http://mytweetmap.com
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5021

Sometimes you just want to tweet and relax and grab some tasty URLs from your personalized twitterverse. In my case, I belong to 2 groups: I am simply “metaweb” in my social “regional” twitterings here in Mexico. In the edublogoshphere twitterverse, I am “metaweb20″ with an emphasis on “Web 2.0″ technologies and education.

Two days ago, I tried My Tweet Map and simply didn’t “get it.” All I could see was a blank map of New Jersey, not terribly interesting at all. Then last night while tweeting here in Starbucks and testing the Meebo Me widget in my blog with the help of @sujokat, @mbogle, and @murcha I got a “twitterwave” from @sujokat. Upon encouragement to give My Tweet Map another go, I was delighted. All the people in my edublogosphere twitterverse that were also logged into twitter were popping up all over the world along with their tweets and photos. We get so busy in a flurry of tweeting that sometimes we don’t remember (or even know) where some of our twitter buddies are from. What I like especially about My Tweet Map is that you only see your followers, those in your twitter community.

To make things even better, Firefox has a twitter client addon called Twitbin that has been around for a while that sits nicely inside the browser’s sidebar. Other twitter clients are fancier and full of more features. But, for me, they seem to hide under things or “get in the way” by floating on top of the display or popping up alerts, or flashing taskbar tabs, etc. Twitbin just sits there behaving nicely as a companion while your tweets move around the globe in My Tweet Map. So, give it a go and let me know what you think! With Twitbin, I can still keep tabs on my twitterverse, even if my Firefox tab is not focused to My Tweet Map; and I can also participate in my Mexico social twitter community inside Twitbin at the some time that I participate with my edublogosphere friends in the main browser window with My Tweet Map (or twitter.com). Having Twitbin open at the same time as using My Tweet Map also lets me keep an eye on my twitterverse historical tweets for handy reference, especially if I have been tabbing around at other sites while tweets were being mapped that I didn’t see. My Tweet Map also has a listing of recent tweets, but not quite as useful as seeing the listing of all tweets in Twitbin.

Perhaps, I may just jump over to My Tweet Map and use it as my primary twitter client? I am very visual, and seeing geographical locations mapped at the same time makes me happy! I like being happy!

Companions (click to see full size detail of Twitbin and My Tweet Map together)