LIVE WEDDING STREAMED & TWEETED

Technology and A Wedding

Some might say it's ridiculous to live-stream and Tweet during such an event as a wedding. They also may think that perhaps Tweeting has gotten to the point of being addictive. However, I think it's totally sweet and pretty darn cool!

Now I don't even know Chuck and Lori, but I have an interest in their wedding as it relates to technology. In addition to their own live-stream and Tweeting of the event, it was also Tweeted and blogged by attendant, Steve Garfield. Again, I don't know Steve, but I follow him on Twitter because he's a techy sort of guy.

Anyway, as a result of my interest in technology, Chuck and Lori now have their wedding pushed a bit further out into the world at large. Their story and Off-on-a-Tangent-Steve's are being Re-Tweeted here and blogged via iPhone from the Sunday morning comfort of my own feather bed. Technology is sweet!

:: RT stevegarfield - Chuck and Lori Live Streamed their Wedding and Paused to Twitter
Wedding ::

Steve's blog: Off On A Tangent

___________________________

(posted via iPhone)

TRIVIAL or SERIOUS . . .

it's FASTER than a SPEEDING BULLET –

After a couple of weeks on Twitter just tweeting fluff, like, "having coffee and feeding the cats" and posting cat pics or the awesome fog the other morning, I began to think that this could be an incredibly useful way to get real time information to people during the upcoming Hurricane Season. Being the weather nut that I am, The Weather Channel is pretty much on my TV most of the time, but I decided that I needed and wanted additional information - I needed weather tweets because, as the world goes today, I needed information "right now"! I surmised that this would be especially great if I could find Mississippi tweeters who were into weather and reporting those live events and posting pictures of any tornados or hurricanes, and of course damage.

So, I began digging around for storm chasers and various weather geeks who lived in Mississippi. I was especially interested in finding tweeters who lived along the Gulf Coast. It didn't take long to find some either but I also included following Mississippi Emergency Management - MSMEA.

Last night, I was watching live streaming video of a chase over in southeast Louisiana. The system they were chasing was huge and also moving over southwest Mississippi with warnings popping up every few minutes. Info from other weather tweeters was coming in every few minutes. The real time information coming in last night was really showing that Twitter could be extremely useful during dangerous weather events. Even though I was not directly in the line of bad weather last night, I was able to keep up with the events which included the coast. With a tweet from MSMEA, I was able to pass along information via email to coastal friends (as they don't tweet... yet) which they then passed on to others.

This morning I was able to read damage reports from Biloxi/Harrison Co. and look at a picture of flooding on Hwy. 90 in Ocean Springs which was tweeted by a person living there. Although I have a great "Katrina friend" living in Ocean Springs, she was going to go out driving and take pictures of any flooding and email them to me. I'm still waiting. . .

So you see the combination of and directness of an iPhone, or other camera phone, Twitter, and Twitpic are just "the bomb" for moving "the stuff of knowing what's going on" immediately along the information highway . . . which seems to get shorter and shorter everyday. The tweeting of weather info from professionals and people out on the chase along with the ability to tweet your own weather info and pictures of damage makes Twitter just twitterific!

Non-Tweeters, you need to hop into the Tweet Lane.

An example of some of the many serious tweets that went on all evening and night and into the morning today.

One of my many trivial tweets - the video link was originally emailed to me (which is beginning to feel a bit archaic). After I watched this fun piece of claymation, I noticed that I could Tweet the YouTube link right from the site. So of course I just had too. Afterall, you need some fun stuff mixed into the pile of serious.

LIFE ON THE WEB ::

TwitterTweetingFlickringBlogging

Well, I got hooked into twittering. Like I need one more Internet thingy to be occupied with. I have to admit that I got off to a slow start (and thought about giving it up) as I was
quite twitter-impaired. I had all of two followers and they were family.

Finally I got the hang of it all and began searching for a few interesting people to follow. Of course, being a cat lover, I Googled “cat-loving twitter groups.” Voila! Checked out some of the groupies and picked four to follow including two cats. Ditto for birding people and groups such as The Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Next I looked for artists and discovered another growing phenom-art on Twitter, which translates into “twart,” “twartists,” and “twart” intstitutions such as The Tate in London. For now, I’m following The Tate, Jenny Holzer, An Xiao (a photographer and digital media artist), and kaffeeneko (an aspiring Digital Preservationist/Curator-Specializing in East Asian and Contemporary Visual Culture). I decided against Yoko Ono as she seems to tweet way too much.

Next, I noticed that I had begun to “collect” a few followers. Some I blocked because they had nothing to offer and some are people who I am following. Quality is more important than quantity.

So now I find Twitter more interesting than email, which is what I used to check first thing every morning. Now I reach for my beloved friend, iPhone, my second drug of choice, as I’m having coffee and my eyes are opening and check my tweets. Because I’m following people in other time zones I get great early morning tweets and twitpics and it’s all rather refreshing.

The people I follow in Twitter are allowing me to peek into their lives. Some of them are in Japan, Spain, Wales, England, and cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York.
This gives me a broader perspective of life in general. I get to read what people are doing, thinking, feeling, eating, drinking, reading, seeing-especially when they post a twitpic or video clip. If you’re traveling-impaired like me, you get to see some scenery that you’d never otherwise see. Just yesterday morning, I was viewing one of my tweeter’s videos of his very cute foster kitty taking advantage of their rooftop patio, which overlooks a city in Spain. In the vista: white roof-topped houses, palm trees, a rich blue ocean, and Oscar the kitty having a great time exploring his surroundings. Of course, you’d have to be a cat person to fully appreciate that one.

So, even though I’m loving this Twitter thing, it’s added more to my daily routine. Along with tweeting, and twitpicing iPhone images, I’ve got to keep up with my own Web site (way, way behind), check my Flickr account, MySpace, and update my blogs, including blogging this bit. That’s only a few bits of my web/iPhone enhanced life because once I find an interesting link or pic on Twitter I usually end up surfing the web or commenting on said pic, then before I know it I’m checking out a Flickr person which may lead
me to another Flickr person and then I find I may want to add them to my contacts and then I get the urge to upload new images to my own account but the images I want are still psds so I have to turn them into jpgs and then see I have comments to read. . . you get my drift?

So I decided to check MySpace this morning and then I want to blog because I have this topic on my mind.

And here I am, three hours into the morning wondering why I’m running behind on other areas of my life. Where do I draw the line? And, do I want to draw a line? Oh, forgot to check Facebook, I’m looking for a long-lost friend.