Very clever ad!

I was fortunate enough to meet the author of eat-tweet, Maureen Evans, known on twitter as @cookbook. Maureen is a fellow Canadian originally from British-Columbia and currently lives in in the UK with her partner Blaine Cook, the original programmer of Twitter. She has spent years traveling the world sampling food and tweeting about it.

Me, Maureen, and her book.

Eat-tweet is one of the coolest concepts I have come across on Twitter. As a fellow foodsy, ex chef, and father, @cookbook has given me the ability to find quick, easy, and tasty meals to satisfy my tastes buds on a daily basis. I admire the passion and enthusiasm @cookbook has put in over the years. If only I had thought of it first …

So what exactly is eat-tweet? For over three years now @cookbook has been tweeting 140 character recipes on Twitter, and for any one who uses Twitter, you know how difficult 140 characters can be! She has managed to amass over 30 000 followers, yes 30 000! Not only has she managed to create a micro community of foodies on Twitter she recently published a cookbook containing over 1000 of her tweeted recipes entitled eat-tweet.

You may be wondering how she managed to tweet recipes in only 140 characters, well, she created her own dictionary of easy to understand short terms. Remember when you were in high school and you had to read A Clockwork Orange and your teacher had to give you an accompanying dictionary to understand the fictional language Anthony Burgess crafted for the novel? Well the eat-tweet dictionary is nothing like that. It’s very easy to understand but blew me away at how in depth it was, hence the Clockwork Orange analogy.

Over the past week I have been sampling from her book and here are a few I really like, plus a couple from her twitter feed:

Tourtiere: Quebec. Bake,mash lrg tater; simmr~h+2lb grndpork/mincd onion&garlc/?c h2o/½t cinn&pep/¼t clove. Fill,vent dblpieshell; 50m@350F.

Soupe au Pain et au Chou: Quebec. Saute onion&carrot&celery/3T oil. Simmr15m+4c stock&cabbage/2c crouton/2T tompaste/s+p. Top w parm&parsly.

Cold Avocado Soup: Puree1½avocado/½shallot/peeldcuke/3c buttrmilk/s+p; chill. Top w pulse-blended ½avocado&shallot/tom/2T lime&yogurt&basil.

Cheddar Dumplings: cut c flour/6T suet or buttr/4T aged cheddar/T chives/t Dijon/s+p; mix+4T h2o. Roll~8balls; tuck into simmering stew~30m.

And my favorite …

Banana Bread: cream 3brwn banana/4T buttr&sug/.5c brwnsug; fold+c flour/.5c whl flour/t bkgpdr&soda&spice/.25t salt. h@350F/175C in loafpan.

Hopefully this has inspired you to follow @cookbook and buy her book eat-tweet.

There are many known issues and Twitter exploits that can send you off to another page, change your account details, send tweets, add or delete followers, etc.

Anyone who uses Twitter, has intermediate coding skills and some time on their can easily write a script that can be malicious. Not all exploits cause major damage or annoy your followers, some simply open pop up windows or redirect you to pornographic sites. Either way it is a hassle.

I highly recommend your read David Naylor’s post on Twitter Exploits (Thanks to @Nik_G for sending me this link).  It may help prevent you from being hacked!

What can I do to fix this?
If your Twitter account has been compromised there are some steps you can take to remedy the situation.

• Start by looking at who is following you. Unfollow anyone who you don’t know or looks dodgy.
• Check your authorized apps at http://twitter.com/account/… in case there’s something suspect to revoke. Thank you @JeromeParadis for this tip!
• File a ticket with Twitter Support (I wouldn’t hold your breath, but it’s worth a  try).

Simple steps to stay safe!
There is no guarantee you will never be hacked. I’m very careful, yet It still happened to me.

• Follow @spam profile and report Twitter spam via direct message
• Never click on a link that looks dodgy. DM the sender first and ask if they sent it.
• Be careful when entering your Twitter credentials on 3rd party sites or applications. Check they a trustworthy first.
• Use a dedicated application like TweetDeck, TwitterFox or HootSuite. It’s much safer than tweeting through your browser, however there is never a guarantee!

I’m still suffering the repercussions of being hacked. Twitter automatically reset my password due suspicious behavior. Basically I reached my limit of a 150 API calls and they shut me down. At least they recognized it was not me actually sending the tweets. After I reset my password I was locked out of TweetDeck and TwitterTools and Lifetsream (WordPress plugins I use to syndicate my Twitter feed). The password reset did stop the spam and hopefully tomorrow I will be able access my applications again.

I wont stop using using Twitter because of this experience. I’ll just have to be even more careful in the future.

Recently I came across a really neat site call Ident Engine, a JavaScript library which retrieves and aggregates profiles from across the web.

Almost every project I have worked on in the past year has required some sort of Lifestream component. Most of us have built identities across the web. We’ve filled in profiles, uploaded photos, videos, reviews and bookmarks. It’s a great way to build awareness for your self or your brand. That being said there are a ton of WordPress plugins available to add this feature to your site.

Here’s a few I’ve tried:
Lifestream – This is my favorite!
RSS Stream - Will retrieve from just about any network, but you ‘ll need to find the RSS link!
Profilactic
FriendFeed Activity Widget – You’ll need to setup a FriendFeed account first.
ComplexLife – This was built on SimpleLife and also uses RSS feeds.

Why am I discussing Lifestreaming?
This past summer I was speaking at WordCamp Montreal and was fortunate enough to to attend a presentation on Lifestreaming by Erin Blaskie (Don’t know who Erin Blaskie is? Check out some of her work;  www.lifestreamingincolor.com , www.bsetc.ca , and www.askerinlive.com). This presentation was so inspiring I decided to start a Lifesteream of my own! Just this past week I quietly launched Brendan Sera-Shriar – A Lifestream. It was built using WordPress, the Sandbox framework, and the iBegin Lifestream plugin.

It’s still in beta, which means I’m still playing with and will continue change over the next few months, so for now enjoy and hopefully you will be inspired to start a Lifestream of your own!

Not only can you geek out on Twitter you can wear it and take it everywhere you go!

Twitter Tees features notable Tweets submitted and voted on by Twitter users, with art direction and design of each t-shirt by the in-house creative team at Threadless.

Twitter Tees allows users submit their favorite tweets and have them printed on tees. You can also vote on all tweets that have been submitted. As an added bonus they are currently running a contest to win cash each time you vote on a tweet are submit one.

One of the coolest features of the site is the ability to log in with your twitter account. Once logged in the site will read your twitter feed, tweets, replies, messages, etc. You can the choose to submit anything from your feed to be voting on and printed on tees.

The catalogue is still small, but they only just started, can’t wait to see how quickly it grows.

So what makes a good Twitter design? Considering the only real design element you can play with is the background, it can be somewhat challenging to create an awe inspiring profile. It seems the current design trend emerging is the ‘left sidebar’. Majority of the design is contained within this area of screen real estate on the left, where most designers will display additional information about themselves, self portraits, personal or company logos, and links and banners. The only downside to the ‘left sidebar’ approach is the lack of space on 1024×768 resolution monitors (most common), therefore to get more out of the design, most designers go beyond the standard resolution and portions of the design become hidden by the main Twitter layout.

There are other options, such as repeating patterns, which are very common, and something we are starting to see more of, the extra-large backgrounds that can flow over the boundaries in all directions for maximum display.

Here’s a list of Twitter profiles whose creativity helps them stand out above the rest. Feel free to share any profiles you think should be mentioned here.

http://twitter.com/karenmcdade

http://twitter.com/krftd

http://twitter.com/imajes

http://twitter.com/norsted

http://twitter.com/imgspark

http://twitter.com/betterinpink

http://twitter.com/bittbox

http://twitter.com/ThinkDesign

http://twitter.com/techxav

http://twitter.com/in09

http://twitter.com/chrisspooner

http://twitter.com/theleggett

http://twitter.com/MrTweet

http://twitter.com/KrisColvin

http://twitter.com/Jonathan360

http://twitter.com/jaygoldman

http://twitter.com/GordyMac

https://twitter.com/elydelaney

http://twitter.com/dannybrown

https://twitter.com/ovrdrv