| Monday, 5 January 2009, 10:52 pm Tags: Twitter |
This morning at around 9am Pacific “under 50″ of the most-followed Twitter users lost control of their accounts, including Barack Obama, CNN’s Rick Sanchez, Fox News, and me.
Both my password and the reset email address were modified. As far as I know the hacker didn’t post on my account, but Fox News twitted “Bill O’Reilly is gay” and Rick Sanchez announced that he was taking the day off because he was on crack. Twitter was quick to remove these spurious posts and block the hacker. But what really happened?
I got this explanation from Twitter’s John Adams, @netik, via Qik on my iPhone at the Tweetup at the 21st Amendment tonight. According to John, the hacker gained access to Twitters admin tools.
Scary.
(9 votes, average: 4.89 out of 5)
Loading ...| Friday, 2 January 2009, 9:48 am Tags: TWiT Live, xmpp |
TWiT started as two podcasts way back when in 2005. Today it’s a dozen shows, a live, nearly 24×7 video stream, a 24×7 audio stream, two very active chatrooms, a microblog for listeners, and a forum for contributors. In short, it’s a large and growing community of tech enthusiasts built around downloadable and streaming audio and video content.
My experience with Twitter, the TWiT Army, the TWiT chatrooms, and the real-time feeds at Friendfeed, plus my extensive conversations with Steve Gillmor and the other participants at Bearhug Camp, have inspired me to attempt one more live feed: a live text stream of links, comments, and notes related to the live programming. The chatrooms offer something similar, but they’re more conversation focused. I see this stream more like the live-blogging that occurs during a Steve Jobs keynote, or the tweets surrounding a major news event, like the recent election. Think of it as real-time show notes created by me, our show hosts, and our community. Let’s call this stream the “river.” This is an experiment, but I think it could be very useful, both informative and entertaining.
bear has set up a Jabber server for us at twit.im. That’s the engine that would power this river. Now it’s time to think about how we’ll implement the user interface, both for readers and contributors. I’d like to make it easy enough to use that readers naturally become contributors.
Aside from installing a server and buying the domain twit.im, we haven’t done anything else. So the following is purely speculative. I’d like to get your comments on it before we begin implementation. Consider the following an RFC.
The best interface to this river would, I imagine, be an IM client, but as with any stream there might be other ways to view it, in a Friendfeed room, on a dedicated web site, as a ticker on live.twit.tv, etc. I think these instances can be created by the TWiT community as needed over time. And since the river is just an XMPP stream it should be very simple - the API already exists. I would also like to have a real-time RSS feed of the full-river - that should make it pretty easy to write viewing tools. But initially, any Jabber-compatible IM client, GTalk, Trillian, Pidgin, iChat, or Adium, would work fine.
People post to the river by adding river@twit.im to their IM client. They’ll also get the river content fed back on that channel. I think we’ll encourage the use of hashtags so posts can be categorized: #link, #note, #location, #wisecrack, and the like. We might even want to require that every post be tagged to make it easier to filter the river. Some folks, for instance, might only want links, others might just want wisecracks, and so on.
More importantly, we’d also need some commands.
FOLLOW/UNFOLLOW/FOLLOWING - so users can control whose posts they see
BLOCK/UNBLOCK/BLOCKING - to prevent spamming, by handle and IP address I think
TRACK/UNTRACK/TRACKING - to allow you to watch for particular content on the river
Are there any other commands we need? Ultimately a search of some kind will be important, but we can get this for free by piping the RSS of the river into a Friend Feed room (as an example).
By implementing FOLLOW, BLOCK, and TRACK we can open up the server to anyone who wants to participate, since users will be able to precisely control the content of their feed, just as they currently do with Twitter (only better).
I would also like to be able to create special-use instances of the river. For example, at my Macworld keynote, I’d like to be able to create a one-time use backchannel, say macworld@twit.im, that attendees could post to and follow, and that, perhaps, I could put up on screen.
At this time we don’t have any plans to let users register for twit.im accounts. I don’t want to bog the server down with additional duties. It’s going to be busy enough as it is. But if you have an existing GTalk or Jabber account you’ll be able to use that.
What do you think? Have I missed anything? Is there any functionality you’d like to add? Please add your comments below. Thanks!
| Tuesday, 30 December 2008, 10:47 am Tags: Animoto, France, rennes, Video |
The Animoto treatment on some of my pictures from France.
You can see the whole set on SmugMug and the highlights on Flickr.
UPDATE: The ad is gone now - and I remixed it with much better results. Each time you remix you get a different version and I find it’s often worth trying it a few times for the best result.
| Tuesday, 30 December 2008, 7:03 am Tags: timelapse, Video |
2008 was a difficult, contentious, exciting, and ultimately momentous year, but while the affairs of men boil away, life and nature serenely continue on. This beautiful time lapse movie from Erik Sondheim really captures the eternal heartbeat of life.
It’s worth the trip to Erik’s site to see how he did it and watch the full two minute HD version. Good news: he just got a 5D Mark II so next year’s video should be even more mind boggling.
Here’s to a happy, peaceful, and prosperous 2009 for all of us all over the world.
| Monday, 29 December 2008, 10:04 am Tags: elfdancing, Fun, jibjab, Video |
I’m back from France and a wonderful visit with Abby. She’s studying there until May, so it was a real treat to spend some time with her. She’s acclimated wonderfully, and her French is excellent.
Henry and I came home yesterday. We left Jennifer behind because she lost her passport on Friday and couldn’t get a new one until today. She’ll fly back tomorrow, but I have a feeling she’s probably glad of some extra time in Paris with Abby. I know I would be.
I took well over 1000 pictures with the 5D Mark II. I’ll be sorting and posting over the next few days. I didn’t spend as much time taking pictures as I thought, though. I was having too much fun visiting Abby and la belle pays, France.
Meanwhile here’s something to tide you over. A little video Myra Joyce made for us… Happy Holidays!
| Wednesday, 10 December 2008, 10:35 pm Tags: Animoto, Egypt, Video |
It’s only been a year, but here’s an Animoto.com video of my pictures from Egypt…
Download the QuickTime version of the slideshow here.
France is next!
(14 votes, average: 3.93 out of 5)| Sunday, 7 December 2008, 12:49 am Tags: Interviews, Podcasts |
Thanks to Steve Reikeberg for interviewing me for his Geek Cred podcast. I enjoyed myself. You can listen on his site or right here.
| Wednesday, 26 November 2008, 9:53 am Tags: GETV, Interviews, Irina Slutsky, Videos |
Irinia Slutsky stopped by the cottage last week to celebrate the third anniversary of her show, Geek Entertainment TV. Here’s the (heavily expurgated) result:
| Friday, 14 November 2008, 10:58 am Tags: iPhone, qik, Video |
Qik just sent me a beta release of their new iPhone app. You can use it to stream live video from the iPhone. It’s viewable at Qik.com and is stored there as well. This does not require jailbreaking - this is an official app that will be available in the iTunes App store soon.
Considering there’s no video recording on the iPhone, this is pretty amazing. Here’s my first attempt. One thing I’ve learned: hold the phone still!
I’m looking forward to using this to stream video when I’m out and about. You can follow twitlive on Twitter for notices when I stream live from the phone.
| Tuesday, 4 November 2008, 10:02 am Tags: election, TWiT Live |
We’ll be streaming live election coverage beginning right after net@night tonight at 7p Eastern/4p Pacific/2400 UTC on TWiT Live.
Our joint coverage with social|median will feature founder and former White House staffer, Jason Goldberg. Our special focus: tech and the election.
Scheduled guests include Jim Brady, Managing Editor, WashingtonPost.com, Brian Reich, Author: MediaRules, Terri MacMillan, Modern Media Japan.com, with an overseas perspective, Alan Silberberg, CEO, You2Gov, Julius Genachowski live from the Obama party in Chicago.
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