Bird House Rules » Bird House Rules

Episode #16: Review of TweetTime (with Nifty Tech Blog)

Twitter's Tee Morris — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 05:05:23 +0000

Did you ever have audio that you listened to, even after editing it, and think “I can’t post this…”

Yes, that happened to us.

The Bird House and in-studio guest Nifty Tech Blog (but this time, recording through the wonders of Skype) after listening to our original review of TweetTime decided that a re-record was most definitely in order. So, basking in my Steampunk Castle afterglow, we did a second take on our first (and follow-up) look on this original client for the iPad.

Episode #12: Review of Tweet Flow (with Nifty Tech Blog)

Twitter's Tee Morris — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 07:21:05 +0000

In the wee-small hours of the morning, Bird House Rules comes back with a series of podcasts all about the iPad. Alongside the Nifty Tech Blog, I review Tweet Flow, an iPad client that keeps it simple.

This episode is part of a Bird House Rules-Nifty Tech Blog miniseries. For the next few months, we will be featuring reviews on iPad clients, some of which you might be seeing in the Second Editions of All a Twitter and Sams Teach Yourself Twitter in Ten Minutes!

Guest introduction by Meg Jarrell

Episode #11: The Zen of Follow Friday

Twitter's Tee Morris — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:15:47 +0000

Back with another Bird House Rules (and well under that ten minute window), I’m here to talk a bit about the evolution of Follow Friday. what started out as tweets like this…

Follow @digitalsista, a Social Media mistress and resource located here in Washington D.C. #followfriday

…many Twitter feeds are getting hit at the end of the week by tweets that look like this…

@digitalsista @chrisbrogan @geechee_girl @ITStudios @chrisabraham @sigmastudios @dananner @fishdogs @LindaVandeVrede @riznphx #ff

Take a deep breath, relax, and follow me to your Zen of the Follow Friday.

Guest introduction by Michael Spence

Featured television clips:

Firefly
Black Adder

INTERVIEW: All a Twitter on Breakthrough Business

Twitter's Tee Morris — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:15:53 +0000

As mentioned in the previous Bird House Rules postings, Que Publishing has once again featured All a Twitter in Barnes & Noble Bookstores everywhere, and in my response to Que’s “Whatever you can do to get the word out…”query, I feature Michele Price, the host of Breakthrough Business. On her BlogTalkRadio show we talk about Twitter, about my job at Intersections Inc (which you will find out more about later on Imagine That! Studios), and about approaches that go against the grain of the marketing books. We talk about how “old school marketing” just doesn’t work with Social Media, and how businesses need to understand that Twitter (and Social Media, on a whole) is about people.

We had a blast on this interview, and I hope you enjoy the listen. Feel free to comment, post, and share!

INTERVIEW: All a Twitter featured on View from Vahalla

Twitter's Tee Morris — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:30:55 +0000

With the return of Bird House Rules, I am getting back into my groove on this blog. Que Publishing has been instrumental in bringing me back into this groove after contacting me concerning All a Twitter. As mentioned in the previous BHR, the book is being featured once again in Barnes & Noble Bookstores everywhere, and asked me “Whatever you can do to get the word out…” I sent out a query to my Twitter and Facebook networks, letting them know that I was available for interviews.

From Twitter I heard from long-time-friend of the Bird House @Odin1eye who featured me in a particularly fun interview on his blog View From Vahalla. This blog features podcast reviews, commentary and rants on Social Media and the world it impacts, and (now) interviews. Odin1eye and I talk about about how Twitter has changed, where it is headed, and what went into the writing of All a Twitter. Here’s a selection from the interview:

I find that the Social Media Experts (a/k/a Evangelists, Mavens, Enthusiasts, Oracles, etc. a/k/a Social Media Douchebags a/k/a SMDs) are becoming less and less tolerated. Some of these self-proclaimed Twitter Messiahs are preaching their gospel to a flock in the hundreds of thousands, but tend to follow back less than a thousand or even less than a hundred.

What’s up with that?

I’m just going to call it like I see it: Everybody wants to be Chris Brogan (@ChrisBrogan)(respectful [ding]) but so few are achieving the balance between pro and personal. Chris isn’t perfect, but he is maintaining the genuine while managing the massive numbers. (One of many reasons I got that trust agent to write the AAT Foreword.) There are others like Jeff Sass (@sass) and CC Chapman (@cc_chapman) who are putting forward that effort to stay honest on Twitter. Between 2008-2009 there were SMDs left and right who nurtured the numbers and then stopped participating in their feeds. Oh sure, they would preach how they used Twitter to “connect” but look at their feeds and it would be RTs, quotes, and questions that linked back to their own site.

This interview was a real pleasure, and I hope you enjoy the read. Feel free to comment, post, and share; and expect more from my blogosphere-podosphere tour this month.

Bird House Rules — Episode #9: Location, Location, Location

Twitter's Tee Morris — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:15:55 +0000

No, you’re not seeing things. I’m back, and I’m coming out of the Bird House swinging!

It’s been a long break, the first half of it expected and the other half completely unexpected; and I return to talk about foursquare, Please Rob Me, and the current concern sweeping through the Twitterverse. Adding to the debate of how much information is too much information comes FortheHack and their stand against sharing GPS coordinates for neat-o badges and free stuff from various vendors in the real world. Hear my own view of it from the Bird House and pick up a few twips in this episode on how to stay safe while sharing with your fellow Twitterakians.

Guest introduction by Starla Huchton

Featured movie and TV clips:

Firefly
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Monty Pyhton’s “How Not to Be Seen” sketch
Army of Darkness

Featured People and Stories:

Security Expert Robert Siciliano
Siciliano’s Twitter posting to CBS segment on “Please Rob Me”
Siciliano’s tweet concerning “Please Rob Me”
Exchange between me and Brand Gamblin
Brightkite

Album Artwork by Paul Fischer of Dancing Cat Studios

Some Days, It’s Tough Being Twitter

Twitter's Tee Morris — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:51:52 +0000

If you kept up with me yesterday, you knew that my day from the Bird House was a rough one. I had a knee jerk reaction to the sudden disappearance of Twitter’s new Retweet function (and I openly admit that part of my ire was coming from the possibility that hard work I did for an upcoming print run of Sams Teach Yourself Twitter in Ten Minutes and my Bird House Rules Episode 8a was all for naught…) only to discover that Twitter was having a rough day of their own, far beyond new options pulling a Harry Houdini.

This morning, a lot of things were explained.

Maybe these hackers were partially responsible for yesterday’s intermittent service. Maybe the odd behavior from Twitter was merely a precursor for what PCWorld reported early this morning. Maybe I was the only one thinking about the DoS Attack from this summer, but Twitter was once again under fire. A group referring to themselves as The Iranian Cyber Army redirected for a brief time all Twitter traffic to a landing page of their design. Sumner Lemon of IDG News Service reports:

Visitors instead saw a black screen with an image of a green flag and Arabic writing. The defaced site also included a message that said, “This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army,” and an e-mail address.

Twitter blamed the outage on changes made to the company’s DNS (Domain Name System) records, which match the company’s domain name with the IP addresses of its servers.

Meanwhile, the news from Twitter Status was that as of 11:28pm, last night:

Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed. We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon.

So far, nothing new has really surfaced apart from critics who are saying this is just another show of how vulnerable Social Media sites are. I, for one, applaud Twitter’s resilience. They only lost service for an hour (which was probably when I was engrossed in my weekly dose of Mythbusters…) and managed to bounce back. Yesterday had been a somewhat uneven day for Twitter, but they have seen worse. Much worse. I think yesterday’s performance is proof extremely positive that Twitter has learned their lessons from previous growing pains.

So as the dust settles from yesterday, just remember…

…and tweet happy!

Birdhouse Rules: The Pilot Episode

Twitter's Tee Morris — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:11:59 +0000

Welcome to Birdhouse Rules, the Official Podcast of All a Twitter and Sams Teach Yourself Twitter in Ten Minutes.

This is the Pilot Episode or more commonly referred to as “Episode 0″ in podcasting. I’m introducing myself and my podcast to you, just so you know what you can expect in the next ten minutes, give or take a few minutes. With special thanks to Andrew Stone and TweetDeck for the inspiration, enjoy this informal formality of a new podcast’s first step.

Guest introduction by Phlippa Ballantine

Album Artwork by Paul Fischer of Dancing Cat Studios