Tag Archives: language

The Star-Spangled Banner, In Spanish?

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What’s the big deal?

The other day, I got one of those forwarded e-mails that we all get from people who think they’re preaching to the choir. You know the kind. The e-mail expresses a very specific opinion, normally in angry terms, and the person who forwards it to you thinks you’ll agree and keep forwarding it to other people who will agree.

This particular message, like some others I occasionally get, hit a solid brick wall in my in-box. Not only did I disagree, but I feel that the people who do agree are looking at the issue with a typical small-minded, conservative attitude.

The issue was the proposed singing of the National Anthem in Spanish.

The Message

Here’s the entire, unedited text of the message, which was accompanied by idiotic cartoons I won’t bother to reproduce here:

No apology for sending this ! ! ! After hearing they want to sing the National Anthem in Spanish – enough is enough. Nowhere did they sing it in Italian, Polish, Irish (Celtic), Ger man or any other language because of immigration. It was written by Francis Scott Key and should be sung word for word the way it was written The news broadcasts even gave the translation — not even close. NOT sorry if this offends anyone because this is MY COUNTRY – IF IT IS YOUR COUNTRY SPEAK UP — please pass this along .

I am not against immigration — just come through like everyone else. Get a sponsor; have a place to lay your head ; have a job; pay your taxes, live by the rules AND LEARN THE LANGUAGE as all other immigrants have in the past — and GOD BLESS AMERICA!

PART OF THE PROBLEM

Think about this: If you don’t want to forward this for fear of offending someone — YOU’RE PART OF THE PROBLEM!

It is Time for America to Speak up

If you agree — pass this along, if you don’t agree — delete it!

Well, I don’t agree but I didn’t delete it. Instead, I’ll speak up, as the message urges.

Let’s set aside that the language the message was written in wasn’t even in good English. It’s fraught with punctuation errors that make it sound, when read, like the angry rant it is.

But let’s look at this person’s gripe. Spanish-speaking people would like to sing our National Anthem in their language. What’s so bad about that? I think we should be flattered. It’s the ultimate show of respect. By translating The Star-Spangled Banner into Spanish, they’re putting it into a language they can clearly understand. They’ll get the message of the words of the song.

Or does the message just not matter?

Some Truth about Our National Anthem

What’s the song about, anyway? Do these English-only ranters even know? Here’s some history from Wikipedia:

“The Star-Spangled Banner” is the national anthem of the United States of America. The lyrics come from a poem written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key, a then 35-year-old amateur poet who wrote “Defence of Fort McHenry”[1] after seeing the bombardment of Fort McHenry at Baltimore, Maryland, by Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay during the War of 1812.

The poem was set to the tune of a popular British drinking song, written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a London social club. “The Anacreontic Song” (or “To Anacreon in Heaven”), set to various lyrics, was already popular in the United States. Set to Key’s poem and renamed “The Star-Spangled Banner”, it would soon become a well-known American patriotic song. With a range of one and a half octaves, it is known for being difficult to sing. Although the song has four stanzas, only the first is commonly sung today, with the fourth (“O thus be it ever when free men shall stand …”) added on more formal occasions.

This brings up three interesting points that the ranter probably didn’t know or even think about:

  • The poem by Francis Scott Key was set to the tune of a British drinking song. Key did not write the song. He wrote a poem later set to music.
  • The text written by Key is not usually sung as written. Indeed, only part of the poem is commonly sung. I challenge the writer of the message to sing or recite the missing stanzas or even tell me how many there are. Or sing the stanza added by Oliver Wendell Holmes during the Civil War. (Yes, it’s in Wikipedia.)
  • The poem is not about America. It’s about our flag. A specific flag, in fact, which hangs behind protective shield in the Smithsonian and can be viewed periodically throughout the day. (I’ve seen this huge, tattered flag in person and it puts real meaning to Key’s words.) It’s also about war.

Later, the Wikipedia entry directly contradicts what this small-minded ranter states in his message:

As a result of immigration to the United States, the lyrics of the song were translated into other languages. In 1861, it was translated into German.[12] It has since been translated into Hebrew [13], Yiddish by Jewish immigrants,[14] French by Acadians of Louisiana,[15] Samoan[16] and Irish.[17] The third verse of the anthem has also been translated into Latin.[18]

So there.

The Spanish translations are also discussed, along with the somewhat revealing statement, “It drew a critical response from President George W. Bush, who said that the national anthem should be sung in English.[21]” This clearly reveals the ranter as just another Bushie, echoing the president’s sentiments because he either can’t think for himself or because Rush Limbaugh told him to.

The Wikipedia entry, as usual, makes fascinating reading, with lots of history and links, as well as the complete lyrics to the song. Anyone interested in learning more about our National Anthem should check it out. People who want to rant about it might consider reading it before ranting publicly, so they get most of the facts straight and don’t sound like ignoramuses.

English as a Second Language

But I think what really pisses me off about this whole thing is the continued feeling among a certain group of Americans that immigrants must learn to speak English.

Let’s look at this objectively: every non-Native American in this country — the vast majority of the people here — is an immigrant or can be traced back to immigrant ancestors.

I don’t have to look back very far to find my transplanted roots in this country: my maternal great grandparents immigrated from Italy to New York around the turn of the century and my paternal grandparents immigrated from Germany to New Jersey in the 1930s.

I don’t know much about my great grandparents, but I do know that my grandmother’s mother never learned to speak English. She was a homemaker who lived in an Italian neighborhood, surrounded by people who spoke Italian. Her nine American-born children, including my grandmother, were bilingual. She was deeply religious, a Catholic who likely attended mass conducted in Latin.

My paternal grandparents learned to speak English right away. My grandfather, trained as a pastry chef in Europe, worked in a bakery until he was able to open his own. My grandmother worked up front, dealing with the customers. They had to learn English to succeed in their business. Their two sons were bilingual, although I don’t think my father, the younger of the two, speaks German very well.

There are two points I want to emphasize here:

  • We are the immigrants. Did we come here and learn to speak Navajo or Sioux or Cherokee? No. Instead, we forced the indians to send their children to our schools in an attempt to eradicate their culture. We forced them to speak English and, as a result, many of the native American languages have been lost forever. As a white American, I’m not proud of that.
  • People who come to this country will learn to speak English when they need to. An immigrant living in an immigrant neighborhood or town may not need to learn much English at all. But if he wants to work with English-speaking people and get ahead in this country, he’ll learn to speak the language of the people he deals with. That’s why the English-speaking day laborers are more likely to get work or better pay than the non-English-speaking ones. It’s also why English-speaking employers who hire immigrant laborers learn to speak their language: so they can hire and communicate with the cheapest ones. The language barrier is an economic barrier that works both ways.

And let’s cut to the chase here: how many Americans who move to Mexico or Costa Rica or other places where their dollars enable them to live like kings speak Spanish fluently?

Besides, many “Americans” don’t speak English very well anyway.

Your Turn to Rant

I’m certain that this post will get the hairs up on the backs of certain regular readers here. It’s not my intention to annoy anyone. I just want people to think about it objectively.

What’s the big deal?

Use the comment link or form to state your case. Just remember to keep it civil. If you get abusive toward me or any other commenter, your comment won’t appear here.

Survivors?

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An unusual choice of words.

I’m listening to NPR (National Public Radio) this morning. They’re reporting on the Pope’s private meetings with sexual abuse “survivors.”

While I certainly don’t mean to take anything away from the situation — children and young people molested or sexually abused by Catholic priests they trusted — the term survivor seems a little extreme as a label for these now grown people. The first definition of survivor in the dictionary that’s part of Mac OS X is:

a person who survives, esp. a person remaining alive after an event in which others have died : the sole survivor of the massacre.

And that’s how I usually think of a survivor. Consider the phrases Hurricane Katrina survivor, cancer survivor, Titanic survivor. Surely you can come up with others.

But the dictionary goes on to offer the following alternative definition for survivor:

the remainder of a group of people or things : a survivor from last year’s team.

or

a person who copes well with difficulties in their life : she is a born survivor.

Indeed: either of these definitions would apply to these unfortunate people.

What do you think? Is the term survivor an appropriate label for these people? Can you come up with a better label? Perhaps one you heard or read in the media? As someone interested in words, I’m curious.

Flying with Cars, Take 2

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Another gig at the Proving Grounds.

I spent yesterday afternoon sweating my brains out, flying in formation with cars.

I’d been hired once again to take a film crew around a proving ground tracks to get some footage for a internal marketing video. Last time, there had been one car. This time there were two. Last time it had been in September. This time, it was July.

The Flight Down

Mike came with me from Wickenburg. We topped off the tanks at the local airport here and took all four doors off. We’d filled a cooler with ice and bottled water and Gatorade to bring along. I also had a hand-held radio for Mike so he could listen in while we were flying. The flight from Wickenburg took about 50 minutes. It was hot — about 110°F/42°C — and even the wind through the open doorways did nothing to cool us. I had a small spray bottle and would douse my loose-fitting cotton shirt down with water as I flew. 2 minutes later, it would be completely dry again.

It was also bumpy. The desert, baked throughout the day by the broiling sun was sending waves of thermals straight up. But a 10 to 20 knot wind from the southwest was breaking all that up. As a result, the flight was like riding on a poorly maintained road with big, fat, soft tires. Bumpy but seldom jarringly so. Someone prone to motion sickness probably would have puked.

There were also dust devils: towering updrafts of swirling dust blown laterally across the desert floor. At any one time, looking out at the open desert, we could see at least two dozen of the damn things, some of them at least 500 feet tall. We were flying at about 500 feet above the ground, so dodging them became part of our flight path. If it looked like we’d hit one, I’d alter course to pass to the west behind it. This probably added a few minutes to the flight, but I wasn’t the least bit interested in getting very close to any of them.

By the time we got to the proving ground and landed on a piece of road where everyone waited, I was tired and red hot — literally! — my face was completely flushed — and partially dehydrated. It was a good thing we had an hour to kill before the film crew would be ready. I spent it drinking water and Gatorade in the air conditioned comfort of the facility’s lunch room.

The Film Crew

The film crew consisted of the same director and photographer as last time. The photographer had a big, professional video camera that he sat on his shoulder as he taped the action. The camera was attached by a cable to a small monitor that the director could hold in his hands during the flight.

The photographer was strapped in not only with a seat belt by with a rope that tied the harness he wore to the bar between the two front seats in the helicopter. In addition, they rigged up a come-along strap on the helicopter’s frame between the left and right side of the helicopter and had the camera attached to that by two separate straps. We clearly would not be dropping either the photographer or camera out of the helicopter.

Everyone on the film crew wore black shirts. These are obviously people unaccustomed to life in the desert. It doesn’t take long for a desert dweller to realize that black might look cool but it doesn’t feel cool with the sun shining down on you and a UV index of 10. They also drank a lot of Pepsi. No matter how many of us “locals” recommended water, they’d guzzle Pepsi and some weak tea looking concoction they kept in one-gallon plastic water jugs. I didn’t ask what it was.

Throughout the flight, the director would yell commands to me and the photographer through the helicopter’s intercom system. He had to yell because the photographer was hanging out of the helicopter to get his shots and his microphone was out in the 20 to 80 knot wind (depending on our speed, of course). The director also yelled into a handheld radio that the driver was tuned into, giving him directions.

Of course, the most challenging thing about communication was not the wind noise but the language. They didn’t speak good English.

The Flying

The kind of flying this time around was mostly chasing the car around the speed track (a large paved oval with sharply banked curves) and the dirt track (a smaller oval with a dusty dirt surface). I’d fly alongside, anywhere from 10 to 100 feet off the ground, but usually around 30. Speed ranged from a hover to as fast as 80 knots.

If you’re a helicopter pilot, you know that this kind of operation puts me in the shaded area of the height-velocity diagram or so-called “dead man’s curve.” I’m full aware of the dangers of this kind of flying and communicated them to my passengers.

But frankly, my willingness to do this kind of flying is what got me the job two years ago. They’d asked two other local operators to do it and they both said no. I think that the fact that they were flight schools played heavily into the decision. Wouldn’t be a good example to set for newly minted CFIs. Besides, I really think that this kind of “extreme” flying is best done by experienced pilots. Although I only have about 1,800 hours right now, that’s a heck of a lot more than the typical 400-hour flight school CFI.

The challenging parts:

  • Going from a near hover to highway speed in a very short time.
  • Keeping an eye on the car and the obstacles around the track, including poles with wires, antenna towers, tents used to hide cars from passing aircraft (believe it or not), and road signs.
  • Flying alongside the car at 20 feet above the ground, making smooth “hops” over lower obstructions (signs, tents, etc.) as necessary,
  • Swooping past the front of the car and turning so the camera didn’t lose sight of the car until it was past us.
  • Getting back into shooting position quickly after a technical shot so the photographer could maximize his video time.
  • Understanding what my passengers wanted me to do, especially on those occasions when they couldn’t agree and gave conflicting commands.

The best shots probably came close to sunset, when we were working with one of the cars on the dirt track. The clear sky, low sun, and dust combine to make magical scenes. Most of the shots used in the video from last time were ones from the dirt track. My job was to keep the setting sun, car, and helicopter in a line so the photographer could get sunset footage.

The Machine

I really enjoy this kind of work. Flying a helicopter from point A to point B is mildly interesting, but doing the kind of flying needed to photograph moving cars (or boats, for that matter), is extremely challenging. It takes all of my concentration to deliver what the photographer and director want.

But what’s probably best about it is the way my arms and legs go into a certain autopilot mode. I think of what I want and my body reacts to make the helicopter do what needs to be done. There’s very little thought involved. I’m just part of the machine — the brain, so to speak. And when flying — or doing anything with a piece of equipment, I imagine — becomes so automatic and thought-free, that’s magic.

The Trip Home

We finished up just after sunset. Rather than shut down and go inside for some refreshments, I decided to keep it running and head home. I wanted to get home before it was too dark. I was exhausted — I’d flown over 4 hours that day, including a flight from Howard Mesa and the ferry flight to the track — and was depending on the last vestiges of adrenaline to power me home. So the film crew got all their straps and cables out, Mike got in, and we took off.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that the Low Fuel light was flickering 2 miles from the nearest airport. Another plane was on final when I came in for my approach. I meekly asked him if I could land first because of my fuel situation. He gracefully pulled his twin engine airplane into a 360 turn to the right to give me additional room. By the time I set down at the self-serve pump, the fuel light was shining brightly. I thanked the pilot of the plane again after he rolled out from his landing.

It was still 104°F/40°C most of the way home — an hour-long flight in growing darkness. I’m accustomed to flying at night — I think every pilot should be comfortable with that skill — so it wasn’t a big deal. It was also very smooth; hardly any wind until we neared Wickenburg.

The only problem was the dust that had evidently gotten into my eyes during the last bit of shooting. It really messed up my contact lenses.

Four Steps to Get the Most Out of Twitter

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Some tips for taking the “yuk” out.

I first heard about Twitter a few months ago on either the MacBreak Weekly or TWiT (This Week in Tech) podcast. (Both highly recommended, by the way.) I immediately checked it out. At first, I thought it was kind of cool, but then I realized that it was nothing more than a gigantic, worldwide chat room. Everyone talking, few people talking to a specific other person, some people even talking in languages other than English (imagine that!), few people saying anything of interest.

Twitter is a micro blogging tool. If you looked at 100 random blog posts from all over the blogoshere, how many of them do you think you’d like? This is the same. Look at 100 random tweets and you’re likely to find very few that are even worth the time it took to read them.

And they’re only up to 140 character long.

First Impressions

Miraz summed it up in a comment on yesterday’s “Reach Out and Meet Someone” post here:

I’m really interested by your previous post and comments here about Twitter. I’d noticed Twitter and found my first, and strong, reaction was Yuk!

The next time I looked was the other day when I thought I should include it in a book I’m writing for community groups. This time I looked and just felt old.

I see it as a monumental waste of time and a triviality, so I find your comments about feeling more connected to people particularly useful.

I felt exactly the same way. Yet people were talking about it and raving, in many cases. So I figured I was probably missing something and decided to give it a closer look.

You Need to Scrape Away the Bull

The main complaint about Twitter is: who really cares about what all these people are doing? What you had for breakfast isn’t very interesting. What you’re watching on TV isn’t interesting either. And why all the cryptic statements? Are you trying to be cool?

But if you could scrape away all the bull and concentrate on the content that may be of real interest to you, Twitter does have some value. I’ve gotten a glimpse of it. Not enough to convince me that it’s good, but enough to make me think that it might be.

Here’s what I did to reach this point. I recommend these steps to anyone who wants to give Twitter a real try.

Step 1: Create a Twitter Account

I’m not going to explain how to do this. You can go to Twitter and follow the instructions online to do it yourself.

I definitely recommend that you choose an appropriate image for your identity there. Something that gives people an idea of what you’re all about. For a while, mine was the same image I currently use for my Gravatar: my helicopter’s back end with hot air balloons in the background. Pretty but not very real. I’ve since switched it to my standard head shot, which I hope to get redone one of these days. Most Twitter users either use a photo or a cartoon for their images. My advice: don’t use established cartoon characters; one of these days, someone’s going to start suing.

While you’re in your account settings, be sure to create a one-line (they really mean about six-word) bio of yourself. It appears when someone goes to your Twitter page. Set your time zone, enter the full URL for your Web site or blog, and just provide the needed info. If you don’t want to be on the public timeline, there’s a box you can check. I wouldn’t check it unless you’re worried about stalkers or some other crazy thing. After all, there is a slight chance that you might impress someone reading the public timeline (whoever that might be) enough to make a new friend.

Step 2: Download and Install a Tweeting Tool

I cannot over emphasize the importance of this step. Sure, you can keep your Twitter home page open and refresh it once in a while to see what’s new. But there are better ways to get involved with Twitter.

For a while, I used a Dashboard widget to compose and send my tweets. This was convenient; press F12, fill in a form, press Return, and press F12 again to get back to work. This added my tweets to Twitter, but did not display the tweets of my friends.

TwitterificThen I discovered Twitterific. Frankly, I can’t imagine using Twitter without this little application. (Now calm down, folks. You can use the Comments link or form at the bottom of this post to tell me why your favorite Twitter tool is better.) It features a resizable window that captures and displays not only your tweets, but the tweets of all the Twitter users that you follow. There are a variety of notification options with and without sound. And, best of all, there’s a tiny form at the bottom of the window that you can use to enter your own tweets.

Twitterific has just one problem — and it doesn’t affect me at all: it requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later. Yes, it’s a Mac-only application. (I’m relying on the PC folks reading this to use the Comments link or form to tell us what they’re using. Let’s hope they don’t let us down.)

Twitter also works with instant messaging and I’m pretty sure you can use your IM client (iChat, MSN, AOL, etc.) to interact with Twitter. But since this article’s intention isn’t to explain all the different ways you can use Twitter, I’ll let you explore that option on your own.

And Twitter does work with text messaging on a cell phone. But if you enable and regularly use that feature, you really need to get a life.

Step 3: Find People to Follow

You don’t want to monitor the public timeline. Trust me: it’s a waste of time. You want to follow the tweets of a select group of people. People that you select.

There are a few ways you can find people to follow:

  • Ask your friends, family members, and work associates if they have Twitter accounts. If they don’t, use the Invite form on your Twitter account to invite them. Be sure to use the extra note field to explain what this is all about. You might want to point them to an article about Twitter (like this one?) or a favorable review. The people you invite should be people that spend a lot of time in front of a computer connected to the Internet, so tweeting will be easy and convenient for them.
  • Track down the Twitter accounts of famous people you want to follow. Believe it or not, Barack Obama has a Twitter account. (I don’t follow him.) So does Stephen Colbert. (I do follow him.) Now, obviously, these people have better things to do with their time than send tweets out into the blogosphere, so their tweets are likely composed by their staff and have some kind of marketing value. Obama’s is strictly campaign stuff. Colbert’s is a bunch of typical Colbert-style one-liners. These are just examples. I’m sure plenty of celebs have Twitter accounts, if you’re into the celeb thing.
  • Check the blogs you follow. Quite a few bloggers have Twitter accounts. If you like the blogger’s blog, then you might like his tweets. I found a number of interesting people to follow this way.

Make these people your “Friends” — that’s Twitter’s term for the people you follow. Doing that is easy; just go to their Twitter timeline and click an Add link under Actions.

If someone makes you a friend, he’ll be listed under your followers. It’s always nice to add them as friends, too. It might give you insight as to why they added you. And you can always “Leave” them if you decide you don’t like their tweets.

Which brings up the next point. Once in a while, you’ll discover that you really don’t like the tweets of one of your “friends.” (I really feel a need to put that in quotes since the people you follow might not be real friends.) Just go to your Twitter page, view your list of friends. and click a Leave link under his name/icon. I did this just the other day when I decided that one of my “friends” was getting a bit too political for my taste. (No, I don’t want to sign your online petition, thank you.) Click of a link and I don’t have to hear from him anymore.

Step 4: Post Tweets

Even if you have no followers, you should make it a habit to post tweets on a somewhat regular basis. I’m not saying you need to do it daily or hourly or weekly or every ten minutes. I’m saying you should do it at least occasionally, when you have something to say.

I tend to tweet when I sit down to start a project or finish one up. This morning, I tweeted about going down to feed my horses and about a new article posted on my site. When this article is finished and posted, I’ll tweet about it and provide a link.

Be particular about the content of your tweets. Try to limit yourself to tweets that people might actually be interested in. Okay, you had eggs for breakfast. But don’t tweet about it unless you fetched those eggs out of a henhouse and the rooster tried to kill you or you cooked them in a microwave, causing them to explode all over the inside and start a fire. Okay, so that’s an exaggeration. But you know what I mean. Something interesting.

You can make all your tweets self-promotional, but I assure you that you’ll have very few followers — unless, of course, you’re famous and people want to read about your latest book, movie, radio show, interview, podcast, etc. I admit that my tweeting about articles as they are released has an element of self-promotion to it, but I’d like to think that some people might want to check out some of what I’m writing about. After all, if you were using Twitter, wouldn’t you be slightly interested in an article about it?

Remember, Twitter limits you to 140 characters per tweet. Don’t feel as if you have to fill them. It automatically converts long URLs to short ones (using tinyurl), so don’t worry about URLs taking up all your characters. Just keep it short and sweet.

As for writing style, Grammar Girl wrote an excellent style guide for tweets, “Grammar Girl’s Strunk & Twite: An Unofficial Twitter Style Guide.” Read it and use it. Please.

The Twitter Virus

I first read the phrase Twitter virus yesterday. At first, I thought it was some kind of real computer virus. But apparently, it refers to a person’s active involvement in Twitter — in other words, tweeting the moments of your day all day every day.

A certain amount of Twitter virus is vital to using Twitter and attracting and keeping followers. But if you’ve got it too bad — like a certain person I follow who tweeted from his cell phone about being stuck in traffic waiting at a railroad crossing this morning — you probably want to take a step back and think hard about your involvement.

While a tool like Twitterific makes participating in Twitter extremely easy, don’t get carried away. The people who follow you don’t need (or probably want) every detail of your life.

Try It

Twitter is also a social networking tool. I participate because I find it interesting to see what other people do and think throughout their day. I leave the Twitterific window open — I have a 20″ monitor, so there’s enough real estate for it — and peek at it once in a while. And then I tweet when I have something to say. It’s pretty effortless and it certainly doesn’t take much out of my day.

Now you know what I do with Twitter and how you can make it a worthwhile experiment. Don’t be shy. Try it. It’s all free and, if you don’t catch the virus, you can quit it at any time.

More on Twitter

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Frivolous and a waste of time, but kind of cool, too.

According to Wikipedia, Twitter is

a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, the Twitter website, or an application such as Twitterrific.

Some More Details

Here’s how it works.

You join Twitter by signing up for a free membership.

You can then use the Twitter Web site, an application such as Twitterific (Mac OS only; there must be something out there for Windows users), a Dashboard Widget such as Twitterlex or Twidget (Mac OS only), SMS, or instant messaging to compose a 140-character-or-less mini blog post — referred to as a tweet — and post it to the Twitter service.

Your tweet goes into the Twitter public timeline (shown below), a constantly updated listing of recent tweets that changes so frequently, you probably won’t see your tweet appear because by the time you refresh the page, 20 or 30 other Twitter users have posted their tweets, thus pushing yours off the page. Much of what does appear is pretty boring. Some of it is clearly promotional or self-promotional. Some of it is in languages other than English.) And, of course, there’s the usual low-level chat mentality of posting nonsense apparently in an effort to fill bandwidth with inane chatter.

The Twitter Public Timeline

So, in short, Twitter enables you to broadcast, to the world, what you’re doing at that very moment or, if you’re not doing anything worth talking about, whatever message you want to broadcast. But very few people are likely to see it, so it’s a lot like shouting out of a helicopter window while flying over the Pacific Ocean — pretty much a waste of communication effort.

Follow the Tweets of your Friends

TwitterificFortunately, there is a way to weed out the stuff you don’t want to see and to concentrate on the stuff you do want to see. Just create a network of “friends” and people you “follow.” As you find other Twitter members you’re interested in, you add them as friends. Then, when you view your Twitter home page or use an application like Twitterific (shown here) to keep up to date, you only see the tweets from the people you care about.

My only problem is, either the people I care about don’t use Twitter or, if they do, I don’t know their Twitter User IDs so I can’t add them as friends. This is probably because I’m not hip — a situation I’m quite used to, since I’ve been dealing with it my entire life.

Put Your Tweets on Your Blog or Site

Twitter BadgeA cool feature of Twitter is the ability to add a Twitter badge to your Web site or blog. You can see my Twitter badge (if it’s still online when you read this) in the navigation bar on the Home page of my Web site. Here’s a screen shot of it, just in case I removed it. (I’m so fickle about features on my site.)

You can modify the color of the badge, but not much else. I think the badge is too big for the 140 characters allowed, given the microscopic font size. I was unable to tweak it for the appearance I wanted. What’s nice is that it includes a link to my Twitter page for people who care about me to follow me. I don’t think anyone has yet. That doesn’t surprise me, given that I’m not hip.

By the way, adding the badge to your site is pretty easy. Follow the link to Badges, set options as desired, then copy the resulting code and paste it into your site or blog where you want it to appear. It automatically shows your most recent tweet when the page is loaded.

Similar Services

I first heard about Twitter on the TWiT (no relation) podcast. (TWiT is short for This Week in Tech and it’s hosted by Leo Laporte. Since raving about it on a show, Leo has since switched to rival service Jaiku. I don’t know anything about Jaiku (yet) and am too busy today to explore it. But you can expect an article about it in the future.

Who knows? It might be a better solution for folks with hipness deficiencies.

Looking for other Twitters

If you’re a regular reader of this blog and maintain a Twit account, I welcome you to promote it in the comments for this site. I’ll check out your tweets and may add you to my list of “friends.” (Whoo-hoo!)

Would also be interested in reading your impressions of the Twitter service or competing services. Use the Comments link.