Humans.txt is an interesting idea – it’s (another) way for websites to create an association between the people (developers, authors, marketers, and so on) that are behind the creation of the website and the website itself, without actually including that information in the content of said website.  It’s not exactly a web development standard, but it’s a neat idea; and it’s the kind of information that’s “there if you’re looking for it” but remains otherwise hidden from view – as it should be.

The format itself is very simple – it’s a plain-text file, called ‘humans.txt’, and it’s placed at the root of the website.  In to that file you place whatever content you want, and whatever content is appropriate.  A little more elegant than placing that content in the comments of your HTML, as has been done in the past.

It’s finally happened. My tithe to Apple has been paid, and my iPhone has arrived on my desk.

I’m still an Flash Platform developer of course, this isn’t a career change – it’s a broadening of horizons.  I anticipate much cursing and headscratching is in store for the next few months though.  Here we go, should be ‘fun’.

I got a free t-shirt from Adobe (yay me!). As it turns out, Shikha Bhargava – product manager for the AIR Marketplace – posted this article on the Adobe Developer Center at its relaunch. ImageSizer obviously sneaked in there as one of the first 10 new applications to be added, so I got a free t-shirt.  (As well as a free Digital certificate!)

So, have faith – I’m working on something original. For now, I’m afraid – it’s back to the Link: spam.

In the end it was Will Hawkins [blog, twitter] that convinced me to start using Twitter a bit more – even without the ability to tweet from my iPhone (which I don’t have) it still looks like a valuable tool.

I’ve been using a few AIR applications for Twitter, which for me are a big element in it’s success on the desktop.  I dislike twhirl (and not just because it takes me five attempts to spell it), TweetDeck gets a little annoying with too many searches (but I think that’s less the app and more the way Twitter works) and DestroyTwitter looks really nice – except it lacks the search features of TweetDeck.  So I think I’ll be using TweetDeck and DestroyTwitter for a little while together, until I pick a fave.

Why?

Well actually, this micro-blogging thing has merits.  And not really obvious ones – I mean generally, who cares what useless things people ‘Tweet’ about?  Who cares that 44 thousand people have tweeted about the snow falling?  Not me.  What IS good though, is the fact that it’s so quick and irreverant.  Full-on blogging takes ages to string together sentances to post.  Ok, you get more meaning across, but it takes longer.  Tweeting something takes a few seconds, and with a liberal smattering of keywords, lots of people read it.

The TweetDeck search implimentation is a killer feature.  Setup a search on keywords, and moments after it’s posted, it’ll appear on your desktop.  Want to know if anyone’s talked about something, put in a search and you’ll find out.  I’ve been tweeted twice this week, and I never even knew.

Oh and building on the searches, it’s a good way to seek out people interested in the same things as you, network, make friends, etcetera.

Follow me!

Hey, if you want to see what I tweet about, check out: http://twitter.com/psyked_james