Dave Caolo

Grammar Girl offers a Twitter style guide. I love it.

It’s time to schedule our next Twitter Meetup. This time there’s a bit of a twist.

Our last meetup drew about 20 people, which was both good and bad. I was thrilled to see so many pro-active techies on Cape Cod.

However, the problem was this. With all of us at a long rectangular table, certain conversations got missed. While I enjoyed talking about blogging at my end, I missed conversations that took place at the other end (and vice-versa).

So, this time I’m changing things up a bit. If you’ve got

• A project you want to talk about
• Ideas you want to share
• Questions you’d like answered

and so on, add it to the wiki page I’ve created (if you want write access to the wiki, leave a comment here w/your email address and I’ll set you up). Your name + topic will be sufficient. That way, we’ll all know exactly who will be holding the conversation we’re all most interested in. Sound good?

The second issue is location. While The BBC (our usual stop) has great Wi-Fi, it’s noisy and the layout is not  conducive to people wandering from conversation to conversation. So, I’m open to suggestions. The only criteria are

• Free Wi-Fi
• Uncluttered set-up
• Not too noisy

It’s also nice if people can get something to eat. The final bit of info is date. We typically meet on Wedensdays, but I’ve heard from people who can’t meet mid-week. How about Friday, May 2nd? That should give us enough time to iron out the other details.

I’m looking forward to our next meetup. Spread the word.

Tonight I had one of those “lightbulb moments.”

I rarely use Apple’s Safari for web browsing, but launched it tonight for whatever reason. I was reading my Twitter page when I glanced at the web clip icon.

I grabbed a clip of the input field and update button and added it to the Dashboard. I posted a test tweet and it worked. Now I’ve got a quick way to tweet from the Dashboard. Awesome.

Twitter is fun, social and sometimes informative. When it’s working. And that doesn’t happen very often.

I accept downtime for the sake of maintenance. I also accept the occasional unforeseen breakdown. But Twitter seems to be offline more often than it’s on, and I’m out of patience (and I’m not alone).

So, find me on Pownce: http://pownce.com/dcaolo/. Goodbye, Twitter. Here’s hoping you get your shit together.

Now, someone convince Craig Hockenberry to write a desktop Pownce app for the Mac.

Update: Twitter’s break-up with Joyent could have something to do with it.

Don’t forget, techies, we’ll be gathering on Wednesday for brews and fun. Here are the details:

• When: Wednesday January 23rd, 7:00 PM
• Where: The British Beer Company, Main St., Hyannis
• Why: Because it’s fun (plus they have drinks and free Wi-Fi).

See you there, techies!