# 2667
I am, admittedly, pretty much a Luddite when it comes to embracing new technology.
I wasn't always that way. I got into computers very early, and coerced my employer into spending $5000 on an Apple II+, with 2 floppy drives (no hard drive) back in 1979!
By late 1980, I'd purchased my own Radio Shack Model III (no floppy drive, no hard drive, but 32K of RAM!), and set about learning to program the blasted thing. Turned out, I wasn't a such a quick study when it came to programming in BASIC.
So I took a short cut.
I hired a 12 year-old to tutor me for a couple of days. It cost me $10 an hour, but it was worth it.
A year later, I was earning my living as computer consultant-programmer, working on everything from CPM APPLE II+, to the WANG 2200 LVP, to even that newfangled thing that IBM called their PC.
I became a master at CPM, TRS-DOS and later MS-DOS.
I was the king of Dbase programming for nearly a decade in the town where I worked. But then Windows 3.1, and later Win 95, shook the industry, and the dozen or so programming languages I was fluent in became obsolete over night.
I spent the last couple of years of the last decade of the 20th century doing Y2K remediation, but that was really my swan song as a techie. Since then, the technology has pretty much passed me by.
Oh, I know my way around Windows XP, and can surf the net with the best of them, but I'm horribly backward when it comes to things like social networking, and the newest thing . . . Twitter.
Oh, I know twitter isn't really new. But it is for me. I only looked at it for the first time last weekend.
I now have a `twitter column' running down the left hand side of my browser, and I get tweets (short, micro-bursts of information) as I surf, write, or work on the web.
I was dubious at first. After all, I already get email. Even some from people I know.
Why would I want to receive tweets?
And if I did want to receive tweets, who would I get them from?
Glad you asked.
First, Twitter is simply a form of micro-blogging. Short, succinct little messages that people send out, or broadcast, from their PC (or even their cell phone) out onto the Internet. Limited to 140 characters, these are text messages that people who `follow' you, can receive.
These messages, or `tweets' as they are called, can be directed to a specific person (or account, actually), or can be public for anyone who is following you to read.
Last weekend, I learned via SophiaZoe's blog that FEMA would be using Twitter as a conduit for a press conference they were planning to hold on Monday.
Suddenly, for the first time, I saw a real use for the technology, and I installed the software.
I, along with nearly a thousand other `followers', were on the receiving end of their press conference.
Turns out, that FEMA isn't the only government entity with a twitter feed. Pandemicflu.gov has a Twitter feed, as does Ready.gov.
I now have a dozen feeds. Some are from friends and colleagues in the blogging world, and some are agency feeds like FEMA. I'm slow to add feeds (I'm easily overwhelmed by more data!), but I expect my list of feeds will grow.
What, exactly, would someone like me tweet?
Well, yesterday, I sent this one to the handful of people following my tweets.
In case anyone missed it, Maryn McKenna has a great blog on MRSA Hand Hygiene today http://drugresistantstaph.b... Kudos 11:56 AM
I might use twitter to announce when I post a new blog, or when I've found an interesting bit of news, to say `Hi' to a friend, or just to announce what I'm doing.
But mostly, I'm interested in receiving information, in real time, from the agencies and people I follow.
There are a variety of desktop apps available to manage your twitter account, or you can use the simple-to-use web page interface.
Right now, I'm using Twitbin for Firefox. I'll probably try some others on for size to see what works best for me.
During a crisis, Twitter may prove to be an easy to use, low bandwidth method, of disseminating information to the masses.
I've placed a small listing of government agencies Twitter accounts on my sidebar. Over time, I expect the number of agencies, and people who use it, to grow.
And despite my initial reluctance to try it, I've found that it's been very easy to use.
Amazing what you can learn if you let your friends drag you kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
