Exploring in DC

What do you do on a Saturday night in Washington, DC? If you’re a geek who happens to also be a basketball fan, maybe you do what I’ve done: watch a couple of NCAA basketball games while checking out some newer social media sites and services.

I’m not quite that pathetic. I did take a ride on the Metro this evening after the conference to go see the cherry blossoms on the Mall. It was beautiful:

jeffersonmonument.jpg

But after that, I did come back to the hotel to eat and watch UCLA put away Xavier, and for the last couple of hours I’ve been multitasking, checking out some social media sites, services and applications while watching a closer contest between North Carolina and Louisville.

I may be doing some reviews of these after I get a little more experience with them, but here are some initial impressions.

I like Twhirl, a desktop client for Twitter. I think it can help me have more of the real-time experience of Twitter that would be more helpful. Twittermail looks like a good service, too. Dennis McDonald shared his Twitter rules this week, and I agree with most of them.

One thing I’d like to know is whether I can get Tweets from only selected accounts via SMS. I think I’ve tried this, by signing up for one user’s Tweets. This would be particularly helpful if I could have a high-priority class of Tweets (e.g. family members) that came to me by SMS. Does anyone know whether this works?

I also signed up for Utterz, having seen Chris Heuer use it. My profile name is leeaase. Pretty original, huh? I’ll probably use it to do some blog posts, and then may give it a review.

Probably the coolest thing today is FriendFeed. It pulls in data from 33 other services, including Twitter, YouTube, a blog, Flickr, LinkedIn. Again my account is leeaase. I’ve read a bunch about this and look forward to getting more experience with it.

So what has your experience, if any, been with these services?

Author: Lee Aase

Husband of one, father of six, grandfather of 15. Chancellor Emeritus, SMUG. Emeritus staff of Mayo Clinic. Founder of HELPcare and Administrator for HELPcare Clinic.

0 thoughts on “Exploring in DC”

  1. Lee,

    You can change the SMS for individuals you follow on Twitter by going to their twitter page (twitter.com/username). If you are following them, you will see that little box under their avatar. It will give you the option to “turn device notifications on.”

    There you go!

    Glad you enjoyed DC!

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