It was three years ago today that I first signed up to Twitter. I was user number 12838, and you can check your own number by clicking on your RSS feed and looking towards the end of the URL. Luckily the user name alistair was still available at the point.

I can not remember my first tweet, and Twitter removed all the older ones before I was able to make a backup, but like so many people’s first tweet it was along the lines of “Figuring out what Twitter is”.

Although I have not used it continually for three years I have for the last couple and and frighteningly it has become part of my life. I have made some great friends through it, keep in contact with a lot more, become part of one of the best (and possibly maddest) photo walk groups, know what is happening in the tech and non tech world as it happens, and feel part of a great set of online communities.

Originally it was a great way to keep in the loop and know what friends are up to. Today people are more open and broadcasting to the works when then tweet, but as a result they are [very sensibly] less open, and that in many ways is a shame. I am considering doing the same by being slightly less open and unprotecting my updates.

I think the secret of Twitter’s success is naturally luck, but also adapting it’s self and allowing user to almost add functionality. I don’t know if it can maintain it’s position forever, but unless it does something really stupid I see it continuing for quite a while.

Some good news. Dorkbot NCL returns for a second time on November 17th. This is when we get together to have a look at what exciting things we have made.

This month we will find out about the mystery of Humanaquarium, Brendan Ratliff will be composing using tracking techniques, and Touchscape will be showing off touch technology.

More details can be found on the Centre for Life web site.

Earlier in the year I waffled of at BarCampLeeds about multi factor authentication and tried to persuade everyone to get a PayPal security key.

I learned at Charity Hack that PayPal were discontinuing the security key. I don’t know the full story, but it has been suggested that it could be because of cost.

The security key has essentially been replaced by SMS in the UK. So now you can register your mobile number, and when you try and log in as normal PayPay will send you an SMS message with a one time password to enter. Although not 100% secure or reliable this does overcome the authentication security concerns affecting most PayPal users. Because of this I strongly recommend you use it if it is practical for you to do so.

Now the good news. You can still purchase a PayPay security key for £3 from the US PayPay site, and it is the amazing credit card sized hardware key pictured above. This key can also be used on ebay and other VIP web sites. There are no excuses, even if you only log in once a year you should please get one now.

At last night’s Dorkbot Newcastle the idea of organising a hardware focused Hack Day before the second European Maker Faire in Newcastle was floated.

A “hack day” is when like minded people get to together to create things. This would create interesting things to demonstrate at the Maker Faire, bring people together and introduce others to our local tech community, and help support anyone stuck on an element of there home brew projects.

This will not be a massive event with lots of the razzmatazz of larger Hack Days, but should still be a fun event focused on producing interesting things.

It could be a one or two day event, or perhaps even spread over several evenings. It could also be a weekend event, or potentiality in the days before the Maker Faire. It all depends on what people and when we can squeeze it in.

So…. What are your thoughts? Are you interested in attending? When is good for you? Please let me know your thoughts.

Two years ago I boggled about Microsoft Photosynth but have not had opportunity to play with generating a synth before now.

This weekend I decided to give it a go at the more unusual BarCampBrighton4 venue. I followed the Photosynth tutorial with a few alterations to cope with dividers. The resulting synths are…

• Ground Floor
• First Floor
• Basement
• Yard
• Out Front

They may not be perfect, and I have learned a few things from the exercise, but I remain impressed with the technology. Please let me know what you think and think about having a go yourself.

Thank you to Martin for lending me his machines to do the uploads at the venue as the Photosynth software will not run on my Netbook.

In the past I found Plaxo very useful. It started life as a contact manager where you stored the contact details for business and personal use. It’s unique selling point was that your contacts could update there own details once for all Plaxo users, so to update your list you just need to click a button to accept the changes.

This was fairly useful, and it became more so and more of my contacts started using it. It took me a while to trust the site, as it does with all sites that hold personal data, but I do trust it as much as I do any other online service.

It also had the advantage of syncing contacts and calenders between Outlook, GMail and many other online services. While friends were using many services to sync there contacts and calenders I was using just Plaxo with one plugin. I did start to write a blog post about how great this was, but like so many I never got round to finishing it. Sorry.

Then at some point Plaxo realised that they had the backbone of a Social Network, and created “Plaxo Pulse” that brings all your content in to the Plaxo interface. In some ways this is nice, and optional, but not something that was useful to me or the Plaxo user base at the time.

Sadly with next to no notice the syncing with Outlook has been made a premium service, so will need playing for. There is nothing for nothing and the site does need to make money to continue, so I will not complain about this, but I have decided to move away from Plaxo as it is no longer of use to me. I have decided to use the contact management in GMail for now that can be synced to Outlook using a free app.

I will continue to use Plaxo to sync with other “backup” online services (Yahoo and Live mail for example) for the moment as there is no reason to stop. I will let Pulse continue consolidate the rest of my feeds for the same reason, and one friend prefers to consume it that way. Sadly though I do feel that today is the day I regrettably stopped using Plaxo.

Last week we all turned up at the Guardian offices for Music Hack Day not quite knowing what to expect but prepared for most eventualities. I still did not know what to hack together and no one I knew had any real ideas yet.

There was not really an opportunity to find anyone else to do something with so I decided to do something with my old WaveFinder DAB radio, possibly doing something with RadioDNS and linking it to some of the sponsoring online services. Unforchantly a couple of hours later I still could not get the hardware working on my laptop so decided to play with the Arduino and make some kind of music machine as a learning exercise.

After a lot of fiddling, scavenging, stripping wires, battling with wifi, messing around with hardware, lots of chatting, a late night visit to Avenue Q, some Geocaching, three hours sleep, and drinking lost of tea the percussion machine was born.

At the end of the event I had the device using a couple of servos to play some bottles, a cup, a bottle-top maracas-tamborine-like-thing, and a can. The creation was not a practical hack, but something to learn from while I was creating it, and an excuse to be a little silly. I think the Guardian article sums it up well. I quote…

Come 2pm on Sunday, we gathered to see what people had come up with. Now, some of the presentations were a little – how can I put this – impenetrable for a non-techie like me. Others, however, seemed happy to admit they’d spent the night messing around on a project for no other benefit than their (and our) own amusement (step forward the Percussion Machine, a hardware hack using an Arduino microcontroller that involved turning some empty beer bottles into a drumkit).

I did not take the presentation overly seriously but everyone appeared to enjoy the stupidity of the creation. There were also a lot of great hacks that I enjoyed and are worth a look though. In the end I was awarded a prize by tinker.it for being so creative in using things around us to build the machine with, that was nice. :-)