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.

Twitter 105: Tweeting by Text Message

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While I love using my iPhone for Twitter interactions, the old-school mobile way to post updates to Twitter is via SMS text messages.

The steps are simple:

  1. Connect your cell phone to your Twitter account through the Devices settings. (You do have a Twitter account, right?) You will enter your cell phone number, and Twitter will send you a validation code. Once you receive that on your cell phone, enter it on the Twitter Devices page to show that you got the message.
  2. Create a new entry in your cell phone contacts list, and call it Twitter. Give it the number 40404.
  3. From then on, all you need to do to send an update to Twitter is choose it in your cell phone contacts and send a text message. You can send a message of up to 140 characters.

That’s all there is to it. If you have a mobile device that includes email you also can use that function to send your tweets via Twittermail, instead of using SMS.

The smart clients for iPhone (and I assume for Android or Blackberry, though I haven’t used them) enable you to have much more interactivity with Twitter than you can with an old-school wireless phone.

But if old-school is what you have, SMS or Twittermail are good options for mobile tweeting.

Twitter 107: Twitter Clients for iPhone

I had originally planned to do this post in the Twitter curriculum to examine the various options for iPhone Twitter clients. Then I got the idea of the Chancellor’s Choice awards, and presented the coveted prize to Tweetie.

So check out that post for an overview of clients and features, but if you want a free client for Twitter, just to get started, I had a good experience with the free version of Twitterific.

So this post is mostly housekeeping, to fill out the proposed Twitter curriculum.

Chancellor’s Choice Award: Flip Video Camera

This award will be no surprise to long-term SMUGgles (especially those who have completed Blogging 130), but the Chancellor’s Choice award for low-cost video cameras goes to: The Flip.

Among its Advantages:

Strong video quality, particularly in relatively low-light conditions. 

Speed. Using a camera with miniDV or other tape, you have to play the tape to feed into your computer for digitizing, which takes just as long as the original shoot did. The Flip, by contrast, creates a digital file directly and saves to its memory card, and with the built-in USB connector that flips out (hence the name), you can transfer the video file to your computer for editing and/or upload to YouTube, Facebook or another video sharing service within seconds after shooting. 

Simplicity. It’s literally a point and shoot device, with a single red button to start and stop recording. So easy, even a caveman… (er…uh…sorry guys)

Savings. Ranging from about $70 for 30 minute standard definition to $230 or so for an hour of HD, these cameras are quite affordable. (More details on that below.) I’ve purchased miniDV cameras previously for $400 or so, and for many uses the Flip quality is just as good.

Situational (OK…that’s stretching the alliteration too far.) There’s an old saying in video that you can’t edit what you don’t shoot. Because the Flip fits easily in your pocket, purse or laptop bag, you can have it with you in virtually any situation. This enables you to catch those moments you’d miss if you had to remember to bring your video camera bag. I carry my Flip almost everywhere I go.
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My BlogWell Presentation on Mayo Clinic Social Media

The Blog Council today posted video, audio and slides from my January 22 presentation at BlogWell. I’ve embedded the video and slides below.

BlogWell Chicago Social Media Case Study: Mayo Clinic, presented by Lee Aase  

View more presentations from GasPedal.

One interesting point that’s changed since my presentation is that the Facebook pages have again been redesigned, and I think they have become much more useful. We had 4,300 fans of our Mayo Clinic Facebook page in late January, and now we’re at 6,100.

Here’s the link to our Sharing Mayo Clinic blog, mentioned in the presentation, and here is the prototype patient post I mentioned.

I hope to be at BlogWell in New York later this month, listening to and learning from organizations like Coca-Cola, GE, Turner broadcasting and Microsoft. I hope you can join us.

Introducing the SMUG Bookstore

Over the last couple of years I have done several book reviews on this site, and have typically included a link to the book featured on Amazon.com, so SMUGgles interested in reading for themselves could conveniently order it and get what is likely the lowest price available.

But on Saturday I got the idea of creating a virtual bookstore to go with our ethereal campus through the Amazon Associates program. It was really easy to do; the application process took just a couple of minutes, and within a couple of hours I had gotten my confirmation email that I had been accepted.

So from now on, if you click any of the links to Amazon on this site and go on to purchase those books, SMUG will get a referral bonus of 4 to 8 percent of your purchase price.

For example, if you click the link below and purchase a used copy of David Allen’s Getting Things Done for $7.20, Amazon will deposit the princely sum of 29 cents in the linked account. It doesn’t add anything to what you pay for your product; Amazon considers it part of its marketing expense.
 

So you’ll note there are now links in the top and side navigation to a page called “Bookstore.” That page and its sub-navigation will likely undergo some renovation over the next week or so as I organize and add links to the reviews I’ve previously done.

SMUG isn’t going to become a non-stop book review site; I’ll use this as a show-and-tell learning opportunity, though, creating a course series in the blogging curriculum on implementing the Amazon Associates program in your self-hosted WordPress blog.

Meanwhile, feel free to browse the virtual Bookstore. While we don’t offer comfortable couches or serve Starbucks coffee like a Barnes & Noble, we at least provide free Internet connectivity. 😉