I am a big fan of Twitter, the now justly famous micro-blogging service (listen to my Network World podcast: Category-Breaker: Gibbs on Twitter). I became hooked on Twitter for two reasons. I can stay in contact with a group of friends and colleagues in a "low drag" way. Being able to see what these people are focused on (should they care to "tweet" about it) is at the least interesting, and at best I often learn about new things.

Whether you do, in fact, learn something new does depend on who you follow. There are the news sources on Twitter such as the New York Times, and many of the folks I tweet post items that are relevant to networking and technology.

For some months, instead of using Twitter’s Web interface I’ve been using a Twitter client called Snitter (tag line: “I can’t believe its not Twitter”). Snitter is an Adobe Air application, but a recent tweet lead to what I think is a better Twitter client: twhirl.

Also based on Air, twhirl can connect to multiple Twitter accounts, cross post to Pownce and Jaiku (both are Twitter-type services), and post images to TwitPic (a service that links photos with Twitter tweets).

Another interesting service in the micro-blogging world is an add-on for Tumblr, which I’ve discussed in this newsletter before. Twitter for Tumblr takes Twitter posts and cross posts them to your Tumblr account. I have yet to test this service but the idea is very appealing.

If you want to follow me on Twitter my id is “quistuipater” (those of you who did Latin at school may be amused … or not) – I will follow you in turn. You can also subscribe to my Twitter RSS feed.

You can also follow my Tumblr general postings on the Web or you can get them by RSS.