Image by maltman23 via Flickr

I have been waiting for MakerFaire to come to Pittsburgh for years!!!  I have been a follower of Make and Craft – both are magazines/blogs published by O’Reilly Media.  The Make magazine folks organized the first Maker Faire in CA back in 2006.  It was a live festival of all things creative, handmade, DIY and hacked.  Since 2006 – Maker Faires have been held all over the world.

Maker Faires have included demonstrations of all kinds of neat things.  I had the opportunity to see Bre Pettis, who is a maker/hacker extrodinairre, give a talk on the 3d printer back in 2009 at ROLFcon.  You can check out a video of his presentation about rapid prototyping and the 3d printer at ROLFcon here.  I left ROLFcon thinking Pittsburgh needs to have a hacker space of our own.

Fortunately - others were thinking the same thing. In May 2009, HackPGH opened a hacker space in the uptown neighborhood to provide a workshop space where makers could come together and well, make stuff.  HackPGH has hosted and continues to offer many classes on things like lock picking, LED Flowers and crafts.

Maker Faires are meccas of making things.  I know many a Pittsburgh who has traveled to Detroit or beyond to attend a Maker Faire.

This weekend the fun comes to Pittsburgh! The first Pittsburgh’s Mini Maker Faire is this Sunday, October 23, Noon-6pm at The Children’s Museum.  The event might be called mini but they have a mighty line up of makers who will be showing off their projects and offering workshops.  You can check out the entire list of makers here.

Here are just a few of the things that will be demonstrated on Sunday:

Cheese Printer - Matt Stultz, one of the co-founders of HackPGH will be there demonstrating the cheese printer.

Pittsburgh Lock Picking Club

Yes, Pittsburgh has a lock picking group! This city has something for everyone.  Not sure about lock picking – I wouldn’t have thought much of it before either but then I read this fascinating article from a 2009 issue of Wired about the Ultimate Lock Picker.

The Traveling Pittsburgh Craft-o-tron Machine

This is an awesome collaborative project of artists and hackers. But what you really need to know is that this is a vending machine where you can get a crocheted pierogi.

Sauerkraut Powered Robots

Jesse Hemminger has created these little guys that run on sauerkraut.  Seems like a perfect Pittsburgh technology to me.

Pittsburgh’s Mini Maker Faire
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Noon-6pm
@ The Children’s Museum
Admission is $12

Related articles

• Best of Maker Faire: Like Burning Man for Geeks (thenextweb.com)
• Lava Lamp Music at Brighton Mini Maker Faire (mt-soft.com.ar)
• Maker Faire Freezer Paper Stencils (craftzine.com)
• World Maker Faire in New York to Feature Teddy Lo’s GonKiRin “Art Car” Dragon (prweb.com)

Coffee Strategies writes about Jonthan’s Card (http://jonathanstark.com/card/) – an image of Starbuck’s gift card that Jonathan Stark uploaded to the internet.  The card is there for people to download to their phones to use to buy a cofee or to add money to so that other people can use.  You can follow the balance of the card via @jonathanscard on Twitter. [The only video I can find about this is from Jamie aka @JTYourFace who is  an enthusiastic social media lover/YouTuber.  You can check out her run down on the Jonathan Card here).]

The Coffee Strategies post suggests that Jonathan’s Card is not just a social experiment but more of a covert Starbucks promotion.  You can read all of the details and see the screenshots on the Coffee Strategies post here.   It looks like Stark launched this project back on July 14, 2011.  But the project has recently been getting a ton of buzz around the internet – CNN, Make, Laughing Squid, Tech Crunch.

There are some interesting comments on the blog posts about this project.  Will people give and take or will people just take and the card balance will be zero.  So far that hasn’t been the case.

Buy-A-Burgher-A-Beer App?

Image by bunchofpants via Flickr

Reading some of the posts on the Aldo Coffee blog  - there was one post last week that is no long up about the price of coffee and recently the knitting shop, Naturally Stitches, wrote a post kindly explaining some of their price increases — led me to think about what this type of project might look like if it was just a Pittsburgh project.  Could we create something like this that could only be used at local coffee shops?  Could it be set up as a fundraiser – maybe match the dollars added to the card with a donation to a local non-profit?

The app Gifi lets you leave a gift for a friend the next time they check-in to a place on Foursquare (I am not sure if Gifi still works their blog hasn’t been updated since 2010).  I know there are apps that let you send gifts to friends – like Giiv.  Starbucks and Pepsi have apps where you can send a drink to a friend.  The beer tracking app Beerby was developed here in Pittsburgh by Levlr.

What should a Pittsburgh-buy-a-cup-of-coffee-for-a-stranger app look like?  Since this is Pittsburgh, maybe it should be a buy-a-beer-for-a-stranger app.  Would people use it? Any app developers out there who would want to make a Pittsburgh app?

More posts about Jonathan’s Card:

• Free coffee: A social sharing experiment full of beans? (theglobeandmail.com)
• If you’re strapped for cash at a Starbucks, use Jonathan’s card (geek.com)
• Mobile wallet experiment means free coffee from Jonathan’s Starbucks card (digitaltrends.com)
• Twitter+Starbucks App Account = Social Coffee Experiment : Jonathan’s Card (socialtimes.com)
• Get a free Starbucks drink on Jonathan, share in a social payment experiment (zdnet.com)

At the Auto Show

I Heart PGH was invited to the Chevy Volt Press Conference at the Pittsburgh Auto Show, taking place at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center this weekend. The event started with GM Executive Director of Research and Development Walt Dorfstatter presenting Carnegie Mellon University with a $70,000 scholarship grant from the GM Foundation. GM will be at CMU today, February 11th, doing test drives of the Volt (we think this is open to the public).

The presentation was followed by a walk around tour of the Volt.

During the walk around tour of the the car, it was explained to us that the Volt was a new type of hybrid car that placed more of an emphasis on using electric power as opposed to gas. This is accomplished by charging the car over night through a wall outlet (charger pictured above), and then having it run entirely on an electric power with a back up gas generator that engages when the car’s battery charge gets too low.

During the walk around tour @newsunrising asked us a question over Twitter, paraphrased the question was, “how will the cold Pittsburgh weather affect the battery charge and range?” Well, @newsunrising, while charging and operating in cold weather, the Volt has a battery heater that will keep the battery in its ideal temperature range, and when it gets hot during the summer the car’s air conditioner will keep the battery cool. So outside temperature should not effect performance. You can read more about this here.

Driving the Volt

First off, let me just say this car is loaded. Loaded. With a capital ‘L’. Heated seats that automatically (automagicly?) turn on when the car detects its cold outside? This car has it. Key-less ignition? Has it. Advanced sound system with a built in hard drive for music? Yup. DVD player? Sure, but only in the front, so you can only watch movie when parked. I could keep going with this list, but the car I drove seemed to have every interior feature ever, so just picture that.The only thing it didn’t have in the interior was a rear middle seat. When we asked the GM rep why it was missing he explained that the battery is located where the ‘hump’ is in traditional cars, and they needed to sacrifice the seat to make more room for the battery.

What sets the Volt appart from other hybrid cars – if you can call the Volt a hybrid – is that it will use its electric motor for as long as it has a battery charge, while other vehicles like the Prius only use their electric motor to get the car rolling then switch over to gas. When the Volts battery runs low, a gas generator will kick in to maintain an electrical charge. What this means is that if you charge you car over night with the somewhat optional charger and then drive to work the next day, you can potentiality use no gas AT ALL, depending on the length of your commute. However, if you are driving long distances the gas motor will only engage to charge the battery enough to keep you going. This means that you never need to worry about finding a place to plug in when you are on the go.

Starting the car takes some getting used to coming from driving a gas powered vehicle. You get in, sit down, press a button, and some lights come on — that’s it. There is no whining noise, no vibration, nothing. For a moment it felt like I had just put it into ‘Accessory,’ until the GM rep riding with me told me to pull out into the street. Actually driving the Volt is surprisingly ordinary, which is a good thing. It really feels like you are driving a car, as opposed to the sluggish golf cart feeling I was half expecting.

The car’s CVT transmission offers a smooth, shift-shock-less drive, another plus. In addition to the standard ‘Drive’ mode, there are also low-range, sport, and mountain functions. Low-range acts like downshifting in a regular car, allowing you to have more cohttp://iheartpgh.com/wp-admin/options-general.phpntrol going down hill, while also recharging the battery. Sport greatly increases acceleration (I had the most fun in this setting) at the expense of battery life.

Twitter user @Klun_PA asked “Will they be powerful enough to drag race?” That depends on what you want to race against? While I didn’t get to drive on a road where I could really open that bad boy up, I would say that you could go to head to head with most economy cars.

Finally, mountain mode tells the car that you plan on driving up hill for a while and that it should start charging the battery earlier if it gets low so you are sure to have enough power to get to the top. Just to be clear; you will never ‘run out of juice’ in this car, and it goes up hill just fine. This feature seems to be more for additional efficacy and peace of mind.

Other Thoughts

All in all, I feel like the Volt is an exciting and capable machine, loaded with features. It seemed geared for daily commutes, not using gas for the first couple dozen miles, but is fully able to go on long road trips without needing to stop an recharge. I am hoping to see many of these on the road in the near future and I am hoping that they will pave the way to an all electric/alternative fuel (ex non-fossil fuel) vehicle.

Gigapana-What? I promise this is not a scary disease or some fancy name for bed bug infestation – a gigopanorama is a giant panoramic photo.  In most basic terms – lots of digital photos are stitched together to create a large panoramic photo. You can learn more about these photos and the technology behind the giga pan photos at Gigapan.org.  Carnegie Mellon and Pittsburgh based DeepLocal are key partners in this project.  Gigapan.org also has a huge gallery of other amazing photos to check out.

The First Pittsburgh Gigapanorama was created in October, 2009 from the roof of the US steel building.  You can check out the photo here. The GigaPan.org website lets you navigate and zoom in on different parts of the photo.  There is also an actual print out of this photo that has been displayed around the city – I had a chance to see it earlier this summer at the Sprout Fund Summer Social.  It is a HUGE banner with amazing detail of the city.

(Photo from the Studio for Creative Inquiry website)

On Top of Top of the Triangle Remember that restaurant? There used to be a fancy restaurant on the top floor of the US Steel building called Top of the Triangle – the restaurant closed in 2001.  While fine dining isn’t likely to return there is a project about putting a park ontop of the US Steel Building – the High Point Park.  The High Point Park is a project of Carnegie Mellon’s Studio for Creative Inquiry.

This fall the students from Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz School are working on the park as their semester long systems project – you can learn more about the class and the project here.

A Map and A Parade One of the reasons that I am excited about the Pittsburgh Gigapanorama 2 is because of the success of the Street with a View project. In 2008 – when Google was starting Google Street view – some Pittsburgh artists staged a scene for the cameras.  The project was called Street with a View.  Street with A View staged a parade, a party and a whole lot more (look for the dancing chicken leg) for the Google Street view cameras.  You can check out some of the videos on the project here and read the blog posts on Neatorama, Mattress Factory Blog and Make.

Gigopanorama Party Time I wanted to share the Street with a View project to inspire show off how one group approached these public photos.The folks behind the Pittsburgh Gigapanorama 2 are looking for you to join the fun.  Create your own scene, party, dancing poultry and more in the next Pittsburgh Gigapanorama.

Here is how you can get involved:

From The Studio for Creative Inquiry…here’s how you join the fun

1. Check out the 30-gigapixel First Pittsburgh Gigapanorama (http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/47373), which we photographed from the top of the U.S. Steel Tower last year. Try zooming “all the way in” until you can see street signs and individual people, just to get an idea of the amazing resolution of GigaPan images. Well, that was our test image. On Thursday, we’ll shoot a new version — during the Pirates game at PNC Park — with even higher resolution than before!
2. Choose a place where you’ll be visible. Use the first panorama (here) to help choose a place that has good visibility from the top of the tower, and which is legally accessible for you. The closer to the Tower the better, but any place that can be seen in the first image should also be visible in the second. Remember: the closer you are to Downtown, the more visible you’ll be — and unless you’re within two miles of downtown, you’re going to be awfully small. Since the Pirates will be playing in PNC Park at 12:35pm, you can also be in the picture simply by going to the game and sitting on the right or left sides of the field (no outfield seats)!
3. Note your orientation to the Tower and save time.
   We plan to take the image in four geographic segments on this approximate schedule:
   • 11:00 – 12:00 – Oakland, the Hill South Side and points east
   • 12:00 – 1:00 – The Strip, Lawrenceville and points north
   • 1:00 – 2:00 – Station Square, Mt. Washington, South Hills and points west
   • 2:00 – 3:00 – The North Shore, PNC Park, and points north.

   Check back here for more information. Starting at 11am, we’ll broadcast updates every 5 minutes on Twitter(@creativeinquiry) and Facebook to let you know which direction the GigaPan cameras are pointing! We recommend you use the Google Map of the U.S. Steel Tower (http://bit.ly/USSteelTowerMap) to determine whether you’ll be North, East, North-East, North-North-East (or whatnot) in relation to the Tower. Our team will make announcements in 10-degree increments, so it will help if you understand the numbers on a “compass rose diagram” like this one.

4. Do your thing. We encourage creativity! Wear a costume or colorful clothing; hold a sign or banner; do anything to help you stand out from the landscape. (Keep it legal and school-suitable, please, or we may have to edit you out.) Also, bring a cell phone that day so you can receive our Tweets when we’re shooting photos from your direction.
5. Let us know what you’re up to! Drop us a line on Twitter, Facebook or by regular email at studio-info@andrew.cmu.edu to let us know where to find you. Have someone snap a picture of your display that you can send us!
6. Find yourself in the panorama! We expect to release the completed image online in late October, when you’ll able to visit the image, find and take a snapshot of your participation. We’ll also make a large (4′x25′) print of the image and include it as part of the gigapanorama exhibit “New Perspectives of Pittsburgh” which will be in the Photo Forum Gallery in the upper lobby of the U. S. Steel Tower from October 11 through November 19, 2010.Details to follow.

Click here for the Facebook event page.

Thanks to OnlyinPGH and Flong for the heads up on this event.

Related blog posts about Gigapan

• Burning Man 2010 GigaPan Photos by Rich Gibson (laughingsquid.com)
• SIGGRAPH 2010: Robotic Gigapixel Photography (core77.com)
• 8 Panorama Websites For A 360 Degree Virtual Tour Around The World (makeuseof.com)

PodCamp was started several years ago in Boston as an “un-conference” that brings together the social media curious and those who are deeply ingrained with technology to share ideas and concerns to help advance the usage and implementation of social media tools such as blogs, podcasts, online video compilations, and the use of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Cities around the world have embraced the plight of the event, holding an annual PodCamps to keep the conversation going. Last fall, PodCamp Pittsburgh 4 drew nearly 400 attendees.

The free un-conference style event features 54 sessions that range from Blogging 101 to Advancing Your Career by using Web 2.0 tools. Sessions run simultaneously within 45 minute time-slots, allowing attendees to check out a variety of topics based on their needs and interests.

All attendees will receive a t-shirt, complete event guide, access to all sessions, breakfast and lunch both days, and most importantly, compelling content. PodCamp Pittsburgh 5 also features a VIP attendee package for $25 which includes more goodies and recognition as a sponsor of the event.

Local businesses and organizations have generously donated funds and supplies to cover event overhead.

Notable speakers for this year’s event include Media Professional Ian Rosenberger, ReadWriteWeb COO Sean Ammirati, “Secret Agent L” Laura Miller, and Pittsburgh City Councilman Bill Peduto who will give opening remarks on Saturday at 9:00 a.m.

PodCamp Pittsburgh 5
Art Institute of Pittsburgh
Saturday, September 18 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Sunday, September 19 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
The event is FREE and open to the public. Register online or just show up!

Organized completely by a group of dedicated volunteers, PodCamp Pittsburgh 5 promises not to disappoint.

PodCamp Pittsburgh founder Justin Kownacki speaking at PodCamp Pittsburgh 4. Photo by Rob de la Cretaz

Related articles by Zemanta

• Meet me at PodCamp Pittsburgh 5 (techburgh.com)
• Podcamp: Expect the Unexpected (mediabullseye.com)
• Social Media Interview – Justin Kownacki (simplyzesty.com)

Tomorrow I will be a panelist for one of the sessions at the Pittsburgh Craft Collective’s  The Business of Craft workshop.I am sitting here at my computer putting together some links and ideas on how I use social media – blogs, facebook, twitter – for IheartPGH and some of the other projects I manage for work.  I thought it might be interesting to have a conversation here in the comments about how other Pittsburgh groups, businesses, blogs, non-profits are using online tools. 

Some questions to think about

• Which tool is easiest to use and gives you the best result
• What tools and ideas have worked the best?
• What ideas haven’t worked?
• What other businesses and organizations are doing a good job using the web to keep people informed?
• How do you keep track of who and what you want to follow? Google reader? Hootsuite? Tweetdeck? Others?

Please feel free to share and ask questions in the comment.

Some related reading about social media…

• Social Media For Non-Profit Organizations (thenon-profittoolbox.com)
• Top 6 Social Media Mistakes And How to Fix Them (socialmediaexaminer.com)
• Why Do the Most Popular Social Networks Fail to Satisfy Consumers? (veryofficialblog.com)
• 7 Steps For a Successful Social Media Strategy (socialmediaexaminer.com)
• 7 pragmatic questions businesses should ask about social media (thehumanracehorses.com)

This Friday is also the Geek Arts/Green Innovators (GA/GI) Festival.  One of the great things about Pittsburgh, and I feel like I say this often, but it is true and worth repeating is how different communities come together to create innovation.  GA/GI celebrates the intersection of geek and green in the arts.

The organizers of the festival have assembled an impressive line up of people and organizations doing impressive things in the areas of technology and the enviroment in Pittsburgh.  See the entire line up below.  If you are not familiar with the Penn Avenue Arts coridor – start at the Pittsburgh Glass Center at 5471 Penn Ave and go from there.  The Glass Center always has interesting demos on first Fridays and a number of the GA/GI events will be there.

A few things that are definitly worth a stop:

• Voluto Coffee – we <3 Voluto and they know coffee
• Grow Pittsburgh – Twilight Farmer’s Market
• Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest -  Art Display by John Metzler
• The Power Flower by Art Energy Design,
• CMU ChargeCar
  • Check out the PopCity article about ChargeCar here.

But honestly – all of these are great organizations and it is nice that they have lined up so many great organizations and activities in one place.

GA/GI Festival Details

5472 Penn Ave,Pittsburgh, PA, 15224
April, 2, 2010, 5:00 pm – 11:00 pm
Festival location within 4800-5500 Penn Avenue…OR start at 5472 Penn Avenue–The Pigh Glass Center!

Website and Facebook

CLUSTER 1 (near Pittsburgh Glass Center 5472 Penn Avenue)
Pittsburgh Glass Center
A “Hot Jam” in the  Hot Shop;
Exhibit: “From the Earth to the Fire and Back”;
Live Entertainment:  Life In Balance,
The Rusty Bagpiper, DJ Stevey B of iParty Productions,
Cello Fury (Formerly Cello Fourte) and a Fashion Show “Pedal to the Metal” with DJ James Gyre @ 9:30 pm

Enjoy a light nosh and wine made in Lawwrenceville–with Duane Rieder of Engine House 25!

@Glass Lofts ”Eco Living” – NOW OPEN! Pittsburgh’s hottest, address, view a show space by Emphasis Interiors and a variety of art exhibitions: the Society of Sculptors, celebrating their 75th Birthday. Featured Artists: W. Johansen,  V. LaValle,
A. Almarza,  J. Fisher,  A. Azoury, E. Singer, M. Gregio, Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Center Global, and  Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

@ Dance Alloy Peformance @ 7 pm  5530 Penn Ave “Tap Into the Possibilites” (cost $7 admission)

Voluto Coffee hosting artist R. Snow” Open Until 10 pm

A Glass Clearnce by Shermise hosting an intallation by Evolve Architechs “Fast Forward to 2020″ (Also showing in Cluster D)

Edge Studios “Exquiste Corps” @ 5411 Penn Ave.

Creative Fitness /Go work out a sweat free for 20 minutes @ 5406 Penn Ave

CLUSTER 2 ( near Quiet Storm 5430 Penn Avc)
Grow Pittsburgh “Twilight Farmer’s Market
Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest Art Display by John Metzler
Turner Dairy Farm
Garfield Farm and Friends
Student Conservation Association
Sprout Fund GA/GI Showcase: Replay My Play and The Hill District Green Print Plan
Quiet Storm Cafe /Benefit Dinner for Grow Pittsburgh (Reservations preferred)

CLUSTER 3 (Family Dollar Sector /Intersection of N. Pacific Ave and Penn to 113 S. Pacific)–Great Family Venue!!!
The Power Flower by Art Energy Design, ZipCar, CTSI Science Mobile Lab, CMU ChargeCar, Verizon Fios, (Hula)Hoop Union, The Pittsburgh Chess Club, EcoCents, Allegheny County Library Association “One Book”, Pittsburgh Technology Council, Global Links, Creative Reuse hands-on activities;  Save the Igloo,  Yellow Black and Green Pittsburgh, Green Gear Pedicabs; The Trash Fairy–a salvage art storyteller, and others!

CLUSTER 4 (Penn Avene and Winebiddle sector)
Awesome Books–Book Release Party for C. Leach and  E.McNutt
Laura McLaughin–Community mosaic project
ARTica Gallery w  J. Vachon Salvage Quilt Project and C. Dregalla, artist
Irma Freeman Center–”Anitquated & Future or Imaginary Technology
Ian Ingram @ All God’s Creatures Grooming (see window)
Image Box–featuring exhibit “Green, Green Grass” by J. Visnesky
Most Wanted Fine Art–J. Lysak and the Edinboro University Print Shop
Mixed Media Terrariums by S. Wojdylak
Mondern Formations / Annual Spring Salon and guest Electric Owl
International Children’s Museum / Mandala art work
Space Robots and Other Creations
R. J. Walters Law Office “Tango” demo
5000 Penn Ave  and Gross Street Exhibitions by P. Villalobos Echeverria
Tweek clothing/ 10% for College Students on entire shop
B. Ziller’s Beautification Project–Paint colorful boards for abandoned RE

So a few weeks ago we blogged about the Pittsburgh goes Google project. Well it turns out that the Google Fiber Network that sounded too good to be true is really too good to be true.

The folks at Google took a page out of the Ashton Kutcher‘s playbook with Google Fiber project.   Turns out the whole thing was just a joke and Google executives were stunned to see the lengths that local mayors and residents would go to to attract Google’s attention.  To win over the hearts of Google – last week Pittsburgher’s spelled out the word “Google” on Forbes Ave.  Check out the photo of this elaborate gesture from the Post-Gazette here.

The Mayor of Sarasota recently jumped into a shark tank at Mote Marine Aquarium to drawn attention to Sarasota’s bid for Google fiber.  (If you ever visit the Sarasota area – which happens to be near where the Pirates are for spring training – I would suggest you make a stop at Mote Aquarium to see the manatees).

Google executives have decided that things were getting out of hand – especially when they heard the Mayor of Pittsburgh was thinking of changing his name to Mayor Googlestahl and decided to reveal the truth about the project.  You can see the press release from the Google Fiber Team here.

Some additional blog posts about Google Fiber:

• Al Franken Mines ‘SNL’ Past In Bid For Google Fiber (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• I Have Renamed My House “Google” (wired.com)
• Cities Try to Grab Google’s ‘Golden Ticket’ (abcnews.go.com)
• Cities Rush to Woo Google Broadband Before Friday Deadline (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
• 1100 communities apply for Google’s Fiber Network (slyvisions.com)

Chris Brogan (he writes a great blog on social media that I follow daily) had a post last week on how to help in Haiti – in the post he links to a great post - Designing Hashtags for Emergency Response, by Chris Messina from the blog Factory City.  Messina’s post offers some great thoughts on creating hashtags for twitter and he links to the Epic Project EPIC from the University of Colorado at Boulder – which is working on Tweak the Tweet – a standard group of hashtags for tweeting information in Haiti.

What the hashtag? If you are not a regular on Twitter you are probably reading this and wondering what on earth does a hashtag have to do with anything on Twitter or Haiti.  Since I have gotten a few phone calls and emails asking about this in the past week let me take a moment to review the hashtag.

First of all if you are new to Twitter – check out this video from the folks at CommonCraft – Twitter in Plain English – 2:30 will help you understand what Twitter is and how it works.

From the Twitter Support Page on Hashtags:

Because Twitter provided no easy way to group tweets or add extra data, the Twitter community came up with their own way: hashtags. A hashtag is similar to other web tags- it helps add tweets to a category. Hashtags have the ‘hash’ or ‘pound’ symbol (#) preceding the tag, like so: #traffic, #followfriday, #hashtag. Hashtags can occur anywhere in the tweet: some people just add a # before a word they’re using

You can then see what people are tweeting about a particular topic by visiting http://search.twitter.com and searching for a specific hashtag – if you want to see tweets about the Steelers – you can search for #steelers. The results will be a list of any tweet that includes “#steelers”.  The hashtag is helpful for conferences and events – for example – during the G20 – you could follow related tweets by searching for #G20.

More Hashtag Resources – check out Tagal.us and Hashtweeps.com – both sites offer a directory of hashtags.  The wikipedia page for Hashtags offers lots more info about hashtags too.

#Pittsburgh – What are some Pittsburgh Hashtags?

So this had me thinking about Pittsburgh hashtags – what hashtags are you using here in Pittsburgh – lets put together a little hashtag directory for Pittsburgh hashtags so we can follow the local conversation.

Here are few that I use or I have seen:

• #pgh
• #steelers
• #shoppgh
• #pghsnow

What hashtags do you use?  What hash tags would you want to see in the Pgh Hash Tag directory?

Some additional reading about Twitter and hashtags…

• HOW TO: Use Twitter Hashtags for Business (mashable.com)
• Twitter Tools – Decoding the Social Networking Hash Tag Mystery (socialmediatoday.com)
• Three steps to getting started in Twitter (socialwebschool.com)
• How To Use Twitter Syntax Like A Novice & Pro (evolyte.com)
• Hone In On Hashtags (twitterrati.com)

What the Whuffie?

Whuffie is a term used to explain social capital in a new book called The Whuffie Factor by Tara Hunt. I am reading this book now and it is a really interesting look at how social capital is playing an increasing role in business today and how social media connects people and helps to build social capital. I think the community that has grown around IheartPGH definitely has some Whuffie factor too. Learn more about the book at TheWhuffieFactor.com

What does this have to do with Karaoke?

Tara and her friends are on a cross country road trip in an RV with a karaoke machine and they are making a stop in

Pittsburgh this Saturday.

The story unfolds….Five friends: Tara Hunt, Tony Bacigalupo, Alex Hillman, Emma Persky, Karen Hartline plus their furry friend Ridley load up a moving truck and RV with Tara’s worldly possessions and a karaoke machine — complete with costumes and stage — and venture across America, starting in San Francisco and ending in Montreal.

Learn more about the story of Whuffaoke at Whuffaoke.com

Whuffaoke in Pittsburgh

Saturday, July 25, 2009
7:30-10pm at Pittsburgh Technology Council Office
http://www.whuffaoke.com/tour/pittsburgh/
RSVP on Facebook

More about the event on the Techburger blog

More ways to Connect

• Follow Whuffaoke on Twitter @whuffaoke
• Check out Tara Hunt’s blog HorsePigCow and follow her on twitter @missrogue

Read more about whuffie…

• Whuffaoke or Bust: RWW’s Road Trip Resources (readwriteweb.com)
• A Week With Whuffie and Parellel Economies (kylelacy.com)
• Managing Your Social Capital (drinkingoatmealstout.com)
• Building Social Capital (agentgenius.com)
• Learn the 3 Levels of Whuffie (activerain.com)
• The Whuffie Powered Search Engine (oneriot.com)
• PDF2009. Building The Social Economy: Craigbucks, Newmarks, and Making Whuffie (webmetricsguru.com)
• Get Your Whuffie Together (blogs.msdn.com)
• Twitter, Whuffie and Digital Feudalism (broadstuff.com)