Most importantly you won’t receive updates to your mobile from all the people you are following. I really can’t imagine how scary that would be. You will need to set the option to receive updates via SMS to your phone from the person you are following on Twitter. Twitter Phone FAQs has all the answers to your questions. Check how To Turn Mobile Updates On and Off (via Web or SMS) page to subscribe/unsubscribe to receive updates via SMS.

When I joined Twitter in 2007, we had the option to send and receive updates to Twitter via SMS through the International number (long code). But when time moved on and more people joined, Twitter limited this functionality by allowing short codes only to few countries which supported two-way (sending and receiving) text-messaging. Rest of the countries only had the option of using long codes which supported only one-way (sending only) text-messaging.

I’m sure this is a big news to the Twitter addicts in Sri Lanka. This move will also make Sri Lankans to start using Twitter  in a more fun and efficient way. The Official Twitter Text Commands page will be guide you to get going.

While I have most of my friends on Twitter and have also have got connected to new people, some of my friends actually don’t really get it. For them Twitter is less interactive than Facebook and most of the time they get confused with the two. A lot of them join Twitter and post updates for a couple of days and thats it. They go missing completely. In my opinion Twitter and Facebook have two different models and they must choose one or use both in a selective manner to serve their purpose. Facebook is a way to communicate only within your friends you know on a close environment but Twitter can be used to communicate to the rest of the world. Search Engines and other tools pull off your Tweets and do wonders with it while Facebook model doesn’t allow this. Twitter too has protected accounts but it really doesn’t serve the whole purpose of using Twitter. So as I said earlier, it all depends on how you use these services to serve your purpose.

Here is a video that explains the whole Twitter thing in plain English. Hopefully it will encourage few of you to start Tweeting.

I think its high time to move on. I’m planning it to make it a portal for the Sri Lankan geeks. The aggregator will remain but just be a part of the site. I won’t spoil things up but you will know when it happens. When I launched lkgeeks.org, my initial plan was to keep it limited to FOSS Blogs. But with the revamp it may change. So all the geeks who represent Sri Lanka will get equal opportunity to get listed and share their Blog posts and Tweets. Also there would be some sort of filtering that will take place. Non-technical posts/Tweets have to be filtered while @ Replies will be taken off from the Twitter feed. I haven’t really figured out this process yet but I’m just trying to plan things out and you will also know what you can expect. Its a mixed thought and I welcome your feedback on this.

Since Twitter has introduced the Lists feature, I have created a List for lkgeeks.org and once the site is revamped, the Twitter aggregator will be based on this list. I made a tweet about this sometime back. If you are not listed, send me Direct Message on Twitter to get listed.

Also I will be adding a News/Events section. This way everyone can track events around Sri Lanka. Its something I can’t do alone so any voluntary help is much appreciated.

The good thing is that I have a lot of ideas but executing them doesn’t really happen most of the time mainly due to lack of time I get to work on these ideas. You will see changes happening soon. Would love to hear your thoughts as well.

Early this month I put up lkgeeks.org a Blog Aggregator for Sri Lankan FOSS/geek Blogs. This site is not intended to compete with other Sri Lankan Blog Aggregators but its goal is to let everyone read Blog posts only from the Blogs of FOSS/geek Bloggers. I'm a fan of Kottu, but it consists of Blogs from various categories and its too crowded. Its difficult to filter out Blogs that sounds more technical. So that kinda influenced me to start this site.

If you fall into the category of a SriLankan FOSS/geek Blogger send me the URL of your blog to nazly dot ahmed at gmail dot com. There is a review process and once its approved it will be added to lkgeeks.org.

But then there are few other services I use on a day-to-day basis to share news, photos and articles on the Web. I use Flickr to share my photos. I Digg. I share news and articles on Google Reader. I share my bookmarks at del.icio.us and the list will surely grow. I already have the Twitter badge on the blog. I was displaying the Flickr photos but removed it for now coz the Flickr API was giving some problems. I surely can incorporate the rest of the services into my blog using the APIs, badges or feeds provided by them. In fact I was in the attempt to do that but have second thoughts and wonder whether it distract the main blog itself.

Now I have a problem. There are too many services I'm using. I need to syndicate all of them in one place. If you are one my friends in Facebook you could easily track all my updates coz I have added all the necessary applications for all the services I use. But then you need to be my friend. There is a bit of an urgency to get everything in one place. So I started working on building a Website for this purpose.

In the process I came across FriendFeed, a service that will grab all my updates from the services I use. You can check my FriendFeed page to get all the latest updates on all the services I use. So I guess I will settle with this for now. But it doesn't mean that I will stop the development on my Website. It will be up soon.

My current situation reminds me of a saying I found in an article that I read.

Are we nerds just making solutions to solve problems created by our own solutions?

I guess the answer is Yes based on the increasing number of Web 2.0 services. Any thoughts?

If you are a developer and want to get the advantage of notifying your viewers if you are running a news site, an articles site, job posting website or a blog, Twitter will be the ideal choice. Check the Twitter API which you can use to communicate between Twitter and your application.

Here is a simple tutorial on sending updates to Twitter from PHP Script using the Twitter API. I tested it and works like charm

Most of you will already know what Twitter is but for starters its a service that asks you the question "What are you doing?" and we simply have to send our updates via Instant Messaging, Email or even by SMS. Its a micro-blogging service coz the updates cannot exceed 140 characters. So it has to be very short and sweet. The service has been around for sometime but I got kinda addicted to it almost a month back when I saw Bud updating his Twitter using his iPod Touch at the MySQL South East Asia Roadshow 2007. I like this micro-blogging idea even though I have a blog coz I can send in little tweets when I don't want to write a big post about day to day activities. You can follow someone on Twitter so that you can receive updates about this person via the Twitter website, Instant Messaging, Email, RSS or SMS. All these can be configured quite easily. I mainly use GoogleTalk Instant Messaging and SMS for sending updates. SMS updates can be really handy when I'm on the move.

Now I have added a Twitter widget on my blog. It will show you my latest Twitter updates. So you can keep in track of what I'm up to . The HTML/Javascript widget can easily be customized with CSS and thanks a lot to Asanga, my design buddy for sharing his extensive knowledge in CSS which helped me to get it nicely placed on my blog. Also I have added the Twitter Application on Facebook. So that it shows my latest Twitter update. Adding more to that you can let the Twitter Application update your Facebook status. This way I only have to update Twitter which will update my Facebook status as well. There is another Facebook Application called TwitterSync which is only designed to update the Facebook status. So there are enough options available.

If you need more info about Twitter read this The Big Juicy Twitter Guide

Follow me on Twitter