So the website I run, TravelGator, finally gave Twitter a try this week. I’d been holding off doing anything on Twitter as I honestly didn’t get the attraction (plus I had been lazy). So I finally decided, given the ridiculous amount of buzz about this company, to give it a try.

As a sort of an experiment (and again because I was lazy) I didn’t really do any research on the “right” way to use Twitter and just barreled in to give it a shot. I quickly learned that it can be really addictive when you get into it. I didn’t get much from the people out there who were updating me on the type of breakfast cereal they had in the morning but the ones who were posting links to really interesting travel information they had found online were very much appreciated. Most of this information I found very interesting myself and I never would have found it on my own.

In this way, I was using Twitter as a sort of personal search engine for a specific topic area - as most of the people I was following were in the travel business in some way or otherwise interested in travel as a topic.

The other thing I did was I started to contribute my own interesting links, some to content on TravelGator content but also to a whole range of blogs and other sites out there that cover travel. I also “re-tweeted” links that others sent out that I found interesting.

So…all good right?

Apparently I made a bunch of newbie mistakes according to the powers at Twitter.

1. I followed too many people right off the bat - even though everyone I followed looked really interesting based on their past tweets and I wanted as rich an update stream as I could get. Apparently you are only allowed to follow 2000 people before you need to also have the number of people following you rise to a similar level. I got cut off from following new people around 1200 or so.
2. I posted too many links and not enough personal updates. This one I find weird…isn’t blogging all about links to other things (i.e. the hyperlinking thing that started the web in the first place). If so, shouldn’t we expect microblogging to be based on the same basic premise? I really didn’t care about the hypothetical breakfast cereal choice but the links everyone were sending out were gold.
3. I did something else that they didn’t like although I have no idea what.

Anyway…after three days of posting (about 200 posts) and following other people (about 1200) and having people follow us (about 400 and rising rapidly) the account got suspended.

I’ve posted to their help forum and sent them a pleading email but my hopes are not high that they will rectify this situation. Based on other chatter out there on blogs by people who have had the same thing happen to them I expect Twitter’s spam algorithms are pretty poor so they suspend a lot of valid accounts and hence customer service is way overwhelmed. We shall see though. If not, I’ll create another account in a few days and try again.

They did send us this nice email:

This is an automated response to share reasons why Twitter suspends accounts for investigation. If you’re contesting suspension, please reply to this email and include the information requested at bottom if you haven’t already.

Twitter primarily suspends accounts for Terms of Service violations or spam investigation. (Please visit your own profile page to make sure you’re actually suspended and not viewing someone else’s suspended profile page.) If you are suspended, it’s most likely for one or more of these reasons::

User Abuse
* a large number of people block the profile or write in with spam complaints
* aggressive following
* imbalanced ratio: the number of followers is small compared to number of people following
* misuse of the reply feature
* updates consist of duplicate links and/or text
* updates consist mainly of links and not personal updates
* updates consist of updates poached from others’ timelines, passed off as one’s own

Technical Abuse
* updates consist of links pointing to phishing sites, malware, or other harmful material
* a large number of accounts is created in a short amount of time
* an account is identified as belonging to a spam cluster

When this happens, we suspend the account for investigation and hide the contents from the public view in order to remove the cause of complaint. Unless we’ve advised you otherwise, your account may be suspended for a minimum of 30 days while we investigate. Accounts in violation of the Twitter Rules or Terms will be permanently suspended.

It’s important to us that the Twitter community receives only the content they’d like to receive. While we do welcome feed-based accounts, we discourage aggressive following and other tactics that will alarm people.

If you feel you’ve been suspended in error, please reply to this email with a short explanation if you haven’t already, and don’t forget to include your user name. We will do our best to get back to you within 30 days.

Thanks,

Twitter Support

Now this is impressive. A log book filled out by the flight crews of every flight taken over 31 years (and by a consultant no less…we fly a LOT!).

I didn’t even realize you could do this sort of thing - coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time.

My wife and I are currently in Kazakhstan to adopt a little girl. I’m blogging our adventure at www.kzadoption.com

Fortune interviewed me awhile back as I just took on a new role with Sapient as a consultant in their Trading and Risk Management practice. The resulting article ran today and is a good read if you are looking for your next gig.

One of the questions I regularly get asked when I’m out trying to raise money from VCs for my latest brainstorm is whether I have a patent behind the idea. I’ve never bothered as I don’t really think that the majority of the businesses out there are successful because they’ve protected their intellectual property with a patent, but rather because they just out-compete their competitors. Plus new businesses have a habit of radically changing as you put them together which can easily invalidate the defense a patent provides. Plus I’m a fan of open source…and so on.

What I didn’t realize until I read a post in the Patent Law Blog on the cost of maintaining a patent (after shelling out all the cash to get it in the first place) is that maintenance feeds are rather pricey - especially if you aren’t making money from the patent and have to write a check from your personal checking account.

For most categories of patent owners, the maintenance fees after issuance are $980, $2,480 and $4,110 at 3.5 years, 7.5 and 11.5 years, respectively (I did wonder about the reason for the 0.5…). If the fee is not paid, the patent is forfeited and this cost results in a of patents expiring before their time.

Something to think about before you take that napkin into your lawyer for a quote. I wonder if this is why Lego lost its patent years ago? Perhaps they forgot to pay the bill.

I spent a few minutes this afternoon browsing around Tiger.com checking out computer components. My home server is getting a bit old and I’m thinking of doing a complete upgrade.

Then I stumbled upon this video of a very serious computer build that includes a 24 SSD drive array. So…no moving parts and scary speed. I so want one (but am not a Google founder unfortunately). I wonder what things will look like 10 years from now?

I recently got one of those emails that are making their way around the net but in this case rather than simply deleting it I actually read it. And you know what, it make more sense than most of what I’ve read in the main stream press about why my stock portfolio is worth half what it was six months ago.

———–

A young and dynamic customer service consultant at the local bank recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases Heidi’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the alcoholics as collateral.

At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert bankers transform these customer assets into DRINKBONDS, ALKBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then traded on markets worldwide. No one really understands what these abbreviations mean and how the securities are guaranteed. Nevertheless, as their prices continuously climb, the securities become top-selling items.

One day, although the prices are still climbing, a risk manager (subsequently of course fired due his negativity) of the bank decides that slowly the time has come to demand payment of the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi’s bar. However they cannot pay back the debts. Heidi cannot fulfil her loan obligations and claims bankruptcy.

DRINKBOND and ALKBOND drop in price by 95 %. PUKEBOND performs better, stabilizing in price after dropping by 80 %.

The suppliers of Heidi’s bar, having granted her generous payment due dates and having invested in the securities are faced with a new situation. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor. The bank is saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock consultations by leaders from the governing political parties.

The funds required for this purpose are obtained by a tax levied on the non-drinkers.

‘Cause she is going to get to play with stuff like this. Very very cool…I want them already.

Created by MIT graduate David Merrill and called “Siftables”, each block is its own interactive computer with a color screen, infrared communication, accelerometer and Bluetooth radio. The number of neat things and games you can dream up with these little computers and a good development kit would be just about endless. Add WiFi to the mix so they can interact with the net and the package would be complete.

I’ve been renovating part of my basement for the last while in an attempt to turn an old, musty space that was poorly finished into a combination gym and playroom for my daughter. We are almost done with what turned into a six month project and one of the last steps was installing a dehumidifier to keep it from getting too moist in the summer months.

After killing two portable units in years past I finally went looking for something a bit stronger and that could handle the entire basement area (almost 1500 sq feet). Thanks to the mighty Google gods I stumbled upon Sylvane’s website and more specifically a Sante Fe dehumidifier that seemed to be just about perfect. It could handle the size of room, would allow me to duct it in and was EnergyStar rated.

Everything showed up exactly as ordered and very fast (two days!) by UPS truck. I installed the unit in a closet that I had wired up specifically for this type of dehumidifier (it had a drain available) and mounted the remote controller on the outside of the wall. I then ran ducting into two rooms (a trick - buy flexible 10″ ducting at your local Lowes or Home Depot and strip off the insulation…it works perfectly and is really easy to work with).

The one issue I ran into was that I forgot to order a special switched plug for the external controller - so I just wired in a new receptacle that was powered off the controller. Problem solved. All in the installation took me about 4 hours including some head scratching to get the ducting to fit (I forgot to include it when I measured the space).

I insulated the walls of the closet to cut down on the noise but the unit is actually not that loud despite pushing a lot of air. You can definitely hear it but you need to be in the same room as where it is running or very close. It is about as loud as a forced air furnace when running.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Apparently a tourist from New Zealand picked up a $9 MP3 player in a thrift store in Oklahoma and discovered a few weeks later that it was full of US military data including soldiers names, cell phone numbers and mission briefings.

According to CNN, “The files included the home addresses, Social Security numbers and cell phone numbers of U.S. soldiers. The player also included what appeared to be mission briefings and lists of equipment deployed to hot spots in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Scary stuff. Yet another reason why high quality encryption should be built into pretty much every electronic gadget that we carry. Unfortunately it is usually an afterthought or difficult to use.

What information do you carry around with you every day that you really wouldn’t want to lose? (hint: check the pictures on your cell phone.