I get asked this question so often that I thought I would post a quick response here that answers that question.
I know you will see any number of animated avatars on twitter profiles and your response may be favorable or negative.
I’m sorry to say that the days of being able to upload an animated avatar are over.
Twitter NO LONGER will allow animated avatars to be uploaded. In fact they will not allow GIFs to be uploaded at all.
On January 29th, 2009 - an API engineer from Twitter posted this email on the Twitter API Google Group announcing Twitter’s plans to BAN Gif Images.
“Hi all,
I’m sorry for the late notice but I just got word from our User
Experience (UX) group that they are testing a change to stop accepting
GIF images for the avatar (profile_image) and profile wallpaper
(profile_background_image). For every image we have to verify the
format and size, and then create the thumbnail version. GIF images
consistently fail at that and report ‘possibly too large’ because we
can’t tell what went wrong.
There is no plan to remove existing GIF images. You’ll still be
able to use JPEG (image/jpeg and image/jpg) and PNG (image/png)
images, but new GIF images will no longer be accepted. This code
should be ready within the next week, so if your code is automatically
dealing with images you may want to start disallowing GIFs. Again, I’m
sorry for the late notice on this … snuck up on me as well. ”
This post was inspired by my Twitter Buddy WritingHannah and her adventures with Parsnip Soup. I was looking for a Carousel Widget for Wordpress blogs and came across this one by WidgetBox
What the heck happened to all my followers? Before now, they would just kinda leave or evaporate or get abducted! Well they went somewhere and you didn’t even know they left.
Now with Qwitter you can catch your Twitter Qwitters.
That’s it! Qwitter checks your followers and notifies you as often as it can, depending on how many people are using it and how many followers they have.
Qwitter e-mails you when someone stops following you on Twitter with a message like this:
John Gruber (gruber) stopped following you on Twitter after you posted this tweet:
What’s the difference between Arial and Helvetica?
Send files to your friends, by simply dragging any file up to 10MB in size on to Tweetr. Tweetr will automatically upload your file and when it is done will provide a short url to send to your fellow Twits.
Tweetr also comes with a webcam feature that allows you to share your new outfit, piercing or the latest gadget. It’s easy to use! Just click on the webcam icon. There is a drop down box that helps you select your camera if you get a white box when you click on the icon.
Click on the picture to the left to immediately download Tweetr 3.4 or check them out at http://www.tweet-r.com/
I have been playing around today with incorporating the Flash Version of Twitter Badge into my blog. One appears in the body of this post and one you can see at the top right sidebar position.
How easy is it to do? Fairly simple.
Here are the steps:
1. Click on the link www.twitter.com/badges or type it into your browser window.
2. Login to your twitter account.
3. Select the type of badge you want to use - the Flash Version appears in the top right sidebar position.
4. You can choose your own badge color for the Flash Version and once it looks the way you want it to, then you just copy the text displayed in the window to your clipboard.
5. Next you would go to your Wordpress Administration Dashboard, go to your Appearance Tab and then to Widgets.
6. Add a Text Widget in the sidebar where you want the Twitter Badge to appear and paste the code that you copied to your clipboard into the Text Widget. Save your changes and you are all done.
The HTML version appears in this post. There are currently three versions in three sizes available. The HTML versions are interactive (meaning your visitors can do things within the Twitter Badge - Try it for yourself. You simply select which style you like, copy the HTML code to your clipboard and then paste into your post, or follow the directions given above to add to your sidebar.
I’ve been testing another Desktop Utility for keeping track of my fellow Twits. Right now I am running Twhirl and Twitteroo in tandem to see which I prefer. I’ll let you know in a subsequent post when I’ve made a decision and why.
I’m having a little trouble coming up with a good theme to use for Twitter Tips. It is apparent to me that due to the way that some of the Twitter Widgets display updates, that I am going to have to use a theme that has a “dynamic” sidebar.
So, please bear with me as the site goes through a metamorphosis or ten while I try various themes.
I would love feedback………..if you see one you like, let me know
