If you weren't around last night on Twitter, you missed the brief renaissance of "fat" tweets.

To recap, because of a loophole in Twitter's url-shortener, it was possible to create messages of indeterminate length. There were a number of people, myself included, who tried a few brief experiments to see if it was possible. Mostly just Hello World stuff. Nothing very interesting.

But it was tantalizing. For the first time we got to see what a longer tweet would look like.

StefanW echoes my sentiment when he says yes they were sweet, but asks "How to fight dogmatism?"

This got me thinking. I know how to fight dogma. With compromise.

I'd like to propose an experiment to the owners of Twitter. For a brief period, say 7 days, let a few of us create special accounts that don't have a 140-character limit. We know there's no technical limit in the software. After all you had to disable the feature. It's already in there.

After a week of experimentation, we agree that you get to turn it off if you want, or you can leave it there. Or do something else. Maybe we'll learn why, after all, easing the limit is not a good idea.

As with everything on Twitter, it will be strictly opt-in and anyone who opts-in can opt-out at any time.

Let us have a week to experiment, to see what's possible, and to make recommendations.

If you agree or disagree, write a blog post. And be sure to use more than 140 characters to say what you think!

PS: I've been down this road myself. In the early days of outlining, ThinkTank had a 40-character limit on headlines. One of our earliest most vocal users, and a good friend, Dick Applebaum, was relentless in promoting what he called fat headlines. When I wrote the post yesterday I was reminded of Dick. What was the outcome? I relented. The result was MORE, which won product of the year in 1986 on the Mac, and made our users very happy and our investors rich.

PPS: mbjorn calls this Fat Tweets Week. I like. Changed the title of the post.

 8/15/2010; 11:46:07 AM.   .

I am still wiped out from yesterday's 2-hour ride that involved some real hills for the first time in 15 years.

But I wanted to try out an iPhone app for biking called Cyclemeter.

It took a bit of futzing around but I figured out how to get it to export the map to Google.

Today's ride was short. 38 minutes, 5.66 miles. Went down to the Battery and back. Enough to work up a sweat and to feel it in my legs and butt.

I think I'm getting to the point where it's hard not to ride at least a little every day.

Wondering what happens when it gets cold?

 8/15/2010; 11:25:39 AM.   .