I spent some time this weekend working on my http://dialthejoke.appspot.com/ application. The idea is certainly not original. I first learned about these systems when I saw Pirates of Silicon Valley. It accepts user submitted jokes and those jokes are then voted on. The joke with the most votes will be the played when you call 425-440-0035.
I built it with <http://www.twilio.com/ and Google App Engine. It's the first real app I built with twilio. It only uses the "say" verb so I still have a lot to learn about the twilio system. But I do have another app I plan on building during the evenings and weekends ahead. It's slightly more complicated but I think it will be a bit more amusing.
For those that are interested the source code can be found here: http://code.google.com/p/dialthejoke/.
Obama nominated Sotomayor to the supreme court today but the top twitter trend as of now: #3wordsaftersex I do understand twitter search. So far I actually like twitter search. I find somewhat interesting blog posts (on technical things) that I probably would not have found otherwise. I don't know what twitter plans to do with search (fight Google?). I could see how they could win. It would be nice if the searches were sorted by "relevance" instead of most recent post. Grouping common tweets together and categorizing them might be nice but I honestly don't know if I would like that.
The power of these tweets seem to be the links and keywords and the time context. Perhaps mining the tweets would be a better way to label images? Or label websites, videos, blogs, and news items that the tweets link to.
Just some thoughts. I guess I sort of get twitter now.
...the people. Here is a question somebody asked on a class forum. I really hope they meant to be funny:
Professors response to the acceptable size of paper for notes used during an exam:
Let me clarify. Two pieces of A4 paper. Fourth sides. Hand writing notes.
Students response:
Hmm... since wikipedia states that A4 paper is '8.3 x 11.7"', I assume this means 8.5 x 11" will also suffice (where do one obtain "A4" paper around here?)
TA's response:
That is the most ridiculous question I have seen in my 25 years of existence. It even beats some of the other questions one hears in the election rallies these days. My official response to it is that I am going to go off to bed now as I have an early morning lecture to attend.