Update: Lagomorphic was informed that twitter has a auto-follow feature.  When a twitter-er follows your account, twitter can set your account to automatically follow them [view their tweets].  Even with this, I think there should be a little oversight and discretion.  If one is trying to portray an image of a clean and a non-divisive campaign, I'd try and keep up on it.  Even if it was an oversight, once it was pointed out, I would go to great lengths to correct it, blocking their account.  Let's see what happens, if nothing, then that would be telling.

Whoever is manning the Obama twitter account should think about having a little discretion. [note: To follow someones "tweets" takes the physical act of the account holder to click a Follow button.  Whoever is overseeing Barack Obama's twitter account consciously and voluntarily added the accounts mentioned below.]

Lagomorphic gives the lowdown on who the Obama twitter account is following and it's a reference to Sarah Palin's private parts.  [I wouldn't let kids see.  It can get personal.]

velvethammer, at Ironic Surrealism II, gives a couple more of who Obama's twitter account is following.

Just saying.  Might want to take a second look.

on another note:

Join in getting Hugh Hewitt connected with his listeners, us, via web 2.0 and twitter.

No permanent site, but you can follow HHRadio live feeds during his show in these ways:

using firefox, search.twitter, and some tweet/twitter program

If you don’t already have Firefox, download and install.

One way to get a live feed of HHRadio tweets is to use search.twitter.com.  You could have the page up and keep hitting refresh but I found a Firefox add-on that will automatically refresh the page at intervals you can determine equaling a live feed.  Download and install ReloadEvery 3.0.0 [click “Add to Firefox” green button].  [ReloadEvery picture series]  Now open a tab and go to the HHRadio twitter feed.  Right click in the open window, hover over “Reload Every”, when side menu pops up chose a “Reload Every [xx]s”. I recommend either 10s or 30s because 5s seems a bit to “fast” when picked.  Or do the same thing via a drop down menu on the reload button.  The page will now reload every [xx]sec and display any new messages that have HHRadio in the tweet message. [HHRadio twitter feed refresh setup picture series].

You can then use any program you wish to send tweets using your twitter account.  Anything that sparks your fancy, a rundown of quite a few can be found at the Twitter Fan Wiki page [home].  But I’ll cover three [picture series for options at end of third option]:

1st Option -- Have an extra tab open, sign in to twitter account, and tweet from there.  You can switch from HHRadio feed tab and your twitter account tab.

2nd Option -- **My favorite**  There is a great little twitter tweet-er called TwitBin that can be a sidebar element in Firefox.  This will make it so you can have a twitter tweet-er visible with the refreshing HHRadio feed right next to it.  Download and install TwitBin.  After install, you will see the TwitBin next to your address bar at the top, click it.  A sidebar will appear on the left side of the browser titled TwitBin, click on the house icon; this will allow you to enter in your username and password.  After entering in your info, click “Login”.  You can choose a preference of seeing a public feed, your friends feed, direct messages feed, or reply messages and how often TwitBin will go fetch new tweets.  I recommend setting it to friends so you can see who’s tweeting you personally.  You can find preferences just left of the house icon.  When set hit “Save Prefs”.  To refresh the TwitBin sidebar tweets, click the refresh icon just right of the house.  Now in the text field just below those icons you can type a tweet and hit enter.  As you type, up in the right of the sidebar element, it will tell you how many characters you have left.  After hitting enter, it will immediately appear in the TwitBin sidebar.  You can logout any time by clicking “logout”.  With TwitBin you can have a tweet-er open with the auto refreshing HHradio live feed in the same window [no switching windows or programs].  I like this setup the best.  Close the TwitBin sidebar by clicking the [X] on the sidebar or clicking the TwitBin logo next to the address bar.  [see how TwitBin and HHRadio live feed look together in same browser in the picture series below]

3rd Option – you can have a separate program running outside of your browser [like Twhirl] and send tweets from there, while watching the HHRadio live twitter feed.  I mentioned Twhirl and you can download and install here.

[tweet-er programs [setup] picture series]

Instead of using the search.twitter feed with the “Reload Every” option, you could use monitter.  [monitter picture series]

using text messaging via phone

You can find instructions on how to set up and use from the twitter devices help page.  Here’s a quick rundown:

1.  Setup twitter to recognize your phone number [one twitter account to one phone number] – [I also recommend to turn updates off unless you have a really good text plan through carrier.  Tweets from those you’re following could be numerous. Need help turning off?] – [Mobile setup picture series]

2.  In the U.S.A. text your message to # 40404.  Out of U.S.?  Your tweet limit is still 140 characters even as a text, be careful.  If you are texting a message you want to show on the HHRadio live feed, don’t forget to include “HHRadio” in text/tweet.  If you don’t include HHRadio in text/tweet, it will not be filtered and found for inclusion in live feed.

3.  Have a good text plan and want to have the HHRadio feed sent to your phone via text, you can have it track the feed.  Text “track HHRadio” to 40404.  I’m testing it out but if you notice updates to HHRadio live feed on the web but not on your phone via text, try texting “track hhradio” to 40404.  Every tweet that has HHRadio included will be sent as a text to your phone so you can keep up to date.

More info:  Twitter Phone FAQ, FAQ

using IM

Twitter has made it “temporarily unavailable” as they make it better.  There are things out there you can use [TwitterSpy, Twitt’d], but use at your own risk.  Both given are limiting and not very impressive to me.

using iPhone

Google it and you see there is an assortment of things you can use, but I hear Hahlo 3.1 is pretty hard to beat.  It’s made for the iPhone and iTouch but if you want, you can use it on a standard home computer browser.  [Hahlo picture series]

follow

Send tweets with HHRadio included during the show [think of the traffic during the third hour Friday, during movie hour] or when it’s off air.  Whenever you want to send something to Hugh's way.  Send info, links to articles, replies to Hugh’s questions [on air, off air], advice, comments.  Call Hugh [currently, first time ladies/gals/women callers only] and mention the twitter HHRadio feed.  Try and get Hugh Hewitt to do more tweets and info through his HHRadio twitter.

Let’s connect more with our Conservative radio talk show hosts.

Thank you Hugh Hewitt for linking to my post about getting connected with listeners through twitter.  Didn't think it would be this quick of a response.  Got home and finally had time to check out www.hughhewitt.com, and as I'm scrolling down I see a post about twitter and radio listeners linked to my blog.  Checked stats on sitemeter.com, got over 2,000 hits just for yesterday.  I checked the previous 7 days stats and you can't even see a blip of action but for yesterday.  Then I checked the HHRadio feed off of search.twitter.com and found 5 pages worth of people "signing up".  Awesome!!!  Color me surprised and excited because...

HERE WE GO!!!

If you signed up for a twitter account start tweeting info/comments/opinions/etc with "HHRadio" in the 140 character message.  And because of this, I'm going to be working this weekend on trying to set up something better to track the HHRadio feed.  Like I said in the previous post, nothing wants to work.  But I'll try and get something working by Monday's show.  A NEW HHRadio participant says you can use yammer to set up a group within twitter.  I'll be looking into that and see how it works and if it's something that can be utilized for this endevour.

I'm looking at ways to get a real time feed read so you wouldn't have to update the page yourself.  This way, during the show, you can be at one webpage and have real time HHRadio feed updates scrolling down the screen.  It will add to the Hugh Hewitt and listener participation.  One cool thing about search.twitter.com is that when people have updated to HHRadio, towards the top of the page it will "pop up" with a yellow bar saying "(x) more results since you started searching. Refresh to see them."  So if you are using the search.twitter.com HHRadio feed, either hit the refresh button or wait for the message above to "pop up" and hit refresh.

For a real time feed widget I'm liking monitter.  I'll see if I can get that up on a page somewhere.  monitter is really cool and is real-real time twitter feed from what I can tell [or seems to update about every 5-20 secs].  You can click links posted in tweets, see the tweets.  It's a dream widget.  Just type "HHRadio" into one of the three boxes at the top and you can see the tweets roll in when they are uploaded to twitter.

So this coming Monday, during the Hugh Hewitt show, if I have nothing up and running that's good enough, I'd set a new tab or new window to search.twitter.com and remember to refresh OR set a new tab or new window to monitter - type in HHRadio in one of the boxes at the top and sit back and participate.  [type in something in the other two boxes to track other words like Palin or Obama or McCain etc]

Have any suggestions of what can be used for the feeds, email me @ tohu.va.vohu.th[at]gmail[dot]com or radio.action.act[at]gmail[dot]com

SERVICES OR SPACE

Google sites and Townhall is more limiting on code than I thought it would be.  So does anyone have extra webspace or server space that can be utilized to set something up temporary or permanently?  Can you help mantain it?  ...since I'm not a proficient web designer ...yet.  You could even just put the widgets on your own websites without being connected with me.  You can get the monitter widget easily.  I can send you the html code for the escaloop widget.  You can get the RSS Mixer widget.  You have my e-mail.

I'll maybe try contacting N.Z. Bear and see what it might cost to set up something like he did for #dontgo and it's twitter stream that automatically updates every 10-20 secs.

BRING IT ON

Again, start tweeting with "HHRadio" in the message.  Especially during the show.  If you are watching an Obama or Biden rally and hear a gaffe, tweet it [immediately].  I'm wondering if Hugh found out that Obama questioned McCain's patriatism from a HHRadio participant?  Find a story that's interesting, or may help out Hugh, or is something Hugh is searching for and asked for our help to find, or is breaking news, tweet it.  To make those tiny 25 character url's for your tweet, I would suggest going here.  It makes good, clean tiny url's.  Tweet, tweet, tweet it up.  Let's see how this will work out.  Any other ideas how this can be used?

Don't forget to spread the word [add/send/link this post too].  Get more twitter-Hugh-heads [HHRadio twitter-ers] participating.  Let's shatter the glass ceiling of talk radio listener participation.  Glass jaws be darned.

GOOD TWEETS

Here are examples of tweets from recent HHRadio participants:  Someone giving news info with a url.  Also used the mGeG shorthand.  mGeG=morning Glory, evening Grace.  [Could just do mG and hope Hugh tweets @ reply with eG  - ...hoping...]  tinyurl seems to not be working, but here is the article they were trying to link.
Palin and the "Bush doctrine".  Palin's a true conservative.  People moving to Ohio/Michigan for 3 months and registering to vote.  Can anyone find a cite for this?  9/11 show.  Obama's a narcissist...  Race impossible to lose.  Bring back the fairness doctrine.  Wanting Hugh Hewitt to get involved on twitter.  Cyber stalking.  Candidates history.

Let's turn it up to 11!!!  Let's get this show on the road.  mGeG.

You can find me on twitter @ radioaction.

Update:  How to setup and watch/follow a "live feed" of HHRadio tweets via Firefox browser, text message, or iPhone.

what i want to do & why

I’m attempting to get people connected with Conservative radio talk show hosts via Web 2.0 [loosely inspired by Patrick Ruffini's Digital Democracy article in September 2008 Townhall magazine, Real-Time Representative]. It’s because many times I’ve personally wanted to call in and give my two cents, or tell someone what I’ve thought about them or their show, or wanted to give them information. But it’s hard when I’m working, or otherwise preoccupied with a hundred different things. Usually it’s after the show has long since turned the “on air” sign off and left the coffee stained cups to keep the phone switch board company that I have time to try and send an e-mail off. But I forget, or forget what I wanted to say, or the couple sentence response turns into a novel diatribe. Did they get it? Will they read it? Will they look up the info attached? [Conspiracy theory: I personally think my e-mail might be on their block/black list]

action plan

So how can we get around this? I’ve been eyeing Twitter for a possible answer/solution. Beyond my initial feelings that Twitter was an inane service, I’ve come to realize that it has the potential to be extremely amusing but at the same time can be utilized for action/activism/info dissemination as case in point #dontgo. Building off the #dontgo model, we could engage with Conservative hosts on another level and build an informed “community”. If your busy working, dealing with distractions, can’t find time to call and either try calling again for a dial tone or wait on hold, don’t have the time to type up an e-mail, send a tweet [twitter message]. If you want to tell them what you think about the show/guest, tweet ‘em.

But I’d really like to see it used for a greater purpose, and that is to give them our two cents, to offer links to information, to be a part of action/activism/info dissemination.  If a host asks for people to give them instant feedback on an issue/topic, tweet ‘em. If a host asks for information on an issue/topic they are researching, tweet ‘em. If you have a news article you think might be useful to them, tweet ‘em with it. Hugh Hewitt points out that there is going to be an unprecedented level of smears coming. Update:  Especially with the "'mini-army' of Democratic lawyers and operatives" up in Alaska.*  I think Conservative hosts and the public are going to need all the help they can get for finding and getting out the right information. That’s were we and twitter can come in. It’s a level of audience participation I’ve haven’t seen utilized before. And I’m kicking it off with my favorite talk show host Hugh Hewitt as a beta test to see if it’ll work or is useful. I think he would be the most "connected" of hosts around.  So how can you be a part of it?

sign up for twitter

This is self explanatory. Go to twitter’s sign up page and create/setup an account.

send @ reply to hugh

Update:  Add/Follow Hugh's twitter account HHRadio and my RadioActEnMasse account [were tweet updates are specifically about the Hugh Hewitt show].

My personal account is at radioaction.

Obsolete:  [The following muddied up the search.twitter HHRadio feed if a large group of listeners signed up at once and tweeted "@HHRadio Radio Action act participant".  Retrospect, unnecessary tweets flooded feed.  But do shoot an e-mail to Hugh nudging [as they say in twitterville] him to get involved on his HHRadio twitter account.]

Hugh Hewitt doesn’t know this is going on. I'm trying everything I can, but I hope that my contacting him and you contacting him, he’ll see the effort being put together and join/use it. So after you get a twitter account send a tweet reply message to @HHRadio saying “Radio Action act participant”. So your message should look like this [minus the quotes]:

“@HHRadio Radio Action act participant”

e-mail hugh

To get Hugh Hewitt on board, I’m going to try and contact him but it won’t hurt if you do the same. Send Hugh an e-mail or maybe Duane too telling him/them about this effort and they should keep tabs on this and tweet more [we would love to even hear what is going on behind the scenes, during commercial breaks.  Take a picture of John Campbell's shirt when it's the Hawaii throw up one and post to TwitPic & twitter.  Tell Hugh that kind of stuff.  Let them know what you would like to see as far as interaction on twitter.  But also...]. Send them a link to this post or to the website I’m getting together to track the twitter feeds for it. The more e-mails they get concerning this effort the greater the possibility they will check it out and in turn, keep tabs on it. Ask them to follow it during the show.  Call Hugh up and mention it.

twitter messages with HHRadio

When you send/upload a tweet that is meant for this effort or communicating and participating with Hugh, include somewhere in the 140 character tweet “HHRadio”.  I’m putting together a rss feed stream on a website that will track tweets that have “HHRadio” in them. If you don’t include this, it will not be tracked and followed for Hugh or others. Here are examples of possible tweets [minus quote marks]:

“HHRadio loved Hitchens, right again about terrorists.”

or

“HHRadio mGeG you should talk to Frank Luntz about that. Said words matter.” [mGeG=morning Glory evening Grace]

or

“HHRadio you’re talking about lastest Palin smear. It’s debunked by Dave Berry at www.link.com”

or

“found link to latest Obama connection to Rezko @ www.somewhere.com.  check it out HHRadio.”

or

“yes, Palin has excited the base HHRadio. it’s the reformer ticket we’ve been waiting/hoping/wishing for.”

or

“if code pink did, it would only be for attention. HHRadio”

follow @ website

Update:  search.twitter.com

I have a website that has a rss feed aggregator that will pull together the 15 latest tweets for Hugh Hewitt’s twitter account and any tweet with “HHRadio” in it. So check it out: http://sites.google.com/site/radioactionact.  You can find the same feed here. I did have a couple cool widget’s and aggregators picked out to use but google limits you on the code you can do. So nearly everything planned went out the window. But I hope to have some more things on it down the road. Right now you will at least have the aggregator. Maybe if I can find a couple more pennies in the cushions and can put something together like N.Z. Bear has been doing. But keep an eye on the feeds for new information being passed around and stay connected with the host. We can interact and participate on a Web 2.0 platform. You can also set up your favorite communication program to track tweets. Most communication programs allow for this.

Update:  Widgets giving me headaches you would not believe.  Nothing wants to work for me.  Google sites won't let you add certain code, townhall.com won't do scripts.  Got a widget to upload to post but functionality was horrible.  Until I can find a better work around, you can find the twitter feed on the website, at **search.twitter**, at escaloop preview widget, or RSS Mixer feed.  Nice thing about RSS Mixer feed is you can click on links and will open pages but it doesn't seem to update in real time.

future

If this goes well, maybe it can be used and spread to different hosts. Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Laura Ingram, Bill Bennet, etc. Many times I hear Dennis Prager say he wishes he could get an instantaneous reaction to something. He can’t take to many calls before he has to move on. Think of the possibilities with using twitter. Then I hope to add from different sources like digg.com.  When someone digg an article or news item, in the digg description they can put "HHRadio" and a feed could be setup to filter those stories out.  The feed then could be used by HHRadio followers, public, and Hugh Hewitt.  Let’s see what we can do, join me in being an active participant.

I’ve never seen the power of the people acted out until the last couple of years [i.e. immigration bill, drilling issue, Meir’s, etc]. I’ve never seen that power actually influencing events [as pointed out in an article in Townhall magazine February 2008 issue in an article by Jennifer Rubin titled “Who decides? What is Conservative?”]. Maybe I was to young to notice it before but it’s no longer a time to only hear that it’s possible to do.