Tweetbook - convert your tweets (twitter) into a book

Alex Hardman
12:54pm 9 October 2009 (Edited 1:05pm 9 October 2009) Permalink

I haven't looked at either of the links but if they could "package" up a hashtag then that would be super useful for archiving conference back channels...

Could be a wee website service in that if no one else is doing it :)

Gráinne Conole
1:04pm 9 October 2009 Permalink

Yes excellent point Alex - we are using twapperkeeper which seems pretty good. From memory both the tools are based on a url so might be possible to put in the search #tag url for the term....

Derek Moore
1:29pm 9 October 2009 Permalink

I've been exploring the possibility of using Twitter as a reflection tool for PGCE students. A history of their Tweets would be really useful for them to attach to their portfolio.

I’m currently supposed to be marking their work now. I've discovered that my students are poor at reflection. Twitter (or any status update application) could make reflection seem less contrived. A quick scan through aggregated Tweets might produce some interesting insights, which could be added to particular artefacts they put into their portfolio.  

Twittering is about conversations. But it is also important for them to remember that this is a mediated public. A ststic PDF re-enforces the idea that your Tweets are persistent, searchable and replicable.  There are a variety of ways to access your archive. I used Tweetbook and was impressed with the PDF. I’ve also popped my Tweets into Google calendar, but can’t always see the immediate Tweet because they overlap. Yes, converting Tweets removes the conversation. But there are other lessons being learned.

Will Pollard
1:59pm 9 October 2009 Permalink

I looked at the Tweetbook link and it works fine. Page size European A4 perhaps because of open source PDf creation from Italy. You can also get an XML version so this could be edited or rearranged.

I don't think a PDF file should be regarded as static. It requires extra software to add comments or markup. Adobe limit the capability of the free Reader unless the server software is purchased somewhere. But a lot can be added or the pages rearranged. I am going to try out my own book of tweets with this in mind.

A book could be quite short term. There is a printing device at Blackwells on Charing Cross Road that could print one copy from a PDF though maybe twenty. Could be collections of papers or web pages. Maybe Tweets in bold to link it all together. XML is a better source for editing or layout.

Patrick McAndrew
2:33pm 9 October 2009 Permalink

Preserving twitter threads and in particular hadhtags came up when we used Cloudworks for the Monterey conferenc in March . At the time we encouraged a mix of cloud comments and twitter and it worked for the duration of the conference and was also a great resource for a couple of months afterwards and then the strand disappeared :-(. We discussed various solutions around reading the tweets into a database but in the meantime other services have come along like twapperkeeper.

But yesterday I was talking about preserving twitter in various ways with Liam Green-Hughes - he has made a test of tweets to mindmap see http://olnet.org/node/43 something like this could lead to a more interesting route to preserving otherwise temporary discussions. We talked about making a service as part of OLnet which would do this - but we haven't yet decided whether to do so.

Gráinne Conole
2:50pm 9 October 2009 Permalink

Sounds really useful Patrick and I think the trick is to link into other tools rather than always leap to developing from scratch.