A Geek Dad’s Log

A good friend of mine, @Dirgayuza Setiawan recently launched his Twitter book for beginners.

If you know anyone who's just getting into Twitter, it might be a good idea to get them this book even though most of the information is available from Twitter's own help pages.

The good thing about printed books is that you can read them when there's no Internet connection. Mashable has a really good free online guide for Twitter but it's not that useful offline. The PDF version is only readable on the latest version of Adobe Reader which I'm not a fan of.

The book is in Indonesian which helps locals understand Twitter better if they're not that fluent in English. They also won't need to dig through the help pages at http://twitter.com/help. I'm sure even many seasoned veterans haven't bothered to look through that section of the site.

It's a good guide for beginners without getting into more complicated situations.

Sent from my iPhone

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Apparently at any given time, to ensure a trending topic on Twitter you would need about 2000 tweets at once. More if you want it to be on top and maintain that position for a lengthy period.

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What

Special Dialog on MetroTV. 

I've been asked to gather a list of people from Twitter who would like to be in the audience at their studio. The show will feature discussions about the bombing at Kuningan last Friday morning and the IndonesiaUnite movement that began on Twitter which has practically taken over Twitter for the past five days, as a response to the incident.

It will also have performances by Slank, Efek Rumah Kaca, Pandji Pragiwaksono, Oppie Andaresta, and Jose Rizal Manua.

IndonesiaUnite is a movement that aims to show the world that Indonesians are not afraid of terrorists and instead of hiding, will drive to protect, preserve, and advance our way of life. It is also being used to tell the world that there is more to Indonesia than they may know.

It is not only a movement on the internet, it is being pushed offline also to show the rest of the country that there are people who care about driving the nation forward, that there are ways to make this country a better place, and that a nation is nothing without its people.

Where

MetroTV Studios, Kedoya

When

Live show from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm. 

Must be at MetroTV by 5:30 pm. 

How

Meet 4:00pm at Plaza Senayan, MetroTV bus will pick us up and take us back to Plaza Senayan unless you want to make your own way.

Please confirm your attendance by leaving a comment on this blog entry. I will not admit further submissions unless there are confirmed cancellations.

Who

@AndyZain, AndreasSurya, @ariefr, @astrid_amalia, @absolutraia @aulia, @boruniraja, @brettmcguire, @desta_star, @kuncoro, @mastrosiani, @patvandiest, @rnhpenna +3, @teguh_koopa, @vikingkarwur, @vmahmud, @waraney, @yoshi_f, @irsadestiwi, @gusgoose, @qronoz +2,  Inggita, @leonisecret, @adigunacakra, @andytanamas.

UPDATE

We'll be waiting around the atrium at the ground floor. Some of us will go straight to MetroTV. 

I don't think we can add any more people unless I forgot some of you.

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June 14, 2009. More than halfway past May's total.

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The following is a comment I left at this blog entry belonging to Pitra Satvika about his thoughts on Facebook becoming more like Friendster, at least in Indonesia. His blog is in Indonesian and my comments are mostly in Indonesian. I might translate it if enough of you care for it.

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I was asked to write a three paragraph introduction to Twitter for an Indonesian sister magazine. This is what I ended up writing.

In English.

Accidentally.

I had to translate the entire thing afterwards. Obviously my piece got cut down to pieces because of space constraints, it will end up looking very different to this one.

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Blackberry owners are no longer the only people who walk around looking at their gadgets and twiddling thumbs at them. Regular people with regular mobile phones are joining in the new look of the 21st century all thanks to Twitter. This relatively new kind of blogging has taken the world country by country since 2006.

Developed by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, Twitter is a service that lets you post short updates (or tweets) of whatever it is that you're currently doing or thinking of. You can follow other people on twitter and they can also follow you. If you don't like certain people following you and read what you tweet, you can block them. Likewise, you can stop following someone if you no longer enjoy what they tweet.

If you think Facebook is like your home on the internet, Twitter is the corner coffee shop where you and your friends hang out. These days though, you don't just say what you are doing anymore, you can post questions, links to anything you find interesting on the internet and even have conversations with your friends either publicly or privately.

The concept became so popular that late last year Facebook adopted the style for its own status message and even asked a similar question. Twitter asks, "What are you doing?", while Facebook asks, "What are you doing right now?"

Like instant messenger services, you can send a message to one or more people by adding "@" in front of their Twitter name or "D" to send a direct (private) message that only your friend can see. For example, asking @deon what's makemac.com? will send that tweet to deon and anyone who follows both you and deon. Sending D deon what's makemac.com? will only send it to deon.

Twitter started growing quickly after it was introduced and won an award at South by Sothwest, a music/interactive/film festival in Austin, Texas and became even larger in 2008 after Barack Obama's campaign began using Twitter as one of their online presence.

Other politicians, athletes, musicians and actors have also started using Twitter such as Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Stephen Fry, Britney Spears, Fred Durst, Lily Allen, Shaquille O'Neal, and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

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He has since evacuated to at least 2 Km away.

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