Who on Earth 2.0 is … Chris Messina?
October 20, 2010
Chris is the guy who came up with the first Twitter hashtag#. This was way back in … 2007, 23rd of August to be precise. The first hashtagged tweet was ‘how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?’ Not too exciting maybe, but hashtags have proved to be incredibly useful ways of grouping conversations and leaving a sort of paper trail so people can check what’s been tweeted on a particular topic. In fact, Chris called them channel tags and at the outset was the only one to use them until autumn 2007 when people started tagging tweets about the forest fires in San Diego and congressional voting. The rest is history, nowadays ppl hashtag just about anything & everything, but it still serves its purpose, such a simple thing as a pound sign!
twentyten
January 13, 2010
…streamingonlinerelevancebehaviourdriven
focussedidealisticrealisticnetworkcommunity
knowledgesocietythinkplaydooutofthebox
riskchanceopportunitycrisisdownshift
twentytentweetstempusfugitflowingfleeting…
Ex-pat in CAT: Never mind the ‘bolets’
October 10, 2009
Once again the mushroom picking season is upon us and keen mushroom hunters are dusting off their knives and baskets and setting their Tom Toms, ready to set out in search of their ‘precious’. Here in Catalonia there’s an almost religious fervour when it comes to mushrooms. When I tell people I don’t really like them, I’m met with stunned expressions. How can you live in Catalonia and not like mushrooms? Heresy! In English we tend to use the all-embracing term ‘mushroom’, but in Catalan each variety has its own rich, earthy name. One of the most popular is ‘rovello’, which in English is… ‘an edible kind of mushroom’. You see what I’m getting at? You simply have to admire the whole culture of it – the enthusiasm is catching.
