Deus Ex Machinatio

Madame Zee and the Shorty Awards

I would never in a million years have expected this, but my own Madame Zee is up for a Shorty Award in the #entertainment category! The Shorty Awards are, as they describe it, honoring "the world's top Twitterers." As of this writing, Madame ranked in the 13th place with eight votes. 

Madame has no hope of bringing the award home, of course -- heavens, the top-ranked contender has more nominations than Madame even has followers at all. But it is delightful that anybody could think of her this way. 

And maybe -- maybe -- if a few of you have it in your hearts to nominate her, perhaps she can make it into the top 10, if only briefly? 

Of course, while you've got your nominating engine started, why not give a second to honor Jay Bushman for his fantastic Twitter story, The Good Captain? 

Good karma all around, duckling. Very fortuitous indeed. 

Update: Quick and easy voting guide... Click through for exact instructions on what to Tweet to nominate Madame Zee and Jay Bushman. Please note nominations from private accounts don't count.

Let Me Hear Your Voices

Some of you may remember me tweeting about the need for a private wiki for a Sekrit Project several weeks ago. (And I got a wonderful avalanche of volunteers, too. Thanks again!) 

Now I'd like to introduce that project: Voices. 

As it stands now, Voices is the seed of an exploration of narrative in the wiki format, and I hope to include elements of collaboration and branching storytelling as it goes forward. But to do that... I need your help. 

The structure of Voices is two-tiered. There are content pages, which only I can edit, and discussion pages, which can be edited by anyone with a user account. (I apologize for the need for a user account, but a stunning volume of pharmacological spam in the planning phases for Voices made that necessary.) The story will grow slowly over time, in response to the participation of, well, YOU. So we'll be making this thing together, you and me. Teamwork.

I've also included a page for donations to CARE, a reputable non-profit organization, and I'm hoping to raise a respectable amount of money for them. 

Obviously this won't be a successful project if I can't get anybody to come play with me. It should be fun, and it's all in a good cause, so go and raise your Voices right now. Tell a friend, email your buddies, Digg it, spread the word however you know how. Let's see where this thing can go!

Twistori: Another New Twitter Trick

I just stumbled upon Twistori, a site that pulls anonymized Twitter updates based on... well... just go see it. It's mesmerizing and comforting, little cross-sections of other people's hearts and minds. This is nothing short of a work of art, though the artists, Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs, call it the first phase of a social experiment. I wonder if there's really any clear distinction between the two anymore?

This is one more to add to my list of unusual uses people are finding for Twitter, along with The Good Captain, which has concluded, and my own Madame Zee project. There's certainly a lot more to come.

Thanks to @playbe for tweeting about it!