How to Keep Twitter from Shortening a URL
Twitter automatically shortens URLs now. That’s great when you want to squeeze a few more words out of the 140 character limit, but you probably don’t want your brand name to be changed to a tiny URL of any kind. I use bit.ly to shorten URLs because the service lets me shorten using neal.fm.
There have been a few times that I’ve composed a tweet like GadgetReport.TV/6 is out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N3zHmz5aUY. It’s great if the YouTube URL is shortened, but I don’t want the brand I’m trying to build to be changed into a short collection of symbols and letters. How do I keep my .com or .TV or .whatever from being shortened by Twitter?
Use the ASCII code for dot/period: .
If you type GadgetReport.TV into Twitter or any URL shortener, your tweet will post as GadgetReport.TV and won’t be shortened.
Read MoreThe Tweet Choir @ Microsoft’s 2012 Press Conference
Tonight I was listening to MacBreak Weekly and they were talking about Microsoft’s use of a gospel choir to sing tweets during the Microsoft keynote. I love me some gospel music and the idea of words about tech set to the sound that floats my boat got me googling.
Here it is …
Read MoreVocal iPhone Dictation App Mentioned on Rush Limbaugh May have Made 17-Year-Old Developer Very Rich in a Day
You might be shocked to learn one of the main inspirations behind GeekBrief.TV is Rush Limbaugh. I listen to a lot of NPR, but I also grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern. While Rush over simplifies and over generalizes the positions of the people he opposes politically, there are a couple of non political things he does on his show that happen randomly and I love them both. Rush is a huge Apple fan. He reads Apple rumor sites and it’s awesome when he gets giddy about a new release. The other thing he does from time to time is talk about the media business and his how he came to dominate radio ratings.
Today he started his show talking about an amazing new App for iPhone 4S called Vocal. It works with a companion Mac App and give you the ability vocally control a Mac and dictate into writing applications from the iPhone. Rush spent a good fifteen minutes raving about how great it is. Listeners were emailing asking questions because they couldn’t find it in the App Store. Rush talked about the App more and referred listeners to the developer’s website, spelling out the URL: http://mtrbts.me/vocal. To help listeners find the right App, Rush told listeners it was developed by Matt Roberts. He said, “You’ll know you’ve found the right App if it’s by Matt Roberts. He also recommended listeners go to Matt’s site to watch the demo video I’ve embedded below.
In all, Vocal probably got about 20-minutes of air time on a show with 20-Million listeners.
I watched the video planning to write a post about the App. I had no plans to include details about Rush, until I clicked on Matt Roberts Twitter link. Matt is a 17-year-old student in Australia who had never heard of Limbaugh until today. Matt says, Limbaugh’s listeners are making up a majority of his support requests. 
http://twitter.com/#!/ma_ttie/status/149623075246313472
I think it’s very cool that we live in a world where a 17-year-old can build an App that can get 20 minutes of praise on a show that is supposed to be about conservative politics!
Read MoreBon Jovi … He’s Alive!
There was a Twitter generated rumor that Jon Bon Jovi died. He had a laugh about it and posted this photo proving the rumor that Bon Jovi is dead is not true! I know girls who say it also proves he’s still wanted dead or alive.
HTML 5 TweetDeck
I haven’t found a Twitter client I like better than Twitter.com, but for people who like to do Twitter off the website, TweetDeck is a fav.
TweetDeck as an Air App is popular, but now there’s an HTML 5 version that skips Flash and gives you all those lovely columns in your browser.
Read MoreHow to Type on iPhone (and love it)!
Steve Jobs said 7-inch screens on tablets are a bad idea. He said you’d have to shave down your fingers to type on one and some new research bears that out. I posted a link to a story about it on Twitter and got this:
https://twitter.com/#!/ChrisBeasley/status/144189607574126592
If you struggle with iPhone’s onscreen keyboard, there are two things to believe that makes a difference in how fast you’ll type and how much you’ll enjoy typing on the screen.
1) The keyboard is smart.
2) Trust it to be smart.
Next time you’re going to type an email, a tweet or a text, don’t worry about touching exactly the right letter. Aim at the right letter, but if you hit the wrong one, keep typing. Go at it as fast as you can. iPhone will compensate for your misses by guessing the right word. When iPhone guesses wrong, you have to backspace, but mostly, it guesses right. As soon as you see the word you’re going for in the bubble, hit the spacebar. You don’t have to type the whole word. iPhone will insert the suggested word when you hit space. Over time, iPhone learns from your mistakes and corrections. It gets better and better the more you use it.
Type fast by aiming in the general direction of the letter you want and hit the spacebar as soon as you see your intended word in the bubble. It doesn’t take long before mistakes are few and you start to really enjoy the virtual keyboard.
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