Digital Passports

Heard about Twitter but don’t know where to start? Already using Twitter but you’d like to expand your network? Want to find a way to stay connected with other STAR Discovery Educators in between events and conferences? Have I got a solution for you!

This all started with Lee Kolbert. She decided to create a tool that STAR Discovery Educators could use to register themselves along with their Twitter names, and then see the results as an online list. That way, STARs could go through that list and add other STARs that they might not have known were on Twitter.

Brilliant idea and it didn’t take long for the list to grow mightily! However, let’s face it… For a new user, copying and pasting and following 70+ Twitter accounts is a pretty tedious task. I mused on Twitter about how handy it would be for someone to create a way to just import in a list of Twitter names! Wham Bam, there you go. An instant starter set of Twit-friends, just add water. Lo and behold, podcasting legend Tim Wilson read that tweet and said, “Hey, neat idea! I’ll just close my eyes, click my heels together, and poof! Meet the Twitterator!”

Ok, it’s a bit of a dramatization, but it really didn’t take Tim at all to take the idea and run with it. Just supply his tool with your username and password, and then give it a list of names or point it to a URL that has a list of names, and it’ll have Twitter follow all those people for you. Couldn’t be easier!

Well, maybe it could………. By throwing DabbleDB into the mix, I can have it chop up the table that Lee Kolbert created using JottForm and spit out a CSV file that Twitterator can digest easily. That gives us a static URL that will ALWAYS import in all of the STARs registered by Lee’s tool. So if I want to follow all the people who have registered themselves within the last few weeks, I just run that same URL through Twitterator again. Anybody I’m already following it just ignores!

Ok, so how do you get started? Easy as 1-2-3

1) Register a username at Twitter.com (obviously skip this if you’re already registered)

2) Register yourself in the STAR Database that Lee created. That way other people can follow you!

3) Go to Twitterator.org. Put in your username and password and in the “Enter a list of people to follow” box, paste http://tinyurl.com/4a7mnu into the URL field and click submit.’

Voila! You are now following all the STAR Discovery Educators who have registered themselves! Now tell all of us what you’re doing