Here’s my attempt at curating the content coming out of #EVTC:

So is Twitter really “the future of media”?

I have to wonder how long Twitter can continue to capitalize on the 160-character limit of standard text messages, created by communications researcher Friedhelm Hillebrand. With all the advances in technology, aren’t we ready to abandon such archaic limits on how much data can be sent in a text message?

Well, the reality is there are over 5 billion mobile phones in use worldwide. But the actual number of smartphones — capable of handling larger amounts of data — is still only a fraction of this number. I wrote about this explosion of global mobile phone use in my chapter for the Wikiklesia book, which at the time (2007) boasted these stats:

59% of mobile phone users are in developing countries, making cellphones the first telecommunications technology in history to have more users there than in the developed world.

Africa is the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world; growing almost twice as fast as any other region. While only 200,000 households in Kenya have electricity, there are already 7 million mobile phone users.

As long as mobile phones that are not smartphones dominate the world market — and as long as the GSM keeps the SMS standard the same — Twitter will be the platform for extending and broadcasting these short messages onto the Web, social media, and beyond. (Sorry, Plurk!) And that is definitely an important part of the future of media, if not the whole kit and kaboodle.

So let’s see if I can pull all these disparate threads together …

I took my Strengthsfinder survey this week, and discovered that my #1 strength is Ideation. What does this mean? It proves what I’ve always said … about myself … I’m an incorrigible idea person.

So here’s one idea that I just couldn’t shake: Foursquare Time Machine.

“What is it?” you ask. Well, first, let me tell you how it came about.

Todd Hertz is actually the Al Gore of Foursquare Time Machine. He invented it, but I’m the Steve Jobs, who has taken the idea and stylized it and branded it and am selling it now to you.

Here’s how it works: Instead of checking in on Foursquare (the latest and greatest location-based technology – just ask anyone who was at SXSW), you pretend like you’re checking in on Foursquare in the past … or … in the future!

For example,

Bummer. Beethoven kicked the bucket. (@ Vienna 1872) #4sqtm

Yeah! Celebrating the birth of Robert Frost! (@ San Francisco 1874) #4sqtm

The Heaven’s Gaters are riding out on Hale Bopp now in their Nikes. (@ Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. 1997) #4sqtm

The hashtag #4sqtm is Twitter shorthand for Foursquare Time Machine. Tag your tweets and then you can follow along as others check in from other places and times.

It’s an exciting new innovation that I hope will quickly become the latest “trending topic” and Internet meme. You can make that happen! Start time traveling in Twitter today.

For further Twinspiration: historicaltweets.com

Bonus points: Today’s the opening of “Hot Tub Time Machine,” which is IMHO the greatest movie title/idea since “Snakes On A Plane.”

I’m extremely excited to be speaking at the “Theology After Google” conference, March 10-12, at Claremont. I’ll be joining Tony Jones, Adam Walker Cleaveland, Spencer Burke, John Franke, Dwight Friesen, Jon Irvine, and others. If you’re interested in learning more about using social media in communicating ideas (especially folks on the West Coast), I hope you’ll consider coming out to this unique conference!

My Take on the Apple iPad
The big news last week was the launch of Apple’s much-anticipated iPad tablet computer. I wrote up the story for the Halogen TV website with my prediction: “It’s not the device itself that’s magical. It’s the innovation that the device now allows—the new interactive games/applications and multimedia ebooks/e-publications (magazines and newspapers) that are going to be developed—which will make the iPad a ‘revolutionary,’ must-have device.”

“Theology After Google” student Wesley Menke nicely synthesized the iPad news with my presentation in his blog post “Apple’s ‘Magical Realism.’” His take on the “magical” language employed by Apple in its marketing of the iPad and contrasting it with the “liturgical” (“work of the people”) concept of Web 2.0/new media is a great observation. This is, in fact, one of the big criticisms of the iPad—that it is a device for consuming media rather than creating media.

I don’t think this is in any way an “accident.” Apple is, no doubt, banking on the market being ready for a consumer device for reading/experiencing multimedia e-books and e-publications (magazines and newspapers). Other companies are quickly joining the e-reader/tablet PC race, but their offerings will now have to stack up against the iPad. And, besides, Apple’s computers are built for creating, while their other mobile devices (iPod, iPhone) are not. In that sense, iPad fits perfectly with Apple’s other mobile devices, and this makes perfect sense now that Steve Jobs is calling Apple “a mobile devices company.”