In the last three weeks my Twitter account is flooded with followers who are marketing agencies, web sites offering super effective strategy for you and your company, that can teach you make money from nothing and easy-fix tips and tricks. If you go to their profiles and web sites, you can find a single page with entire presentation and tons of blinking Web 1.0 ads, free newsletters, trials, twittenars, promotion talks on the ground, boat and airplane (?!$%^&), while the others just inject the buzz single update “how to earn $500 in few minutes”.  Some people on my surprise get hooked by following those accounts with so called auto- robots.

In the last few days I am carefully following what’s going on in my twitter stream and boy, oh boy – I am thinking to reduce the noise. Give Twitter in a hands of people who perceive it as an outlet in personal, professional life, with offending words, abusive comments – things can get out of control. Even for people in IT business.

This kind of communication performances with pushing nature of information, denotes (oh it is!)  the society in crisis (who mentioned global economy?). I am wondering  in which direction social media in the networked world is really going? Now, I’m starting to believe that you are who you are following. Twitter is digital, modern Greek agora but with democratic misinterpretation.

So, still craving for more followers? Here are three simple tips:

1. Be as massive as you can be: tweet and spam your friends, contacts with chat-alike tweets, blip.fm’s, retweets like: “how to ..”, “guide to…”, “grow your follower numbers to over 10,000 in a week..”, ‘follow me and win a prize…”, etc.

2. Don’t forget to mention Britney Spears in your tweets and some mainstream media buzzwords such as ‘marketing’, strategy’,  ‘solution’, ‘guru”, etc.

3. If you are female -upload attractive profile photo, if you are male – wear a moustache or left-eye-wink

Even if you are decent Twitterer with the respect for the people you are following and not that involved in twitterati’s fuzz, don’t be misleaded that Twitter’s curse won’t get you down: “Let the massive marketing twitter accounts that offer strategies follow you till the rest of your (digital) life!

In less than 24rhs I’m leaving old continent and heading to USA, East coast to have a great time, brainstorm, network, meet old and new folks at ScienceOnline09 conference/unconference/ where I’ll be giving a session and brainstorm with super-smart people, evangelizing open access, jogging the minds with Web issues. My route is very excited and interesting and if I grab a chance I may blog from the spot, edit conference wiki, but it’s very likely to catch me via my LifeStream and Twitter.

Science blog: IpScientia is launched as Serbian Science blog, and I am inviting you here to contribute and collaborate. If you have a blog that covers the topics in science, IT emerging technologies, popular science, education – contact us to add you within Blogroll network of blogs. Also, if you are using Twitter,  follow us at IpScientia.You can join our team and be a guest blogger, collaborate on IpScientia as blog author; use email form.

If you are Friendfeed user check/join the conference room, this is me at FriendFeed, more information on the way. If you are using Dopplr, you can certainly stop me for a tea at any EU/US airports, follow the schedule. Thanks to all donators for laptop cause, I will keep you post-it about my final action and decision. This and next week is full of travels, flights, meetings, and b-days (read: moi, w00t!). The later, as next week is my- oh- my, I’ve  managed to celebrate burfday on several spots in a single day, including both continents, airports, and who knows – expect unexpected. If you notice tall girl in a jeans &hoodie with PDA, mobile, books and magazines under the arm and a backpack, feel free to poke me (not superpoke accepted!).

Reminder for those who are into science blogging: you have two more days to participate in PLoS ONE  Second Birthday Synchroblogging Competition, it is right time to submit your posts! You can find here how.  Still, you have time to vote in the 2008 Edublog Awards. Check out nominations, there are some great edublogs.

Those who are planning to attend or participate in ScienceOnline09 , you can follow updates on FriendFeed , my Twitter timeline or Bora‘s site.

Last Christmas and Holidays I’ve spent in lovely analogue world receiving updates from Twitter via sms, interacting and communicating apart from (the failures of) GPRS, micro-blogging applications, my browser.  GRPS is not reliable especially for Holidays. I was so happy to have wifi on my PDA only for interwebs and mobile for texting and twittering.

Since Twitter doesn’t support anymore facility of receiving free sms’s on my mobile device, I am testing few services these days, and came to conclusion that the only micro-blogging service that treats you with free of charge sms, direct messages and other notifications is – BrightKite. I found many Twitter buddies there, both International and local (locals should sign up) who post micro-notes, comment under each one of them, post/upload their mobile pics – and it is cool! Service doesn’t charge you any received sms or direct message, if you live here in Europe. You can also send Brightkite notes on Twitter, but I still didn’t figure out how you can receive tweets on Brightkite for free. If someone knows – let us all know!

While I’m testing all micro blogging possibilities for the upcoming Holidays without GPRS or wifi dependence (just in case) – you can sign up and friend me at BrightKite.

Despite the fact that ‘Belgrade and Beyond’ blog exists in other form {digital serendipities}, I am still writing  about interesting events and electronic resources on Belgrade, Serbia. For those of you who are not familiar and you happen to reside in Belgrade for some reason, this information may be valuable to you.

Belgrade Foreign Vistors Club (FVC) presents the online community for foreigners in Belgrade, created by  Jonathan Davis. Beside Belgrade FVC there is Belgrade Foreign Visitors Club Wiki, an online information resource for foreign residents and visitors to the city of Belgrade, where you can find high quality community edited information resources and guided directories with useful links.  Also, check out Belgrade FVC forum where you can interact with other members, Twitter feed, and there is Facebook group informing users with current events, reviews, recommendations. I hope you’ll find this information and links useful especially if you are planning a trip to Belgrade or maybe to move here.

Do you find yourself posting more than ten tweets per day? Do you spend more time on Twitter and other micro-blogging services and less blog reading? Your blog posts, because of the hectic life and time (!), became rare as snow in May? You find that your friends and colleagues rather read your Twitter timeline following every single tweet you send,  than your (ir)regular blog entries? If so, welcome to (sour) times where micro-blogging services are evolving and resembling the blogosphere. Do they?

People are spending more and more time on micro-blogging sites such as Twitter, Jaiku, Plurk, also using FriendFeed facility not only to share interesting and useful links with their friends and allies but to chat, report, promote, discuss, rant on different topics. I have three group of people I follow on Twitter: endless ‘chat’ in real-time for hours on the latest gadgets (during morning hours/working European time), afternoon twitterers (East Coast of US) on elections and economy, and late night West coasters on education syllabuses, everyday situations, rants. Technology, politics and education.

Are micro-blogging forms new web 2.5, web 3.0 ‘form’ of  IRC rooms, forums, discussion groups of instant interaction, a great medium for distributing immediate attention that pushed blogs on aside?  But then, blogs are still for me the greatest social networking place with possibility of interaction through comments (more than 140 characters) but also I couldn’t help to notice symptomatic blogging situation where people are following more twitters than RSS.  Since more people micro-blog, blogs themselves are becoming aggregates of tweet digests with referred content. Probably some of you got into this page as I’ve sent short tweet with tinyurl message about it.  It is up to you (your blogging behaviour) if you’ll comment here or send me @replies on Twitter or send likes emoticons on FriendFeed.  Are micro-blogging services changing dynamics of your blogging activities? If so, how? Comments welcomed!

Today is the world’s the first- ever Open Access day, celebrating the growth of international movement that uses the Internet to throw open the locked archives, libraries, online databases, information flow in general,  that once hid and restricted knowledge.

One of the definitions of ‘open’ denotes ‘a piece of knowledge is open if you re free to use, reuse, and redistribute it.”  The concept of open access has already started to spread rapidly beyond its original roots in academia and software.  Other statements encourage the unstrict sharing of research results with everyone, everywhere, for the advancement and enjoyment of science and society.

Open Access is the principle that publicly funded research should be freely accessible online, immediately after publication, and it’s gaining ever more momentum around the world as research funders and policy makers put their weight behind it.
The Open Access philosophy was firmly articulated in 2002, when the Budapest Open Access Initiative was introduced. It quickly took root in the scientific and medical communities because it offered an alternative route to research literature that was frequently closed off behind costly subscription barriers.

Founders and promoters who jointly announced the first international Open Access Day, that is marked with lot of events, locally and internationally, are SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), Students for FreeCulture, and the Public Library of Science. To see a list of participating countries, universities, campuses,  visit the Open Access Day Web site. Also, you can participate in synchroblogging competiton by posting on some of the questions.

I have been writing, talking, preaching about open access of e-resources, software, movement, issues  (oh, so many times) on conferences and in practice being as one of the editors of E-LIS/E-prints open access archives, and still believe that OA can make a difference in the publishing world, academia and the freedom of information.

How are you contributing to Open Access, today and every other day during the year?  What do you do to support Open Access?