FishTwits Blog

10-30-09

Movember Inspiration: ‘The Fisherman’

Movember officially starts this Sunday the 1st of November.  We are reminding all fishermen that this is a great opportunity to settle once and for all whether fishermen with moustaches catch more fish and at the same time grow an awesome Mo and most importantly raise money to support research into mens health issues.  We look forward to seeing you and your teams Moustachio’d fishing pics!  If you need some inspiration as to what type of Mo you should grow, we recommend:

The Fisherman

If you want some more inspiration check out the style guide

Just to remind you of the official rules of Movember

You know what they say, never sign anything you haven’t read, always eat your crusts and make sure you know the rules. Just so we’re clear:

1. Once registered each Mo Bro must start November 1st with a clean shaven face.

2. Then, for the entire month of Movember each Mo Bro must grow and groom a moustache according to these rules:

• There is to be no joining the Mo to the side burns – that’s a beard. There are no beards.

• There is to be no joining of the handlebars on the chin – that’s a goatee.

• A small complimentary growth under the bottom lip, aka a tickler, is allowed

The rules for the FishTwits competition are here

10-27-09

Site Update: Hit counters, easier conversations, and more!

There’s a lot of new stuff on FishTwits today!

The biggest new feature is hit counts. The “biggest hits” view sorts based on both the actual number of hits and how fresh they are. While this is unchanged, any tweet which has one or more hits will now display the number of hits it has received on the “hit” button, so you can not only tell what tweets are the best and freshest, but also just how good they are.

Somewhat simpler, but perhaps more useful, is that replies posted through FishTwits will now include a link to the tweet you’re replying to, making it easier for other people on Twitter – people who are, for some reason, not using FishTwits to read about fishing – to figure out what you’re talking about in your replies.

Speaking of reading things on Twitter, we’ve added a link from your profile page to your direct message inbox on Twitter. This link will only appear when you’re logged in and viewing your own profile and clicking it will take you to Twitter to view the messages – FishTwits never retrieves your private direct messages at any time or for any reason.

Got a killer suggestion for how to improve FishTwits, or just something you want to see that isn’t there? We’ve added a UserVoice feedback tab to the right side of each page on the main FishTwits site. Just give it a click to see what suggestions are out there, make a suggestion of your own, or vote on what you want to see most. If you manage to find a bug we missed, you can report it there, too.

Finally, you can now see more easily what the photos in the FishPics gallery are about, as the text of the tweet associated with the photo will now appear when you point at the thumbnail previews with your mouse.

There are a couple other minor changes in there today that I didn’t mention, but I’ll let you find them on your own…

10-26-09

Movember Madness: Fishing, Growing a Mo and Raising Money for Mens Health

What’s better than going fishing? The answer to this is generally nothing but we’re here to tell you that the one thing better than going fishing is going fishing sporting an awesome MOUSTACHE! What if you could raise money for a great cause at the same time and win some wickedly cool prizes?

There has been a long-standing controversy amongst a select group of well-regarded anglers:

Do fishermen with Moustaches catch more fish?

Circumstantial evidence seems to indicate that it may in fact improve your chances by up to 5 times! However, here at FishTwits we like to see hard facts when it comes to fishing.

Some of you may have heard of Movember.  Movember is a world wide charity event about raising much needed funds and awareness for men’s health – specifically prostate cancer and depression in men. The event works like this:  You sign up to become a Mo Bro or Mo Sista and start collecting sponsorships to grow a moustache for the month of November.  If you sign up as a Mo Sista, you can collect sponsorship for the man in your life – boyfriend, husband, brother, father, granddad, etc. to grow a Mo.

To us, Movember seemed like the perfect opportunity to settle this controversy once and for all and at the same time support a really worthy clause.  Eric and I have put our razors away, picked up our fishing rods and are heading out on the water in pursuit of the Moustache-loving fish, but, if we really want to settle this, we are going to need your help.

We have decided to make Movember Madness an annual FishTwits competition.  If you want to join in the fun, help settle the controversy that has been plaguing the fishing world for centuries, be in the running for some really cool prizes and – most importantly – help raise money for a great cause, here’s what to do:

1. To enter our competition you will also need to sign up for a free twitter account (this allows you to also sign in to FishTwits).

2. Head on over to Movember.com and sign up as an individual – or even better sign up as a team – and get all your fishing buddies involved in the fun (teams could be for your fishing club, your fishing forum, your company or just a bunch of mates).

3. Register as an individual with FishTwits simply by clicking the tweet button on your Movember.com page then come over to FishTwits.com and upload a photo of yourself fishing without a Moustache.  It’ll look a little something like this:

I’m growing a Mo for #Movember to help the fight against prostate cancer & men’s depression. Pls donate: http://www.movember.com/m/96971

4. Register your team simply by clicking the tweet button from your Movember.com team page and get all your team members to come over to FishTwits.com and upload photos of themselves fishing without Moustaches.

Join my #Movember team as a Mo Bro or Sista to help the fight against prostate cancer & men’s depressionhttp://www.movember.com/r/24929

5. Start collecting donations and growing an awesome Mo or, if you are a lady who wants to support the cause or just loves a man with a Mo, encourage your boyfriend, husband, brother, father, friend, etc. to grow a Mo!

6. Go fishing as many times as you can in November and upload a picture of you and your ever growing and ever more awesome Mo (or pics of you, the man in your life and his Mo) each time you catch a fish.  Remember to include the words ‘Mo Madness’ in your tweet when you upload the photo so that we know you are entering it in the competition.  Entries close on 30 November at Midnight, GMT.

The team that raises the most money will win the coveted Movember Madness fishing trophy and a place on the FishTwits main page linking to their organisation.  The team that uploads the most Movember fishing photos will win an assortment of fishing tackle.  The individual that raises the most money will win an exclusive Mo Madness fishing t-shirt.  We could always do with more prizes, so, if your company or organisation would like to sponsor a prize and help promote this great cause, get in touch with us: Fishtwits@fishtwits.com

10-20-09

Site Update: Long tweet handling, bigger art

I had been intending to bring you the ability to purchase Savlen Studio’s paintings directly from the FishTwits site in today’s update, but we stumbled across some problems caused by a change in Twitter’s handling of rejected tweets last week and dealing with these changes held up the work on payment integration. Hopefully, there won’t be any further delays to prevent that from going in next week.

The main cause of rejected tweets was text that didn’t fit within the 140-character limit, so that has now been addressed quite thoroughly: Any tweet made through FishTwits which is longer than 140 characters will now be cut down to size with the excess text added as a comment on the tweet – you can type in as much as you need to describe your catch and it will all be saved, even if it doesn’t fit within Twitter’s length limits. A link to the detail page for your tweet will also be inserted when this is done, so that anyone who sees the shortened tweet will be able to click through to view it in full on the FishTwits site.

On the original intended enhancements for this week’s update, although I didn’t get to the point of allowing Savlen’s artwork to be purchased through FishTwits, I was able to provide a larger view of each photo which you can view by clicking the image in the sidebar. This page will also be the one from which you will be able to make the purchase when that is implemented.

10-17-09

Site Status: Issue with tweet failures/images on wrong tweets

In the last few days, two users have reported issues with uploaded images being incorrectly attached to tweets which they had previously made from a source other than the FishTwits site. These problems appear to be the result of Twitter failing to make the updates and, rather than reporting the failure clearly, instead sending back the user’s last successful tweet as if it were the new one.

It is possible that other users may have also been affected by this issue and simply not noticed, as it would appear that your tweet merely failed in cases where this occurred, but the tweet did not have an attached photo, unless you made a point of examining the tweet history in your profile and noticed the old tweet having been inserted.

I am currently researching better methods for detecting Twitter failures in this case and expect to have a fix for this problem in next Tuesday’s site update.

10-13-09

Site Update: Pick your hits and buy some art

This week’s update brings you the favorites functionality that I promised last week – we call them “Hits”. At the bottom right of each tweet, you’ll now see a button labeled “Hit?”. If you like the tweet, just click it to light up the bobber and mark it as a “hit”.

The second piece of this is that the “freshest catches” label at the top of the fishfeed has been joined by “biggest hits”. Click “biggest hits” to see the tweets which have been recently marked as hits by the most users – older hits do still count, but not as much as newer ones. To go back to showing the newest tweets first, just click “freshest catches”.

The other major change you’re sure to notice is the addition of paintings by Savlen Studios to the right of the fishfeed, below the “most popular” box. If you see something you like, you can click through to Savlen’s site and order any of the paintings displayed on FishTwits or commission your own “bragging rights” portrait, in which Mike Savlen will transform a photo of your choice into a custom painting.

10-12-09

This weeks Winner

Congrats to @sickfishing for winning this weeks photo contest.  A nice 44″ pike that may even be bigger than him.

This week he won the brand new Fishtwits T shirt

Enter your photos this week for your chance to  win too

10-08-09

Flies for Fins

April Vokey the fly fishing superstar from Flygal Ventures started an awesome initiative earlier this year called Flies for Fins where people could donate flies to help raise money for to preserve populations of BC Steelhead.

I have never fished for these beautiful fish but there is no doubt in my mind that one day I want to get over to BC to try and tempt one of these guys with my fly.  Happily FishTwits has managed to secure a few of packs of flies from April, more happily the flies were a bargain at $10 a pack and even more happily all the money is going toward preserving the Steelhead populations so that when I do finally get over to BC the only thing that will stop me from hooking up with one will be my skills :-).

If you want to get some of these flies (and who wouldn’t?) head over to April’s blog and follow the instructions (they are selling really quickly!).

To top it all off, April is holding a silent auction on her Facebook Fanpage where you can bid on loads of great fishing gear donated by people from all over the world (including an awesome new FishTwits T-shirt) to support the cause.

10-06-09

Site Update: New topics and bigger image embeds

Nothing much in the way of new features available at http://www.fishtwits.com/ this week, just infrastructure to support selecting and displaying favorites starting next week.

What I do have for you today are some new fish species and fishing techniques to choose from and embed codes for larger image previews. When you view an uploaded image, there are now two embed sizes to choose from. The “small” version will give you a square image the same size as the preview in the upper right corner of the page. “Large” is the same size as the one displayed just above the embed codes, for if you want to give your visitors a good look at the fish.

As always, if you have any requests, suggestions, or bug reports, you can post them here or, for security-sensitive problems, email security@fishtwits.com.

New fish:
Striper
Bluefin Tuna
Redfish
Redfin
Dorado
Dolphin Fish
Mahi-Mahi

New techniques:
spinnerbait
crankbait
buzzbait
minnows
freshwater fishing
saltwater fishing
saltwater fly fishing
ultralight fishing
night fishing
soft plastic
surface lure
hard plastic

10-01-09

Octobers weekly Photo Contest

All right everyone I have just finished getting some t shirts made and thought I would give some people the chance to get them for free. This month every Sunday we will be giving away one of our shirts to the person who uploads the best pictures to our site (Steve and I will be judging).  Simply upload a picture in the cast box and type the name of the fish, technique used to catch the fish and the location at http://www.fishtwits.com/. Looking forward to seeing some great pics.