Update: To clarify, we're getting a new access number for Australia—as soon as we get the number, sms service will be back in action. We're working on it right now and it's a high priority.

Australian users please take note! If you currently use Twitter via your mobile device instead of over IM or the Web we have some news. Right now, Twittering via sms in Australia is more expensive than it needs to be—for you and for us. Our short term solution is to suspend sms support for Australian users.


When sms support for Australia returns it will be better all around. We'll let you know as soon as it does. In the meantime, we recommend using Twitter over IM, Web, Twitterrific, or any of these interesting alternatives.

I have been lax in blogging this awesome news. Daniel Dura created this very slick visualizer for Twitter updates that works really well in a conference type setting where displaying the updates of participants back out to the crowd is quite compelling. It's easy to customize too. Check it out!


Daniel says, "TwitterCamp is a desktop application that allows you to monitor tweets from your friends using the popular Twitter service. The application was built for the ApolloCamp mini-conference and uses the recently released Apollo runtime alpha and Twitter API. The application is especially suited for running on large displays such as plasmas, LCDs, and projectors at conferences. It is simple to customize the interface so that you can use the application for your conference."

By some measures, as Ev says, this is just a legal technicality. Nevertheless, it is a significant milestone for Twitter. Today we are announcing the formation of Twitter, Inc. Previously, Twitter was owned and operated by Obvious, LLC. Employee roles are pretty much the same since Twitter has been the main product at Obvious for some time now but yeah, there's another company in San Francisco!

Socializr is a free web service for sharing event and party information with your friends and they share a fondness for simplicity with Twitter. So it only makes sense they Socializr and Twitter have integrated!

You can now click on the 'Update Twitter' link from an event to update your Twitter status with the event name, date, and URL.

Also, you can add your Twitter URL to your Socializr profile, and your Twitter updates will automatically be integrated into your Socializr user page."

My friend Greg directs tv shows and films and he's got a new series premiering on FOX this Sunday night called 'Drive.' The show was co-created by the same guy who made Firefly (Tim Minear) and stars the same lead actor, Nathan Fillion. The series is about a secret, illegal underground race and there was a recent New York Times article about the groundbreaking technical achievements of 'Drive'.

Anywhoo, Greg is going to do Twitter-style director's commentary live during the premiere. As far as we know, this is a first! Follow along if you like, just text FOLLOW FOXDRIVE to 40404 or visit the profile page and follow from there. The show is on this Sunday night at 8/7c. Here is the official web site. Should be good times!

"Twitterverse is a mashup and visualization project which mines and archives the public timeline of Twitter and provides a visualization of the most commonly used words in a given time period. You can also search by a specific word."

On the front page of today's New York Times is an article about the future of 911 calls. Central to the success of the system will be message routing across various devices and platforms.

Experts are laying the groundwork for what they call Next Generation 911, which will better handle Internet-based calls, text messages, cellphone photos and other forms of communication already in common use.

Meanwhile, the current issue of the MIT Technology Review explains, "Twitter is a system that quickly matches new messages coming in from members with the followers who have signed up to receive them, then retransmits them using each follower's preferred channel."

Yes, we're building a large-scale, device agnostic, message routing system—that's the technical core of Twitter and it has many applications. However, we're making it fun and social too. It's the fun part that technology columnists occasionally get cranky about. But you've got to cut them some slack because if you're trying to track technology and actually keep up with every new development then you're bound to get a little overwhelmed.

Also, do you think "large-scale systems" sounds sexy?

Edwards Camp Goes All A-Twittering - New York Times: "Much to Scoble’s surprise, Edwards promptly Twittered a promise to offset the carbon he generated by funding alternative-energy research — marking what seems to be the first policy clarification from a major candidate on social software."

Speaking of awesome Twitter projects coming out of the developer community, we've recently updated the Twitter API to include direct messaging and a since parameter among other things. Alex spent some time documenting our API in more detail. If you're a Twitter API developer, by all means join our group Twitter Development Talk to stay in the loop on new stuff like this.

Craig Hockenberry and IconFactory have released version 2.0 of the wildly popular Twitterrific desktop application for Macintosh saying, "Version 2.0 has gone through some serious improvements since its initial release as well as several important bug fixes and represents a 'must have' upgrade to anyone using Twitter on the Mac." Download Twitterrific 2.0 for free.

Twittercasting the Red Sox Somebody is calling the current Red Sox game with Twitter. Follow the game via text. Futuristic? Maybe not. But neat!