::A Geek in Korea::

So, Twitter is still around, and I’m still signed up for it. The best case for using Twitter on a frequent basis is as a sort of “super-SMS” style service, where you can basically “Reply to All” via the Internet. Imagine an SMS everyone on the Internet could see so that you could tell people what you are up to. You send short, 140 character messages, and you see them posted on the Internet. People can respond to you directly too.

If my group of friends would adopt Twitter over Facebook, we could all easily keep in contact with each other via a website/SMS, and I wouldn’t get these obnoxious “Join Facebook!” messages in my email. (Yeah, I’m never joining Facebook. I’ve got a blog 8 years strong. Deal with it.)

Ideally, this Twittering would work out of the box with Korean phones. The Twitter SMS service doesn’t yet work in Korea properly. There is no one to send the Tweet messages to. You can’t send an SMS to a Korean service provider and have it pop up on Twitter directly. This RADICALLY diminishes Twitter’s usefulness. Considering the only time you can update is when you are in front of a computer, and I already have a blog, why would I bother with Twitter when I can update fully here on my website?

I’ve found an acceptable work around for any phones capable of sending email. You will be able to sign up and use Twitter in a semi-functional manner. However, it requires you to sign up with a third part unaffiliated with Twitter, and hand over a password. It’s best if you don’t rely on your Tweets for anything mission critial. As long as you are having some fun with Twitter, it won’t matter.

I’m hoping that Twitter eventually comes to Korea. I don’t want to use a clone like “me2day” Tweeting at work between classes is about all I have time for when I sit down. It’s a sort of micro-blog of my day to help me recall topics I might want to talk about later in the evening when I write. (I can also use the “Notes” feature in Opera to keep a unified notepad that follows me where ever I work.)

I signed up for service at Twittermail.com. I was going to use emailtwitter.com, but Opera told me their security certificate had expired. Hmmm, I have to hand you my password to my Twitter account, and you have an obsolete security certificate? Yeah, no thanks.

So, anyway, the first problem is figuring out what email address you have. I know for KTF my email address is “my_numerical_phone_number@vmms.nate.com”. However, this is an “email out” only sort of service. I can’t figure out how to send an email back to my phone at all. My phone gets emails from other phones, but not from gmail or outside services. I sent an email to my normal account and tried to reply to it. No dice.

Once you sign up for Twittermail, you can set up their “Secret email address”  as a contact, then send an email to that address. It will show up as a tweet.

One of the services at Twittermail was recieving “@your_username” tweet replies directly in email. This would be like getting an SMS when someone was talking directly to you on Twitter. Sadly I can’t get this to work, as everything that hits my phone email address doesn’t get to me on my phone. So, while I can send to Twitter an email that gets converted to a tweet, I can’t get any of my old tweets, or anything people contacting me send.

Of course, if I signed up with a third party email that I could check on my phone via the web, I might be able to use this gateway Twittermail service to retrieve my tweets. However, this would probably run up my connection fees, so I’m hesitant to even try. As it is, I don’t know how email is calculated into my service contract.