When I travel I like to immerse myself in the culture as much as possible. I try to eat what the locals eat (a la Anthony Bourdain), shop where the locals shop and find activities specific to that location. I’m amazed at how some tourists, in a “memory recording frenzy” surround items of interest and shoot video, take pictures and generally avoid the actual experience. It really is the difference between experiencing a place and recording a place. When I do take a lot of pics of a location I feel like I got a bus tour of that experience.
At times, that is how I feel about using Twitter mobile or Brightkite. I’m out doing things and I think I should check in and tell people about where I’m at. That really distracts from the actual experience and I begin to resent being pulled away. This could simply be my lack of multitasking abilities or it could be something to be addressed!
For me it would be much easier to verbally record my tweets. Back in May, I posted about/using SpinVox for voice to text services and created that post using SpinVox technology. The people at SpinVox were very helpful getting me set up with an account, a phone number and extending the standard time to record to 2 minutes. SpinVox is not really for blogging but is perfect for micro-blogging like Twitter. Fortunately for us, you can use SpinVox to Twitter and when I think about my Brightkite interview, I now understand why they were so excited about QR codes.
Not only could you easily update your Twitter account but you could scan the location’s QR code; updating your followers as to your whereabouts and what you were up to. I’m going to get SpinVox for Twitter set-up (assuming it works on my Blackberry) and I’ll let you know.
