Twitter.com

Okay, what the heck is Twitter? And why is it all the buzz?

Well, it's kinda like "blogging lite". You get 140 characters to type in a message, and it gets posted on your twitter page. Kinda like blogging, kinda like IM. Kinda fun. And speaking of IM, if you set it up, you can post from IM (i.e. your Jabber client, or from GTalk) as well.

My first take on Twitter was "how worthless is this?", but I have to admit it's grown on me. There are some things that I want to blog about (like this), but other things, (like my morning ride), that's too short to blog about, but that I'd like to post about somewhere (even if, as with blogging, my mom and I are the only ones who will read it). At 140 chars, I have to stay short and sweet, which has its own appeal. And apparently, for those of you who have friends, it's a fun way to keep in touch, if they're on Twitter as well.

And other sites are popping up around Twitter. One, twittervision, is particularly compelling. Twittervision shows a map of the earth, and displays a new tweet every few seconds. This doesn't sound like much, but it's pretty neat, at least to a map geek like me.

Anyway, I'm giving it a whirl.