Alex Harries's diary

Woohoo!  

Sorry...

(No video? Click here). 

... and the end of the HE tunnel is approaching - tomorrow morning, on stage in front of a Guildhall packed with people, I'm going to trip arse-over-tit graduate from Portsmouth University.

And about time, too ;o)

Good luck to everyone graduating this week, have fun if you're going to the Grad Ball, and have a really good summer no matter what you end up doing, plus a special good luck to everyone who - like me - is having to take resits to get their "Hons".

Right, that's everyone covered - I'm off to the pub. Who's joining me?

Twitter is a way of posting mini-updates onto the interweb about what you're doing, and works in much the same way as Facebook's status, except you can do more with it. It's perfect for the narcissistic and bored; two areas in which I excel ;o)

I mentioned playing about with Twitter a little while ago, but never really got into it because I couldn't figure out how to pull the updates onto web pages, so I couldn't see how it would add value to a website.

A couple of weeks ago I spotted BBC reporter Ben Hammersley was touring Turkey to cover the country's election, and was using social networking sites Twitter and del.icio.us (to name a couple) to syndicate content back onto his BBC homepage which had been set up specially to cover the - experimental - feature.

Since I'm supposed to be working my socks off on my Final Year Project, I decided to do something else entirely and, having read all there is to learn about video standards (don't ask - been trying some DIY with an expensive piece of a/v equipment), I turned my attention back to Twitter.

I've now signed myself up for an account (despite the worrying - but not unique - feeling I might already be too old for this. Then again, maybe not ;o), found out I can easily post updates from my mobile by SMS, and found how to add a list of my latest updates from Twitter in my sidebar.

Ok, now I've kinda done it, I want to figure out an easy way for everyone on UPSU.net to add their Twitter information to UPSU.net, so I've put a new to-do in the to-do list: add a box for "my Twitter ID" to peoples' public profile edit screen, then automagically display their latest x updates in their diary sidebar and their profile page. Maybe we could even display their latest update with their forum posts...?

And... Well, that's the rub; since the point of all this - if there is a point - would probably be to attract more students to use UPSU.net, what would Pompey's students want out of this? How would we make it easy and intuitive to add and use? How could we make it obvious what it does? And, of course, how much peripheral marketing will we have to do to let people know why they should bother with all this Twitter nonsense? Maybe a little market research might be in order...

The finer details aside, the SMS updates aspect definitely makes this worth looking into a bit more; maybe not this month, but before the start of the new academic year, when I'm hoping to have had time to revamp the blogs homepage to make it a lot more understandable, I'd like to see it all up and running.

I'd also really like us to come up with some ways we can use Twitter, perhaps for a feature during the Freshers' period where freshers are encouraged to Twitter their first experiences of Uni life in Portsmouth for a live-updated feature piece on UPSU.net?

If we found the right people - i.e. bods who aren't coy with their updates - this could possibly pave the way for some really frank, insightful dialogue, and it's definitely something with potential to apply to every area of what the Union does - welfare, entertainment, academic support... Everything, in fact, apart from the kitchen sink.

p.s. BBC Radio 1 are on Twitter...

Since one of this blog's remits is to let the students of Portsmouth University know what they're getting for their money by employing me, here's the, err, "highlights" of the last month's work:

• Sabb/UPSU Media stuff: harassed, cajoled and begged until the order for the new 24" iMac suite went through
• Sabb stuff: met with numerous Uni bods , and learnt a bit about how the University operates on a decision-making and budgetary level (fascinating stuff. Maybe...)
• Web stuff: finally finished the Grad Ball website (homepage) after plenty of ball-ache, making sure we answered as many FAQs as we could, as openly and honestly as we could
• More web stuff: asked Steve, Mike and Fraggy whether we could benefit from the services of online development chap Kris Talikowski (the chap who judged our website as the best SU site in the country) - I haven't heard back yet, but then it's a very busy time for everyone
• Answered around 300 e-mails, and junked probably twice as many again
• Played with power tools while helping (or, in the real world, "hindering") build the new desks to kit out what was the sports office until a couple of days ago, ready for the Union's membership services bods (Steve, Mike and Graham) to move in, and ahead of the annual "Sabbatical Feng Shui" of the Sabb office's desks (and the inevitable associated fighting over space and territorial behaviour... of which I will no doubt be a part, being the child that I am... ;o)
• Found out Chill radio isn't on TV any more - bugger
• Sabb stuff: I'm going to Ibiza in September and the Malibu Soundclash is coming to Pompey (during the autumn term) - nice!
  
• Sabb stuff: re-read the minutes from the last SAGA meeting - thrilling stuff (sarcasm aside, quite an important meeting) and wrote a load of notes & questions I want answered
• Web stuff: created the UPSU news tracker to keep an eye on the site's health
• Web stuff: created a hee-yowge, site-wide tracking system (which the news tracker is built on)
• Sabb/UPSU Media stuff: had a looooong meeting with some Pure:FM bods about their planned forthcoming rebrand. Hopefully they don't dislike me too much after that meeting...!
• Web stuff: pickled my noodle over the various levels of group permissions interactions in the UPSU Groups system (I still haven't got it entirely worked out...) - again, fascinating... Maybe.
• Web security stuff: added a lock-out "feature" on peoples' accounts on UPSU.net - get the password wrong 5 times and you can't log in for a further 30 minutes. Handy to slow down brute-force password attacks, and a pain in the arse if you simply forgot your password.
• Web stuff: put the music survey online for Pure:FM
• Sabb stuff: attended ...
  
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