Blogs / Bad Astronomy

So have you heard of Twitter? It’s an instant-update social network site, a bit like a cross between a blog and an instant message. You only get 140 characters to say what’s going on with your life right now, and that’s it. It gets posted to your own page on the Twitter site. You can follow other Twitterers, and see what everyone is doing.

I am still unconvinced this is the next Big Thing, but a lot of folks I respect (like Chris Pirillo) use it and love it. I signed up for it, and I’ve been adding some comments on my page. I’m trying to figure out if it’s at all useful for me. Maybe not yet, but it will come in handy when I live blog a launch or something. The next Shuttle launch is in June, and I plan on live-blogging it, but it’s a pain; I have to keep updating the blog and then everyone who reads it via email gets their inbox plugged full of my commentary. Twitter would make that a lot better.

There are mashups too, software mixes that increase the utility of Twitter. So far nothing I see there is more than a fun diversion, and it’s not quite fun enough to hang out a lot. But I’ll keep on with it and see what’s what. I won’t update much during the day due to my job (at least until I move to Boulder and write my book, woohoo!) but I’ll see what I can do.

I’m very curious about folks’ opinions here. Useful? Waste? What say ye?

Hey, don’t forget to sign up to get a chance to win a free copy of the APOD book or a DVD screensaver! The contest closes Saturday at noon Pacific!

I’ve done a lot of interviews over the years: Coast to Coast AM, CNN, some documentaries, radio, podcasts… but never have I ever needed to have an avatar to fly to one.

Now I do. I’ll be doing an interview with my friend Aaron Price from Slacker Astronomy. And we’ll be doing it in Second Life.

If you want to participate, you’ll have to do it through Second Life. At this point, you’re on your own, because I know very little about the life I have, and even less about Second Life. But you can get more info at Slacker Astronomy, and if you can read the sign in the image (and let me just add that it took a while for me to get that image; I fell off the mountain, and then flew around, and then couldn’t go up the mountain, and then flew around some more, then finally landed near the sign again, and was really careful not to fall off again) you’ll see that it says to go to NASA Colab 209, 29, 45 and to be there April 21 at 23UT, or 4:00 p.m. Pacific time.

Right. If you understand that, see you there. If you don’t, then congratulations! Your first life is good enough for you. Check back here later to see how things went.