(with pictures www.twitter.com www.mapsofwar.com secondlife.com jakemandell.com/tonedeaf/ www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/science-forecasts www.belu.org dandelife.com ) THE INTERNET COLUMN By Giles Turnbull It needn't be a bad thing to make a complete twit of yourself. Especially when all your friends are doing it too. A site called Twitter (twitter.com) is the latest web craze, combining text message technology with the immediacy of weblogs and the fun of keeping in touch with your friends. Twitter is the product of some very talented minds who have made plenty of smart web services before. Most prominent among them is Evan Williams, the guy who co-wrote the original Blogger, sold it to Google for a small fortune, then came up with ingenious web-based audio recording and sharing site Odeo (odeo.com). Odeo hasn't been that successful (surprising, given how downright wonderful it is), but the shiny newness of Twitter has much brighter promise for the future. Twitter works like this. You sign up for your free account, and tell Twitter a few things about yourself. Most importantly, you give Twitter your mobile phone number. Yes, it's an American service but it works for UK mobiles. You use Twitter to tell the world (or just your mates) what you're doing right now. You can post messages (maximum of 144 characters, txt msg style) to Twitter from the web site, from your Instant Message account, or from your phone. If your texting to Twitter, you only pay the normal UK rate for a message - in the region of 10p. So far, so nothing special. But here's the clever bit. All your friends can sign up for Twitter accounts too, and everyone in your gang can add each other as friends at Twitter. Once you've built up a list of friends, you see their posted Twitter updates on your Twitter page - and, if you wish, they all get texted to you in real time. This is when Twitter comes into its own. Suddenly, you've got all your pals in your pocket. You can be strolling along and your phone will buzz with updates from friends; obvious things like "Fancy a drink tonight?" to random thoughts and quirky observations like "Tea count: 3" and "Verbs are the new nouns". To be honest, once you have a half dozen or more Twitter friends and you have mobile alerts switched on, your phone probably won't stop buzzing all day. Posting thoughts to Twitter only costs money if you send an SMS; using the web or IM interface costs nothing, and there's no limit to the number of twitterings you can send. It all sounds like just a bit of fun and for the most part, it is. But there's something special about Twitter. It allows a kind of group conversation that email, forums, IM and good old internet relay chat don't encourage. Your Twitter space is where you can electronically glance around at your mates, no matter where they are in the world, just to see if they're OK. And you can ping them every now and then with a reassuring message of your own. And if that doesn't capture your imagination, how about this: get your loved ones to sign up for Twitter accounts, and you have an instant means of sending them SMS messages for free, via your paired Twitter accounts. + War geography + Maps of War (www.mapsofwar.com) is a fascinating combination of history, geography, cartography and detailed research. Each map is a little interactive movie, showing how war and conflict have affected particular areas of the globe through history. Two maps - one showing almost unceasing war in the Middle East, the other showing where Democrat and Republican American governments have fought - are particularly interesting. + CopyLife + Residents of virtual world Second Life (secondlife.com) have been up in arms at the sudden emergence and controversial use of a piece of software called Copybot. Second Life (2L) users pay real money for the right to customise their avatar's appearance, even down to the clothes it wears. Copybot can clone an avatar in an instant. Does copyright exist in virtual reality? Watch this space... + Browsing around + :: Perfect pitch, or tone deaf? Find out how well you hear music jakemandell.com/tonedeaf/ :: What do the scientists predict for the next 50 years? www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/science-forecasts :: Belu, water in biodegradable plastic bottles www.belu.org :: Dandelife: make a timeline of your life dandelife.com Giles Turnbull has a web site at gilest.org ENDS