Twitter for rarities (1 Viewer)

[Marcus Conway - ebirder]

I am now following everyone that is following me. I just posted re waxwings, which should scroll up on the feed. Maybe its not a rare but we can start to filter stuff out as we get going.

Regards spam I am sure we can mod this ourselves until it turns into a monster. Now setting up the RSS back to the mobi so it should be instant??

 

[username]

its taken me a lifetime to master emarginations and estimate primary projections and I thought I was doing well to update Birdline and a pager service remotely from a phone box* whilst finding Soft plumaged Petrels and sibes..but this ? have just spent an hour in microblog land!


* tall red oblong box with glass panels thro' which you could watch yellow brows in adjacent sycamores whilst talking** to fellow humans

** a form of verbal communication once used by birders for passing on gen and ordering pizzas

Ha! Guess itz a 'next generation' thing John! Still...even tho i haven't a clue about twittering platforms and doss [dross] feeds etc....i'm willing to believe that these guys might be on to something? Always worth exploring new possibilities in communication....even if a load of us don't understand...at the moment Reckon 'they' got they're 'fingers on the pulse' of hi-tech...but like you [i think]...i feel that 'the pulse' is perhaps becoming less n less human.......progress eh?!...we'll see...i shall take another headache pill and watch 'this space'.....!
Boldly go where no man has gone before.......[and when you get there...get yer bins out n find something].............

 

[Marcus Conway - ebirder]

I have a small tech issue with adding the RSS feed using Google Reader for 'ebirder with friends' as it seems to think I am DClinton! RSS fine to ebirder but to get the feed I need to RSS 'ebirder with friends' for global updates. anyone else got the RSS going?

 

[Pariah]

I consider myself fairly technical...and I still cant make heads or tails of it!
When did "tweet" become an actuall noun? Ive never read the word tweet so much in such a short space of time.
The result is now I have the birdy song stuck in my head.

Di di di di di di di. Di di di di di di di. Diddy di di di tweet tweet tweet tweet.



Good luck with the new endevour guys.

Owen

 

[Pete Mella]

I still like this idea but I've thought up a few issues that have to be considered...

Firstly there's no way to moderate or edit messages, meaning if a newby decides his juvenile GSWs are middle spotted woodpeckers, or someone decides their 100 waxwings in their gardens are cedars because they've done a Google Image Search then there's no way of ridding it of stringy reports without deleting the user (which is a bit heavy handed).

More importantly the same goes if someone irresponsibly says "I've just found a goshawk nest! It's in the tallest spruce at grid ref SKxxxxxxx!", or "a golden eagle just flew towards a large grouse estate!", or advertises a rarity on private land without landowners' consent or some other inadvisable scenario.

Secondly there's no way of filtering results, so anything near to you may be buried by rares in far flung corners of the country. Perhaps services set up with county-wide news would be more useful? It could even fill gaps that the news services leave behind - that is species so common they don't deserve a mention on Birdmap, for instance, but locally would be fairly significant and worth seeing for some (for example a yellow wagtail or flock of red-legged partridges in my end of Sheffield).

 

[Stephen Fletcher]

Lost me completely. Glad i live in Spain where there are few birders, and we have our own rarity forum via email or mobile phone call.

 

[Pariah]

You could organize into cells.
Have local twitter forums for areas, with one/two people responsible for each one. These people can verify the veracity of reports before forwarding messages onto other cells in the country.

Owen

 

[username]

You could organize into cells.
Have local twitter forums for areas, with one/two people responsible for each one. These people can verify the veracity of reports before forwarding messages onto other cells in the country.

Owen

Now that i can understand...a bit!....[although forming into 'cells' sounds like some terrorist thing out of 'Spooks'].
Perhaps similar to the 'old style' sharing of bird info?...when we used to 'ring' the 'head guy' in each county? Wonder if that's possible these days?.........hhmmm...worth thinking about...? I dunno.....

ps......all these twitters n tweets makes me think thuz a bit of 'snow madness' goin on...
['twitter ye not'...Frankie Howard...RIP]...
I need to get out in the field for a 'fix' of birds [obviously]....where's me hi-tech heat seeking laser-guided bins........

 

[Lichfield Birder]

Trying to link my phone with Twitter but getting this message:

Note: We currently don't support sending SMSes to this number. You may still verify your phone and update Twitter, but we'll never send you a message.

Does anyone know what the problem is. Its a standard UK mobile number on contract

 

[Colin]

Blimey - This is going to be time consuming. First I have to check emails, forums and personal messages on my wi-fi laptop, answer the mobile and the land line and answer texts on both and now I have to twitter as well. No time for birding!!:-O

 

[mb1848]

A post on Texbirds mentioned Tweetdeck.com sort of like Owen's syndicalist local collective. http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta . There was a good discussion of the whole tweeter birding thing on Texbirds in January here:
http://listserv.uh.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0901&L=texbirds . Plus you can read about Crimson-collared Grosbeaks, Blue Buntings and a possible Pine Flycatcher.

I thought we were an autonomous collective. I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week,...

 

[Pariah]

The more i think about it the more local mini twitter seems a good option.

This would allow for local scarcity news to be shared. Afterall, guys down south hardly want to hear about ring billed gulls in scotland for example.

When a major rarity is found, then the selected individuals responsible for the group can contact other groups.

Otherwise it gets messy and complicated.

Of course its wide open to abuse. And sooner or later someone will find something and someone else will make derogatory comments.

It will be alot of work to moderate.

Owen

 

[Daffyduck]

Trying to link my phone with Twitter but getting this message:

Note: We currently don't support sending SMSes to this number. You may still verify your phone and update Twitter, but we'll never send you a message.

Does anyone know what the problem is. Its a standard UK mobile number on contract

Hi Alan, I've just tried to sign up and have received the same message. Ive managed to set the Tweet up to follow Rarevine and Birdforum - so I can apparently send messages in but not receive by SMS only email grrrrrrr.. I have a vodaphone network - is that why?? Also, its a shame you cant use the same name on Birdforum for the Tweet - so many names to remember!
Tina

 

[Lichfield Birder]

Hi Alan, I've just tried to sign up and have received the same message. Ive managed to set the Tweet up to follow Rarevine and Birdforum - so I can apparently send messages in but not receive by SMS only email grrrrrrr.. I have a vodaphone network - is that why?? Also, its a shame you cant use the same name on Birdforum for the Tweet - so many names to remember!
Tina

Well I'm on Orange so I don't think that is the problem

 

[Marcus Conway - ebirder]

Also, its a shame you cant use the same name on Birdforum for the Tweet - so many names to remember!
Tina

Just click on rarevine and follow everyone who is following rarevine - no need to remember anything :t:
Would be good if more poeple post updates. I have updated and rarevine has to, but there have be no other updates.
Not sure on the phone thing - have you verified your mobies?
EDIT sorry see two others updating, although piegazer you need a seperate entry coz your random update appeared as an update

 

[Guizotia]

So do I need to keep manually adding new people who follow rarevine, or is there a shortcut for that?

 

[Marcus Conway - ebirder]

So do I need to keep manually adding new people who follow rarevine, or is there a shortcut for that?

It's manual

 

[Hotspur]

Thats the thing - rarevine offers no service per se but purely a method of organizing an initial set up (and who to set up with)

 

[Alan Tilmouth]

Great idea, check out the first regional twitter service below. (All the best ideas are stolen and i'm guessing the patent isnt pending yet)

 

[Marcus Conway - ebirder]

This is cool. Can we set up one of the bird north east to provide a summary for scarce in that region so we can follow? The alternative would be for us all to follow all NE tweets but that would get messy. Having different logons following different sets of friends ie regions would be too complex - so a summary would be good and keep the rarevine for national scarce/rare plus?

All we need now are more users and more scarce!