It seems that all the cool kids are hopping onto Twitter these days (Follow BlueFur on Twitter!). People are quickly discovering that there is much more to Twitter than just the ability to tell the world “what are you doing”, because Twitter can serve as an excellent marketing and networking tool. You are able to use Twitter to directly contact and follow individuals that you may not otherwise have access to.

You can also use Twitter to promote your blog, automatically putting up a new “tweet” each time you publish a new post on your blog. This is accomplished by a WordPress plug-in called WordTwit. Installation and configuration are very easy, because all you have to do is unzip, upload, and activate. From there, you go the options section to connect your WordPress blog with your Twitter account.

The trouble with WordTwit, however, is that it seems to have problems sending out a tweet when you timestamp a post into the future. Say that you wrote a post today and you weren’t going to make it live until tomorrow afternoon. You would assume that WordTwit would send out a tweet tomorrow afternoon, right? Well, for certain versions of WordPress , this just doesn’t seem to happen.

There are two primary solutions for this.

1. Upgrade to WordPress 2.5. The issue seems to be rectified in the latest version of WordPress, sending out a tweet at the appropriate time.

2. If you have a post that is time-stamped, go back and “re-save” it after the post has gone live. This seems to push the WordTwit into action.

Naturally, the first solution is a lot easier and it’s something that you’ll probably want to do anyways. Happy tweeting!

Last week we asked has Who makes the best Notebook and 48% said Mac is the best one. This weeks question is…

Looking for an opportunity to network and meet other business people? The Langley Chamber of Commerce is putting together 2008 Business After Business Networking & Showcase Spring Fling. This event like in the past will have booths of local Langley businesses. This year they are having a scavenger hunt and the winner will get to take home a $200 Keg Gift Certificate or free nights stays a the Super 8.

When is the event happening?
Thursday, April 24, 2008 4:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Where is it happening?
Super 8 - 26574 Gloucester Way - Langley

Registration
To register for this free event you need to RSVP by phoning 604-530-6656.

It’s a bit of a paradox to say that you should expect the unexpected, because if you’re expecting it, it is no longer unexpected. That said, although you may not be able to expect the unexpected, you should do your best to be prepared for it. This is a very important thing to keep in mind when starting and running your business, whether it be an online endeavor or the opening of a brick-and-mortar store.

This is why it is of paramount importance that you keep a keen eye on your cash flow and always have a contingency fund in place in case of emergencies and unexpected expenses. The size of your contingency fund will depend on a number of factors, like the amount of money coming in and out on a regular basis, as well as the possibility of having to repair and/or replace expensive elements of your business. If you run a printing shop, for example, it can be very expensive to replace one of those large printers. If you’re a freelance writer, on the other hand, the largest replacement cost would just be a simple computer.

In dealing with the cost of day-to-day operations, it’s easy to stretch your cash flow thin. You’re going to have bills to pay on a continual basis, but you should have a fund set aside to take care of unexpected expenses. Don’t leave yourself in the unfavorable position of having to ask for a (potentially high-interest) short-term loan from the bank just to cover an unexpected expense.

Compared to their desktop counterparts, laptop computers have typically come up short with the level of internal storage capacity. That’s about to change with the arrival of the Asus M70, the first notebook to come with a full terabyte of storage right of the box. In order to reach this major milestone, Asus outfitted the M70 with two 500GB Hitachi Travelstar hard drives. Yes, it’s not a single drive with a terabyte, but it’s the next best thing.

Now, you wouldn’t expect Asus to create the world’s first laptop with a full terabyte of memory and then equip it with a series of sub-par parts, right? Asus keeps the good stuff going with a large 17-inch WUXGA display, four (!) Altec Lansing speakers, HDMI output, and Blu-ray support, making the M70 a great entertainment-minded computer. This also means that it would be great for presentations and other business applications.

Rounding out the specs are a biometric fingerprint reader, Intel Core 2 Duo processor, Windows Vista, integrated webcam with facial recognition, and up to 4GB of RAM. There’s no indication regarding pricing or availability, but I’d imagine that the Asus M70 will fetch quite the pretty penny when it hit shelves.

Over the weekend I had an idea for an easy to create and fun Twitter application. Like various other social mediums I like to build something so I can better understand how that medium works. I also like to ensure that our hosting will work with that medium if someone asks. Reading through the Twitter API it became very apparent that a Magic 8 Ball application would be very easy to build. I sent a tweet to Matt and asked him if he wanted to build it together. Matt agreed and we development began.

How does it work?
The Magic 8 Ball Application allows you to send a yes or no question to @magic_8ball and it will reply back with an answer to your question. Matt and I agreed to make the code open and available for you to see and use it if you wish. You can reuse the Magic 8 Ball Twitter Application script to create your own script. I think it would be easy to modify this script to make a coin toss game and rock-paper-scissors.

Problems with developing on twitter
From the development I would make a few suggestions to Twitter. The 70 replies per hour limit slows down development and will mean that the application will only be able to do 70 replies an hour. Also they limit the API to pull 20 replies. If you had 22 questions the script would only reply to the first 20. Twitter should look at the Facebook development model which they approve scripts which can then increase these limits if approved. I did email twitter to request these levels be increased and as of this post I have not heard back.

Monetizing your twitter application
If your developing an application for twitter there is a limited amount of revenue models. You could sell the link monthly in your applications profile. You could of course sell the application but usually people only buy applications that generate money. You could spam your users but usually that will cause people to stop using it. I think it would be hard to generate some good revenue from a twitter application at this time.

Do you have a twitter application you would like to develop?