Facebook over Wifi broken - Firesheep

Thought I had better pass this on (until they implement a fix) it's potentially simple for anyone on a Windows laptop or Apple Mac to hack into your Facebook or Twitter account if you are accessing it via public wifi (this has always been true) but now someone has written an application (FireSheep) that lets any idiot do it automatically with a click of the mouse...better not use either of those services in a public place unless you want to risk someone else taking control of your account...

Please pass on the warning...

Twitter lists - How to

Forced into *some* sort of action after the rampant success of #duncansdream and an ill advised dip into #followfriday, I suddenly found myself (at the tail end of last week) following (and being followed by) rather a lot of new people on Twitter...rather than (slightly rudely) unfollowing those people who weren't being terribly interesting (or seemed to think that #FF is a fun thing to do, not only on Friday, but on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday) I came to a simple solution...set up a list to filter my feed a bit...It's pretty straightforward, in the Twitter interface just hit the "Lists" option, hit "New List", give it a name, then view your "following" list and on the right, next to each person/news agency/marketing exec there is a little icon that (logically) looks like a little list, click it and hit the little check box (for everyone you do like reading about) and the jobs a good 'un... ;) Now, instead of grazing your tweets from the home tab, just click your shiny new list in the nav on the right for a noise free twitter experience (don't mind reading it all on the web, but it's a bit of a pain when I'm on my 'droid)... ;)

Analyse your Tweets...

...check it out here...

I'm 71% "Upbeat" and 72% "Spacy"...like cooooool maaaaan... ;)

Oh and thankfully I'm only averagely "plugged in"...

Why Twitter is awesome...

If you don't "get" twitter...and many people don't...allow me, for a moment, to talk to you about why it's awesome...(and fyi - I didn't just jump on this bandwagon - I'm a veteran - my first (daft) tweets fluttered out into the (largely empty) ether in July 2007, before it was even a blip on most geek radars, let alone celebrity/marketing ones), so I feel qualified to speak (even if with just a tiny amount of authority) on the subject (ahem)... ;)

Firstly - don't assume that Twitter is how it first appears - "Bob is eating some pie (3 minutes ago)" - there *is* a certain amount of that (admittedly), but once you fiddle with the focus, you'll see it's just an echo from the big bang of Twitter's birth (when everyone was super-excited to be using Twitter, but no-one really knew quite what to do with it...or what it was destined to become)...

Second - It's a way to directly touch, and tap into the deepest personal thoughts, opinions and feelings of all those around the globe that participate...the startled crackle of excitement when I saw "Stephenfry is now following you on Twitter" was quite an experience (not sure if you'll get to feel exactly the same, as I started tweeting in the *very* early days, and celebrity tweeters are probably more spoiled with followers nowadays, but you never know)...! :)

Third - It's now officially **THE BEST SOURCE OF NEWS IN THE WORLD...EVER**...Not wishing to sound like a stuck record, but two days ago, waiting at the bus stop, Stephen Fry whispered in my ear that we now had a Tory prime minister - "LibDem/Tory Rule! All will now be well. Justice prosperity kindness happiness for all! Yay! What could be better? #heavyhandedirony"... ;)

Fourth - Twitter is a direct measurement of where the hearts and minds of the twitterverse are right now (related to what's going on), check out "Trending Topics" (that's not actually it, it's just a feed of them - you'll find the real thing on the right when you log on), it's an automatic thermometer of exactly what things everyone is getting all excited (or up in arms) about (and you can search it, or filter it by country)...stuck on a train on the DLR and want to know what's going on (or how to get out of it)? Search "DLR" (if it's not already a trending topic)!

Fifth - Twitter rights wrongs and looks after it's own...the guy who got prosecuted last week for tweeting his frustration that an airport he was stuck at would be blown sky high if it wasn't sorted out (it was closed by snow, so obviously he was joking - admittedly a joke both bad and stupid - but still a joke), Tweeters got to together and raised more than enough money to pay his fine (and maybe finance an appeal)...

Sixth - It's free...!

If I've inspired you to have a go (as I hope I have), there are only a couple of things you need to know to connect successfully with the vibrant throng-

Pick some cool people to follow, some of my favorites (among many others) are -

Professor Brian Cox (of "Wonders of the Solar System" recent fame)
Dave Gorman (of Googlewhack Adventure (etc.) fame)
Graham Lineham (wrote IT Crowd and Father Ted, ferocious internet freedom/rights protagonist)
David Mitchell (Peep Show)
Wil Wheaton (uber geek/actor)
Stephen Fry (uber geek/comedian/wise-man)
Warren Ellis (daddy-freak/comic book author)
Robert Llewellyn (Scrapheap Challenge/Red Dwarf)
Simon Pegg (actor/writer/dog owner)

- although yours will be your own, your twitter space filled with thoughts of those that amuse and stimulate you, not just your friends telling you what they are having for tea or that they can't find their socks...just beware of people pretending to be someone they are not (but you already knew that from your Internet 101 class, right)?

Finally two technical points - If you put @username (where "username" is someones (*gasp*) twitter user name) in the tweet it means it's flagged up for that person specifically (my telephone announces these tweets in almost exactly the same way as a text message), so if someone says for example "@finkangel I heartily agree with your sentiments", I'll know straight away...everyone else can see it too of course...and this is the same as hovering a tweet and hitting "Reply"..."Retweet" sends what someone else has says back to your followers (use if you strongly agree with something and that tweet becomes "hot" within a topic if lots of people feel the same)...

...and lastly, you will still see people putting #topic (where "topic" is whatever the subject of the tweet is) this is a good way to start, or join in with a trending topic, but they can pretty much cope without the # now, so if you tweet "#con-dem I'm not sure about this new government" it would be the same as just saying "a con-dem government doesn't seem likely to work" from a trending topic point of view (joining your thoughts to the cloud)...

Urm...that's about it...Have fun with "the SMS of the Internet" as it was once known, it's so much more now, and getting better every day... ;)

Psst - It's over here...and if you get on with it, and want to follow my little tweets, I'm over here...

Stephen Fry in America

I had the pleasure yesterday of being lured into catching up (via BBC iPlayer) with watching the first episode of the extremely entertaining new show "Stephen Fry in America" by first discovering a small excerpt of the accompanying text on Mr Fry's blog...and I actually think it was the right way round to do it...As the episode played, I had the privilege of knowing what was going through his head as each experience unfolded (including being able to chuckle as I recalled the odd "embellishment", shall we say?)...interestingly (and somewhat obviously) the TV show, while highly enjoyable and decidedly educational in it's own charming way, in this case seems like just an executive summary for the rich detail, measured insight and beautifully woven prose in the book - which I have made up my mind to buy...as in this case it's clearly the richer element of the pairing (and not just a limp money spinning ploy as is occasionally the case)...

Oh, and funnily enough, this isn't actually the first "Stephen Fry incident" of the week either...On Tuesday I discovered (via Big Blue), that Mr Fry twitters...so I thought I would add myself to his adoring fan list (as you do) and tune in to his tweets from time to time...it was only when checking my gmail a little later in the day that I noticed the update which had arrived shortly afterwards..."Stephen Fry is now following you on twitter"...wow...

I'd better make an effort to be interesting then...! :0

Cuncun Twitter - British Backpacker

Someone is twittering from the path of the hurricane!

Facebook and Twitter

Well, I've had to give in and create a profile on Facebook, there are only so many "invites" one person can ignore...signed up also to Twitter (see the new section on the right in the side bar, which, incidentally was extremely simple to add (just a tiny code snippet)), which you can update from your mobile (just send it a text message, perfect if you get a bunch of free SMS), IM (doesn't support any I use, but they are adding more as they go along), or just from their website...you get 144 characters per post, so it's a bit like a mini blogging tool, there is supposed to be a facebook plugin for it (which should eliminate the need to actually use Facebook too often, as I have quite enough to do without worrying about yet *another* social networking *thing*, Flickr and Blogger already keep me fairly busy during my down time)...