Before I give some reasons why I use Twitter, let's have a look at some stats.

I sent out roughly 2660 tweets, on average 8.4 per day:

Looking at my tweet density, I hardly seem to be getting any sleep, which is not entirely true

Over the last year, I tried quite a few twitter clients, but I like Tweetie the most (yes, I'm using a Mac):

Why I use Twitter

• Twitter helps me to keep informed about topics I am interested in, while at the same time giving me the chance to get in touch with the sources of that information and give feedback.
• Many vendors and dev teams have Twitter accounts and use them to twitter about what they're currently doing / developing, again helping me to keep up-to-date about current developments
• Twitter helps me to "hear" what others are saying about the tools I and my teammates develop. Twitter clients like TweetDeck and Nambu allow you to define custom searches. E.g., I've got a search defined for "Xtext OR DSLs" so I will be informed each time someone tweets about either Xtext or DSLs. This allows me to give instant feedback to users needing help or ranting about Xtext (actually, most users praise Xtext, so I'm mostly using this search to retweet that praise)
• Twitter is like a big room in which everybody can hear what you're saying. You can use this fact to use Twitter as a marketing channel, and that's what we do with Xtext, too. We get the word out on Xtext, e.g. by announcing cool new features or talks we're giving at upcoming conferences.
• I also use Twitter to get / keep in touch with co-workers, friend and also clients. More often than not when meeting new clients, I hear people say "nice to meet you in person after we have been talking on Twitter". Sometimes, I use Twitter instead of my phone to ping people ("give me a call when you are available") - works great!
• By using Twitter, you will actually feel much closer to your peers ("tweeps") than you did before. This holds true especially for the Eclipse crowd. Many of us follow each other on Twitter and thus know what we do in our day to day job (and in our spare time, too) better than before.

Some recommendations

Whether you're new to Twitter or have been using it for years, here is my list of recommendations for Twitter. May it be inspirational for you:

• Find a decent client. The web interface is O.K., but in order to use all the power of Twitter, you need to use a real client. My main work horse is Tweetie (on the Mac), mostly because it allows me to view conversations in a really neat manner. On the iPhone I recommend TweetDeck - you can easily define additional columns to display custom searches, DMs, tweets nearby and so on. Nambu also is very nice - and native! TweetDeck on the Mac is also great, but eats a lot of resources, which is why I rarely use it any more. If you want to issue tweets without losing context, give Google Quick Search Bar a try - there's a plug-in that allows you to tweet from QSB.
• Do NOT protect your updates. After all, you want to get in touch with other people. So there really is no point in protecting your updates.
• If you're new to Twitter, make sure to post some tweets before starting to follow other people. You want to make sure other people are following you too, but why should they follow you if you've got nothing to say?
• We're not interested in disgusting details about you, your family or your friends, so keep them for you.
• I follow people mostly for professional reasons. Tweeting personal stuff is perfectly OK and can add that grain of salt which makes you human, but you should try to keep a balance.

Summing up

Summing up all things, using Twitter has helped me to get in touch with a huge amount of people I wouldn't have interacted with if I hadn't been using Twitter.

If you read all this, let me lift the secret about the obviously wrong mathematical equation in the title of this post: it's the number of characters you may use for one tweet (140), the number of days since I started using Twitter and the total number of tweets I sent out (2659). Actually, as I am using Twitter Tools for Wordpress, this blog post will automatically be announced on Twitter and thus be tweet number 2660.

I am going to try to post one tool recommendation per week - unless I am on vacation or speaking at a conference.

So without further ado, here is the first tool: Skitch!

Skitch is a tool that helps you to create screenshots. I need to create lots of screenshots: for documentation, to explain things to people by mail, and to annotate my bug reports. Of course, Mac OSX has several shortcuts to create screenshots, so what's the deal about Skitch?

First of all, Skitch allows you to view and edit your screenshot: press CMD+SHIFT+5, select the capture area and voilà - Skitch opens a window showing the screenshot just taken:

You can now use the tools at the left hand side of the Skitch window to highlight certain areas of the screenshot, which comes on handy if you're filing a bug report for your favorite open source tool.

When you're done with editing, you can either drag the image to another application (using the "drag me" tab at the bottom of the window) or you can post the image to the web. I have set up Skitch to use my Flickr account, so I can use the images in other tools right away (I am writing my blog posts in Mars Edit, which has a great Flickr integration, so I've got a complete tool chain here). Skitch supports a number of file formats (JPG, SVG, PDF, TIF, GIF, BMP and native Skitch), so you can select the desired file format before sending the image to the web or dragging it to another application.

All images are also stored in a local history, so if you need to go back to one of the screenshots you took a while ago, no problem with Skitch.

Skitch really has made my life on my Mac easier because it integrates with other tools (both online and offline) so well and because it eliminates many steps that made dealign with screenshots so cumbersome before.

You can download Skitch beta from http://www.skitch.com. You will be asked to sign up, however, both the download and the software will work without registering.

Happy screen shooting

Here's how:

The hardest part of it all is to create the config file for the formatter. To create it, select one of your existing projects, and activate project specific formatter settings (Properties -> Java Code Style -> Formatter -> Enable project specific settings):

Configure the code formatter as desired. Click OK when you're done.

Using a file explorer, navigate to <path to your workspace>/<yourproject>/.settings and copy org.eclipse.jdt.core.prefs to a new location. This file contains all your formatting settings.

To invoke the code formatter using the command line issue the following command:

<path-to-eclipse>\eclipse.exe -vm <path-to-vm>\java.exe -application org.eclipse.jdt.core.JavaCodeFormatter -verbose -config <path-to-config-file>\org.eclipse.jdt.core.prefs <path-to-your-source-files>\*.java

In case the formatter complains about your code, your code probably contains Java 5 constructs and you have to add the following lines to your config file to make everything work:

org.eclipse.jdt.core.compiler.compliance=1.5
org.eclipse.jdt.core.compiler.codegen.targetPlatform=1.5
org.eclipse.jdt.core.compiler.source=1.5


But why weren't they copied? Didn't I tell Ant to copy all files by specifying "**/*.*"?

No, I didn't! The pattern "*.*" means "all files that contain a dot". Doh. Timezone files do not have a dot. The solution to the problem is quite simple: just remove the ".*", and you're done:

  <!-- copy JRE -->
  <copy todir="${target.client.dir}/jre">
    <fileset dir="${project.jre.dir}/jre">
      <include name="**/*" />
  </fileset>


So, if you want to copy all files, remember to not use the "*.*" notation used to us Windows users, but use the "*" notation used to Linux users.

Since I do not own an iPod, but instead call a Palm Tungsten E my own, I wondered whether I could use my Palm for listening to podcasts. Yes, I can! Here's how I did it:

1. First, get a podcast aggregator. I use Doppler.
2. Get an MP3 player for your Palm. I use Real One Player for Palm, which came with my Tungsten E.
3. Now it is about time to subscrie to a podcast feed. Here is the link to Frank's Tonabnehmer: http://frankwestphal.podhost.de/rss
4. Doppler supports sending all downloaded files to an external programm, e.g. iTunes. That's where we can plug-in!
5. Download this ZIP file and place the contained batch file in a directory of your choice.
6. You'll have to adjust the path information in the file, of course.
7. Open the Doppler config dialog and associate MP3 files with your new command file. The application field must contain the path to the batch file you just extracted, the parameters field must contain the text "{1}".
8. Now, place an SD card in an SD writer attached to your computer and start downloading a podcast. After downloading has finished, the batch file will copy the MP3 files to your Palm's SD card.
9. Just place the SD card back into your palm and you're ready to go!

The free version display ad banners at the top of the window. To make them go away, you can buy a license at 34 EUR. If you happen to have issue 8 of the german c't magazine, you are eligible to buy the browser for only 8 EUR - a great deal!

Oh, and here are the new features and changes: Opera changelog

I have been using Opera since version 7.x and never want to use any other browser. The most useful features in my eyes are:
Tabbed browsing
Support for sessions (opens a set of sites you browse regularly)
Mouse gestures
Quick Preferences (now, you can enable / disable you proxy with just 2 (!) keystrokes)

So, all I could tell him was to stop using MS Project for managing the project and use some custom made Excel table or a tool like eGroupware that has a built-in project management module that is not trying to be smart.

My project manager was in the room when I was talking to my former colleague on the phone and when I said "all project managers that I know of use Excel tables and only use Project for drawing Gannt charts", she put two thumbs up.

I just don't understand why this tool is so expensive and why people still try using it...