First off, Twitter is more than just email. If all you use Twitter for is to reply/direct message people, then yes, Twitter is a poor man email (who can’t afford a smartphone so he can do it from any SMS capable phone). But it’s more than that. It has the public interface that lets anyone follow you. It’s a quick way to disseminate information in a public format. Email isn’t designed for that. You can also follow people you’ve never met before and receive information from them. Email has to be pushed, Twitter is pulled.

With regards to Facebook, all I know of the new FB homepage is what I saw on their preview therefore my views might not be valid. The new homepage gives you a feed appearance where people can post pictures, links, etc. ala Twitter style. However, I think Twitter has some advantages over Facebook. For starters Facebook has a ‘black-hole model’. You can import data into Facebook but you cannot export data. This is Facebook’s biggest limitation but necessary for their financial model. They need people to visit their site to generate advertisement revenue. Twitter and other sites like Flickr allow other sites to import their data. Last I checked, Facebook wouldn’t let me export anything I did on their site as a feed.

The open model of Twitter allows for multiple interfaces. There are many applications and devices (phones) that allow you to update your Twitter. Facebook starts and stops with their website. You can also export Twitter data. I can have my Twitter feed on my website. All my Facebook information is stuck there. If I want to view something, I have to visit the Facebook site. I can get Tweets straight to my IM client or phone if I so desire. I never have to visit the Twitter website.

The limited interface is what separates Twitter from Facebook. If Facebook allowed users to export their Facebook data and opened up their inputs, then Twitter would be in trouble.

Twitter’s just gotten started. One neat thing I saw with Twitter was Realtime Twitter Searches with Google You can supplement your search with Twitter searches. You can get live coverage from events. Twitter’s open system will allow for many new capabilities in the future. I feel Twitter’s just gotten started while Facebook is trying to keep relevance.

IMHO.

I follow the model of measure twice, cut once. However I usually go a step further and measure four times and cut twice b/c the the first cut is usually too conservative. I don’t like messing up. Usually this makes me procrastinate my projects but not this time (well at least I stopped putting it off and now I’ve begun!)

The first step was to plan all the routes. I needed to know exactly where I wanted everything before I started drilling holes all over the place. My house has two floors which makes things a little tricky. There’s attic space above the three upstairs bedrooms. I’ll use this to drop the wires down into the walls to be wired to a jack. Personally I like to make as few holes as possible so I’ll try leveraging pre-existing holes used for electrical runs. However, it appears there are studs on both sides of the outlets I plan on running it with. I guess I’ll have to drill new holes that hopefully don’t come out into the ceiling.

The downstairs has a drop ceiling for a portion but not in the bedrooms. We have a storage room downstairs where I plan on terminating all the wires into a switch. I’ll also host any servers and printers in this room as well. I found a cable run into one bedroom which I’ll follow and change the plate into a two or maybe 4 port plate. The other room presents another challenge. I found some molding at the hardware store today that I can use to run the wire outside in the room but tuck it away in a corner.

The real challenge is going to be getting the runs from downstairs to upstairs. I found a preexisting hole that went through the floorboards into the walls upstairs. I hoped this would work. However, after trying a ‘electrical cord finder’ it proved inconclusive. I then ran fish tape wire up the hole and started banging around to try and hear it. The hole wasn’t where I wanted it to go and didn’t look like it went into the attic.

However we do have a closet in the hallway. I figured I could drill a hole in the corner of the closet which will lead downstairs. Then run the cables up the back corner through another hole into the attic.

Closet floor where I plan on drilling a hole

Using the prybar to remove the baseboard.

The stubborn nail who didn't want to come out.

The force exerted on the wall from the prybar left an indentation.

The nail poking through the floor.

The spot is actually not that easy to get to.

I drilled two holes to run the cables.

The final damage to the closet.

That’s all the work I did today. Tomorrow I plan on running the three lines from the storage room to their final destinations.

1. Because I can
2. I control my information
3. I’m anti-mainstream

One main reason for my own website is because I can. It serves as a prototype/provinggrounds for my web tech skills. It started with HTML, then flash, then php with a mysql db in the background, and now driven with a CMS. I’ve used it to showcase to myself – what I could do. It was never fancy but just proof of concept such as different flash animations, rss readers, db interaction, etc. There have always been better solutions elsewhere that would allow me to do more or do it better. I’ve always shun these because I’m a do-it-myself kinda guy.

Second reason is that I like to control my information. If I use a blogging site or something, they store all my information and it would be a pain to retreive it all if I want to switch. If they close up shop – how would I get it all back? It’s my information and I want to retain all rights to it. I also use my site to tie in multiple streams of information. Facebook has started to do this w/ all it’s capabilities but different sites allow you to ‘have’ different information. I want one place where I can pull that information together and present it in my own way. In the past it’s been blogging, xanga and .plan. Now it’s added on twitter, pictures, movies, etc. Facebook with it’s many applications allow for all of this however I want to control my information and not give it over to Facebook. However, I do like 3rd-party syndication which leads into point three.

I’ve always had a leery eye for the ‘mainstream’. In highschool it was Xanga – the premier azn blogging site. The last couple of years it’s switched to Facebook – the premier collegiate social networking site. When Xanga first came out, I shunned it like the plague because everyone was doing it. It did provide some useful capabilities ahead of it’s time. It allowed people to sign up for subscriptions either on the web or via email – all before RSS came out. Now Facebook allows a great way to share photos, blog (notes), and microblog (fb status).  I like to leverage all these capabilities but at the same time hold to my three ideologies.

Thus – ‘tims_world’. Version 5.0 offers many benefits over 4.2; the big ones being tagging, permalinks, rss, and twitter integration. I could do all this myself from scratch but it’s faster to use Wordpress. The only capability I’m losing out is Xanga email subscriptions. I’ve added Feedburner email subscriptions but it will just mean that all my xanga readers will need to switch over to that or RSS. Blog entries will also be available via Facebook Notes. Versions 5.0.X will feature theme updates as I can’t do any graphical work on my laptop. There will also be more plugin updates as I dive deepering into the Wordpress world. Version 5.1 will feature iPhone support. While I was on vacation, all I used was my iPod Touch for web access and it was great. The only thing missing was access to the blogs I follow. I know I could use Google Reader or something but I figure I could make my website a portal to all the information I want in an iPod Touch/iPhone friendly way. Lots more good stuff to come. Stay Tuned!

*EDIT*

I was able to import all of my posts that were saving in my old database. The other day I found a number of older posts that exist in Xanga but not my database. At some point I’ll try and save those as well.

There are many times I want to blog or post something but don’t want to write a full blown entry on it – usually b/c of time. I wanted a way to quickly push my thoughts out to whoever wants to read them. This used to be the concept between my rants and my posts. Rants were full blown discourses and posts were just random thoughts, events, or feelings. With the integration of facebook, everything’s sorta become a post because I can push it out through xanga and facebook notes. This left a void in my “publishing” something for quick and easy thoughts, feelings, musings or incidents. Facebook posts are good for websites that intrigue me but that’s about it. I think the .plan used to fill this gap when you could ‘finger‘ people but has gone the way of Kermit, pine, and the termsrv.

But now enter Twitter I can send “tweets” via gchat that can get posted to my website and to facebook (Although Facebook can only hold one tweet at a time which to me isn’t as useful b/c I’d like people to see all my thoughts in a day). I’ll play around w/ it for a little while and see how it goes. If I like it, I’ll update my website to incorporate it.