Sathyanarain's Weblog

I saw a few tweets about Tweetboard in my Twitter timeline this morning and decided to check it out. A quick request for an alpha account got things done. The installation is pretty simple; it just involves the user to paste a simple code in the site. Once tweetboard is installed, you need to login with your twitter account to provide the auth token.

Ok. Now what?

The tweetboard site says

Tweetboard is a fun and engaging micro-forum type application for your website. It pulls your Twitter stream in near real-time (max 1 min delay), reformatting tweets into threaded conversations with unlimited nesting. Conversations that spun off the original conversation are also threaded in-line, giving your site visitors full perspective of what’s being discussed.

Tweetboard is also a powerful viral tool that engages your website visitors. Each time someone posts (or replies) via your board, a link back to the corresponding conversation is appended to their tweet, creating a viral stream of Twitter traffic to your website.

Why I love tweetboard,

1) Engages visitors into a micro forum, increases stickiness.

2) Introduces non twitter users to this amazing manna from heaven called Twitter!

3) Tweets posted through Tweetboard in your site gets posted in your timeline with a permalink to your site thus increasing traffic to your site through exclusive Tweetboard urls, posted.at and inreply.to. The destination url would be of the format  - http://sathyanarain.com/#tboard_168724

But why I may not use Tweetboard,

1) Page load time increases by a few seconds

2) Though the permalinks are useful in tracking the conversation, it occupies part of the tweet. Sometimes, it is with much difficulty that I try to make a point in twitter within 140 characters. The posted.at and inreply.to permalinks take up 20 characters as of now. *20 precious characters*. And they’re bound to increase as more users start using Tweetboard.

3) The Tweetboard support page does not have a link to the homepage! duh!

Update on the 1st of July at 2250 hours: Here’s another problem with tweetboard — Good friend, Mayank read this review and left a tweet as comment in my blog’s tweetboard which is to your left. He just wrote a tweet. And the tweet had a posted.to link to my blog, but not an @reply. I had no clue about the tweet until I randomly checked Mayank’s timeline.

I hope Tweetboard’s beta release solves these issues.

You guys can have a look at how Tweetboard works in this site to the left of the screen where you see a Red colored label. Clicking on it opens my tweets.

So do you like Tweetboard?

You can follow the creators of this microforum on twitter @140WARE for updates about developments.

Update on the 1st of July at 1810 hours: Here’s what Mayank has got to say about Tweetdeck.

You can follow me on twitter @msnarain

Its been more than 7 years since I wrote my first “Hello World” code.

A comic strip dedicated to all the geeks out there.

Click on the image to view the larger version.

My version of Pink Floyd’s The Gnome.  A beautiful song by Syd Barrett with surreal lyrics and a classic example of Barrett’s whimsical sense of humor.

I really need to improve my singing, esp when I’m singing while playing the guitar.

And the other day when I was heading to Coffee House for a tweetup to discuss a certain project regarding The Chennai Photowalk called by Chandru. My chauffeur insisted on driving on a full blast of ac. I usually dont object to my chauffeur, neither do I argue with him. He’s afterall a very nice chauffeur. Only problem with him is he laughs at his own jokes; jokes that usually dont induce laughter even after desperate attempts to laugh by the opposite party (read affected party).

So as he was driving me through Teynampet, thanks to my stomach disorder due to the previous day’s dinner at BBQ Nation and an overdose of raddish I had had for the day’s lunch, I involuntarily let out a ‘radish’ fart. It wasn’t that notorious a fart, still the closed ac car didn’t leave room for ‘cleansing’.

I thought of rolling down the windows to let fresh air in, but decided otherwise as my chauffeur wears expensive contacts and even a speck of dust entering his eyes would result him being down for two days. Not that I care about him; if he goes down, who will drive me around?

There were just two of us in the car. I wouldn’t even be able to refuse if he cried foul!

There were times when we were a group of three or more and someone would let out a really notorious fart. All of us would be staring and frowning at each other till the fart fizzled out.

Coming back to the story, the only thing going on in my mind was should I confess?

After doing some mental mathematics, I finally decided not to tell him about it. Moreover, I wanted to see his reaction on the radish fart.

He didn’t react, much to my surprise.

We were almost at our destination when he smelt rat. It was almost half an hour after I polluted the car when he realized the presence of foreign particles in the air. He created a big ruckus about the issue and still uses the incident to accuse me when some random asshole in our vicinity farts.

I have always had the doubt that he too farted in the car that night. He realized that I farted half an hour after I did just that. I doubt he just tried to potu vaangufy and as I was already guilty, I readily accepted much to his joy.

Crux of the story: I’m looking to hire a new chauffeur. Anyone who owns a car can please get in touch through msnarain[at]gmail[dot]com or facebook or twitter or linkedin.

For more fart stories, follow @fartingpen aka JayanthMuraleedharan on twitter.

Read Jammy’s account of radish farts here.

So in the midst of all the hype about the Aussies being racial, esp against Indians, let me remind you that we’re a country where it is the caste that determines your chances of getting a government job, seat in a government college, getting cheaper ration, getting into the armed forces and what not!

I may be of caste A and 50% marks are enough for you to get into the a prestigious college while you may be of caste B and have to get 90% marks to get into the same course in the same college. Same logic works for getting jobs or getting into the armed forces.

There are still places (read villages) in India where tea shops serve tea in separate glasses for the so called ‘upper class people’ and ‘lower class people’.

And I cringe while I type the words upper class and lower class.

I can talk of scores of examples of a racist India; I don’t want to.

And we call the Aussies racists.

My blood boils when someone talks ill of my country, but there are times when I feel sad, bad, hurt and resigned.

I hope when I have kids and they grow up, they get to live in a less racist or zero racist India.

(Click on image to view the full size)

Google Apps doesn’t allow you to register domain names having ‘msn’ in the names as MSN is one of Google’s competitors and I’ve two domain names, msnarain.com and msnara.in which I wanted to register with Google Apps.

I’ve rambled about this previously, but the above graphic found in dreamhost.com is more like adding salt to the injury, prompting me to write about this once again.

Gmail is Fail Mail atleast for me

This writer’s block is getting on my nerves. I just cant think about what to write.

So dear readers, please show some love and vote.

Lets now look at what readers have to say about this poll.

Rakesh: I have voted! I feel so proud as an Indian and a reader of this blog! Here you go! ..|..

Shruthi: The change we need is here! I have voted! have you? ..|..

P.S: Please vote in the upcoming elections too

P.P.S: All names changed to protect identity of the persons