While I don’t think C4 can be replaced, there are other conferences of a similar scale that can help to fill the void. This Fall offers a full calendar of options for folks who are looking for an opportunity to socialize with peers and learn a few new tricks of the trade:

VTM iPhone Developer’s Conference: October 16-17, Philadelphia, PA.
Voices That Matter has been on a run with iPhone-targeted conferences, putting on a show every 6 months or so at different locations around the country. I spoke at the Boston event a year or so ago, and had a great time.

I am attending the Philadelphia event as a speaker alumni guest, and they have also passed along a discount code to share with you: PHBLOGS. If you use this code before September 10th, it combines with early bird pricing for a total savings of $300.

MacTech Conference: November 3-5, Los Angeles, CA.
For all you hardcore Mac and IT nerds who have had enough of the iPhone-only conferences, this is the place for you. This is the inaugural event and seems to have come at least in part as a reaction to Apple’s substantial omission of Mac and IT content from the WWDC event this year.

I’m speaking at this conference and although I won’t say exactly what my topic is, it just might set me up for a world class showdown with my illustrious friend Wil Shipley, who is also scheduled to appear.

360 iDev: November 7-10, Austin, TX.
Hot on the heels of MacTech, 360 iDev is another iPhone-oriented conference that has been skipping around the country. The Austin, TX location is a big draw for me, but I think with so much other activity and the speaking gig just prior in Los Angeles, I will have to sit this one out.

Apple Developer Tech Talks: November-December? Worldwide.
If you haven’t been lucky enough to live near enough and apply quickly enough for these stellar events, you’ve missed out. For the past several years Apple has sent some of its best communicators to put on what amounts to a micro-WWDC: a day of intensive sessions on the latest and greatest Apple technologies.

I attended last year’s New York event and wrote up the experience for TUAW. Assuming Apple puts this tour on again this year, and I’m eligible to attend, I’ll be scampering to sign up. You should, too!

What else is going on in the Apple-sphere this Fall? If I am overlooking something big, please share with us in the comments below. I’ll update the post later with a more “definitive” list of options to choose from.

It may go against the grain a little bit, but I’ll say it: I’m incredibly excited for the future of Mac software. I don’t expect we’ll make software that looks and feels like iOS apps (we shouldn’t), but I do expect we’ll learn from iOS apps how power is the real goal, and that flexibility is just a tool to use exceedingly sparingly, only when it substantially increases power.

I like, no … I LOVE the idea of learning from iOS apps, in order to build superb Mac apps.

As many of you know, I don’t believe the Mac is dead, and it should go without saying I don’t believe iPhone or iPad is dead.

We’re on the brink of an Apple-dominated consumer-electronics era, and we’re in charge of making the software good.

This pursuit was of course assisted by Google itself. It has a nifty advanced search feature where you can specify a date range for the results. Unfortunately the algorithm for assigning dates to pages seems really buggy, and you end up with a lot of false positives for the date range you specify. For example, Google was being talked about in 1973?

I was able to find some interesting newsgroup postings from Sergey in 1994. On August 18, 1994, he sought advice about booking air travel from San Francisco to Baltimore. In 2010, this conversation would almost certainly not happen, as any number of powerful airfare search engines crunch the numbers and compare rates across carriers, dates, and airports.

But even more interesting to me is a math question posed in 1994 about the Karhunen-Loeve theorem:

Hi,

I ran across a reference to a Karhunen-Loeve transform in a paper I was reading and from the brief mention it seems that it is relevant to my research.  However, there is no pointer to where I could find more information.

Could someone let me know what a good reference for the Karhunen-Loeve transform would be?

thanx
–sergey

Today you just type “Karhunen-Loeve” into Google to get the answer.

Unfortunately, this seemingly minor update presented a major failure in my debug builds, which I’m adventurously compiling using the LLVM clang compiler. They built fine with Xcode 3.2.2, but starting in 3.2.3, I got a linkage failure, tracing back to the popular open source RegExKitLite:

Undefined symbols:
  "___gxx_personality_v0", referenced from:
      _rkl_debugCacheSpinLock in RegexKitLite.o
      ...
  "__ZSt9terminatev", referenced from:
      +[NSString(RegexKitLiteAdditions) clearStringCache]
      in RegexKitLite.o

What? Those symbols smack of C++, but there isn’t any C++ code in my project. At least, I don’t think there is. RegExKitLite is so famously advanced in its designed, I couldn’t easily tell you whether there was stuff in there intended as C++ or not. On a whim, I tried to switch the file type to C++ to see if that made clang any happier. No, it screamed bloody murder. It agrees with me, RegExKitLite is not C++ code.

So why the link errors? I examined the compile line carefully for RegExKitLite and confirmed that it’s using clang in a manner that should only be generating plain C linkage:

/Developer/usr/bin/clang -x objective-c -arch x86_64 ...

But when I look at the resulting RegExKitLite.o with the “nm” command-line tool, it shows the culprits symbols have been listed as references in the binary object file:

% nm RegexKitLite.o | grep -e terminate\\\|personality
                 U __ZSt9terminatev
                 U ___gxx_personality_v0

Normally when I’m getting some kind of issue like this, I just type in the problematic symbols in to Google and usually find somebody else has found and solved the problem. No such luck this time. There are lots of false positives for the typical reason somebody runs into this link error: they are compiling legitimate C++ code but neglecting to link with the stdc++ library. But in our case, we are not compiling C++ code, but we’re ending up with C++ dependencies nonetheless.

I hopped on to the #clang IRC channel on irc.oftc.net, where a couple extremely helpful clang engineers (thanks to dgregor and rjmccall) helped talk me through the problem, and determine that it does seem to be a clang 1.5 bug. They confirmed that with their latest and greatest clang the bug seems to be fixed, but I was curious to confirm it myself, so I checked out and built the latest clang, too. Sure enough, all is well for future generations!

But what do we do now, stuck with the clang 1.5 that ships with Xcode? There is a crude workaround: simply link to stdc++. But yuck! All that C++ linkage dirtying up my pristine Objective-C project? Since I only use clang (for now) to build debug builds, I don’t have too much of a problem doing this. But if I was shipping these binaries I would be very hesitant to make that concession.

Radar #8230225: clang 1.5 forces linkage to C++ for non-C++ source file
(Open Radar Link)

The best we can do is report the issue to Apple and let them decide whether it’s worth their time to backport whatever fix in later clang is missing from clang 1.5. If you have other suggestions for how to work around the problem in the mean time, please do chime in with a comment below.

Update: The author of RegExKitLite kindly chimed in below with a pointer to the revision in the clang source repository that that fixes the issue. He also suggests a simple, and seemingly safe workaround, involving a slight tweak to the RegExKitLite source code.

After the launch of the iPhone 4, a well-designed device with one easily-demonstrable flaw, the company is losing its famous control over the emphasis of press coverage. Apple is typically brilliant at walking the line between humility and pomposity, adjusting its tone to suit the current situation.

When Apple was suffering in the late 1990’s, it played to historic core values with campaigns like “Think Different,” but held on to the sliver of confident superiority that helps to sell its brand. Now that it’s on top of the world, it tends more toward a triumphant strut, with just a dash of idealism. Recent blunders paint the company as both arrogant and user-hostile, two attributes that incite pundits to attack without mercy.

Nobody likes a sore winner. Whatever the fight, struggle, ambition, the odds are good that judgement will be harshest on the one who emerges victorious. Anybody who ever received an A+ on an exam in grade-school, only to have the teacher publicly celebrate it among classmates, knows that success turns you into a target. Surviving that success requires careful management of one’s own image, as perceived by the audience that was most invested in the outcome.

Imagine you’ve just achieved something incredible. Bystanders will react with one of three reactions: praise, indifference, or scorn. You can ignore the majority, who don’t care a whit one way or another. Your fate will be decided by the passionate minority, so you must inspire fans to be more passionate and tireless than detractors. A small, energized core of supporters can outlast even a large, committed group of critics. At its best, Apple inspires passionate users to identify more with the company’s egalitarian rhetoric than with the billions of dollars that are flowing into the company’s bank accounts. (The billions are pretty inspirational to stockholders, however).

Apple makes fantastic products that are, by and large, defect free. In my opinion, they deserve to win. I applaud the company, and in particular, its employees. As the years go by, almost every part of the company seems to be improving. They routinely launch new products that stun and delight us with a combination of obviousness-in-hindsight, and that futuristic “Apple magic.” Kudos to them.

Apple is also brilliant at public relations. They produce beautiful, inspiring advertisements. Their web content strikes the balance of confidence and customer-centric humility. And their rank-and-file employees show off their passion for the company in email lists, internet fora, and on Twitter. But at the height of success, the fact that critics are gaining the upper hand is evidence that the company is failing to control its image.

Most of Apple’s recent PR gaffes trace back directly to Steve Jobs. His famous arrogance was exactly what the company needed while it restored itself to, and then surpassed, its former glory. During Apple’s recovery, detractors belittled and dismissed Apple as an “also-ran” company, suggesting they should give up and yield to the obvious victories of companies like Dell and Microsoft. But Jobs ignored the critics and spoke to the fans, inspiring us to stand by and loudly defend Apple.

Now that Apple is on top again, Jobs seems to be losing that knack for inspiring fans. He’s turning into a sore winner. He defensively chides his own customers for holding their iPhone 4 “the wrong way.” He tersely defends questionable Apple practices in one-liner email responses. He spins the truth in that barely plausible manner that used to be celebrated as the “reality distortion field,” but now comes off as purposefully dishonest and manipulative.

I believe Jobs is an idealist product visionary who wants the best for Apple and for its customers. But he’s lost his ability to manage his own image, and thus the image of the company. Apple’s PR department is in charge of manipulating how the company is perceived, but their efforts are being drowned out by the live-wire personality at the helm of the ship. Jobs needs to quiet down now and let cooler heads speak. No more arrogant, terse email replies. No more defensive press conferences. No more snarky interview quips. Just chill out and try to get your groove back.

At his best, Steve Jobs is a brilliant, inspirational spokesman for the company. At his worst, he is the pompous winner who begs to be taken down a notch. Jobs is the kid who, having been celebrated for the A+ exam grade, reacts by chiding his classmates: “You all are a bunch of idiots.” Fans lose their faith, detractors gain momentum. This guy’s in for a rough victory.

This entry was inspired by Michael Tsai’s Tone.

His latest, My Loss, reminds us that even successful entrepreneurs have gone through the wringer more than once, and have made their share of mistakes.

I especially like the “moral” of this latest post:

Say “no” where you used to say “yes”. Say “yes” where you used to say “no”. Do the thing that scares you the most, then get up and go.

This captures the essence of  one of my own motivational mantras: ”Say Yes.”

When someone asks me to speak at a conference, write an article, give a toast at a wedding, attend a conference, or just to have lunch, my gut reaction is to refuse.

Almost every public thing I do that pulls me away from my computer and out of my house, comes from saying yes when I want to say no. I psyche myself up, remember that this life isn’t going to drive itself where I want it to go, and step up to the plate.

Say yes.

At the company’s I/O conference they announced Android 2.2, or “Froyo,” a significant update to their mobile phone OS. The open platform powers many of the iPhone’s most viable competitors, including the Verizon Droid, and Google’s own Nexus One.

Why is this good for the iPhone? Because it’s doomed without a proper competitor, and thus far, it’s been lacking one. What happens to fighters who nobody spars with? Regardless of size, skill, or strength of weapon, they end up flopping about the arena alone. Never defeated, but never victorious.

Apple came out swinging with the launch of iPhone in 2007, and has done an admirable job of shadowboxing: enhancing the device and expanding the platform with iPod touch and iPad. In the absence of serious competition Apple’s legendary paranoia has served some of the same function, but grit and independence of vision will only get you so far.

The details of Android 2.2 are not that interesting to me. What’s important and inspiring is that they are iterating on the product, and not throwing their arms up in defeat. Google lets us know they will not be sitting this round out, and their fighting posture sends a message to Apple, and to the world: the iPhone is assailable.

In order for Apple to benefit from this fight, they need to zero in on the qualities of Android that actually pose a threat. Sam Pullara attempted to give them a hand, by identifying Android 2.2’s lightning-fast Java VM as a potentially deadly blow. I think Sam is overstating the performance overhead in Objective-C. The language’s message-dispatch features have been so finely-tuned by Apple that any criticisms should come pre-loaded with proof of specific performance problems.

Even if we assume that Android’s fast VM does trump Objective-C for speed, is it meaningful to the competition? Duncan Davidson, an excellent photographer who happens to also be a legendary Java expert, says no:

“A faster VM will certainly help things out. But Android’s eventual fate will have little to do with how fast the VM is or how long method dispatches take on the iPhone. Instead, it’ll have to do with harder things like user experience, service plans, interoperability, and excellent applications.”

By most accounts, Android phones still fail to match iPhone when it comes to all those things that Apple does best: simplicity, attractiveness, and refinement of the user experience. But Google knows there is much about Android that pleases: more features, and fewer limitations. They’re using this allure to push the Nexus One on folks who would otherwise be naturally aligned with the iPhone.

The flow of free phones out of Google is measurable by the amount of surprising, casual-switcher chatter I’m seeing on Twitter and in blogs. I got one email from a colleague who announced, “I’m switching to a Nexus One for the week, so please use my Google Voice number to contact me.” If somebody is switching phone platforms, and they know in advance that it’s only a 1-week trial, there’s a good bet they didn’t pay for the phone.

The free-phone strategy is working, prompting fair feedback from folks who nonetheless find plenty of negatives to criticize. Justin Williams demonstrates this with his guarded praise:

“Android is certainly a capable smartphone operating system. In fact, if the iPhone never existed, it’d be pretty great.”

The fact that its greatness hinges on the iPhone not existing is a problem, but it also underscores that iPhone is the primary challenge to Android’s success. Even though Justin stops short of declaring Android a winner over iPhone, he concedes that he’ll probably keep using it until the 4G iPhone is released.

Mike Ash offers similarly candid feedback:

“First full day with the Nexus One. Verdict: substantially uglier, harder to use, but VASTLY more powerful than an iPhone.”

This impression from Mike fits perfectly into the marketing message from Google and its mobile allies. I barely watch any television, and even I know that evidently “Droid Does.” The world is more thuggish than frilly, more impressed by strength than finesse, and this message will work. Android is the gigantic, Dunkin Donuts Coffee Coolatta to Apple’s dainty espresso cup. Still, if you’re only going to offer a couple advantages over the iPhone, power and freedom are not poor choices.

As John Gruber points out, even if Android or another platform takes a dominant position, it doesn’t necessarily spell disaster for the iPhone. Apple’s advantage, as demonstrated by the Mac, is they don’t need to serve the masses to succeed:

“Apple could positively thrive with a long-term mobile market share of, say, 20-25 percent” … “In the phone industry today — all mobile phones, not just smartphones — Nokia sells more than 10 times as many units as Apple, but Apple generates more profit.”

Playing the underdog suits Apple well. I have enjoyed, as a fan and stockholder, their success over the past several years, but it’s changed them. From a company that balanced its own ideals against the demands of developers and competitors, to one that holds a firehose to repel all naysayers.

The risk to Apple is not in losing the masses, but in losing the faithful core. In their unchallenged position, Apple made a lot of right decisions, but they also made mistakes, particularly in the form of political moves that limit what developers can distribute on the platform. These restrictions are done in the name of quality control, but anybody who has browsed the App Store knows that all this autonomy has done little to stem the flow of trashy, embarrassing apps.

What they have done is alienated developers, and ultimately deprived users of software they want to see on the platform. My fear is these botched decisions are hurting Apple, but they aren’t feeling it. Pain is a gift: the signal that prevents a burned finger tip from becoming a body engulfed in flames. Apple is numb from success, and I hope the emerging competition from Google and others will re-sensitize them to the threat of failure.

Google’s Android is the best challenge yet to the political and technical decisions made by Apple for its iPhone and related products. I welcome the challenge, and look forward to Apple’s scrappier, revitalized retaliation.

Read the MarsEdit 3 Press Release

As you can imagine, I get a lot of feedback about MarsEdit. People tend to be head over heels in love with the application, so most of it is extremely positive. Nonetheless, there are certain persistent requests that I have received over the years. It’s extremely common for people to request the following features

• “WYSIWYG” rich text editing
• Support for WordPress Pages and Custom Fields
• Improved HTML syntax highlighting
• Integration with iPhoto, Aperture, and Lightroom
• Scheduled media attachments

MarsEdit 3 is my answer to all of those requests. Finally.

Download a copy, and enjoy.

So now that 3.0 is out of the way, I suppose I will just kick back and relax. Hah! The most exciting thing about clearing those high level feature requests off the table is it sets the stage for the next round of refinements. There’s a lot of stuff already in progress that I am excited to share with you in the coming months.

I plan for the future of all my products by consolidating user feedback and balancing it against my own personal vision for the application. I’ve got plenty of ideas for MarsEdit on the Mac, as well as on … other platforms.

MarsEdit 3 is a new foundation for developing even more enhancements on the Mac version, but it also includes a lot of “behind the scenes” structural changes that will make it easier for me to build e.g. an iPad version.

It’s going to be an exciting year.

Like rockets and planets?

Check back tomorrow morning at 9AM EDT.

I have something fun for you.

I participate extensively on Twitter with my personal account: @danielpunkass, and my company account: @redsweater. One of my applications, @marsedit, also tweets with a mind of its own.

I have strong opinions about what works well on Twitter, and what doesn’t. I decided I would start writing down these opinions so that I can easily reference them in the future. This advice is as much a memorandum to myself as to any readers who might feel that I am preaching to them. I violate most of these recommendations on a regular basis, but I hope that writing this guide helps me to do so less often.

Tweet Anatomy

For such a simple format, there is an incredible complexity to the variety of tweets, and the metadata that go along with them. In this section I will identify all of the standard tweet forms and many conventional metadata forms, and how they should be used.

Mentions

When referring to any person, product, or company that has an official presence on Twitter, include their @username organically in the content of your tweet. By including their @username, you provide a canonical link to their presence on Twitter, and make it easy for them to take notice of your comments, if they choose to. If it’s important to include the proper name as well, then include the Twitter name in parentheses:

Never start a tweet with a @username, unless that Tweet is a reply to the user. Placing the @username at the beginning of the tweet will mark it as a reply, preventing it from being seen by members of your audience who don’t also follow the user:

@danielpunkass was at the meeting last night, and he told me some juicy gossip about @marsedit.

Twitter claims that this should not show up as a reply, but in practice it seems to happen more often than not. Perhaps it is because Twitter clients set the “reply” flag on tweets that are written this way, even if they shouldn’t. To be safe, edit the format of your tweet so that the @username shows up elsewhere in the content:

I met Daniel Jalkut (@danielpunkass) last night. He told me some juicy gossip about the next release of @marsedit!

Because @username mentions will draw the attention of the user you are tweeting about, don’t overuse a particular user’s name in your tweets. You will irritate them and they may choose to block you.

Replies

Replies are a special form of mention that indicates your tweet is addressed specifically to the attention of another user. Reply directly to another tweet by using the reply feature of the web site or your Twitter client. This will ensure that the reply intent, and conversation flow is tracked appropriately inside Twitter.

In general you should not edit the standard formatting for replies, which include the @username of the user you are replying to at the beginning of the tweet. Deviating from this format will cause your reply to be visible to all of your followers, instead of just the ones who follow both you and your recipient.

Some users abuse this fact by adding an arbitrary character before the username, so that all of their followers see the reply:

.@danielpunkass I think you’re full of crap, and everybody knows it.

If it’s imperative to share a reply with your entire audience, be respectful and edit your tweet to adopt the format of a mention, so your audience knows you are not abusing the reply format:

I think @danielpunkass is full of crap, and everybody knows it.

You can address a tweet to more than one person by including multiple space-separated @usernames at the beginning of the tweet. Always list the primary target as the first name in the list.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgement is a special form of mention where the @username does not show up organically in the content of the tweet. Use acknowledgements to credit other users as the source of content. Add acknowledgements to the end of your tweet, in parentheses if possible, and include shorthand citation language such as “via” or “thx” to clarify the kind of acknowledgement. Sometimes it is appropriate to use the shorthand “/cc” to indicate that you only mean to ensure these users are aware of the content of your Tweet:

Oops. Turns out I was totally wrong about Macworld’s editorial policy. Check this out: http://example.com/ (thx @danielpunkass, /cc @jsnell)

When you share information with your audience, always acknowledge the source of that information unless the source has explicitly requested to remain anonymous.

Tagging

Add tags to a tweet by adding a space-separated list of words at the end of the tweet, with a hash character before each word. These units are referred to as hashtags:

I don’t even like hashtags, but I guess I’ll use them just to make a point. #hashtags #twitterstyle #uglytweets

Use tags when you want your tweet, regardless of content, to be locatable as part of a larger trend or standardized category of tweet. For example, some people use the #fb tag to tag tweets that should automatically be copied to Facebook, or #ff to indicate that the tweet is a list of @usernames somebody recommends you follow as part of the “Follow Friday” meme.

Retweets

When you want to share another user’s tweet with all of your followers, use the retweet feature of the web site or your Twitter client. If your client does not include a retweet feature, adopt standard “organic” retweeting notation:

RT @danielpunkass Everybody should download MarsEdit today.

It’s highly preferable to use standard retweet features where available, because they store intent about the retweet into Twitter, and allow for more advanced filtering and searching by your audience. Using the standard retweet feature also eliminates the need to edit the original tweet to make room for the “RT @username” notation.

If you copy the contents of another user’s tweet without using the retweet feature or standard RT notation, you must put that content into quotation marks, and clearly cite the original author:

“Everybody should download MarsEdit today.” — Whoo hoo, @danielpunkass is right about that.

Failure to do this leads to confusion about whether you, or the person you are citing, is the original author of the content.

Direct Messages

When you wish to communicate privately with another Twitter user who follows you, use the direct message feature of the web site or your Twitter client. If your client does not support a direct message feature, or the user in question does not follow you, there is no way to communicate privately with them via Twitter.

You should never use replies to highlight the fact that you can’t direct message a user. This is a rude implication that the other user should be following you, when it’s every user’s prerogative to manage their following list as they see fit.

If you need to get in touch with somebody privately, and you can’t find contact information for them on their personal blog, web site or by other means, request their attention tastefully with a reply tweet:

@danielpunkass I’m trying to get in touch with you privately about something. It’s important. Can you direct-message me your contact info?

Before writing such a tweet, make sure you are following the person so that their gracious attempt to contact you with a direct message will succeed.

Write For The Medium

Twitter’s 140 character limitation beguiles and infuriates its users. At its best, it forces users to come up with the most concise, purest of language expressions for their thoughts. At its worst, it leaves users “just a few characters shy” of pure genius. The advice in this section is intended to clarify how you can best embrace these constraints: work with them and not against them, and your audience will thank you.

Avoid Abbreviation

Brevity is an art, and Twitter’s 140 character limit encourages it. Don’t compress more than 140 characters worth of thought by using abbreviations, or worse, non-grammatical fragments. If u try 2 hard to fit yr thoughts, it duz not work. You just sound like a moron.

Exceptions: some shorthand notation has become so commonplace on Twitter that you should use it in favor of longer-form words. For example, never spell out “RETWEET” in your efforts to retweet another user. Also, abbreviations are acceptable inside acknowledgements, because this language is not considered part of the language of your tweet.

One Tweet Per Thought

When an expression doesn’t fit in 140 characters, don’t spread it out over multiple tweets. Instead, switch to a longer form medium such as a blog and write as extensively as you wish on the subject. Then, summarize your long-form post in a single tweet and link to the longer-form content.

Never “Tweet-longer.”

Using services such as Twitlonger achieves the goal of limiting yourself to one tweet per thought, but it does so in a sloppy way that does not inspire confidence among your audience. They want to hear your thoughts, carefully edited for consumption, not vomited out onto the table.

Identify Linked Content

A tweet should stand on its own, and should not require outside resources to be understood. This problem is exacerbated on Twitter, where the destination of a link is often masked by the use of a URL shortening service.

Never post bare URLs, or URLs with a meaningless description. It’s insulting to your audience and doesn’t fulfill the value of Twitter as a content vehicle:

This is hilarious! http://bit.ly/4Wm7cs

Instead, include a meaningful comment that makes it clear what your audience will find when they click the link, and helps them decide whether they want to or not:

It’s going to be hilarious when you click this link and find out it’s Rick Astley: http://bit.ly/4Wm7cs

Write For Your Audience

Because there are few explicit rules to what you may use Twitter for, there are a variety of interesting uses that don’t map directly to “a person’s identity.” For example, companies, products, even news sources and aggregators use Twitter as a means of publicizing information in short bursts of text.

In any case, every Twitter account publishes content that is directed towards an intended audience. This audience may include your close circle of friends, your customers, professional peers, or a combination of all these and more.

You know your audience best, so speak to them in ways that make sense. The more diverse your audience is, the harder it is to refine content to their taste. The advice in this section is intended to help you limit widely-offensive behavior in your tweets.

Write Every Tweet By Hand

Never let a service automate tweets on your behalf. Unless your audience expects the content of your tweets to be machine-made, make the effort to editorialize everything you share. Users who follow you expect to see original content, not the mechanized ramblings of location-aware services, or the spam-like news of your progress in an online game. Even the seemingly innocuous plugins that tweet about updates to your blog are transparently automated, and take away from the human aspect of your account. Write those tweets by hand, as well.

Avoid Ideological Hotspots

Unless your audience shares you political or religious views, resist the temptation to rant about your ideological beliefs. As satisfying as this can be, it alienates many of your readers and gives the impression that you lack the discipline to avoid obviously provocative topics.

Complain Constructively

Nobody cares to hear about the subtle inequities of your daily life:

Grr, I wish that newspaper boy would FREAKING learn how to get the paper onto the porch!

It may feel good to get it off your chest, but it’s boring to the rest of us. Even if we happen to commiserate with you, it’s a useless tweet. Instead, channel your frustration into valuable content:

I wrote a blog post: 10 tips for getting the newspaper boy to do his job better.

While it may be meaningless to some of your audience, at least it offers constructive content for those who are interested.

Be Yourself, Only Better

Twitter is your opportunity to show off your best attributes. Some people will defend rude or tactless behavior on Twitter by quipping, “I’m just being myself.” It’s true, but you’re also just being yourself when you’re using the toilet. Don’t share every little facet of your life, only the charming parts.

Don’t Pick Fights

If you disagree with something another user has said, offer thoughtful evidence that they may be wrong, without resorting to snide or sarcastic language. Don’t assume that the only way to attract the attention of another user is to provoke them to angry debate. This kind of personality defect is easy to detect, and if you persist in picking fights, your targets will block you, and your followers will abandon you.

Take It Outside

When Twitter replies start to resemble chat, the interchange can be joyous for the people taking part, but tedious for those followers who are forced to watch. Unless the content of a discussion is of particular interest to a wide audience, it should be taken to a private medium such as direct messages, chat, or email. This is doubly true for any discussion that has the hallmark tones of argument.

In Summary

Twitter is a powerful vehicle for sharing our thoughts with the world. Used appropriately, we maximize this power and encourage others to respect and applaud us. Used carelessly or with sinister motivations, we simply beg to be ignored.

I hope this collection of advice helps you maximize the power of your tweets. Those of you who also have strong opinions, what did I leave out? What did I get completely wrong? Let me know in the comments so I can consider revising this as a living reference for using Twitter correctly.