Let’s get some things out of the way right up front here. I like Twitter (and other social media). Heck – By day, I am a software architect for a “community” web site with plenty of social media magic mixed in. I also realize there is no “right way” to use social media. These are my personal views. If they rub you the wrong way, I’ve probably already unfollowed you. Finally, I’m not trying to get a Twitter High Score. While I would love to have millions of followers to pimp my music projects to, it would mean just that many more who see my late night drunken one liners.

Some of you have fancy Twitter tracking tools, some of you obsess over your followers list, and some of are you are puzzled that I wasn’t familiar with the oh so witty remark you made earlier in the week. Yes – it’s true. I unfollowed you. Now, don’t take it personally. Well, maybe take it personally. Let’s see why I may have kicked you to the virtual curb.

You have multiple accounts and are constantly retweeting yourself. You’ve got a side project or three. Awesome. If I’m interested in it, I’ll follow it. If not, I’ll just stick with your main account. But here you come with your RT fever. I consciously decided not to read those tweets, but you seem to know better than me and will make sure I see them anyways. I get and support the occasional cross promotion for your new followers, but give me a break.

You abuse the Quote style retweet. Some of you are hopping up and down to tell me that I can turn off retweets from specific accounts if I don’t like the above scenario. I know all about it and use it to great effect. Unfortunately it blocks all retweets. Except those pesky old school ones where you add your witty content to it. If I’ve already flipped the no retweet switch and I still think your a bit spammy, it’s time to part ways.

You cross post every tweet to Facebook. If we’re connected on both sites, I don’t need to read it twice. Given the two, I’ll opt for Facebook, because people really get butthurt when you unfriend them there.

You RT for contests on a daily basis. Hey, we’re all human and a chance for a Colorware Macbook Pro is sometimes too hard to pass up, but if you’re retweeting everyday for low dollar items you need to do one of two things: create an account just for your spam or dig deep in your wallet and just buy the damn thing.

You have a one track mind. No, not that track. I’m good with that. Some of my personal contacts seem to use Twitter almost exclusively to ramble about a single topic. Good for you. I’ll see you on Facebook or at happy hour.

Your business/service is mixing news with a feed of some sort. I really want to stay in touch with some websites. If they are having a sale or a service disruption, twitter is the perfect place for me to be informed. But keep the automated data feeds separate. Just because I am interested in your music hosting service doesn’t mean I want to know everytime someone else uploads a file.

You are a music promotion account hyping pop and R&B. Yes, I am a self-described music junkie and I do produce music but for the most part my tastes are more specific. Sure there are great tracks coming out by the artists you’re pimping but I’m sure one of the eleventy jillion blogs I read will let me know when the next Rebecca Black is peaking (hopefully this reference will need to be Googled by next week).

Phew. That felt good to get off my chest. I’m sure there will be some retaliation. Oh well.

What are your Twitter pet peeves? Feel free to add your thoughts in the (moderated) comments.

Updated 08/18/11

Another reason I unfollowed you: An automated Direct Message when I followed you. Spam me once shame on you…

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Last year, I had three “restrictive” resolutions: Don’t do this, No more of that, etc. All three had been broken by kickoff of the Rose Bowl. While I was able to regroup and find some success, I also found that telling myself “No” is not the best way to go about achieving change.

This year my resolutions are more “aspirational”: Do more of this, Be more like this, etc. So far it has been a breeze AND a great feeling of accomplishment even after only a week. Each and every night I have looked back on the day’s events and identified a win. Truth be told, I have been thinking about these changes for a few months, since the Temple Burn. I think the extra time helped internalize what my goals for the coming year really are.

Here’s wishing you luck on your New Year’s resolutions.

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Yes, it is an iPod touch on steroids and that is the perfect thing for it to be. It is not for replacing your laptop or your phone. It is simply a media delivery device with some extra computing power.

Right now, I am not its target market. My mom is. I gave her an iPod touch and she loves it. She’ll check her email from the living room, play some games, etc. Giving her a larger platform to do so on is going to thrill her. It can turn into a digital picture frame? Perfect! Electronic photo album that she can hand around to people and not drag out the laptop? Awesome! Color ebook reader? Sweet!

Yes, we the cognoscenti are picking it apart. With all the hype how could we not be disappointed by some aspect of it. And yes, Apple is famous for features driving revisions. I’ll bet they have a cameraPad already in the works, along with multitasking, just waiting for the better power consumption the new A5 chip will have next year.

Will I buy one? I don’t know. Definitely not right now. But I have a feeling the evolution of it, along with the new apps it is going to spur, will be pretty tempting…

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I am all for adding meh and wonky and email to the dictionaries, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of older words. It’s not like there is a letter shortage and they need to be repurposed.

So I adopted two words. Yeah, I roll like that. Use them in your daily life, and adopt a couple of your own.

sevedical – speaking cruel or harsh words

and

magistracide – the killing of a master or teacher

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Besides, your faithful companions are humiliated by this. Exhibit A:

What if Sparky gets loose and hit by a car? Is this really how you want him going out? Dressed like a Spongebob bitch?

Exhibit B:

Cmon now! Goofy has spent his entire career carefully walking the line between canine and human. What does this say?! Does this clear up the issue? Does it out Goofy?

Finally, Exhibit C:

If I catch you dressing your dog like this, I will call the Humane Society and I will have CSI inspect your crotch for evidence of dog hair.

(inspired by this)

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The first is simply scanning directory structures and building data from that (ie. folder name at artist level gets read as artist name). The second is to use the metainfo from the file itself (ID3 for mp3s, Field Keys for MP4, etc.).

Both have pros and cons. Scanning doesn’t require tags (duh) and is slightly more forgiving. Tags otoh allow for far more information to be processed. Case in point, the compilation flag.

in iTunes, there is a nifty little checkbox on the Get Info dialog that allows you to indicate that a track is part of a compilation. This has the benefit of allowing you to capture the true artists name in the appropriate field, but have it be grouped by the album. Otherwise, each artist in the compilation would have their own album entry with one song in it.

Funny thing about that checkbox… its not a standard ID3 tag. Apple creates a new tag (TCMP) and sets the value to 1 for comps. If its not present, or value is 0, then its not part of a comp.

This is all “legal” – the standard allows for custom tags to be created and used. But Apple gets even tricksier.

The format of this tag requires that the tag be version 2.3 or higher, as the previous versions had different encoding schemes. If the tag isnt at the right level, apple stores the information in the xml dump of your track info instead of upgrading your tag.

All well and good when you are just using itunes. But makes for crappy data retrieval when trying to scan the items themselves.

Moral of this story? Be good netizens with your music tracks. Make sure to upgrade tag versions before transferring files. Also, my pet peeves, use the Of fields ( i.e  Track 1 of 17 not just Track 1 ), use the Compilation checkbox. If its mostly one Artist but one track has a “Featuring Another Person” use the Album Artist field to group them all together as the main artist.

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My mobile is a slightly different situation. Again, I usually only pick up if I recognize the number, and voicemail can sit in there for days or weeks before I clean it out. Even then, a few seconds to figure out who it is and it usually gets dumped.

I wonder if my behavior would change with Visual Voicemail, like the iPhone has, although I doubt it.

Between Twitter, IM, SMS, and email, there are plenty of ways to get information to me that are integrated into my normal routine. Calling an external phone number and dealing with a linear menu system just isnt one of them.

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Perhaps it is time to sunset SparkleMotion… leave what little glory there is for the history books.

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