In the next couple of months I will be at several conferences. Both as a speaker and as an attendee:
Let me know if you are there to!
In the last couple of days I did some researching [0] on microstructures / nanoformats which are actually used by applications. Here is my current list in no particular order. Let me know which I am missing.
Dopplr
In dopplr you can post updates of your trips via Twitter. A good example of custom readble microstructures.
A trip to Helsinki on May 19 to May 23
At SFO on September 9th. Leaving on September 20th
I’m going to Austin on July 15 for 3 nights
microrevie.ws
Lets you post reviews of anything you like / or not like via Twitter. A review has to be send to @hreview. A semicolon separates what is being reviewed from the opinion. And 1–5 asterisks are used to rate the item.
@hreview Some Great Band; really exciting but too loud ****
Loudervoice
Loudervoice lets you review anything you like through different communication channels like Blog, SMS and Twitter. You have to hook up your Loudervoice account with your Twitter RSS feed. And then you can post structured or free reviews:
Review 1 Pizza at Joeys: They just don’t get it
RE Very disappointed my new cellphone. 1/2
Btw. The free format is human moderated.
Cotweet
Cotweet let multiple users of an brand or company Tweet with one account. To distinguish between the users they introduced: ^CoTags, a new convention for using signatures when tweeting from a brand account. It’s really simple—just the carat character followed by the person’s initials, or other identifying set of characters.
@TwilightEarth Glad you’re enjoying the Escape Hybrid! Can’t wait to see the full review. #FordDrive ^SM
StockTwits
With StockTwits you get realtime information about stocks: “A Bloomberg for the little guy”. It does that by prefixing the stock ticker with $.
$MCD and $AAPL were ultra impressive today
TipJoy
A simple way to initiate payments via Twitter. For example, you can tweet
p @ev $1 because twitter is fun
and send $1 from your Tipjoy account to @ev.
And in addition to ‘p’, payment keywords are ‘tipjoy’, ‘tip’, ‘pay’, ‘give’, and ‘rtip’.
TwitterMap
With Twittermap you can update your location:
L:home=517 Spruce Ln, Lenexa, KS 60502
L:lunch:30.010,-90.007
Peqipedia
A micro-pedia which let’s you tweet wiki articles like:
@peqi Microstructures = Try to unify the different Twitter formats.
Other links of interest:
Most of the following try to propose a standard but dont’ have actual implementations.
[0] Some sources included: http://notizblog.org/, http://www.stoweboyd.com/, http://www.140conf.com/application-directory
A couple of days ago Stowe Boyd proposed a new sort of microstructure for Twitter locations. He uses a distinctive character to set off the location: Just landed at /JFK. Now Ralf Rottmann argues against this proposal by saying more special characters are not readable, too much overhead and are only workarounds for short comings of Twitter.
I agree with some of Ralf’s arguments. My biggest concern is that Twitter messages should stay readable for everyone. Especially the newcomers. On the other hand I understand Stowe’s need for getting a structure into Twitter messages because I needed something similar for my iPhone app.
In my app I am using a different kind of approach which you could call “custom readable microstructure”:
Dishes is an iPhone app that let’s you share you favorite meals and drinks via Twitter. In order to do this it defines it’s own format. For example, if you have just been out for lunch and had a great burrito, Dishes would tweet the following message [*]:
Just had ‘Burrito’ at ‘Baja Fresh’ for 5.00$ rating:5/5 #lunch #mexican #dishesapp
Now Dishes understands this message and can parse the meta-information. Although this message is not proper English and could be even more readable, I think it balances the readability and the need for a custom structure.
[*]: You can create Dishes messages without the iPhone at: http://dishesapp.com/create/