During our discussion we also touched on topics such as GeoTagging networks like Foursquare, (the recently bought out) Gowalla and Path.

The MotleyCrue Cast is a podcast for creative individuals both freelance and professional in any field, hosted by Joshua Rapp of Rappsody Studios and Jane Clark of Teakettica, and produced by Pablo Lara in association with The Motley Design Crue.

You can listen to the podcast on the Motley Design Crew site or you can even subscribe via iTunes. Go check it out. You know you want to!

Here are 10 Twitter funnies that I’ve come across over the last week. If you know of any other good ones, leave a link in the comments and let me know. Enjoy

Two of the most popular tools are Seesmic Desktop and Tweetdeck. Both have very similar functionality including the ability to follow/unfollow users, view user profiles, perform searches, create group/userlists, Facebook integration and the obvious tweet, @ Reply and DM.

When I originally joined Twitter, I started using Tweetdeck as it seemed the most popular tool out there in the Twitterverse. After using it for a while though, I found that it was quite unstable. After upgrading (or I should say downgrading!) my PC to a Vista 64bit environment, I found that Tweetdeck was even more unreliable. Even on a clean build, I found that Tweetdeck would consistently crash approximately every half hour. When your sitting at your PC from early morning to late at night with Tweetdeck open in the background, it starts to get quite frustrating having to restart it so often throughout the day. I’m not the only one experiencing these problems as well. Since moving to Seesmic Desktop, this issue is no longer a problem. I find that Seesmic is very stable even when left open, running in the background for 10-15hrs a day.

When you’re following a large number of Tweeple, the Group or Userlist functionality in these applications is extremely useful. I use it to create a group containing all of the Creatives I follow, such as Web Designers, Graphic & Identity Designers, Developers etc. etc.. One of the drawbacks of both of these applications is the lack of an “import/export” facility so as to be able to migrate your settings from one machine to another. Moving constantly between a desktop workstation and a laptop, it can get frustrating having to re-create & update the groups separately on each machine. Fortunately, there is a solution. It’s not exactly elegant but it is a workaround that does work and as such, saves you a considerable amount of duplication.

Seesmic Desktop

All your Seesmic settings for Userlists, Searches and your configuration settings are contained in an XML file called xmlAdapter.xml. This file simply needs to be copied from one machine to the other and hey presto! Everything’s the same. I’ve only tested this between machines running the same Operating System. I haven’t tried copying the files from a Windows machine to a Mac or vice-versa. Theoretically though, it should work as well. The xmlAdapter.xml file can be found in the following location, depending on your OS.

Max OS X
/Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/com.seesmic.desktop.client.<RANDOM>/Local Store/config

Windows XP
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\com.seesmic.desktop.client.<RANDOM>\Local Store\config

Windows Vista & Windows 7
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\com.seesmic.desktop.client.<RANDOM>\Local Store\config

Ubuntu & most Linux distributions
/home/<user>/.appdata/com/seesmic.desktop.client.<RANDOM>/Local Store/config

Tweetdeck

Your Tweetdeck settings are contained in two seperate files. One is an XML file called preferences_<twitter_username>.xml and the other is a file called td_26_<twitter_username>.db. Simply copy these files between your machines and magicadabra! Again, I’ve only tested this between machines running the same OS but in theory, you should be able to do it between different OS’s. The files can be found in the following location, depending on your OS.

Max OS X
/Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/TweetDeckFast.<RANDOM>/Local Store

Windows XP
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\TweetDeckFast.<RANDOM>\Local Store

Windows Vista & Windows 7
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\TweetDeckFast.<RANDOM>\Local Store

Ubuntu & most Linux distributions
/home/<user>/.appdata/com/TweetDeckFast.<RANDOM>/Local Store

As with performing any kind of workaround like this, make sure you create a backup of your original config file(s) before overwriting them.

I’d love to hear if either of these tips were helpful and if they did or didn’t work for you. Leave a comment and let me know.

What are you doing?

Twitter asks one question, “What are you doing?”. People must write their updates or “Tweets” in 140 characters or less. After signing up to Twitter you can search for people, import your friends from other networks such as Gmail or Hotmail, or you can invite friends via email. Even the Twitter sign up process suggests people that you can follow. Once you’ve found your friends or anyone of interest, follow them to start getting their updates.

I have to admit that I was hesitant in signing up, which I suppose is why I haven’t been tweeting all that long. My initial thoughts were “why would I want to read about people ranting on about boring crap”. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong! I am absolutely hooked on Twitter. In fact, I have to make a conscious effort to actually do work rather than sit and tweet all day or read everyone else’s tweets.

There is a huge design community using Twitter, from all around the globe. In fact, about 90% of the people I’m following are in someway involved with the design (and/or development) industry. They range from students studying design, to full-time logo, web & graphic designers, to people with just a passing or personal interest in design.

One of the things I love is the enormous number of links that people tweet. There’s links to interesting design & development articles, design blogs, tutorials, product reviews and not to mention the countless posts that simply contain a collection of links on particular topics, also known as “The Speedlinker” (named in honour of Problogger Darren Rowse). In just the last month that I’ve been on Twitter, my site “bookmarks” have doubled from all the great links people have tweeted.

This last month on Twitter has really been inspiring. I’m following some very talented people and I’m really enjoying seeing the various designs they tweet. I’ve also been reading lots of informative blog posts. I’m thoroughly enjoying reading about what other designers are working on or just their views on particular topics. It really gets the creative “juices” flowing.

If you’re looking to follow some super creative’s, you can’t go past the following…

@imjustcreative – Logo and Brand Identity Developer, Freelance design – http://imjustcreative.com
@nikibrown – Graphic & Web Designer  – http://www.nikibrown.com/designoblog
@mistygirlph- Avatar designer, blogger, grafix designer – http://digigirlmisty.blogspot.com
@jenniferbourn – Brand strategist, graphic designer, web developer - http://www.bourncreative.com
@chriswallace – Designer, developer, entrepreneur – http://www.chris-wallace.com
@minervity – Heavily in to web and graphic design – http://www.minervity.com
@Kodespark - Creative Jockey. Technology Junkie. Programming Geek – http://kodespark.com
@traceygr – Graphic/Web Designer, Illustrator, Blogger – http://www.traceygrady.com
@justcreative – Graphic Designer, Logo Designer, Web Designer, Blogger – http://justcreativedesign.com
@MadysonDesigns – Graphic Designer/Fashion Addict/Mac Geek – http://www.madysondesigns.com
@chadengle- Designer, WordPresser, caffeine addict, Adobe nut – http://ceaweed.com
@kriscolvin - Chief Mischief Maker at the Fuel Labs, User & Brand Experience Designer – http://kriscolvin.com

These are just a very, very small collection of the some of the amazing talent that I’m following out there on Twitter (listed in no particular order). I’m loving their tweets and gotta say a big thanks to them.

This Twitter thing isn’t just all work and no play

This Twitter thing isn’t just all work and no play though. There are also lots of tweets that are worth reading or viewing either for personal reasons, for socialising or just for a laugh. There was even a big milestone this week with @aplusk challenging @cnnbrk in a race to reach 1 million followers. Ashton won early Friday morning (US time). The funny thing is, it was only very recently that CNN purchased the rights to the @cnnbrk Twitter account. Up until recently, it was owned and operated by James Cox. (In case you’re wondering what Ashton’s twitter name means. Its pronounced A + K)

As part of his “pledge” if he was to win, Ashton will donate US$100,000 to http://www.malarianomore.org for the purchase of 10,000 mosquito nets to protect African families. Whether you’re a fan of Ashton’s or not or whether you think it was just a publicity stunt, it really doesn’t matter does it? The real winners are the families who’ll receive this valuable donation and not to mention, the huge amount of publicity that he’s been able to provide this worthy cause. Good on him, I say.

There are a number of celebrity tweeters out there. Obviously @aplusk is one of the more popular ones, but there’s also @mrskutcher, @iamdiddy, @bob_saget, @danecook, @realhughjackman, @tonyhawk, @greggrunberg, @jeffrey_donovan and even @oprah made her first tweet this week, live on her show. There’s also a number of other celebrities, which I wont bother mentioning, that have accounts but all the tweets are made by people they employ. There’s even been a number of accounts setup under the names of particluar celebrities, but tweeted from people who have nothing to do with them. Quite a few of these accounts have also been shutdown recently.

So, if you’re not on Twitter yet, I say “what are you waiting for!”. It’s fun, it’s highly addictive and you get to “meet” and chat with some fabulous people.

What are your experiences with Twitter? Who are you following? I’d love to hear so leave a comment.