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

 

 Episode #9: Location, Location, Location [9:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (132)

Feel free to syndicate this audio, and provide feedback or topics you’d like to hear discussed on Bird House Rules at 703.791.1701, tmorris (at) imaginethatstudios (dot) com, Twitter, or here at the Bird House Rules Blog!

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.

What’s the topic of the day at the Bird House? Inspired by an August 20, 2009 article entitled What People Are Tweeting About, the marketing magazine eMarketer and Pear Analytics took a closer look at the traffic on Twitter in order to answer the question “What is the purpose of Twitter?”

I ask the question “Does Twitter — or Social Media on a whole — need a purpose?”

Other articles cited in this episode:

“One Blog Created Every Second” (Aug 2, 2009), BBC News

Chris Brogan’s “Birds on a Wire”

Chris Abraham’s “All a Twitter is Twitter for Smarties”

Linda Vandevrede’s “Finally a Very Readable Book about Twitter” (for Valley PR Blog)

Guest introduction by Chris Lester

“That’s a fact, Jack!” from Stripes

Album Artwork by Paul Fischer of Dancing Cat Studios

 

 Episode #3: Get to the Pointless! [9:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (345)

Feel free to syndicate this audio, and provide feedback or topics you’d like to hear discussed on Bird House Rules at 703.791.1701, tmorris (at) imaginethatstudios (dot) com, Twitter, or here at the Bird House Rules Blog!

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

I promised that the show was going to post on a fortnightly schedule; but in light of recent events, I decided to shuffle the schedule around and make the first episode something timely. I wanted to talk about what happened on Twitter (and elsewhere) all day Thursday, August 6, 2009.

Just in case you missed it, you can hop over to the link I provide here in the show notes, but safe to say, it was a really busy day. It has taken Twitter a few days to recover. From the looks of things and according to the Status blog, there are still a few pieces needing to be picked up but Twitter — on a whole — is running smoothly.

This show was imspired not only by the events of last week but also by a comment left behind by our Guest Voice. Take a look at the blog, have a listen to this episode, and take a moment to send a “thank you” note to Twitter.com. They really managed to hold things together, and we should all be appreciative of their hard work for this free service they provide.

Guest introduction by Fred Castaneda

“All is Well” drop-in’s from National Lampoon’s Animal House.

Album Artwork by Paul Fischer of Dancing Cat Studios

 

 Episode #1: All Is Well — Lessons Learned from a Hack Attack [9:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (638)

Feel free to syndicate this audio, and provide feedback or topics you’d like to hear discussed on Bird House Rules at 703.791.1701, tmorris (at) imaginethatstudios (dot) com, Twitter, or here at the Bird House Rules Blog!

What — a — day.

It all started this morning when, from Twitter Status, this nugget of good news arrived, explaining the odd, intermittent service:

We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly.

For those of you (like me) who didn’t know what a Denial-of-Service or DoS Attack was at the beginning of the day, you probably know what it is now. The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) defines a DoS Attack as the following:

In a denial-of-service (DoS) attack, an attacker attempts to prevent legitimate users from accessing information or services. By targeting your computer and its network connection, or the computers and network of the sites you are trying to use, an attacker may be able to prevent you from accessing email, web sites, online accounts (banking, etc.), or other services that rely on the affected computer.

The most common and obvious type of DoS attack occurs when an attacker “floods” a network with information. When you type a URL for a particular web site into your browser, you are sending a request to that site’s computer server to view the page. The server can only process a certain number of requests at once, so if an attacker overloads the server with requests, it can’t process your request. This is a “denial of service” because you can’t access that site.

Now, it’s officially official!

I also came up with an easier-to-circulate link, thanks to Bit.ly. Go to http://bit.ly/AllaTwitter and order your copy of All a Twitter today! And feel free to share this video across the blogosphere.

If you are looking for the official blog and podcast for…

…then you have come to the right place. I’m still working on the details and dusting off the furniture; but in the meantime, tell a friend about All a Twitter and stay tuned for what’s coming soon from Tee Morris and Que Publishing.