Isn't it funny how when Twitter does something that others have been doing for ages it's still innovative? But it is.

So look what just showed up in the right margin on the Twitter home page...

Follow TechCrunch and Stevin Berlin Johnson. Good ideas!

But wait a minute -- holy guacamole -- it looks an awful lot like -- omg -- could it be -- the dreaded, evil Suggested Users List.

Has it returned from the dead?

It looks suspiciously like it has. Haven't seen one ordinary person in there, after about a dozen refreshes. They all look like either Friends-of-Ev or celebs with big MSM names. Or reporters that write sweet nothings about Twitter, Inc.

Only this time they aren't just targeting newbies, the kinds of people who sign up, see nothing interesting and then disappear. I already follow 1323 people, and I've been on Twitter since 2006. According to Google I've blogged about it 3490 times (not including this post). What could possibly be the rationale for asking me to follow Tim O'Reilly or John Battelle. How about instead suggesting some people for me to unfollow. (I'm not kidding, I suffer from tweet overload.)

Yeah they totally suck.

Why don't they write some software down there at Twitter and stop nominating their friends for awards.

Where's my opt-out of this? I want to get rid of this thing. Now.

Update: They've blogged about it, but it sure doesn't sound like what I'm seeing. They don't mention the user interface on the Twitter front page.

Update #2: Here's how you opt-out. Just click on all the X's next to all the names as they pop up. Once you've killed them all, the feature just goes away.

 7/30/2010; 4:23:28 PM.   .

Follow up to the piece earlier this week.

You may not like Starbucks coffee, it's not my favorite (that was kind of the point) -- but I'll go there over other choices because of the free wifi. It's funny because I have other choices because I have Verizon Mifi. And the freeness of Starbucks shouldn't matter either because until recently I had AT&T Internet service (at the house in Berkeley) and therefore Starbucks wifi was always free, for me.

There's a funny thing that happens, maybe some psychologists can explain, when something is free for everyone -- that makes it more valuable for you, even if you don't really care if it's free.

Anyway, some free advice for Au Bon Pain and all the pizza joints near the Starbucks on Astor Place, figure out how you can provide free wifi too. I bet it's going to make a diff in your business, pretty soon. It'll be like offering your customers a free glass of water if they ask for one.

 7/30/2010; 1:42:38 PM.   .

This morning I published a book for distribution via Kindle. I took the full content of Scripting News for 2009, formatted it according to their rules. That was the hardest part. You have to render it as simple HTML and all the images have to be included in the zip archive you upload. That meant writing a parser that went through the text, pulls out the images, downloads them locally, and patches the URL in the HTML.

I couldn't figure out how to price it at $0. The lowest price was $1.99. Hope that isn't a problem. Of that, I will get 35 percent or about 70 cents. I don't expect it to amount to a lot of money.

I want to write a book, and I have some people I'm brainstorming with. By starting to publish to the Kindle, even in a rough format, I start to get my feet wet. For me, a veteran bootstrapper, this may be a necessary first step.

Anyway, it may take a few days for it to make it through their approval process. When it's available for purchase I'll post a pointer here.

If you want to download it now, here's the archive.

http://static.scripting.com/misc/2009.zip

Let me know what you think (and please think before you comment).

PS: Wonder if I'm going to have to pay $1.99 to see what my stuff looks like on a Kindle? That would totally suck.

 7/30/2010; 12:52:45 PM.   .