Drinks retailer First Quench, which owns the Threshers chain, is closing a further 391 stores resulting in 2,140 redundancies…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: specialty shopping. For a different topic see least busy time to go to disney world. The blog is also related to: shopping centres.

… @druckerei_de hat ihn. Die Jungs und/oder Mädels hatten die echt Coole Idee einen Twitter Wandkalender Aufzulegen. Mal ganz ehrlich ich will einen. Und das ist gar nicht so schwer. Mitglieder der twitter gemeinde senden einfach folgendes über den twitter Äther

Vorlage für den Tweet:

Ich möchte einen Twitter-Wandkalender 2010 von @druckerei_de bekommen. Zur Aktion von www.druckerei.de -> http://bit.ly/4vTob5

oder man macht es wie ich und Blogt darüber.

Achso die @druckerei_de Redaktion schlug vor, oder wünscht es heimlich vieleicht auch, warum twiter ich, in den Artikel mit reinzunehmen.

Gesagt getan ein kleiner Abriss meines Twitter daseins in form einer Top 5

1. Ich hör mich gerne selber reden, hm gut schreiben zählt auch
2. ich pflege ein hohes Mitteilungsvermögen
3. mein Voyorismus wird duch twitter gestilt
4. es ist ne wunderbare methode neue Menschen kennezulernen
5. Man kann seinen Blog darüber gut bewerben

und nun noch meine Top 5. woran man merkt das man TWITTERHOLIC ist

1. man spricht nur noch in maximal 140 zeichen
2. wenn man mehr zusagen hat blogt man
3. der tag ist in der PublicTimeline Organisiert
4. Das Fotoalbum nennt sich twitpic
5. und last but not least
   sie versuchen das HaschTag zu Rauchen

und da ich nicht am follow friday teilnehme
meine Top 5. TWITTERER

1. @vellusig
   Spricht fliessend ironisch
2. @tapedeck
   führt ein sehr gutes Blog
3. @TerrorCatGang
   die lässsigsten Twitterkater unter der Sonne
4. @katzemieze
   The Only, the one, die graziöse VIM Lucy
5. @HappySchnitzel
   keiner twittert so schön absurd wie du, Sue

gut das solls dann auch für heute sein

cu an other time
on an other place

der bagalutenGregor

Do you use Twitter? Live in or around west London?
Why not meet and greet some other Twitter users from around the area over a pint or three?

I’m organising this ‘tweetup’ so all the local Twitter users get together for a pint and chat – and to meet in ‘3D’. Last time I did this we had over 25 people together for a drink, including school teachers, a local councillor, writers, web design experts, photographers… it was a random mix of west London neighbours and many have stayed in touch.

This time it’s going to be bigger and the pub is even promoting it too – as they want our beer money…! Hopefully we can get some free food or pints from Tom and his team if we get a good crowd along. We might even arrange a Twitter quiz or some other such games to try and drum up some cash for a good cause or something…

It’s a Friday night and Facebook users will be welcome to join us so please come along…

Mark Hillary

Event page on Facebook is here

Rose & Crown
Church Place, St Mary’s Road
Ealing, London
W5 4HN

020 8567 2811
roseandcrown@fullers.co.uk

The closest tube is South Ealing, on the Piccadilly line. The 65 bus (Ealing Broadway to Richmond and Kingston) runs right past the pub, so you can also come via Ealing Broadway station (District and Central line tube and fast train link to Paddington)…

I’ve been having some great tweeting and text messages today and its hard to break away! I thank you all for the entertainment! LMAO! Gosh, what a great time I’ve had in the recent weeks! Thanks to all my Twitter and RL friends, so much  more has been happening in my life and I really feel that I and my site am more worthwhile!

I met @geogeller and @sioksiok who are filming the Twitter documentary in Chicago, and ended up leaving with them that night for the #140conf in LA! What an awesome time that was!!! I connected with so many new people face-to-face–it was like a live version of Twitter. I am not used to such non-stop activity though and by the end was more than ready to come “home” to Chicago! This is really down-time in comparison. I actually prefer the fast-paced lifestyle, but like I said, I am not used to it–nor am I on psych meds yet. But that will happen soon! I am still going through the intake process.

Gosh am I tired! Plus my body is sore, and its hard to think. I’m having headache problems off and on today as well as other aches and pains. Part of my issues. Even my fingers hurt typing. I am surprised that I am more awake today than yesterday. Yesterday I was falling asleep all day. I could really use some coffee.

Mmm…may i present myself for that kiss too? That lucky woman, i am infuriate with her! The case of jealousy there. Anyways, Dorothy Snarker has the video to it.

A $140,000 kiss is just a kiss

Enjoy…

lov3 m3,n33d m3,want m3 and fr33 m3

Ce ai face daca in viata reala ai avea limitare de 140 de caractere la enunturi, precum ai pe Twitter?

Sursa.

144 students from Ho Chi Minh City took part in the 10th annual “Prudential – Good Essay, Good Writing” contest on October 25.

Tang Thi Thanh Thuy, student of Ba Dinh High School in District 5, takes part in the “Prudential-Good Essay-Good Writing” contest on October 25. (Photo: Mai Hai)

The students were divided into two groups, one comprised of 6th and 7th graders, and one made up of 8th and 9th graders.

The younger group submitted essays based on the topic of encouraging their friends to participate in the contest and highlighted the importance of writing well.

The second group, meanwhile, turned in essays which analyzed the verses of a Vietnamese poem titled “Tieng ru” (Lullaby) by To Huu. The poem explores the relationship between individuals and their community.

Well-written essays with an expressive style will receive high marks, said a member of the judging panel.

Organizers included Sai Gon Giai Phong Newspaper and the City Department of Education and Training. The annual contest sponsored by insurer Prudential Vietnam was firstly held in 2000, aiming to encourage literature study and good handwriting among junior high school students.  

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Haylie Duff re-tweeted Miguel Karam’s update on Twitter as part of his HDBnow account. You can follow him www.twitter.com/miguelkaram or www.twitter.com/HDBnow

Here’s how MIGUEL KARAM reacted:

“God you guys! HAYLIE DUFF just re-tweeted my TWITTER update! I am so happy! I was shaking first and my heart was beating really fast!!! I am famous!!! lol kdn I just wrote: “Watch the trailer for Haylie Duff’s film “Fear Island” here: http://bit.ly/2uPwIs It looks really good! @HaylieK” and then she re-tweeted: “RT @HDBnow: Watch the trailer for Haylie Duff’s film “Fear Island” here: http://bit.ly/2uPwIs It looks really good!” I love Haylie Duff. ♥ She’s so sweet! http://hilaryfan.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2522738#post2522738″

Acabo de cambiar la plantilla de “El Viento rozando mi cara”, además de las entradas habituales, iré incluyendo micro entradas. Espero que os guste

Vigil. Celebration. Albert Cochran. Iconic. Colorful. Thong. Sublime. Unique. Weird. Mascot. Kind. Hope. Love. Austin.

It seems there are still more questions than answers about how PEPFAR will achieve a key milestone—recruiting and retaining 140,000 new health care workers over the next five years in countries hard hit by the AIDS epidemic.

Congress included that provision when lawmakers reauthorized PEPFAR last year, part of a broader effort to strengthen developing countries’ health systems. But turning that promise into a reality is a tall order, given the severity of current workforce shortages, the time, effort and expense involved in training new doctors and nurses, and the brain drain of health care professionals from resource poor countries to more affluent ones.

During a presentation at the Global Health Council today, Karin Turner, a senior USAID official whose portfolio includes health system strengthening and heath care workforce issues for Southern Africa, said there was still some “fogginess” on how this effort would unfold in the context of PEPFAR’s pivot to focus more on health system strengthening.

Some of the uncertainties Turner highlighted:

*Will program officials and implementers be looking more at general health outcomes or HIV outcomes under the new PEPFAR law?

*What is PEPFAR II’s vision of health systems?

*Will the focus be on building sustainability or meeting new targets, or both?

Turner said there’s a lot of talk now about maintaining PEPFAR programs, rather than dramatically scaling up, and she said it’s unclear what that means. Asked if there’s been a shift in resources within PEPFAR towards health system strengthening, she said not yet.

Turner said it’s clear that more funding will be necessary to add the health systems component, but “we haven’t heard the answer yet” about whether those resources will be forthcoming.

Joining Turner at the GHC session was Saul Kornik, head of Africa Health Placements, a group that recruits doctors to work in South Africa’s severely underserved rural outposts. His group mainly brings in doctors from the U.S. and Europe, who come to work for a year or two before returning to their home countries.

While that is obviously not a sustainable model for PEPFAR, Kornik had some interesting insights to the workforce shortage problems and how best to address it. His group has found that it’s very ineffective recruit 10 doctors and put them in 10 different hospitals, because there will be no support system; they will almost certainly feel overwhelmed and leave quickly.

It’s much better, he said, to put all ten doctors (or nurses or other health workers) in the same hospital, where they can form a support network and build up morale more broadly within an institution. That, in turn, can help attract native-born physicians who see opportunities to train and be trained by other professionals, he said.

Kornik also said bad management, often even more than low pay or other problems, is a major obstacle to retention; many doctors and other health care workers in South Africa say they leave their posts because their bosses were abusive and disrespectful.

“Unless we deal with management issues, we’re not going to retain staff,” he said, noting that this was a delicate issue because many upper-level managers are political appointees.

A melhor / pior parte do Twitter é que em 140 caracteres não dá tempo para explicar qualquer coisa… e ainda vai precisar de espaço pro RT?

Why Twitter will fail or why it must Morph

Have you started wondering if tweeting has any impact? Or more pointed – is tweeting a waste of time?  I have an opinion about why I think Twitter could die or it will at least morph into something different than we experience now… 

When I first opened my twitter account and a few folks started following me I was surprised… Why did they want to follow me anyway? I quickly learned there were others that had similar interests and notice that if I commented about their tweets they became a follower of me and vice versa… I downloaded Tweetdeck and started experimenting with the powerful search features and organizing ability to keep up with certain topics etc…

THE MORE THE MERRIER

I think many new tweeps follow this learning curve…  You also start noticing that ‘growing your followers’ is somehow an important strategy… You are told to follow back and participate in Follow Fridays.  You are told to keep growing your base with all types of techniques and strategies to keep adding these valuable followers.  Maybe because you realize that if you have something pertinent to say it will reach more people.. You seem to ‘connect’ with other tweeps where you exchange niceties and maybe ‘inside jokes’.  Like running into a friend at the coffee shop and hanging with them…but this tends to be only a few and generally the first ones I had conversations with… Now they are lost in a sea of incoming never stopping ‘20 new all-friends’ at a time.  So, some of these I have to set up a separate columns just to make sure I see what they are up to… sound familiar?

THE HONEYMOON IS OVER

Your following grows to 50 then 100 then 150 and about this time an interesting problem reveals itself… at least for me… I used to read every single post in my timeline as it came in each day… and I could do this up to around 100 to 150 followers… it almost became an obligation on my part to keep track… It took a couple of hours to ‘catch up’ to, respond to some, and tweet my own thoughts.  And the more people follow you the more you follow back…

Here’s the problem:  I can no longer stay ‘plugged in’ with my group of followers and I’m at 500+ followers – How the heck can someone that has 10,000+ following/followers have any meaningful experience with so  many followers..

Unless you are oblivious to what is happening around you maybe you start feeling like the honeymoon with Twitter is over… At this point you are really having a conversation with yourself… think about it, you post a message and maybe a few people RT it (retweet – reposting your tweet to their followers) but…

WHO’S LISTENING

I don’t think anyone is… with so many followers.  I find myself now just glancing at my timeline to see if I recognize anyone or a post that happens to stick out… I am on twitter less and less.  I wonder if that is what everyone is doing?  Or maybe even less… it seems like some tweeters are just holding a ‘megaphone’ up and blasting a self-serving message or marketing-based message etc.  I wonder if they wonder if anyone is listening to them.  Am I the only one who feels this way?  I doubt anyone’s post will go viral with only 140 characters to express this nagging feeling I have – that all of this tweeting effort is for not…

I think if you could ‘hear’ the tweets it would be like being in a sports stadium with thousands of others who are all talking at the same time, creating a loud roar that no one can understand…

TWITTER WILL FAIL

 I believe there will come a time very soon where people will start ignoring their own twitter account… I believe you will start to see a trend where de-following will become the norm as people whittle their following down to a manageable size… or maybe only follow specific groups, organizations and a few close friends or like minded individuals.. No one can really gain value with so many ‘friends’ 

With that in mind, Twitter could fall out of favor unless…

IT MORPHS

I guess my lens tends to be filtered by politics and current events… so I tend to be an ‘activist’ sending tweets to people who make policy maybe hoping to influence their position. Maybe just to admonish.   Getting into verbal wrestling matches with those who would and do oppose my values…  When my followers are so prolific tweeters that I could not pretend to keep up with the onrush of a building river bursting from it’s banks – I am just trying not to drown…

So, unless I can see positive feedback with my followers why spend time tweeting while they are tweeting and while they don’t have time to read all their tweets (which include mine) we are all just communicating on a one-way street…  “LISTEN TO ME!!” But, alas, I fear you are not… I know I am not and here we all are circulating in this big ‘ole pot of twitter stew…

I believe twitter will experience a ‘draw down’ where folks only communicate through Direct Messaging (DM) and the public timeline becomes such a nuisance that it will be totally ignored… kinda like telemarketers calling you during your family meal.  You shut them out and only let folks in that have your ‘unlisted number’ – those you choose to ‘stay in touch’ with…  Maybe it will happen by just people setting their account to private.

TWITTER – THE WEATHER CHANNEL OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Now when someone follows me I go to their profile and one of the first things I do is see how often they tweet… if I see they are ‘power tweeters’ I am loathe to follow them back… is this just me? How can I keep up with another 5-10+ tweets per hour?

I am not a twitter expert… I am just someone wondering if I should continue to participate as an individual.  I do not have a product to hawk or a blog to promote (well not yet – I created this blog mainly just to get this article published) or anything to offer really other than this idea about Twitter’s demise… Maybe I am such a neophyte that I don’t recognize why Twitter will continue to grow beyond it current ‘juggernaut’ status…

I can see big companies data mining and collecting a ‘stream of consciousness’ as it attempts to manage it’s public brand and use it as a sleuthing tools for it’s competitors… Twitter could be a tool for social or political activism.  Maybe it will morph more towards a ‘news feed’ for the masses where you only go to it when something big happens (think Iran protests) – kinda the way we watch The Weather Channel – only when an impending hurricane is bearing down on us…

Of course I will not ‘shut down’ my account… but like an old classic car that I spent lots of time getting it road worthy, now I only drive it occasionally – unless there is a sea-change that warrants a different way to utilize it.. let’s hope.

Today is Gandhi’s 140th birthday, or it would have been if he was still alive, and the whole world is commemorating the occasion. Even Google, a web giant who has absoltuely no relation to Gandhi, has temporarily posted a Google Doodle on their search homepage to pay homage to him.

Read about the birthday celebrations on Sify News here, or check out the timeline of all of Google’s Doodles here.