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I’m real tempted to ditch Twitter.

I interact with Twitter in three ways:

• through their web site
• through SMS
• through ping.fm

Most of my interaction with Twitter is through SMS. Nearly all of the updates that I receive from Twitter are via SMS. I “follow” a number of people (74, as I write this) but receive updates via SMS for perhaps only a third of those. I started out having everyone’s updates sent to me via SMS, but some people either 1) post way too frequently and end up annoying the shit out of me or 2) just don’t say enough interesting things (e.g., the “signal-to-noise” ratio is way outta control).

Most (but not all) of my updates are done through ping.fm. My BlackBerry has an AIM client and that’s how I communicate with ping.fm. I send updates to “pingfm” on AIM and those are broadcasted out to Facebook, Pownce (which I hardly ever use), and Twitter. This is nice because I can update Twitter and Facebook at the same time. Because I don’t want every update going to Facebook (e.g. “@ replies”), I usually send those back to Twitter as an SMS.

Last, if I’m at home and on the computer I usually keep Twitter open in a tab and occasionally refresh it, just to keep up on everyone that I don’t receive SMS updates for.

When I first signed up for Twitter, my primary method of interacting with it was via IM. The “track” feature was awesome and allowed me to find others who had similar interests as mine. Once the shit hit the fan with regard to IM (in other words, when it became massively unreliable), they pulled support for it. Suckage.

Then, several months ago, the Twitter service as a whole became extremely unreliable for a good period. A number of folks jumped ship then. I almost did, but I stuck around.

Today, I read on the Twitter blog that they pulled support for receiving SMS updates in Canada (due to rising costs). Since Twitter has no apparent business model (and, it seems, isn’t generating any revenue), it makes sense to assume that eventually the cash supply will be running low. At some point, they’ll pull support for SMS updates in the U.S. as well, at which time I’ll really have no use for the service anymore.

Maybe I should just get out now.

Are there any viable alternatives? It’d be nice to be able to send and receive updates via SMS. I’d be content with receiving updates via SMS and sending updates through another method (e.g. ping.fm, web only, etc.). What are my choices?

the iphone 2.0 comes out tomorrow morning.

here i lay, on the couch, watching the videos and downloading applications from the app store (aim, facebook, google mobile app, remote, twitterific), even though i don’t have an iphone. yet.

you see, in about seven hours the stores will be opening up and i shall have one. i’m not really sure why, though. i mean, yeah, they’re cool and all, but i have a completely functional blackberry pearl sitting right here.

why must i have an iphone?

the truth is i really don’t know. but i must. and i shall. and i will.

if you need a beta code for ping.fm, use “pingofpings”. it worked for me a few minutes ago.

what is ping.fm?

ping.fm was created for the sole purpose of making it as easy as possible to share your posts with the world. now you don’t have to fumble around the web in order to post anymore, you can just post once, and be done with it.

the idea came about when making some posts to twitter and tumblr . the idea of posting the exact same information in two places seemed a bit tedious, so ping.fm was born.

the toronto star tells the story of chris avenir, a first-year student facing academic expulsion “for helping run an online chemistry study group via facebook“.

“so we each would be given chemistry questions and if we were having trouble, we’d post the question and say: ‘does anyone get how to do this one? i didn’t get it right and i don’t know what i’m doing wrong.’ exactly what we would say to each other if we were sitting in the dungeon.”

as an educator, i think ryerson university is taking this way too far (based on what i know). if there was blatant cheating going on, then by all means punish those involved. if this is, as the article says, the students were simply using the forum to “brainstorm” in groups then it is completely absurd.

i *encourage* my students to work together in groups. working together in groups in something that higher education should teach you. every one of these students will have to work together in teams once they get out into the “real world” and will have to collaborate with their peers. it should also be common knowledge that having multiple people in your group who can provide their own insights is an asset, and makes the team greater than the sum of its parts.

again, blatant academic dishonesty should be punished. from what i’ve read, however, that is not the case here.

best of luck to you, chris avenir.

i just joined the “stop hillary clinton: one million strong against hillary” group on facebook. you should too.