This blog is about twitter hastags. To learn more about twitter hashtags, go here.

So #songsincode has been ruling the twitter trends for a day now). Didn’t follow it? No worries – here’s a recent blog with some good (early) ones.

Basically, it was the most fun I have had reading hashtags. Today, after lunch I took a plunge too

Original tweet here:

(you.breath + you.move).each { i.missing(you) }

Original tweet here:

while ( time(you.reverse) < = 1.minute )
  i = you.steps_behind(2)
end

Oh don’t tell me I was so bad you could not even guess the songs (Every Breath You Take and Two Steps Behind.

I know how I shouldn’t be pointy-clicky on all links I get. Specially the tiny url ones.

Well yesterday I got a link (internal – so can’t share) in a mailing group in office. The URL was a shortened one (something like tinyurl, but used inside Amazon) and it did come with adequate warning about not opening it. But like a few other dumbos I did click it.

I have to share the link in this post – but be warned that I have warned you. It’s no virus r malicious software/code but clever Javascript play. Anyway if you happen to click know that you have no right to sue me whatsoever. And if you really do click – let me know, afterwards, how it goes.

Without further ado, it’s – http://www.rickrolling.com

I am assuming you know what RickRoll is – if not, you should – the wikipedia article on RickRoll explains it well (it has given me a lot of laughs till date and has robbed some producive hours too. I hope you enjoy it too ).

So, anyway, like a real dumbo, even after reading all the warnings I clicked on it. And bam… my browser is not mine anymore. It’s like one of those really annoying moments when you loose control of something you use all the time (maybe not a great analogy, think a driver loosing control of the steering wheel of his bus. Think a bus full of passengers. In this case, it causes no damage – so like, the bus not hitting any thing/body, but dancing around the street).

I had quite a few interesting tabs open on Firefox. And when it started dancing around, I really lost it. For a few seconds that is. Then the ubiquity idea came to me.

ALT+SHIFT. type “close-tab” (actually just type “clo” and hit tab) and then type “RICK ROLL”.
W00t! My browser is back. And my work is saved (the only other way would have been to kill firefox – after which if I restart and ask it to open All Tabs again, I am back to square-one. If I say “Start with no tabs” I loose all the other interesting ones. Of course you can kill FF, open up the FF tabs xml file (it’s nested inside your FF install dir) and delete this tab – but that’s a lot of work).

I have loved Ubiquity a lot and have evangelized it to a lot of people already. It gives you a really powerful browser (like just type “search Something”, or “email Hi to arnab” and you are done. No opening a tabs or another service even). It’s very liberating. My fav commands are search, wiki, weather, email, map, define and twitter.

But yesterday, for the first time I had the opportunity to really feel myself “Thank God I installed Ubiquity”.

If you have not already, give it a spin – here’s the page for the Ubiquity project

If you want more, watch this screencast (you can also find it on the Ubiquity page) -

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

If you are using it already, don’t you love it? If not using it yet – try it out and let me know how it goes. (Ubiquity is also on twitter – @mozillaubiquity)

I love feeding on bits of information. The world is full of interesting things and the Internet has a thousand ways of feeding you all that.

If you are not this type of a person – and like to live in your own shell (nothing bad with that) – you can stop reading now – and use your time well doing something else. Like living in your own shell.

Back to the topic – I do skim most of the info dished out at me. Some I keep in my “hmmm” folder of my brain (you guessed it – doesn’t stick long), some I delicious-mark. The rest are the really interesting ones – I find it hard to not share with people I know.

Like this – http://bit.ly/17q25 written by @zen_habits
(this article is on how to use twitter well – I have a truckload, or maybe a trainload of people I know, who tell me – “What is twitter anyway? Just another Social Media Platform? Why would I want to go to yet another site? Is Facebook/Orkut/MySpace/insert-your-fav-social-media-network not enough already?” This is an excellent article on why and how twitter.)

How can I not make my friends read this?

Now if it was 3 months ago, I would have snapped the link up in an e-mail and sent it to all of you, hoping that you’ll also read it and like it and apply it. This group of people would include at least all interesting folks I know in India, NY and Seattle – that’s a lot of people right? And most probably won’t even read it (yeah I know – it’s ok)

No more – I just twit it now – with the knowledge that whoever wants to eat info-blurbs like I do will follow me and read it.

That’s why I urge you my friends/social-beings/netizens, give the article above a read – here it is again for effect – http://bit.ly/17q25

If you do get convinced that twitter is a big idea, can be useful to you and actually help in reducing spam, get an account fast.

You can follow me if you like – http://twitter.com/arnab_deka
Or check out the people I follow – there are some interesting folks – and follow them instead.

And finally, here are some interesting/info on why/how etc. of twitter: http://delicious.com/arnab.deka/twitter

If you are still not convinced and take nothing else from this blog, take this back – you can rest assured that you’ll get spam from one less person now on.