Blog of Wade Making Connexions

Twitter as a Private Notepad

Out and About the other night, I wanted to write myself a note. Without pen/paper around, and only a mobile handy, my options were slim. It was either an e-mail or a message stored in my phone.

Neither solution really worked for me. Both required further-action when I got home. I didn’t want to have to dig around on my phone, nor did I want to have to search my e-mail for the message. Besides e-mails are annoying to write on a mobile device.

I wanted to get this message down and out, fast. I wanted the Quicksilver principle, with the interface out of the way, allowing direct information input.

What resulted is, a cool usage of Twitter. (Up until now, I’ve been able to hold out from blogging about the 3 flavours of awesome that is Twitter. No Longer.)

I created an online, private, notepad, updateable via SMS. To do this, I created a Twitter notepad account, just to receive direct messages. It easily meets the criteria, It’s all done with ‘d wadenote’. As a bonus, when I get home, it’ll already be in my twitter feed.

Another bonus is the great timeline/notation of when the event took place, and will be around for ever, holding just the contents of my thoughts.

Power of Open
I love that this is possible. I love that Twitter developed as an open platform. Instead of filtering and locking a user into a specific subset of functions, they let us decide what functions and filters we want to apply personally. Each user is enabled to determine how they act/interact/use the platform. We are all unique snowflakes, we have different functions, purposes, and ideas upon the value and meaning on Twitter.

Can you explain in more detail: “I created an online, private, notepad, updateable via SMS. To do this, I created a Twitter notepad account, just to receive direct messages. It easily meets the criteria, It’s all done with ‘d wadenote’. As a bonus, when I get home, it’ll already be in my twitter feed.”

Is this inherent in Twitter or does it require extra code/plugin/scripts?

I love this idea, Wade. I had never thought of creating my own private message ID. Very cool. Must send myself a note about it now

@Donal, it’s inherent in Twitter’s lexicon. Any message prefaced with d means it’s a direct aka private message. After the d a username is expected. ‘d wadenote’ send a private message to the account.

Sorry for not making it clearer initially, was deep in the twitterverse. Hopefully this is clearer.

@Gavin, lol. I’m enjoying my notepad Almost feels like having a private notebook on me ready to go at all times…

I do a similar thing, but take a slightly different approach. I have a (free) Remember The Milk account and it has twitter integration. I use SMS to send a private message to rtm on twitter and it automatically sends it to my Remember The Milk task inbox. Since I don’t get send to-dos, I can log in later and move the task to any one of the lists I maintain (work, personal, music, movies, etc).

Hi Sean,

Interesting approach to get the same result. Thanks for the link to Remember The Milk. I may check it out. I like the idea of removing as many links as possible. Lower chance of something going wrong

Hope to read/see you round more soon. Sorry for delayed comments.

Peace,

Wade