Man, woot sure loves them some Twitter these days...

No prize is worth having to actually register with, and use, Twitter. What a pointless, stupid waste of network bandwidth. I will be SO glad when the next spoonic trend comes along and Twitter dies the death it deserves.

bsmith1 wrote:Man, woot sure loves them some Twitter these days...

yep...

While I am willing to play... i fear my complete lack of twitter skills shall hinder my chances...

I have no clue what I'm doing over there... I was tweeting with zero followers there for a week or so...

Any estimate how long this hunt will last? I don't want to start and not be able to finish... stupid east coast....grr.

This should be interesting. Will there be prizes for each round or just one prize for the person with the most wins? Or maybe small prizes for each one, but the one with the most gets a big prize?

but I hate twitter

How about "I participated" ribbons, we have to be PC

ThunderThighs wrote:I'm figuring that a sample tweet for this would be:

@wootlive answer #woothunt

where answer is your... uhm... answer.

remedial tweeting 101. sweet. thank you!

nodnetni wrote:This should be interesting. Will there be prizes for each round or just one prize for the person with the most wins? Or maybe small prizes for each one, but the one with the most gets a big prize?

No telling with woot.

Last time I played one of their geography games (a looong looong time ago) I wound up with a crappy microwave as a prize.

But seeing as how this requires using twitter, I think I shall sit it out, even if they give away a whole kitchen full of crappy appliances to the winners.

ummm..

a couple more questions if anyone wants to jump in here...

(i did look at twitters faq and had to bail because I wasted the last two days on another site and can't invest that kind of time to read that thing)

but... is there a way to receive tweets without manually refreshing all the time? I do that enough already.. sigh.

and... tweeting without follows was umm... stupid... right?

taternuggets wrote:ummm..

a couple more questions if anyone wants to jump in here...

(i did look at twitters faq and had to bail because I wasted the last two days on another site and can't invest that kind of time to read that thing)

but... is there a way to receive tweets without manually refreshing all the time? I do that enough already.. sigh.

and... tweeting without follows was umm... stupid... right?

you can follow a feed with RSS, or if your browser uses javascript, the feed will automatically refresh at regular intervals.

There also exist twitter clients that will beep at you when updates occur, if you're into that sort of thing. (I'm not)

Everyone have fun, I'll be sitting this one out.

taternuggets wrote:ummm..

a couple more questions if anyone wants to jump in here...

(i did look at twitters faq and had to bail because I wasted the last two days on another site and can't invest that kind of time to read that thing)

but... is there a way to receive tweets without manually refreshing all the time? I do that enough already.. sigh.

and... tweeting without follows was umm... stupid... right?

I enabled the SMS access because I have unlimited texting (but no data plan). You can set it to only send during certain times and only for certain people you follow. This way, you don't get tweets while you sleep and you can follow people (to see their updates via the web) but only get texts from Woot.

Twitter clients exist for most smartphones and most PC platforms (even saw an AppleII version on Gizmodo if you are way behind the times).

LayneRobinson wrote:(even saw an AppleII version on Gizmodo if you are way behind the times).

I have no freakin idea how you knew I was using one of these... but good show!!

lol.

Thanks for the help!

javamatte wrote:The early 2000's called, they want their whining about text messages back...

Seriously, just because you fail to see the value in a service does not make it pointless or stupid. Try checking with some Twitter users to see why (and how) they use it... you might be surprised at how useful and timely it can be.

I actually have some cool ideas of how you can use Twitter as a transport protocol between devices. It's a simple, well defined messaging service that could easily be used for lots of things.

Send a tweet to @YourMicrowave and it responds with "15 minutes remaining". You microwave can broadcast a message "5 minutes remaining" and you get an update, but also your coffee pot get the update and begins brewing coffee. etc. etc.

LayneRobinson wrote:I actually have some cool ideas of how you can use Twitter as a transport protocol between devices. It's a simple, well defined messaging service that could easily be used for lots of things.

Send a tweet to @YourMicrowave and it responds with "15 minutes remaining". You microwave can broadcast a message "5 minutes remaining" and you get an update, but also your coffee pot get the update and begins brewing coffee. etc. etc.

Just a couple nit-picks, but...

what the heck are you cooking in a microwave on a regular basis that takes more than 15 minutes!

my microwave dings when it's done, and that works just fine as an alert. If I'm more than five minutes travel time away from the microwave, I probably shouldn't be cooking anything in it!

note my post above about the crappy microwave from woot -- first hand experience that automating and networking of kitchen appliances is not an original idea nor a good one. just more features that will be ignored and or break.

some things were meant to be simple, and twitter only adds another layer of pointless flair on top of media that are just fine as they are for communication. If I want to know what someone is up to, I won't wait for them to send a twitter to my phone. I'll just use the phone to call them! if it's not important enough for them to call or email, I really don't need to know about it. seriously.

dang I'm getting old and cranky. I want my old internet back, even if I do have to dial up to get it.

Turken wrote:Just a couple nit-picks, but...

what the heck are you cooking in a microwave on a regular basis that takes more than 15 minutes!

my microwave dings when it's done, and that works just fine as an alert. If I'm more than five minutes travel time away from the microwave, I probably shouldn't be cooking anything in it!

note my post above about the crappy microwave from woot -- first hand experience that automating and networking of kitchen appliances is not an original idea nor a good one. just more features that will be ignored and or break.

some things were meant to be simple, and twitter only adds another layer of pointless flair on top of media that are just fine as they are for communication. If I want to know what someone is up to, I won't wait for them to send a twitter to my phone. I'll just use the phone to call them! if it's not important enough for them to call or email, I really don't need to know about it. seriously.

dang I'm getting old and cranky. I want my old internet back, even if I do have to dial up to get it.

I agree with that last bit. Twitter is just another way to exploit everyone's need to be known and validated by those around us. While this is natural, it of course is best done through personal interactions with other human beings. It's unfortunate that all the twittering and texting constantly only provide this at an artificial and superficial level. More is not necessarily better in this case.

People, get out and hang out with your friends! Or at least hear their voices on the phone!

That said, I'm typing this post with similar sentiments. Now I'm a sad little duckling. I'm gonna spend this weekend meeting PEOPLE. Have a good one, all.

What's the best/fastest way to receive twitter updates? Do I have to keep pressing F5 at the wootlive page to see the new links they post?

That was intense. Sadly, I wasn't quick enough.

Well that was really fun!
I didn't win, but I love a good chase.

Thanks woot!

It was fun. I got all of the answers very quickly (next one needs to be trickier -- and probably include a couple of block radius around the given point). The bad part about the twitterness of it was that you couldn't see how fast you were compared to everyone else. I had answers in and then had to wait and wait and wait to see if I was the winner.

I'm sure it was much worse for you on the other end having to wade through a bazillion twitter posts in a matter of seconds. But you really should have known better given your experience with bags of crap on your own servers.....and twitter is notoriously bad with the fail-whale.

did that really say potland people?

agingdragqueen wrote:You can search @WootLive and see all the responses to them in order. You can even save the search for easy checking next time!

Who has time to search for a hash tag when you are too busy trying to be first? Besides, search wasn't keeping up, either....I had it up in window number four. One for my twitter, one for WootLive twitter, one for Google Maps, and one for Twitter search (and one for the little boy who lived down the lane).

ok... i suppose the new wootiquette is to tweet this question...and perhaps I will do that once i figure out what the hell i'm doing.

1. umm.. is it me or is it a twitter thing and can it be fixed... apostrophes are spelled? instead of it's i get it's


Moral for today...

When Woot plays chicken...Woot don't flinch.

take that haters.

I am really surprised at the amount of Twitter hate that exists on these forums. Particularly from yesterday's Wootoff/Happy Hour whining squad. Protip: Woot doesn't owe you anything, so stop acting like there's an amendment in the Constitution that says they do.

That said, I am totally bummed out that I was in a meeting this afternoon and didn't see any of this until I got back to my desk. I love Twitter and I love Woot, so for me, Twitter + Woot = Tons of Fun. I hope there's another one soon and look forward to participating!

I totally missed this, bummer.

We should have a twitter adventure sometime in search for the Book of Crap where a special link needs to clicked on in order to get it.

I don't hate twitter, I just choose not to use it. My opinon is a bit skewed as I do not have an account, but my understanding is comprehensive enough to make the right decision. For me (as many have highlighted), the service is just excessive in minor updates. One particular superfluous tweet being:
"@Awesomesaucesome dude, this sandwich needs less lettuce, you suck at veggieburgers".
While some feel immediately compelled to instant tweet their friends about their sandwich incompetency, I communicate fine with forums, IMs (AIM,YIM,Steam,Xfire), telephone,e-mail, fax, time machine, texts, fog machine, comments, drum machine, telepathy, smoke signals, messenger pigeons, telegraphs, photo sharing services, social networking sites, Morse code, and of coarse radio. Additionally, I do not care about your sandwich or your sandwich making technique and I like lettuce, even though too much makes one eat like a tortoise. Clearly, apathy is my biggest gripe with twitter.

Slydon wrote:I don't think we in the fun room actually expected it to blow up as quickly and wonderfully as it did. Thanks to everyone that played along! We'll try to keep improving our gaming techniques as we learn.

They need to be a little more difficult.. but... with that being said, I'm glad I managed to win a round!

Also, will we get confirmation of you getting our email? I was kind of concerned about someone posing as me.. (or any other user who 'won')

Has anyone else who won gotten an email response back yet? Just wondering if Woot actually got my email...

dspychala wrote:Has anyone else who won gotten an email response back yet? Just wondering if Woot actually got my email...

i'm still wondering if they got my tweets...

tried the search at twitter to see how slow i really was and couldn't find any of them.

Yeah, having just gone through all the clues in about 2 minutes (most of that being loading time), I'd say that was a bit on the easy side. Good concept, though... improve it a bit, and I'd almost be tempted to sign up with Twitter to play.

(Almost.)

Using Boston as a clue for Worcester is like using Chicago as a clue for Detroit, or maybe vellum as a clue for Scottissue.