Twitter: Attribution

I should probably rename this blog.  I seem to mostly blog when I want to rant about something.  My latest peeve is attribution on Twitter.  I personally feel that I need to give credit where credit is due.  So if I see something interesting that I think my followers and I would be interested in, I retweet it with full attribution.  Sometimes I'll go to read the article linked in the tweet and loose the tweet altogether in my timeline.  I feel more comfortable going back and and finding that tweet and RTing it instead of using the RT button on the page.

One of the things that really disturbs me is when you see people tweet something they should have seen in their timeline, not necessarily from me, but from tweeps we both follow, yet they are tweeting it as if they found it themselves.  I feel this is just lazy. (I can hear the stormy comments coming)

I admit to being lazy sometimes, but I make a real effort not to be.  Lately I've been using a really neat tool called Storify (storify.com).  Part of what it does is allow you to search on a topic of interest and pull out all the tweets related to that topic.  While doing this, I see an ENORMOUS amount of tweets that are exactly the same or point to the same exact article (you can exclude retweets - which I do).  If people are really interested in say data breaches, or computer security, there are many lists out there which follow the leaders in the field on twitter.  It looks to my unpracticed eye like peeps are following these lists and instead of retweeting the original post, tweeting anew, which not only diminishes the power of the RT, but also junks up the twitter stream on that issue.

So what am I getting at?  When you see a tweet you are interested in, do what I do, in Hootsuite I click the RT button which sets up the tweet to be RT'd, but don't click the Send button.  First read the story, if you still want to RT go back to hootsuite (Either on your other screen or minimized) and click the Send button.  Now you've RT'd properly with attribution.

Related articles

• Decoding the Language of Twitter Part 1: Twitter Terms (conversify.wordpress.com)
• What's a Twitter reply? Mention? Retweet? (debsanswers.wordpress.com)
• What does MT mean on Twitter? (stwem.com)

HTC Incredible - Task Managers and Batteries

Image via WikipediaThis all started because I wanted to save some battery. I was doing everything I could think of to make my Droid use less battery and the especially included using task managers to kill unneeded running tasks.

I started out with Advanced Task Killer, which Verizonwireless had already put on my phone. It worked really well, although I didn't always know which tasks I could "kill" without affecting the operating system. After a short while it occurred to me that it would be a lot easier if this was automatic. So I looked for and found an app to do just that, Automatic Task Killer. This seemed great it automatically did what Advanced Task killer did. Sometime later I started getting an error on my device. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from and wasn't sure of the best way to go about finding out. I spoke to VerizonWireless Support, they eventually bounced me to HTC support. I was told it was probably some application I downloaded and to reset my device and then reload each application until I started getting the error again. Luckily it was an "A" application - Automatic Task Killer. So I got rid of that and went back to using Advanced task killer.

I eventually tried Juice Defender, it seemed like a good idea, but the log from JuiceDefender showed it was turning on my device at night. I may not have had it configured correctly, but I decided to uninstall it. The next app I tried was Power Manager Full. I tried the free version first and it looked really promising. This app comes with predefined profiles that kick in under predefined circumstances (when plugged in turn on wifi and brighten screen, for instance). The paid version lets you define your own senarios. I liked it a lot and went ahead and bought it. After some time using it I found it was taking up more battery than it was saving, so I uninstalled it (your mileage may vary, this was my experience on a non-rooted phone).

I finally got fed up with trying to extend the life of the HTC battery. If I used absolutely nothing, I could make it last for about 15 hours, but what's the use of having the phone if you aren't going to use it?! So I bought a better battery with the same exact footprint so it fit in the case. It was like going from a gas guzzler to a fuel efficient car, my battery now lasts 12 hours with regular usage. The battery I got was a Seidio. I recommend it highly.

Verizon Wireless / HTC - Another phone debacle

Image via WikipediaMaybe it's just me, but I got kind of miffed when I found out the I had been misled by the Verizon Wireless saleperson when I bought my HTC Incredible. I was in the store looking at the various droid phones and the salesperson was pushing how much more memory the Incredible had (8gb internal compared to 2gb internal on the Droid from motorola). He said the difference I would see was so great that the HTC only came with a 2gb SDHC card while the Motorola came with a 16gb card to make up for the lack of space. This seemed to make sense at the time and from all I had read I really wanted the Incredible anyway.

I started out without any problems and then after downloading way too many applications, I started getting an error message - something to the affect of "Your application area is getting full. Please delete some applications or move them to the card." The first thing I did was check the phone and card space and found that there was 6gb of space left on the phone and a couple of 100mb of space on the card (books and music mostly).

At this point I'm not sure what is going on, so I called Verizon Wireless support. They eventually told me I would have to call HTC support. When I spoke to HTC, they told me something I should have figured out already. Of the 8gb internal memory less than 2gb were available for use by the user. The rest was reserved for use by the OS and the built-in apps (at the time I was using a 3rd party mail application that was restricted to the user area, by switching to the built-in mail app I saved a significant amount of space and was able to use some reserved space).

I felt used to say the least. I really only had 4gb, at best, of usable space. At the same time I bought my phone they had been offering the Droid with a 16gb card (16+2 vs 8+2 was okay, but when you factored in the reserved space it was a different story). I decided I not only wanted to complain, but wanted to go back to the store and voice my dissatisfaction in the hope that they would comp me more memory. I did exactly that and, after some back and forth in which the Verizon rep kept saying it was HTC's fault not theirs, the manager agreed to give me an 8gb card.

I'm much happier now. I believe they should have figured this out from the beginning, but that what I get for getting the phone sooner rather than later.