A proper twit

It's better than Technorati and more accurate than guesswork. It's probably also excessively self-indulgent, but then, so is a lot of the read/write web. What is it? Why it's the Twitter Grader and it informs you of the power and effectiveness of your microblogging activities.

In short, it lets you know just how big a Twit you really are. Here's how it works. It grades you on a score of 1-100 based on the following criteria:

• The number of followers you have


• The power of this network of followers


• The pace of your updates


• The completeness of your profile
  
• ...a few others (I would really like to know what those are, but they ain't telling).
  

There is even an automatic Tweet hyperlink to so you can send your rating direct to your Twitter feed (check me out - I'm Timbuckteeth in the Twittersphere). With Twitter becoming increasingly important as a social networking and communication tool, and more and more twits appearing every day, this little gismo seems like a neat tool to use to measure your progress and success levels. So I did a little exercise to see how high a Twit score my Twittersphere friends have and here are the results...

Howard Rheingold = 99.8

Josie Fraser = 95.7

Andy Powell = 91

Cristina Costa = 85

James Clay = 75

Kath Trinder = a big duck egg (0) - some mistake here, surely?

And finally, get this - Graham Attwell = Proxy Error!

My own score is 68 on the Twit scale - which means I am only a low grade twit in comparison to all my mates. So now you know just how successful a twit I am. All I need now is something similar to measure how I'm doing as a human being....

Fame at last

Wow - I'm famous! No sooner have I set foot back on dear old British soil than I have an airport named after me! At least, this is the story from a blog about product branding called NameWire. I discovered it was linked to my blog through Technorati. Not sure what I have done to be so honoured, but I am there, listed among such illustrious names as John F Kennedy, John Lennon, Charles De Gaulle and Ronald Reagan. See mum - I told you I would be famous one day - and here's me in a moody Clark Gable pose just for good measure. Some might say, more like Mr Bean. Who cares - I'm famous now...! (Seriously, the great thing about this link is that it is rated 127 on Technorati at the moment, so my own Technorati blog rating has already benefited).

I guess the simple answer to this conundrum is that whoever put the blog up, must have read my blog about the ALT-C conceived Hood 2.0 community (and the Midlands airport named after Robin Hood) and has misread the contents. Anyway, nice to know Hood 2.0 is responsible for elevating me into the stratospheric realms of celebrity. I'm off now down to the studio to get a new set of publicity photos taken.

Not so Technocrappi after all....

I'm grateful to Technorati for finally fixing my blog statistics. It has been quite a while and I first blogged about the saga way back in March. My blog reactions (for the uninitiated, those other blogs that think my site is so cool that they cannot resist linking to it from theirs) and my ranking (the Technorati scale you rise up through as more blogs link to yours... it's all rather complicated really) were simply not registering. I went to the blog regularly, but my outpourings were sinking without trace!

I tried everything, sent message after message, and even started to seek out tall buildings... In the end I resorted to a bit of pestering in the right area - directly onto the Technorati help forum itself. After three messages and a great deal of irony (some might called it sarcasm, but what do they know?) I managed to grab the attention of one of the Technorati cogniscenti (does this sound Latin?) to come in and fix my blog.

Hooray! I now have a Technorati authority rating of 11 - that will impress all the traffic cops around my neighbourhood. They wouldn't dare touch me now. "Do you know what speed you were doing sir?" "No, but I have a Technorati rating of 11!" "Oh. Sorry to bother you sir..."

Now I can go on holiday secure in the knowledge that my blog is fully functioning and regular, and has a clean bill of health. Right. Now who do I contact to fix this cold, changeable, crappy British weather? Brrrrrrrrrrrr.

Technocrappi

Technorati have let themselves down I reckon. They are supposed to be one of the best blog tracking services around. Yet a couple months ago I discovered that my posts were not being logged, (as of today, according to them, it has been 80 days since I last posted to this blog - which was a surprise, believe me) and they don't recognise any of the other blogs that have linked to mine. I have sent four pleas for help over the last 6 weeks, and other than the obligatory "If you don't hear back from anyone within a week, please accept our apologies for the delay as we may be experiencing a backlog in Support. Please feel free to send us a reminder of your ticket...etc, etc", message. Other than that, not a sausage ... not a glimmer of help... I despair.

It has upset me so much that I have decided to leave the country. On Thursday I'm off to Sweden again, via London Heathrow, where I can be mistreated by people I can actually see - i.e. airport security guards and taxi drivers rather than some faceless technocrats who seem to be a law unto themselves....

Seriously though, I have been invited back by those good folks at the University of Umea (pronounced OOH! ME! OH!), to do some staff development workshops with their ... er... staff. I'm talking about social presence in online learning again, but this time I will be taking my wiki with me. I have been told I should also take my skis, but I've already fallen out with Technorati. I don't want to make it a double whammy with my insurance company.