Spreadtweet

Those who know me, know I'm a sucker for finding ways to look busy while not actually doing anything; it is true that the lazy man works twice as hard, and that's why I do it--I like working hard.

So when Diana emailed a link to Spreadtweet, I just had to share! Spreadtweet is one of the most brilliant lazy man solutions I've come across in a long time! It let's you use Microsoft Excel to Twitter...that way you look like you're actually doing work.

The Revenge of Gawker

A few years back, a publisher paid Gawker $250,000 to write a book; they had thousands (perhaps millions) of readers, so how could it be a bad thing? It turned out to be a very bad thing. I'm not sure how many copies it finally sold...I know in 2007 (when it first came out) less than 500 copies were sold. I imagined this number has grown thanks to places like the .99 cent store, who probably currently have it on there shelves. Whatever the numbers were, it was disappointing, and it made a lot of editors think twice before shelling out cash for a book by a blogger.

So what does that have to do with anything? HarperCollins just paid former Gawker writer Nick Douglas (no relation to Scott Douglas) a five figure advance to write (if you call this writing) a book of his favorite Twitter posts! The only thing odder than paying money to read a book with nothing but Twitter post, is that the guy can actually find enough Twitter post to fill up a book an entire book.

I sarcastically asked a few weeks ago if Twitter was making us dumber...well, we might find out real soon.

Is Twitter Making Us Dumberer?

It used to be we had blogs to release our grammatically incorrect thoughts and ramblings; they weren't exactly the best thing to the English language, but at least they usually had some substance and occasionally made us think. True, they have made teens dumb, but it's not like they weren't heading in that direction anyway, so I don't think blogs were completely to blame.

Now, however, there is new cause for alarm with the increasingly popular website Twitter. For every new person who subscribes to Twitter the message gets louder: it is socially acceptable to talk in a fragmented txt message language that only sometimes makes sense (Shaq's Twitter account is a perfect example of this).

Like most people, I firmly believe that it's better to jump on a socially irresponsible bandwagon, then be left in the dust, so I joined Twitter.

Now, however, I wonder if perhaps Twitter makes us dumb enough? Surely, there has to be something out there that is a dumbed down version of Twitter for people who can't stand the thought of reading 140 characters?

Can someone please create an emoticon version of Twitter where users are allowed to only post 5 characters? Can someone please make us dumberer?

To help you get started, here's 9 emoticons that should put on the right path:

:-) Happy
:D Laugh
=O Shocked
:-( Sad
:P Tongue Out
:/ Annoyed
;-) Wink
<3 Love :? Confused

I'm On Twitter You Twit

When I started a blog, I figured most people couldn't handle the occasional ramblings from me and my day to day life; my wife has convinced me, however, that people want to know more about my personal life then just occasional ramblings; she claims there are people with such voyeuristic tendencies that they actually get excited to know you had a veggie burger for lunch or spend ten minutes in the bathroom. Actually, I wouldn't say she convinced me; I've been convinced of this for a long time--she just took the initiative of creating a Twitter page for me because I was too lazy to do it myself. Now that it's up, she says it's rude if I ignore her efforts, so I guess you can say I've been quilted into it. She even put a pretty background on my profile…FYI it’s the apartment that we live in.

If you are a voyeurist by trade, maybe you simply are a little too into Twitter, or maybe you just aren’t yet convinced that writers/librarians are basically the most boring people on Earth…if that’s the case then my info is below. If nothing else I’ll update it much more then my blog…for about a month, by which time I’ll probably be bored with it and stop doing it altogether.

My wife, Diana, says it's great because I can Twitter I'm at Disneyland or the mall and meet people there...I told her this isn't great, this is stalking. Perhaps we are just confused about the definition of word?

My Twitter info:
scott_douglas
http://twitter.com/scott_douglas