Category Archives: Technology

| Montreal, Technology

Ile Sans Fil still the king

Roberto Rocha has an article about Ile Sans Fil (and current head Laurent Maisonnave), the volunteer-run free wireless hot spot network, which is still thriving while for-profit commercial systems have either been delayed or quietly cancelled.

I remember having a meeting long ago with a guy who had this idea of starting up a free wifi network. This was before laptops came with wireless built-in and before most people even knew what it was. I thought the guy was crazy, or at least naive, thinking such a network could be setup.

He went and created Ile Sans Fil, which now has about 150 hotspots.

Don’t I feel silly.

| Navel-gazing, Web design

My first real website

The Link's website in summer 2002

The Link's website in summer 2002

For some reason that completely eludes me now, I took a trip through the Wayback Machine this week to visit my first big website. It was for The Link, the better of Concordia University’s two student newspapers (at least while I worked there). And sadly, it’s a website that no longer exists except in the form of a few snapshots in the Internet Archive.

Taking us back to 2001

Having been appointed to the position of webmaster for a newspaper that didn’t have a website, it became pretty clear what my first job would be. During the summer of 2001 I embarked on a project to create a server and install a content management system on it that would be suitable for newspaper articles.

The first part wasn’t too complicated: a generic desktop server with Slackware Linux installed on it, a few tweaks, and the server was up.

The CMS was a different story. This was two years before WordPress. Months before the first MovableType. After minutes of searching, I figured my best option would be to use Slashcode, the Perl-based engine behind the popular Slashdot. (Hey, remember Slashdot? Apparently it’s still there.)

In hindsight, it was a horrible mistake. At the time (and I suspect this is still the case) it was an awful, inelegant piece of hacked-together software, built from scratch to support Slashdot and awkwardly patched with new features. That meant changing things very difficult.

Among the annoyances that only grew over time:

  • Accounts had to be created for each author. Every time a new person contributed or even just wrote a letter to the editor, an account had to be created. A few years in, the “author” drop-down menu had over a hundred names in it.
  • No concept of “issues” to tie together articles of a certain date. Instead of showing all the articles for a particular issue, it would be programmed to show the latest X number of articles.
  • An impossible-to-understand caching system that required all sorts of manual resets in order to do something simple like change the background colour on the main page. This is combined with a background daemon that had the habit of turning itself off.
  • A database that tended to get corrupted causing everything to go bad.
  • Hard-coded or semi-hard-coded constants and variables, such as a “security level” that was in the form of an integer instead of a list of capabilities.
  • No built-in way of handling photos or their captions.

But for its faults, the system also had many useful features, some of which were ahead of their time:

  • Threaded comments, comment rating and group moderation (being Concordia at a time of relative political chaos, these got a lot of use)
  • Integrated RSS, including the ability to pull RSS headlines from other sites
  • Form keys to prevent spamming and double comments
  • “Boxes” (what WordPress calls “widgets) that provide for various functions and bonus content in the sidebar

For about five years, the website ran on Slash, frustrating webmaster after webmaster, until a database crash in the summer of 2006 forced them to switch to a new system. By then, thankfully, technology had progressed to the point where more elegant solutions were available.

Still, it’s a shame the archives have disappeared.

You can see what the website looked like a few months after launch in 2001, a few months later after a redesign, and in 2004 before I ended my tenure as an editor.

| TV, Web design

Globaltv.com redesigned

Global TV made a big announcement about its website redesign. It includes 30 “refurbished microsites” (read: branded pages for each show), an “up-to-the-minute Twitter function” (read: link to Twitter account), an “enhanced” and “dynamically updated” schedule guide (read: a schedule) and coming soon a “newly revamped search engine” (read: they’re fixing the search engine).

The new website also includes a new video player, which most Canadians still don’t know gives them access to Family Guy and House on demand. (Though it still doesn’t work properly for me.)

And it’s got lots of boxes with rounded corners, scrolling Flash menus and gradients, which we all know are required in any properly-designed site of this era.

| Radio, Technology

cbcdbktwt

CBC Daybreak has taken to Twitter, with staff (including host Mike Finnerty) sharing the tweeting duties. Although it includes a lot of stuff that might be considered noise to some (live-tweeting of Habs games, for example), it also gives a rundown of the next morning’s broadcast the evening before, which is useful.

The only thing is you have to learn how to speak txt:

Your Mic is at 0740, 0815 is the chase, new 2u+me from the am. Ur first am MTL news, all the world and biz news from onight – c u from 0530

I think I’ll just stick to listening to the podcast and finding out what was on the program hours or even days after it aired.

| Media, Web design

Sun Media’s new insert-paper-name-here redesign

calgarysun.com

Redesigned calgarysun.com

The Calgary Sun today redesigned its website.

Actually, I should say Sun Media redesigned the Calgary Sun’s website. The new site is nearly identical to those of the Toronto Sun and Winnipeg Sun which have already been converted from the old Sun website layout (you know, the one that overused the Impact font and just looked so 90s in general?). Even 24 Hours and the Journal de Québec have most of the same layout styles.

ottawasun.com

ottawasun.com uses the old design

Two papers remain with the old, quaint web format: the Ottawa Sun and Edmonton Sun. Expect them to be switched over some time over the next few weeks.

It’s another example of the Sun chain going where Canwest has already gone. National news desks, centralized layout desks that create copy-paste pages, dumping Canadian Press in favour of its own in-house news service, electronic editions of its newspapers, laying off hundreds of people, and now white-label websites whose contents can be copied from site to site with the click of a button. (Not that the old Sun sites were that much different from each other of course, but this just furthers the process.)

In addition to the wider design that looks like all the other newspaper websites out there (in good ways and bad), a mobile version, and what is sure to be an improved backend, the new system allows reader comments on articles (or at least it says it does – I can’t find any articles with that feature enabled).

(via TSF)

| Montreal, On the Net, Opinion, Web design

Tourism Montreal up for Webby Award

I’ve never really been a fan of the Webby Awards, the anual awards for Web design. It’s not that they charge hundreds of dollars for entries (and then more hundreds to actually attend the ceremony) or because that source of income encourages them to inflate the number of winners, but for the simple fact that the judges for these awards always prefer style (or should I say “Flash”?) over substance.

Looking at the list of nominees, it seems clear that Flash-heavy multimedia ad campaign sites are held in higher regard than genuinely useful boring HTML. The famous websites and bloggers get their nods, of course (assuming they’re willing to pay or their fame is high enough that the Webbys think they’ll add prestige and eyeballs to the event), but everything else seems to be judged on looks alone. In fact, many entries don’t even link to the websites themselves but to special awards pages that explain how awesome the Web campaign is instead of just pointing people to the sites and having them figure it out themselves.

That is reflected in the nominees with Canadian connections. Officially there are 13 Canadian nominees, making Canada the fourth-most nominated country behind the U.S., U.K. and New Zealand, and just ahead of Australia (notice a trend there, perhaps having to do with the primary language of these countries?) Metro has links to them. But nationality is judged by the organization which created the site, not the site itself, so there are actually others.

Here are the Canadian website nominees I’ve found:

  • Tourism Montreal, by local outfit Sid Lee, in the tourism category. Best known for its slick (and expensive) Montreal in two minutes video, it also has an event search that warns you not to use the basic functions of your browser.
  • Adidas 60 years of soles and stripes, another Sid Lee joint, in the fashion category. Appears to redirect to another Adidas site. In any case, it’s a flashy site for a company whose business model relies on being lashy and cool.
  • Visual Dictionary (Merriam-Webster) from Montreal-based QA International, in the education category. A quality nominee that’s both good-looking and useful.
  • Smartset’s Fashion at Play, by Toronto-based Taxi, in the animation/motion graphics category. A completely useless site, it encourages people to spin boxes around to reveal new outfits, and then plays a video. That “unlocks” access to a downloadable ZIP file which contains a desktop background, ringtone and video, all of which are connected to the campaign and aren’t interesting at all. And when you unlock everything … nothing happens. Fantastic. But hey, the boxes spin.
  • 1000 Awesome Things, a Toronto-based one-person blog about things that are awesome, in the personal/culture blog category. (Hear an interview with its creator with Terry DiMonte on Q107)
  • Kaboose, a Toronto-based parenting site, in the family/parenting category. No complaints here.

I should also point out that the Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog, a very simple idea simply produced, is also nominated.

There are also nominees in advertising, video and “mobile” categories, but I don’t care about those (except to note that my favourite remix of all time is nominated as a viral video). Here are the Canadians:

Interactive ad campaigns

  • Russian Dolls
  • Nokia Accessories Portfolio Video
  • The Big Wild Email
  • Let’s Change Insurance – Aviva Banners
  • Coffee Cup

    • Online videos

  • Follow Your INSTINCT (2 nominations: Best Editing et Best Sound Design)
  • The Curse of Degrassi
    • | Media, Slow News Day, Video, Web design

    Cyberpresse is hit-and-miss for video

    We’re in the middle of a revolution in the newspaper industry, and even though I’m caught up in the middle of it, it’s kind of fun to watch everyone try to muddle their way through.

    Photographers are learning how to shoot and edit video. Reporters are learning how to blog. Editors are learning how to link. And managers are desperately trying to come up with new ideas that will help save their industry and their jobs.

    At Cyberpresse, they’re pumping out videos. Newspapers are jumping on the multimedia train, creating videos, audio slideshows, photo galleries, podcasts and other things they couldn’t do on paper.

    Part of me doesn’t quite understand why newspapers are trying to compete with television and radio on their own turf. TV has been producing three-minute packages much longer than newspapers have, and it shows.

    On the other hand, some videos I’ve seen demonstrate that newspapers are capable of reaching a level of depth you won’t get on television outside of PBS or the occasional NFB documentary.

    Cyberpresse and its producing partner Top Multimédias offer some good examples for newspaper videos, but unfortunately a lot of examples of what not to do.

    Bad: Rudy LeCours

    Bad: Rudy Le Cours

    In the latter category, you’ll find this sleeper from La Presse business columnist Rudy Le Cours. He’s standing in front of a bright window (which is one of the first things you learn in photography school not to do because it makes the subject dark) and for three minutes and 27 seconds talks into the camera about … I think it’s unemployment or something. I had to be resuscitated a few times while watching it and I don’t remember much. There are no graphics, no charts, no pictures, no numbers. Nothing to make it worth setting up the equipment to have this guy speak text into a camera.

    This video from Mali Ilse Paquin in Italy is also a head-scratcher. The audio is clearly taken over the phone or a really bad voice recorder. And the video is just a series of pictures. A blog post or story with the pictures attached would have made much more sense.

    Good: Marie-Christine Blais

    Good: Marie-Christine Blais

    On the other hand we have Marie-Christine Blais and her “Week-end chaud” entertainment preview. She too is talking to the camera, but it’s clear she and her camera operator are having fun (something I’ve long argued is sorely lacking in a lot of news media these days). Not only is she adorable, but she piques my interest enough that I’ll click on that play button when her face comes up. The videos also put up web addresses of bands that she mentions (although displaying show times would be useful).

    Cyberpresse still has a long way to go. There’s no way to add comments to videos or embed videos on other pages. And there’s no related links on any of the videos like you can find in YouTube video descriptions. All you can do is go to this page and navigate your way through the various videos in a giant Flash application.

    Here’s hoping Cyberpresse (and others) move quickly toward having more fun (if not effort) and way less talking heads standing in front of windows.

    | Technology

    Livre de visage, là

    Facebook has launched a Canadian French site, about a year after it launched a French French site.

    The translation was done with the help of Facebook users in Quebec, I guess because Facebook is too cheap to hire a real translator for a week to make sure they get it right. These crowdsourced translations caused problems last time, but I don’t notice any glaring errors so far.

    Among the translations:

    • “Posts” becomes “publications”
    • “More” becomes “d’avantage”
    • “Tagged” becomes “identifié”
    • “Wall” becomes “babillard”
    • “Edit Options” becomes … uhh … “Edit Options” (oops)
    | Technology, TV

    CRTC Roundup: Global, porn and death

    In response to a complaint issued by the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada that Canwest’s* decision to centralize master control of local news at four broadcast centres violates aspects of local stations’ conditions of license requiring a certain amount of local programming, the CRTC has ruled that while it can’t make a final decision because the broadcast centres aren’t fully operational yet, it sees no evidence that Global TV is violating those conditions of licenses, and that the impact of this reorganization should be brought up during license renewal hearings.

    For those of you who couldn’t get through that massive sentence, here’s some background: In 2007, Canwest announced that it was laying off 200 people across the country, mostly technical positions at small stations (including CKMI in Quebec City/Sherbrooke/Montreal).

    To save money, it decided it would centralize master control operations for all its stations at four broadcasting centres in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto. These stations would be responsible for cueing up reporters’ packages and even controlling the movement of cameras remotely. Though editorial decisions would rest with local stations, local reporters would continue to do reporting and the newscasts would be anchored locally (well, kinda), the CEP argued that this still didn’t qualify as locally-produced programming and complained to the CRTC.

    The new reorganized system and green-screen sets launched last March.

    Canwest stated that the allegations set out above were incorrect because control of and responsibility for the broadcasts will remain with the local television station:

    Canwest submitted that the decision to move some production elements (for example, camera work, lighting, microphone levels, generation of virtual sets, physical assemblage of news run-downs) to the Broadcast Centres would not, in any way, abrogate its individual licences or take decision-making capabilities away from the local stations.

    Canwest further submitted that, while the Broadcast Centres will control technical production support, all material decisions regarding the content and presentation of the newscasts, with the exception of set design, will continue to occur at the local level, as will local news gathering.

    While not making a final decision on the matter, the CRTC essentially agreed with Canwest’s assertion that this still qualifies as local programming. It also said that for most stations, while there are “commitments” to local programming, these haven’t been part of their conditions of license since 1999.

    But the CRTC does leave the door open for the CEP to bring this up during Global’s license renewal hearings this year, where their commitment to local programming will be a factor in the CRTC’s decision of whether or not to renew stations’ licenses.

    Considering the current financial crisis facing media and conventional television in particular, I don’t expect the CEP will get too far.

    More porn!

    And now for something completely different. The CRTC last week approved the creation of a new digital specialty channel called Vanessa which is devoted to sexuality:

    Its adult programming would be devoted to the themes of charm, sensuality, eroticism and sexuality and might also include documentaries, news and magazines covering the industries that exploit those themes and the personalities that revolve around them.

    The channel got through the approval process without a big fight. No one filed any interventions opposing the channel, and the only hiccup is that it asked to be free of closed-captioning requirements and the CRTC said no (closed-captioning and porn has been an issue before).

    Sex-Shop Television, the company behind Vanessa, is a creation of Image Diffusion International aka Productions IDI, the company of Marc Trudeau and Anne-Marie Losique that produces content mainly for MusiquePlus. It got approval in 2007 (after originally being denied) for a French-language pay TV channel of the same name. But discussions with Videotron were … ahem… anti-climactic. The cable provider said there was not enough capacity or enough interest to distribute a service like this that they don’t own. (The CRTC theoretically has rules that prohibit cable companies form offering preferential treatment to other services owned by the same company, but I guess they don’t apply here.) The goal is to launch an English service which would get picked up elsewhere and force Videotron to get on board or lose customers.

    The content of the channel isn’t entirely clear. It’s limited to only 10% of its programming being feature films, and can only broadcast explicit adult material between 11pm and 6am. So expect this to be like Sex TV: exploring sexuality in a tasteful (or even fun) way during the day and in a raunchy way after dark.

    UPDATE (April 17): Presse Canadienne reports on the approval only a month and a half late.

    Je me souviens is coming

    Canwest’s Marianne White has an interview with the guy behind that Quebec obituary channel that was approved last week. He says he wants to have it up by the summer and, if all goes well, start a similar English-language service at some point in the future. It also talks to funeral home owners who say they like the idea, so long as it’s done in a tasteful way.

    CP also has an article on the channel in which the guy says basically the same things. That in turn is expanded in a Globe piece which points out how unlikely it is that people are going to sit in their living rooms for hours on end watching obituaries scroll by (though I could see a Weather Network-like model, repeating them every 10-20 minutes and people checking in once a day when they want to see who’s died recently)

    Magdalen TV

    Diffusion communautaire des Îles, the company behind CFIM radio on the Îles de la Madeleine, has gotten approval to setup a community cable channel, which would be distributed through the only cable operator on the islands which have a population of about 13,000. Their goals are modest: two hours a week of local programming, rising gradually to five hours a week in 2012-2013.

    New approved channels

    • CNN International, the sister network to CNN that broadcasts stuff other than U.S. politics to the world outside Canada and the United States (usually with anchors who have British accents). We sometimes see this network late at night when breaking news happens. Now we’ll have access 24/7, at least for those with Shaw Cable or StarChoice, as Shaw was the one who requested it.
    • AUX TV, a channel devoted to emerging music artists. The CRTC rejected a request that they be partially exempted from having to close-caption user-generated content.
    • TREK TV, a channel devoted to “world cultures, travel, geography, exploration and anthropology” (sadly, not space travel). Again, the CRTC rejected partial exemption from CC for user-generated content.

    All these networks will need to negotiate with cable and satellite providers before they’re carried on those systems.

    Global getting on the digital bandwagon

    Canwest has gotten approval to setup digital transmitters for CICT in Calgary and CITV in Edmonton, two of its biggest stations. Both stations would broadcast in high definition.

    CTV and Global have been slow to setup digital stations, even though there’s a deadline looming in 2011, because of the cost, the current recession and the instability in conventional television broadcasting.

    More HD, please

    The following networks have applied for permission to begin distribution of HD versions:

    Barrie examined

    The Barrie Examiner looks at conventional television and CKVR-TV in Barrie, the CTV A-Channel station that survived being shutdown but has laid off a third of its staff and cancelled its morning show.

    We didn’t get called!

    I don’t usually look at the telecom side of the CRTC’s affairs, but a recent survey shows that 80% of Canadians have noticed a drop in telemarketing calls since Canada’s Do-Not-Call list was launched.

    Speaking of telecom, the company behind the Weather Network told the CRTC that mobile providers are putting up walls to control what kind of content (i.e. theirs) can be accessed through wireless networks.

    *For the three of you unaware, Canwest is my employer through my contract at The Gazette (though they weren’t my employer in 2007 when I commented about changes at Global Quebec).

    | Media, Web design

    CBC #37 worldwide for blog media links

    Technorati, the service that monitors blogs and tells them whether they’re cool or not, has released a list of the 50 media websites bloggers link to the most. (Via TechCrunch)

    YouTube, unsurprisingly, tops the list, followed by the New York Times, BBC and CNN.

    The only Canadian media outlet on the list is CBC.ca, coming in at #37. This is unsurprising since CBC has been investing in its Internet sites longer than the private media, and it has national television, radio and Internet sites to fuel its news-gathering operation. Plus it has dozens of RSS feeds sorted by topic, an iPhone version of its website (and separate mobile version), it’s got Twitter, and it has a news ticker people can add to their blogs.

    I also like the fact that news stories (which are all open to comments) use Technorati to link to blogs that link back to those stories, which drives (some) traffic to those blogs and makes them (slightly) more likely to link to CBC than another website with the same story.

    If other Canadian online news outlets want to match that, they should start copying some of those features.

    | Media, Opinion, Technology

    New Media Fund helps new media (as long as it’s television)

    The Canadian government today announced that it would combine the Canadian Television Fund and Canadian New Media Fund, two government-run funds that give money to Canadian productions, into the Canadian Media Fund, which would give $134.7 million a year to support both conventional television and “new media”, meaning those Internet things.

    It’s being described as removing funding guarantees from CBC/RadCan (the CTF “crisis” started when cable companies refused to hand over money because they said too much of it was going to unpopular programming), though the Mother Corp is happy about the announcement because it allows its in-house productions to be eligible for the fund.

    The Conservative government emphasizes that the new “fixed” fund will be focused on funding popular programming like Flashpoint, and not those boring CBC dramas that only get a few hundred thousand viewers. I’m hoping this means there will be more Canadian porn out there, because porn is always popular.

    So, where can innovative Canadian new media developers get their cash? Not so fast:

    “Applicants will be required to make their projects available across a minimum of two distribution platforms, including television.”

    In other words, you can’t apply for the Canadian Media Fund unless “media” is television. It doesn’t matter if you’re popular or not, whether your content is primarily video or not. Canadian productions like LoadingReadyRun or Prenez Garde Aux Chiens are not eligible, because they’re not on television.

    Just the kind of forward-looking outside-the-box ideas we’ve come to expect from our federal culture overlords.

    UPDATE: Michel Dumais agrees with me, and has other critical comments about the new media fund.

    | Media, Technology

    Google Maps helping the story


    Agrandir le plan

    The Minister of Transport today released a list of intersections in Quebec where photo radars will be installed to catch people running red lights.

    Radio-Canada did the obvious thing with it: creating a Google map.

    These kinds of things are much more useful than lists, as I learned when I created a Google map of dangerous overpasses last year.

    | Media, Technology

    Is CBC moderating comments enough?

    Aboriginal leaders in Manitoba are apparently upset with comment moderation on the CBC’s website, which they say let through a bunch of racist comments on stories about native communities.

    CBC moderates comments on news stories, but they’re fairly liberal about it, leaving in many which come close to the line.

    Also of note here is that CBC outsources comment moderation to an outfit called ICUC, which moderates many Canadian media websites. It’s unclear if they let the comments through or if it was done by CBC staff, but (The Globe says ICUC does handle moderation services.) This underscores the fact that those moderating comments need to have very good training in laws concerning libel and hate speech.

    UPDATE: The Globe and Mail explores the issue, with some examples of offending comments. CBC News also covers it, with quotes from management saying they’re taking a look at the issue, and there’s a post at Inside the CBC as well.

    | Media, Technology

    National Post apologizes for reporter’s Twitter tantrum

    Some people see Twitter as a form of instant messaging. But those people can quickly forget that what you say on Twitter is just as public (if not moreso) than what you post on Facebook.

    National Post technology reporter David George-Cosh learned that the hard way today when an expletive-filled argument he had with a source on Twitter was publicized (and republicized and republicized), making him (and the paper) look pretty bad.

    The result, mere hours later, was an apology posted to the Post’s Editors blog (which doesn’t name the reporter it’s apologizing for, nor the person it’s apologizing to, nor the nature of the conduct, but who needs specifics for these things?). (Via Regret the Error)

    Reporters are human, and like everyone else they’ll have off days and they’ll get into arguments. But when they happen online, those arguments can easily become public, and this is probably not the last time we’ll see apologies for personal conduct of people associated with media.

    In this case, the reporter’s actions were in a professional capacity (which makes it the paper’s problem), but I wonder when the time will come where reporters, columnists and other public figures associated with a publication’s brand will have clauses in their contracts about what they can post to their Facebook profiles, personal blogs or other public and semi-public forums online.

    UPDATE: April Dunford, the victim of the tirade, has similar thoughts on her blog.

    UPDATE (Feb. 12): More reaction from Roberto Rocha and a let’s-attack-the-victim post from ZDNet’s Jennifer Leggio (which gets its basic premise wrong). Additional commentary from Mathew Ingram and the Telegraph’s Shane Richmond.

    UPDATE (May 25): Three months later, George-Cosh writes about the “incident” on his blog, saying he’s learned some hard lessons, though he still makes excuses for his behaviour.

    | Navel-gazing, Opinion, Technology

    10 reasons why Twitter still sucks

    I’ve never been a fan of Twitter. Looking at people’s status updates (or “tweets”, as its members have been told to refer to them), all I saw were a bunch of @ signs and TinyURL addresses. There seemed to be very little that was actually there.

    But new media experts around the globe were embracing it. Some people who had been star bloggers a few years ago had all but abandoned them in favour of this new service. They heralded it as some holy grail of journalism (a suggestion I’ve already attacked head-on), as the best way to get breaking news and as being better than blogs.

    So a few weeks ago, I setup a Twitter account. I did what I was supposed to do, follow some friends and start posting updates. Few of them would be considered really interesting. Anything important went on the blog, where I have more readership.

    Before long I started getting messages that people were following me. A lot of people I don’t know. They probably found me through mutual Twitter friends, since I hadn’t posted my Twitter account here until now (mind you, it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out). Unlike blog readership, which I’m sure includes hundreds of people I’ve never met, Twitter seems more personal. I get a message whenever one clicks on the “follow” button, and I see an image of that person’s face with a list of their updates.

    I installed one of those Twitter programs (I settled on TwitterFox, which I’m not entirely crazy about but will do for now) to facilitate the Twittering, and I setup my cellphone so I could send Twitter updates by text message (unfortunately the reverse isn’t true, so I can’t read other people’s Twitter messages through my cellphone).

    Anyway, you’re here to read about why I don’t like it, despite having used it for a month. I’ll give it to you in point form:

    1. The signal-to-noise ratio. When people talk about all the great information available on Twitter, they’re right. But the problem is that all this great information is buried under piles of @ replies, links, corrections, jokes and pointless trivia. It varies depending on the user, but the way Twitter is setup seems to encourage the noise rather than discourage it.
    2. Technical limitations. This is the other biggie, and it goes beyond the 140-character limit, though that’s certainly a big part of it. The biggest annoyance is links. Because most URLs won’t fit in the 140-character limit, various URL shortening services like TinyURL are used. The problem is that this obscures the actual URL. (Some Twitter clients will decode such URLs, but it would be easier if such a thing were handled internally.) Twitter RSS feeds leave a lot to be desired (clickable links would help), and some simple features like “retweeting” need to be done manually or through some third-party application. I realize that text messages are the reason for the 140-character limit, but how much of Twitter’s traffic comes from cellphones?
    3. Single point of failure. Though I haven’t yet experienced the Fail Whale, I expect it will come up soon. Twitter hasn’t yet found a way of making money (though they’re working on it), and the fact that it’s a privately-run service means if anything happens to Twitter’s servers, everyone is cut off. There is an open-source competition in Laconi.ca/Identi.ca (an Evan Prodromou project), but like the old instant messaging wars, it’s not about what service is better, it’s about what service your friends use. Laconi.ca is planning Twitter integration, which might help that, but until then you need to use both services unless you want to be disconnected.
    4. Microblogging vs. instant messaging. This is largely a cultural thing, which means it could change. But the impression I get from looking at Twitter posts is that it’s more of an open chat than it is about open blogging. Lots of replies (many consisting only of useless things like “:)”) or other messages that are more about conversation than information.
    5. Unwritten rules. I’ve seen this previously for blogs as well, with self-appointed community leaders dictating rules for how others should use a medium. Even though we’re not sure how Twitter should be used, there’s no end to the number of etiquette rules. You can’t update too much. You have to follow others. You can’t follow too many people if not enough people are following you.
    6. Duplication. If it’s on Twitter and it’s big, someone (either the twitterer or a follower) will put it on a blog anyway.
    7. Constant plugging. Some Twitter accounts are setup to automatically read from an RSS feed, post the first 100 or so characters and include a TinyURL link. I could just add that feed to my Google Reader and save a bunch of steps. In other cases it’s not automated, but bloggers will point out every time they post something new to their blog. It’s redundant and annoying.
    8. Time wasting. You’re in the middle of a blog post or reading something and bam, there’s another Twitter message to read. You’re interrupted by someone pointing out something they saw on the Internet that was funny. Did you really need this in real-time? You get back to what you were doing and bam another Twitter message. Very little of what gets posted on Twitter needs to be read immediately, and yet that’s the way it is. It’s a distraction and it wastes time.
    9. @ replies and #hashtags look ugly. Sure, you can turn @replies off when they’re not directed at you (or your friends), but then you risk losing important information that’s passed that way.
    10. No privacy. Even if their updates are public, you can’t follow someone without them knowing unless you do so by manually checking their page or putting their RSS feed in your feed reader. In fact, everyone knows who everyone else follows. Perhaps this is a feature, but it doesn’t make much sense for me. Twitter makes no distinction between types of followers, and I don’t want people thinking I’m friends with people and groups I just want to keep tabs on.

    Despite all this, I’m not dismissing the concept of microblogging. Laconi.ca solves many of the technical problems (which suggests that Twitter can solve them too), and others can be fixed over time with culture change.

    Despite its failings, people still use Twitter and (like Facebook) it’s a source that journalists have to mine for information. It involves filtering out a lot of noise, but there are nuggets of gold inside. So whether I like it or not I’ll still have to keep using it. Unlike David Akin, who is de-twittering, I still think there’s information that can be delivered using this medium.

    But I won’t be using it any time soon to disseminate any important information. Follow me if you want, but you’re not going to see much quality. Anything I have to say, even briefly, of any substance will just be said here. There’s no minimum length for my blog posts.