The Twichhikers guide

Everyday we hear of new and interesting ways that people are using Twitter, today I heard about the "Twitchhiker". Basically, it is what it sounds like, it's a guy using Twitter to hitchhike his way around the world.

Said man is a freelance journalist called Paul Smith who is trying to get from Newcastle to New Zealand in just 30 days. Now, there are a few rules that he has put in place for his journey and they are as follows:

• He'll only accept help (lifts, a place to stay and food) from other people on Twitter
• He can’t make any plans further than three days in advance
• He can only spend money on food, drink and anything that might fit in his suitcase
• If there’s more than one offer on the table, he gets to choose which he takes. If there’s only one, he has to take it within 48 hours
• If he's unable to find a way to move on from a location within 48 hours, the challenge is over and he goes home

At the moment, he's currently at the InterContinental Hotel in Chicago and is possibly off to Dallas next, if nothing else comes up. Check him out here and you can also read his blog here, but for now, check out his latest twitchcast:



MyTake - This is some pretty damn interesting journalism and I for one will be following his progress. It clearly demonstrates the global power of Twitter and the sense of community that it has created. It almost gives a renewed faith in humanity, don't it.

Thru-You

This is possibly one of the coolest things I have seen on YouTube in a while, that and I have always been a big fan of mash-up DJ's like The Outlaws and 2ManyDjs. Basically, an Israeli DJ by the name of Kutiman has created a mash-up of a whole host of music from YouTube and created an entire album from it.

The brilliant thing is that he's not used well-known musicians throughout, he's used amateurs, semi-pros and people just messing around that can't even play. The other cool thing he's done is actually used tutorials that have been uploaded by people as part of the mix for the title song, The Mother of all Funk Chords - check out the below.



I tried to take a look at his site, but it's crashed due to traffic, so there's obviously a fair few others that think the same as me. However, he also have a MySpace page you can take a look out and the mash-ups are all over YouTube

MyTake - Collaboration, content-mashing, shaping it your way then sharing it with the world, well now....that's web 3.0 behaviour isn't it. Alright, he's aggregator is probably his mac but the principle is there. He's already a successful musician in his own right, but as our man Mr McCullen said "the medium is the message".

Is there a pot of gold at the end of the skittles rainbow?

There is, and has been, an awful lot of chatter about the skittles digital campaign that's currently underway which is predominantly focused on the use of Twitter. There's more to come from this campaign, so this post might be a bit premature but I wanted to get my thoughts on a post at this point because I think that unless we have "the big reveal" soon, it's going to die off.

If you haven't heard of it, Skittles has essentially changed it's entire website to pull in content from Twitter, Facebook (which features the game pictured to the right) and Flickr. So, the landing page actually features all the twitter chatter about the campaign, which is quite substantial given that the campaign is in full swing and there's a lot of buzz around it. The website also includes some fairly standard product info, a few videos and some pics - which really aren't that special. According to some of the tweets on the feed, the website is actually a copy of Modernista's site and after taking a look, it could be.....then again modernista could be working for Skittles.

There are a couple of posts floating around about the campaign that aren't that complimentary about it, pointing out the exposure of the brand to negative comments (and there have been a few) and the fact that they aren't actually interacting with their audience, breaking the first rule of the social web. But.... I think there's more to come and they have hinted at it on their Facebook page:

Skittles wroteYesterday, at 16:39
Thanks for all your thoughts on the new site. I know there are some lingering questions out there: will they twitter back? Is this site real? Am I causing that smell? Stay tuned for answers to those questions and more. We promise.

MyTake - This campaign hinges on what happens next and I for one am quite excited about what that might be. There's so much chatter around this already, so there's a lot of buzz around the brand which you'd think would spill over to mainstream media, making it a success from a PR/marketing perspective on two fronts. But they need to start interacting pretty soon in order to capitalise on the buzz, or risk losing the audience that they worked so hard to build.

140pedia....needs you

Yet again it's been a long time between posts, but this will change as I have finally started work again after moving half way around the world....promise. Today, the story that has caught my eye is a rather clever, funny and original mash-up of two giants of the modern digital age by the creators of one of the funniest Internet memes.

So what do you get when you mix all this together, well, you get 140pedia brought to you by the I Can Has Cheezburger guys. 140pedia is the result of mashing twitter up with Wikipedia where everything is given a 140 character explanation/or meaning. For example

Cheezburger (thing)
A misspelling of cheeseburger — a meat sandwich made with cholesterol and fat. Also a coveted food of all cats on the Internet.

Or.....

Viagra (Drug)
The little blue wonder-drug of the 90s that let impotent men to cause headaches in their formerly headache-free sig. others.

As you can see, it's very mush in keeping with the ethos of the I Can Has Cheezburger guys in that it's completely irreverent. The site doesn't have that much on it at the moment, but you can submit your own entries and our course tweet your favourite existing entries.

MyTake - It's like a funny, online version of the Oxford dictionary with a social sharing aspect thrown in to boot. Is this going to spread like wildfire, probably. I'll certainly be submitting a few entries.