As some of you may already be aware, I am quite a fan of the stuff known as real ale. You know, beer with flavour in it. I am also quite a fan of twitter, for rapid little conversations on t’internet. After talking about the Newcastle Beer Festival on this site and on twitter, I [...]

I recently noticed that I had posted my 1,000th tweet on twitter, since I started on January 22nd. That is 1,000 tweets in 92 days, or an average of just under 11 tweets per day. And when I remarked that I had posted my 1,000th tweet, @scrumph remarked that he had reached the similar milestone [...]

I’ve spoken before about this on twitter, but there’s a lot of twitiquette that needs to be worked out for everyone. Equally, what you deem suitable twitiquette might not be what I seem suitable twitiquette. Who Do I Follow? Firstly, who follows who? I have quite a simple rule for this on twitter. If someone [...]

Welcome back, Jeeves. Ask Jeeves, as the site is now re-re-branded, also allows Jeeves to answer the question in his own inimitable way. In answer to the question “Why am I back?” he replies: Glad you asked. The simple answer is I’m back to help. I popped out three years ago to travel the world [...]

Twitter and Local Government. Does it actually serve any useful purpose for councils to actually be on twitter? Or is it just another one of these Web 2.0 things that a few tech-heads want to take part in but is of no real benefit to the community at large? Well, if you know me, you’ll [...]

In my continuing series of odd little posts about odd little twitter-related applications, I feel obliged to announce twittersheep. The idea is that your twitter followers represent your flock, and that your twitter sheep are represented by their twitter bios. This then produces a word cloud (c.f. wordle and similar applications) so you can see [...]

For those who like playing with social media, let me know if the following scenario sounds familiar. You join Facebook You join Twitter You connect up your Twitter updates to your Facebook status People complain about it You post your phone number to 15,000 twitter followers by mistake Well, maybe not that last one, but [...]

Thanks to Mike Pickard for correctly identifying that this is the sort of thing that I would be interested in and pointing me in the direction of twitalyzer. Can you hear me say Yay! Pointless statistics about twitter! Twitalyzer breaks down your Twitter feed into five categories: Influence, Signal, Generosity, Velocity and Clout. Influence is [...]

I’ve come across a lot of the above in the last few weeks, in social networks of varying types. It’s important not to confuse the three. The first two will always pose as someone they aren’t, in some way shape or form — either by using the same name as someone and attempting to pass [...]

So I decided to watch Heston’s Feasts on Channel 4, in which the chef Heston Blumenthal is preparing a feast for a bunch of celebrity guests based on a particular time period. This weeks was The Victorians. I decided to watch this for a number of reasons. Firstly, I became aware of the programme because [...]