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O.k… I am 24 hours away from leaving and printing out my final set of maps for the trip. I have located all the camp grounds that I need to as well so have tweaked the maps as well.

The other thing was that I plan on doing a good number of hours around Silverton and Broken Hill, so I will arrive in Broken Hill late Friday leave on Monday Morning, which gives me 2 full days.

I have also started to use the hashtag #wtrip08 if you wish to follow the tweet stream. I will be able to receive direct messages only so conversation may be a bit one way. Why the hell should I pay $29 for 100meg of data on my prepaid phone!

So here is the route day by day…

Tuesday 16/12/08: Melbourne to Echuca/Barma State Forest: 272 km

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Wednesday: Echuca to the Willandra National Park: 418 km (Just south of Ivanhoe)

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Thursday: Willandra National Park to White Cliffs, via Ivanhoe and Wilcannia: 400 km

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Friday: Broken Hill 274 km (Depending on Weather and Road conditions which I can work out at White Cliffs, I can take the main sealed route to Broken Hill, by travelling back to Wilcannia as well)

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Saturday/Sunday: Base myself in broken Hill.. will go out to Silverton for at least half a day as well

Monday: Broken Hill to Burra: 356 km (Remembering to be in Burra before Thorougoods Cellar Door Closes to stock up on some of the best Cider in Australia)

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Tuesday 23/12/08: Burra to Adelaide Airport: 161 km. Most important thing to be at the Airport before Cat arrives from Melbourne.

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Total Distance of trip will be if I only followed the maps 1,881 km - Will over 2k by the time you do all those other running around bits e.t.c… but a holiday I am very much looking forward to.

Plus the return trip home from Adelaide will be via Millicent and the coast taking a few days to do that as well

Tags: General, RoadTrip 08, twitter by Me
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Well who would have thought 12 months ago that I would be writing a post about the US Elections and Twitter. (see this post as a primer on what Twitter is all about)

But here I am. A lot has been written about Sarah Palin, the DNC and RNC and the keynote speeches from both of them and what people are thinking at the time.

But now Twitter and MSM(main stream media) to a degree are combining for the next stage. For Australian readers who are familiar with the Worm, twitter is the worm with a thousand voices. What people think and feel is no longer just a turn of a dial, but a short sharp statement of text. Now people can see not only that people agree or disagree with something, but why they think the way they do.

Yeah, yeah all the twitterati know this, but was is new in this.

From Yahoo “Current TV to broadcast `tweets’ during debates”

“During the debates, the network bent on viewer-created content will broadcast Twitter messages — or “tweets” — from viewers. In close to real time, Current will display comments on the screen while Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama face off.”

Now what is interesting also is that the conversation is already happening, but now it will be expanded to those that are not taking part already.  The “in-crowd” of twitter as it were will no longer have the debate to themselves but it will be open for all to see. (all that is in America that have access to Current TV)

For the “in-crowd” and those of us outside the US who can find the debates online (someone is going to stream them aren’t they??? well the comment from Current.com says they will be streaming the debate as well) we will also be able to join in the conversation simply by added #current to any discussions.

So the US Presidential debates will become a global conversation that people can watch listen and interact.  Perhaps even some of us outside the USA might even get to influence a swinging voter or two.

The election will effect us out here in the rest of the world.  We may not get a vote, but now we at least can have a voice.

Tags: General, twitter by Me
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Obama’s speech seen by 38 million viewers, this is the headline that was used by  NPR on this story
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94112461 from Associated Press.

Then they put this line in at the bottom “Obama’s audience might be higher, since Nielsen didn’t have an estimate for how many people watched Obama on PBS or C-SPAN Thursday night.”

And thus when MSM (Main stream Media) can not monitor what is going on it can not understand it and use dumb words like “might be higher”.  Also the article doesn’t mention that the democrats.org website also had the speech streaming as well.(via silverlight so I didn’t get to check it out)   Then to make things even more confusing this was global.

I and many other people I know watched the events live from all over the world, I was tlaking in the twitter back channel to people in Melbourne, Sydney, San Fran, Brisbane, Perth e.t.c about events as the CSpan stream came in.  At which point I switched to the ABC local stream and told all the people on my twitter list and in my office to watch that version).  So there were hundreds of people that I have some form of contact watching Obama’s speech.  And mainstream media says “Might” .

Thanks to twitter I had a copy of the speech as well before he said it and could see what he was saying line for line and how he improved small parts (very impressive skill) and drop quotes into my twitter timeline.  But don’t forget the audience “might” have been bigger.

It is this grass roots tech approach that paid for his campaign, it is why he refused public funding (he can make more from people on his sms list) that got him to where he is now and shows why someone at 47 years old is a major shift in how things could and should be done.

Now of course being an Australian I cant vote for him but given the effect that Bush had on this country I sure as hell will be hoping that he gets over the line.

If he gives any more speechs along the way myself and most of the people I know “might just watch” as well.

Tags: General, Media, twitter by Me
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Got this email this morning from Twitter…..

Short version outside the US and the UK direct SMS updates will no longer come to my phone. I can still send updates but not receive them away from my computer.

Two things could happen.
1- Twitter is about to suffer a major blow outside countries that have SMS updates now.
2 - If they are fast and australian telco’s aren’t greedy things will be back up to normal very soon.

I am afraid that here in Australia with the way that data charges are that a sms gateway for Twitter may not eventuate for quite some time.

This is a major concern for me. Sure I can still send sms updates, but the receiving of them is vitally important to me to keep the service viable as people have come to use it. If people want me that are not in my circle of physical friends in the last few months I have “DM Twitter” friends for news, information and social gatherings. All sitting in a state of flux.

One of the biggest advantages of twitter was that it broke the IP Model. I can be outside of an IP controlled space (and ironically the IP costs) sitting on an old Nokia 8250 and still follow the world and have to world follow me (not that many did :-()

I only hope that this gets addressed quickly as the Twitter Space was nearly at threshold to break out into true mainstream globally.

I’ll write more later on this subject!

….. The Letter ……
Hi,

I’m sending you this note because you registered a mobile device
to work with Twitter over our UK number. I wanted to let you
know that we are making some changes to the way SMS works on
Twitter. There is some good news and some bad news.

I’ll start with the bad news. Beginning today, Twitter is no
longer delivering outbound SMS over our UK number. If you enjoy
receiving updates from Twitter via +44 762 480 1423, we are
recommending that you explore some suggested alternatives.

Note: You will still be able to UPDATE over our UK number.

Before I go into more detail, here’s a bit of good news: Twitter
will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries
throughout Europe in the coming weeks and months. These new
numbers will make Twittering more accessible for you if you’ve
been using SMS to send long-distance updates from outside the UK.

Why are we making these changes?

Mobile operators in most of the world charge users to send
updates. When you send one message to Twitter and we send it to
ten followers, you aren’t charged ten times–that’s because we’ve
been footing the bill. When we launched our free SMS service to
the world, we set the clock ticking. As the service grew in
popularity, so too would the price.

Our challenge during this window of time was to establish
relationships with mobile operators around the world such that
our SMS services could become sustainable from a cost perspective.
We achieved this goal in Canada, India, and the United States.
We can provide full incoming and outgoing SMS service without
passing along operator fees in these countries.

We took a risk hoping to bring more nations onboard and more
mobile operators around to our way of thinking but we’ve arrived
at a point where the responsible thing to do is slow our costs
and take a different approach. Since you probably don’t live in
Canada, India, or the US, we recommend receiving your Twitter
updates via one of the following methods.

m.twitter.com works on browser-enabled phones
m.slandr.net works on browser-enabled phones
TwitterMail.com works on email-enabled phones
Cellity [http://bit.ly/12bw4R] works on java-enabled phones
TwitterBerry [http://bit.ly/MFAfJ] works on BlackBerry phones
Twitterific [http://bit.ly/1WxjwQ] works on iPhones

Twitter SMS by The Numbers

It pains us to take this measure. However, we need to avoid
placing undue burden on our company and our service. Even with a
limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter
about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada,
India, or the US. It makes more sense for us to establish fair
billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass
these high fees on to our users.

Twitter will continue to negotiate with mobile operators in
Europe, Asia, China, and The Americas to forge relationships

that benefit all our users. Our goal is to provide full, two-way
service with Twitter via SMS to every nation in a way that is
sustainable from a cost perspective. Talks with mobile companies
around the world continue. In the meantime, more local numbers
for updating via SMS are on the way. We’ll keep you posted.

Thank you for your attention,
Biz Stone, Co-founder
Twitter, Inc.
http://twitter.com/biz

Tags: twitter by Me
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I have moved the twitter stream of the left hand column of the site and created a new twitter page

most of my readers are either on twitter and following me (and if not WHY NOT)

if you still don’t know what twitter is or why it is actually really important read this again.

So click on the Twitters link in the top nav, it will give you my twitter feed , plus my twit pics feed as well.

and yes i am still sick, this time i have the flu (and still a broken arm) and have taken more time off work and have lost my voice as well, thus the sad lack of updates on the site.

Tags: General, twitter by Me
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