This time I'm going to discuss some specifics in using Twitter and Remember The Milk. They seem to be the services that my friends and family have the most problems with. I'm going to start with Remember The Milk, as it is more immediately useful to those who might feel a little daunted by the two at first glance. I seem to be most successful when I can demonstrate the cool stuff first, then encourage the newbs to try it out for themselves.
Remember The Milk is all about lists and how to access and add to them. Checking off items can be useful as well, depending on what you are using the lists for. Lists, or any items within them, can be made public or shared with people that have been added to your RTM Contacts (they have to be RTM users as well. I keep finding new things to make lists of, things that are genuinely useful! The kicker here is that you can access your lists via SMS (with the help of Twitter), mobile web browser, your desktop computer's browser, and even news feeds.My big thrill for friends and family is Birthday Lists. Everybody is trying to figure out at the last minute what to get somebody for their birthday. We can near-completely solve this by simply populating a list and publishing it. Any lists you have published can be seen by anyone on the web, and has it's own news feed as well. I have shared such a list here. You can see that it is pretty sparse right now, but hopefully you get the point. Now you know what I want for my Birthday!!
An example of using news feeds can be seen in the sidebar. Look for "kEnny's Tasks - Blogs To Be" on the right. This is my list of reminders for things I want to write about. The list is hosted by RTM, but now you can see it from my blog.
How about your favorite books, or books you want to read? Make a new list for the ones you haven't read yet, populate the list with books you want to read, then check them off as you finish them. You have just made a new list of recently read books, that can be added to your blog. it gets updated automatically as you add them and mark others complete. You can move the best ones to a "Favorite Books" list and add that to your blog as well!
I love movies, and I love seeing them in well equipped, modern theaters. Ever since the early nineties, I have avidly watched previews to find the next movie I need to see, then kept the lists to remind me of what I wanted to see later on. I first used PDAs of various sorts for this. I stopped being quite so much of a geek (I mean by whipping out a PDA and typing or writing on it during movie previews, the rest is kinda hard to wash off) when I found a companion to enjoy movies with. Now that I have RTM and Twitter, I am doing it again with my cell phone, which isn't nearly so out of place. At home, I can go through the list of movies and use IMDB to add opening dates, websites, and any other details. Weeks later, RTM sends me a reminder for the movies opening that day. It shows up on my cell phone as an SMS message, courtesy of Twitter, and my email inbox. If I miss a movie and it isn't in the theaters any more, I move it to my movies-to-see-at-home list, and the due date is removed. Now I can watch for it to be available on TV or DVD. I would like to eventually connect that one to a TiVo Wishlist or Netflix Queue. That would be sweet! WAIT! I'm going to add that to my to-do list right now!
I also love music. I've spent a lot of money on music over the course of my years as a bachelor, but in acquiring extra mouths in my household I have come to realize that the same money is better spent elsewhere. I'm very lucky that the popularity of MP3s popped in not long before my first household companion showed up. The good part about having other ears in the house is that I get exposure to music I might not otherwise ever come across. The bad part is that I don't have anywhere near as much spare time for uninterrupted tune-browsing as I used to. Now I can make a note right away for music I need to look for. At my computer is where I can sort the list contents. In my spare time I can see where those songs or artists lead me. Music ID services and HD radio data are also very informative sources for artist and song information, and I'm looking forward to using those to automatically populate my music list in the future.
I'm moving next month, so I started a list of all the big stuff we have to ensure we have the proper facilities to transfer them to the new house. I shared the list with Allison so we both know what we have in front of us.
When I've got a bill or other important matter to attend to in the near future, I send it to RTM, so I don't forget. It only takes a minute to make the note, and I don't ever have to worry about misplacing it.
Does it get better? Yes. Using tags and locations (RTM integrates Google Maps), you can connect items from multiple lists. There's a multitude of ways to manipulate data in RTM. Sign up now, then go here for help setting it up. You won't regret it.
Next?
This is where Twitter comes in. At its core, Twitter is known as a micro-blog. You can send short messages to update your status, and you can "follow" your friends' updates at the same time. Many services (like RTM, duh!) use Twitter as the glue between you and their operations. This population is what gets me excited about using it, because Twitter is so connectible to begin with. You can send and receive updates (and therefore message to the other services) from the mobile devices via text message, email, IM, and their web page, to name only the direct methods. There are scores of other desktop gadgets and programs that can do it as well. My favorite-est browser, 
, has Twitter functionality built into the sidebar. Between my phone and Flock, I get all the Twitter love I need.Twitter is smart, too! If you set it up for multiple interfaces (IM, SMS, and Web), it can figure out the best place to contact you. When you have a message coming in, and you aren't logged into your IM service, it can go to your phone. If you designate hours when you don't want Twitter sending Tweets to your phone, it only leaves them in your log on the web for you to check on later. You can also selectively enable alerts from certain folks and services so that you are not totally inundated with incoming Tweets all the time. That was the part that took me a while to catch on to. Every time I added a new entity to follow, I also had to enable their alerts to come to my phone. After that it all works great!
I'm only following one actual person on Twitter: one of my sisters, whom I have suckered into trying it out. I follow 2 services: RTM and Xpen$er (which I haven't done a whole lot with yet). I have also set up two accounts to post to, using Twittermail, that I follow. Twittermail allows you to send an email to post to your Twitter account, and is great for coordinating activities for large groups of people. Anyone who knows the correct address can post comments or directions to everyone following that account. One recent example of such coordination was protesters trying to get face-time with the Olympic torch. I have set one up for use during a week-long family reunion this summer, and another to help coordinate resources at work. You can follow updates from your favorite political candidate, and many other entertaining and informative people.
That's what I've got for now. Tune in later to see what title I come up with for the next installment.
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