Twitter

I was standing at the café bar (Le Madrigal) having my late lunch (sandwich, a couple of panachés and a coffee). I almost always end up eating late, around 13:30 or 14:00, as I have great difficulty tearing myself away from my desk and finishing things up in time for lunch. I inevitably end up going out late and I often go to the bakery around the café to buy the bread for my sandwich, which I bring with me, as they are often out of bread by the time I arrive.

When there aren't any horse races on the television while I'm eating, and even sometimes when there are (especially obstacles or sand races) I tend to read on my Blackberry and eventually play poker on my Blackberry when I run out of the news. My first stop in the morning and then again at lunch is always Engadget which ahs a great mobile edition which I've been reading loyally for over a year now. After I've flipped through the headlines and articles there I head over to my true loyalty stop: Palm 24/7. I've been reading Palm 24/7 daily for years now from back in the days when it was a site dedicated to Sony Cliés. I wish I can say what one element it is that has me coming back so regularly but I can't. I don't even own a Palm any more having replaced it with my Blackberry over 6 months ago. I obviously still work with Palms as my clients use them and I am still a big Palm fan having owned a Palm, and almost every model at one time or another, since the original Palm Pilot. After I've gone through all of the Palm 24/7 articles, who also have an excellent Mobile edition as well, I head over to the International Herald Tribune. I normally am not a big fan of the newspaper itself as it is basically the equivalent of reading the American news elsewhere. I travelled thousands of miles to get away from the American news and the American opinions and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay to read it. However they have a really good mobile edition which reads well on my Blackberry and a pretty reasonable Technology section. Once I've been through that it's generally coffee time and I play a bit of Texas Hold 'Em poker on the Blackberry before leaving.

It was actually while browsing through the IHT Tech section that I found an article on Twitter which looked quite interesting. Anything with technology and "to an extreme" in its title certainly peaks my interest. I flagged this and made note to look it up when I got back to the office. I then spent quite some time in the afternoon setting up my Twitter account to be able to send/receive Tweets through the web, through IM using my GTalk account via Meebo and through texting (SMS) on my mobile phone (Blackberry). It was actually quite fun. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon Tweeting every now and than and adding what I was doing... I agree that it gets quite addictive.

Now, in addition to Stumble Upon which already takes up too much of my online time, I have a new time-eating addiction: Twitter. By the end of the afternoon I had added a Twitter widget to the bottom right of my Blog so that everyone reading my blog can watch me waste my time elsewhere as well as read whatever Twitterer I am following. As that's the next interest of Twitter. Following other Twitterers as they tweet throughout the day. I hit unpon their Public Timeline section and watched the tweets go by and hit upon Justine's visit to the Apple Store (where I hope to go to soon) and clicked through her profile to her blog which I found even more interesting and added her as my first followee. Now in addition to wasting my time tweeting I am following Justine which I have to admit makes me feel more like a stalker than a follower. Oh... I also have to admit the obvious: her photo was not too difficult to look at in the list of public timeline entries either.