TwitCause helps nonprofits get discovered on Twitter

Let’s hope this catches on.!!

TwitCause helps nonprofits get discovered on Twitter and enables passionate people to support the causes they care about.

Since the early days of the Facebook Platform, Causes has been one of the most popular apps. It’s also big on MySpace, and the company behind it recently announced that they had raised some $10,000,000 for various causes in two years. It makes sense; it’s using the social aspect of these platforms to spread the word on good initiatives. A new venture, TwitCause, from Experience Project, wants to extend that idea to Twitter.

And it’s possible that this idea could work even better on Twitter, given the built-in viral nature of the service. Basically, each week on Thursday, TwitCause has a new cause they support. They ask that you follow the TwitCause Twitter account and then retweet the cause to show your support for it. These tweets contain a link to go back to the site where you can find a place to donate money if you choose to, using PayPal. The number of retweets and the money raised so far are all shown in real-time on the page, as are the most recently tweets about the cause.

Source: TechCrunch

Twitter tributes pour in for John Hughes dead at 59

At 59, John Hughes suddenly collapsed and died of a heart attack in New York. He’s regarded as THE writer/director of the 80′s teen flick. Yeah you may have heard of him – but if you ain’t check out all of his credits on IMDB. Uncle Buck, She’s Having a Baby,  Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Weird Science, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles and that’s only as a Director, the list goes on and on for credits as a Writer and Producer.

As the many accolades pour in and people are in a frenzy compiling You Tube clips, I thought I’d take the opportunity to capture some Twitter remarks. It’s amazing how you can sum up someone’s life in 140 characters:

Tim_Kress John Hughes is dead. Who will fill the void left by him, who will film the drag queens eating dog shit, the asshole dances?

JesusZamorano John Hughes made me feel nice to be an outcast. Goodbye and thank you for all the wonderful lines we all know and love by heart.

ecowrites RT @sarahconner RIP John Hughes @wildhoney Love this! A John Hughes 80s Montage to “Teenage Wasteland” by The Who http://bit.ly/LExVa

writeli RT @jimmyfallon: I love John Hughes. So many great quotes from so many great movies. (Mess with bull, you get the horns!)

RedZoneCuba A BBC radio announcer just credited John Hughes as the director of “Fergis Buglers Day Off.”

humphreyt59 Twitter finally working on phone, thought it died like the awesome john hughes…. That’s fucking sad http://myloc.me/iihW

And if you wanna spread quotes from the man himself check out:#johnhughesquotes

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it”

RIP John Hughes

National call for mobile phone poetry

RMIT University is calling for poems that will be bluetoothed to peoples’ mobiles during the Melbourne Writers Festival. Poems need to be 140 characters or less, in any style or subject matter. Twitter page to follow from August 22nd, 2009 is #RMIT_Poetry.

Deadline: 5pm, Friday 31 July

For more information, visit

Mobile Textualism

<http://www.rmit.edu.au/news/poetry>

VictoriaPolice on Twitter

Maybe it’s an experiment that just had to happen. But VictoriaPolice are on Twitter and they’re giving fair warning to possible offenders that they’re going to target you if you act like a road mongrel or moron. Of course, you don’t need a radar to detect these guys or dolls aren’t out to win any literary prizes but hey, if it helps stop road-kill. way to go cop dudes.!!

Tweet:3 booze buses are still testing Casey drivers. We’ve caught drunks, speeding and other dangerous drivers. When will people learn?

http://twitter.com/victoriapolice

Trent_Reznor is still on Twitter

Despite rumours Trent Reznor deleted his Twitter account, I just checked and he’s still around. He has however made all comms *one way*, which means ultimately he has the last say and ensures he tells everyone to get fucked at least a thousand times a day.

Apparently Trent got a lil angry over fans accusing him of being a sell-out after lots of kissy-kissy admissions of his newly found love: Here are some of the tweets that infuriated angsty fans:

Reznor: “Now that I’m in love and gone all soft on you, can anyone recommend any romantic comedies? Got a weird urge.”

And

Reznor: “I am missing someone. Boo hoo.”

And

Reznor: “Wait – I’m in love and getting married! I’d give you all free tickets if I could. (hugs)”

You have to remember that this is from the author of albums with titles such as “Pretty Hate Machine”, “Broken” and “The Downward Spiral.”

Reznor was using Twitter the way it was intended – and that was just to be himself. But when a whole career has been spent creating and marketing a nihilistic industrial rock god, public announcements of  urges to watch romantic comedies and wanting to give “hugs,” aren’t going to go down too well with some members of the fanbase. Poor Trent just couldn’t stand being accused of  “going soft”.

Oh well Trent all we can say is Fuck You and the Bride you came in On! *weg*

For more self-indulgent crud than you can point a 140 character micro-blog at http://twitter.com/trent_reznor

Twitter Backgrounds

Hmmm neat idea especially for us too tired types! Gaining in popularity is the Freedom for Iran background! Lots of stories circulating as to how Twitter has helped the people of Iran. One of the better blogs ‘The API revolution’  is written by Jeff Jarvis of  Buzz Machine.

Personally, I am leaning to the Dark Fairy Twitter background : but there is a Girl Background category so I’ll probably change my mind;)

http://twitrounds.com

A game of love, war and telepathy…

Celebrating New Media Scotland’s 10th birthday with new work created and curated by Thomson & Craighead, Sarah Kettley and Distance Lab with new writing by Netwurker Mez and Hannu Rajaniemi, choreography by Sue Hawksley and music by Peter Gregson. The game itself begins eight days before with tales of two lovers told via the @mediascot

Twitter stream. The tweets will contain clues to find and enter a secret location in Scotland. Elements of the live event, and those online will help you solve the puzzles, with custom iPods to be won.
Play on.
alt-win.ning.com
crypticnights.org.uk
Tagged with:
Alt-w Cryptic Programme Attached Images

http://www.mediascot.org/alt-w/in.ning

Onsite: Thursday 2nd July 2009, 8pm. £5
CCA, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3JD

How are journalists using twitter in Australia ?

MediaShift’s Julie Posetti spoke to 25 of the journalists she follows to find out first hand.

Excerpt:”Twitter became big news once journalists realized its power as a tool for breaking stories during the Mumbai Massacre in 2008. In the aftermath of the micro-blogging platform hitting the headlines, there was an explosion of professional journalists in the Twittersphere. This growth has been fueled by increasing mainstream awareness of the importance of social media to the future of a crisis-ridden industry and the elevation of Twitter as a platform for news dissemination, citizen journalism and audience interaction.

So, how are journalists using Twitter? How is the service changing traditional reporting practices and what (if any) are the rules of engagement with the platform for professional journalists? I interviewed 25 of the journalists I follow on Twitter (most of them Australian with a smattering of South African and U.S. respondents) to find out first-hand.

This is the first installment in a two-part MediaShift series on the theme of journalists and Twitter”.

More from MediaShift http://tinyurl.com/q8ljes

Happn.in on Twitter

Happn.in tracks local Twitter users in 52 global cities, and computes a list of the top 10 phrases used in each city every hour. The top phrases used significantly more often that hour than the last are compiled into a list of trends. As Happn.in explains, “A phrase’s hotness is calculated with the ratio of the [percentage of users who used that phrase during the past hour] to the [mean percentage of users who used that phrase over the past week]. Phrases decay exponentially, and quickly drop from the list once they have stopped being used.”

More from Mashable’s – Josh Catone.

GG: Anyone know if this works for Melbourne or Sydney?

Google does the Wave

Billed as “the e-mail of the future,” Google Wave is the result of a multiyear project inside of Google to reinvent the in-box, blending e-mail, instant messaging, photo sharing, and perhaps, with input from developers, connections to the world of social networking.

Wave organizes Internet discussions in the trendy stream of consciousness fashion. It’s a little bit Twitter, a little bit Friendfeed, and a little bit Facebook all in one service, allowing you to send direct messages to online contacts with real-time replies, share photos or documents, and add or delete members of the conversation as needed.

Read more from CNET