So today I picked up the latest Technology Review and turned to an article entitled "Can Twitter Make Money? Twitter plans to become the leader in instance news-and make itself into a sustainable business in the process" by Davis Talbot.  Wow, I thought, what a title.  My next thought was WOW, what a concept--Twitter actually making money--I had never considered the possibility.  Apparently, Twitter turned its first profit with their Google and Bing multi-million dollar deals. 

While I find all of this very interesting, what really grabbed my attention were the first opening paragraphs where the author discusses a quake that occurred in California that had people twittering up a storm a full 10 minutes before the U.S. Geological Survey folks confirmed the quake.  A full 10 minutes.  I had to ask myself what a full 10 minutes could buy a person in an emergency situation.  A life maybe?!  I don't know about others, but that becomes a bit mind boggling for me.  Could a social networking site such as Twitter save lives?  I would venture to answer Yes to that question. 

So, while Twitter struggles to come up with a business model that will make their social networking site a viable, sustainable business, I believe they should continue to analyze how people are using the service.  Will Toyota, or Pizza Hut, or Wal-Mart pay Twitter for tweets that mention their name to find out if people are praising or cursing their business?  Maybe. Only time will tell.  But I believe Twitter has made an impact in the current age of technology and that the users have taken tweeting to a whole new level.  Yea, many of us still just comment on "what we are doing" versus "what's happening" (the former focusing on the personal while the latter on what is news) but we are seeing more and more "news" worthy tweets everyday.  I suspect Twitter is around to stay for a good while (or at least for another year or two, which is a long time in today's technology), and I will continue to tweet and to read.

Still trying to decide how to go about doing this project.  I believe it will begin on May 1.  I have been considering where to start with the readings.  There are so many things I want to read that are on my bookshelf staring at me right NOW.

But, for now, I'm going to discuss something I am reading for a Mentoring Meeting tomorrow.  The article is called "An Essay We're Learning to Read Responding to Alt.Style" by Michael Spooner in AltDis: Alternative Discourses and the Academy.  For me, the shaded blocks are examples of how someone attempting to edit an alt.style might try to force the writer back into a more conventional or accepted discourse style.  This Meta-commentary or meta-narrative really drives home for me the importance of understanding a piece of writing written in this style.  This type of discourse finally places some of the responsibility of making meaning on the reader.  I like that.

There were times that I asked myself if this could be considered a queering of the text, but I'm not certain.  Is it a queering of academic discourse, forcing the reader to interact with the text, ?  I don't know.

My favorite "bubble joke?"  "How many copyeditors does it take to screw in a light bulb?"  Response: "Not sure whether you mean 'change a light bulb' or 'have sex in a light bulb.' Consider revising for clarity?"  Hardee har har

Favorite word: essayistic.  God I love writers who are not afraid to make up new and innovative words.

And, I've just figured out where to start my project.  This article quotes a book I started a while back, but did not get to finish.  I will pick up and finish Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck.  A seminal piece for one of my main areas of interest.

I have yet to decide when this project should officially begin.  I keep telling myself that there is no time like the present, and yet I do not want to set myself up for failure.  This idea was inspired by the movie Julie/Julia.  Sometimes we need something to motivate or encourage us to DO something.  So this is my something.  I will be looking at some texts to start the project soon, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to suggest away.