As Twitter suffers through another period of sporadic downtime many critics have pointed to Google’s new service Buzz as an example of the type of social media service that doesn’t go down and seems to be able to scale with the number of users that have been adopting it.

The only problem with the comparison is that as of 6:00 am today the Google Buzz site while still displaying Buzz postings seems to be rejecting posts. The latest posts are also not coming in sequential order and scanning quickly the latest live postings appear to be about an hour old.

Edit: Google Buzz is back but definitely not operating at 100%. Images aren’t reliably being attached and the service is having trouble with editing.

Google Buzz

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Connecticut Department of Transportation traffic alerts are now available free via Twitter. These helpful updates provide nearly instant notification of traffic tie-ups and accidents. You have the option to subscribe to a statewide feed or one of four different districts.

Connecticut Traffic updates can be separately monitored on Twitter using any of the following feeds courtesy of the CT DOT (scroll down for a click-able link to each feed):

Use the following links to subscribe to these updates:

District One Traffic Incidents

http://www.twitter.com/CTDOT_District1
Andover, Berlin, Bloomfield, Bolton, Bristol, Cheshire, Coventry, Cromwell, Durham, East Hartford, East Windsor, Ellington, Enfield, Glastonbury, Hartford, Manchester, Meriden, Middlefield, Middletown, New Britain, Newington, Plainville, Rocky Hill, Somers, Southington, South Windsor, Stafford, Tolland, Union, Vernon, West Hartford, Wethersfield, Willington, Windsor, Windsor Locks, Wolcott.

District Two Traffic Incidents

http://www.twitter.com/CTDOT_District2

Ashford, Bozrah, Brooklyn, Canterbury, Chaplin, Chester, Clinton, Colchester, Columbia, Deep River, East Haddam, East Hampton, East Lyme, Eastford, Essex, Franklin, Griswold, Groton, Haddam, Hampton, Hebron, Killingly, Killingworth, Lebanon, Ledyard, Lisbon, Lyme, Mansfield, Marlborough, Montville, New London, North Stonington, Norwich, Old Lyme, Old Saybrook, Plainfield, Pomfret, Portland, Preston, Putnam, Salem, Scotland, Sprague, Sterling, Stonington, Thompson, Voluntown, Waterford, Westbrook, Windham, Woodstock.

District Three Traffic Incidents

http://www.twitter.com/CTDOT_District3

Bethany, Branford, Bridgeport, Darien, East Haven, Easton, Fairfield, Greenwich, Guilford, Hamden, Madison, Milford, Monroe, New Canaan, New Haven, North Branford, North Haven, Norwalk, Orange, Shelton, Stamford, Stratford, Trumbull, Wallingford, West Haven, Weston, Westport, Wilton, Woodbridge.

District Four Traffic Incidents

http://www.twitter.com/CTDOT_District4

Ansonia, Avon, Barkhamsted, Beacon Falls, Bethel, Bethlehem, Bridgewater, Brookfield, Burlington, Canaan, Canton, Colebrook, Cornwall, Danbury, Derby, East Granby, Farmington, Goshen, Granby, Hartland, Harwinton, Kent, Litchfield, Middlebury, Morris, Naugatuck, New Fairfield, New Hartford, New Milford, Newtown, Norfolk, North Canaan, Oxford, Plymouth, Prospect, Redding, Ridgefield, Roxbury, Salisbury, Seymour, Sharon, Sherman, Simsbury, Southbury, Suffield, Thomaston, Torrington, Warren, Washington, Waterbury, Watertown, Winchester, Woodbury.

via: CT DOT – Follow e-Traffic Incidents on Twitter

How To Setup SMS Messaging With Twitter For DOT Traffic Alerts

Setup your Twitter account so that all messages from the CT DOT are sent directly to your phone as a text message. First be certain that you are on an unlimited SMS text plan so as not to incur significant charges for SMS messages.

Twitter allows you to set your account so that Twitter messages from anyone that you follow are sent to your phone as SMS text.

To enable this feature, first log into your Twitter account and go to the settings – mobile.

The Twitter service will have you send an SMS text message to 40404. Upon confirming your Twitter account/password you will be activated to receive SMS text messages from those Twitter users you follow.

Tip: You can follow more than one person and opt to receive all their messages to your SMS inbox.
Next go to the appropriate CT DOT Twitter account (review the list above to find the appropriate account you’d like to receive messages from) and turn on the mobile receipt of messages to your phone.

After you’ve enabled your Twitter account so that SMS messages can be sent to your phone, and you’ve told Twitter which accounts you’d like mobile updates for then you will start to receive SMS messages whenever a new “tweet” is issued by the follower(s) you’ve selected.

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Online retailer Despair.com has this cool social media t-shirt that sums up the world of being social online pretty well. Of course it doesn’t apply to you and me – but some of those creepy over-sharing people deserve this in their stocking . Cost is $15.95.

Social Media T-Shirt – $15.95

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Tweetie 2.1 is now available in the iTunes store. Tweetie is a very popular application used to broadcast Twitter messages  from the iPhone. The 2.1 upgrade has been eagerly anticipated because while the web based Twitter service added features such as geolocation and lists those features had yet to make it into most Twitter clients. This free upgrade provides  much improved Twitter geo-tagging (now a feature also included natively in Twitter) as well as re-tweet and Twitter Lists support. A long awaited “report spam” feature should help cut down on those mult-level marketers who seem to believe that social media was created for repeating their inane messages over and over and over. If you already own Tweetie 2 then Tweetie 2.1 is a free upgrade. If your not using Tweetie 2 then the cost is $2.99 and it’s available in the iTunes App Store now.

Tweetie 2.1 via TC

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Twitter has just enabled geotagging support for all accounts. This features, which is turned off by default and must be enabled, tags each of your tweets with your location. Once application updates are released that use this feature it will be much easier to view locations of people at an event, such as a concert or conference, who are twittering.  Because this option is turned OFF by default there should be little concern about privacy and you can always delete all  location data from within your Twitter account. I’d expect that within the next two weeks the major iPhone clients will update for this feature.

Twitter

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Here’s a cool idea for the Twitter addict in your life – it’s customizable with any tweet you like and advertises for people to follow you on Twitter.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbn4E-yFOxc[/youtube]Here’s a 16 minute video walk through of the new Twhirl beta. This software is a client for reading and replying to Twitter messages (as well as interacting with several other online services). Brand new features include:

• Viewing all messages where your @name is mentioned — not just those where it is at the beginning of a message
• Integration to ping.fm so you can update all your social media sites from one Twhirl panel
• Integrated search – if you create a search for a popular term such as “BlackBerry” – the results can optionally be included (and continously updated) in your main Twitter stream.  This is a very cool tool that should allow business users to more easily monitor for specific search terms such as their company name or their brands.

Twhirl is presently in beta though you can get an automatic Twhirl Beta invite by visiting this link.

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