Quotations Weblog

Twitter, as mentioned in the previous post, is a service that lets you post short updates to your friends, who can receive them on the web, on an I/M client, or on their mobile phone.

If you’re a Twitter user, we’ve created a service that will send you four daily humorous or motivational quotations:

• Quotations (Humorous / cynical quotes)
• Motivation (Motivational quotes)

Once you’ve set up a Twitter account, you can subscribe to these by clicking on one of the links above and clicking the “Add quotations” or “Add motivation” link in the right column.

The quotations are chosen randomly by computer and sent four times a day, four hours apart. (Humorous quotes are sent at 8:00 AM, 12:00, 4:00 PM, and 8:00 PM, and the Motivational quotes are sent at 6:00 AM, 10:00 AM, 2:00 PM, and 6:00 PM. If you subscribe to both, you’ll get a quote every two hours.)

These are drawn from the same databases as our Quotes of the Day and Motivational Quotes of the Day, but they won’t be the same quotes as you see on those pages—the Twitter service has a limit of 140 characters, so we choose shorter quotations especially for Twitter.

Enjoy and let us know what you think!

All,

1. What is the justification of including “attributed” quotes here? What are the standards for concluding that an attribution is correct?

2. Should quotes that are “attributed” be included here at all? ever?

3. If “Yes”, then shouldn’t there be some attribution of the attribution? eg: Max Born in his autobiography quotes Albert Einstein as having said “….”.

I would be uneasy ever using any “quote” that can only be vaguely, without reference, rhyme, or reason, “attributed”.

Anyone?

Kip Hansen

Kip,

The short answer is that the “Attributed” tag means we have a strong suspicion that the quote is wrongly attributed and is not really the work of the quoted author.

So why is the quote still there? One of two reasons:

1. We haven’t determined the true attribution yet, but we don’t want the quotation to be missing if someone searches for it.

2. People commonly attribute the quotation to the supposed author, so we include it under their name where people will be looking for it. In these cases, there is usually a note indicating the true author. See for example the following quotation commonly attributed to Voltaire:

• Quote Details: Voltaire: I disapprove of what… – The Quotations Page

Ideally we would only have quotations in the second category, but we have a limited amount of time for tracking down quotation sources.

Incidentally, you would be pleased to know that there is also a “verified” flag in our database, which will indicate quotations with a verified attribution. This will become visible when we update the site in a month or two.

Michael Moncur
Owner and maintainer, The Quotations Page

After a heated discussion on whether we should cancel the Reader Meetup, we let the fortune cookie decide our fate. It said, “A man who dares to waste an hour of time hasn’t discovered the value of life.”

It’s not like we don’t want to spend an hour with our readers; we really do. Unfortunately, the few people who contacted us in Austin have either not responded to our email announcing the event or cancelled. No one has RSVP’d on the UpComing.org site, so the underwhelming response says: CANCEL.

If you live in Austin and were considering going to the Reader Meetup, contact me. Mike and I are are going to this event, which is open to the public, so you’re free to show up here as well.

Your Video Blog Can Save the World

Friday, March 9th, 2005 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Carver Museum Cultural Center (1161 Angelna Street). Google Map FREE admission, no badge or pre-event signup needed to attend this session.

Michael and I are going to be in Austin, Texas for SXSW. While we’re there, we wanted to allow our readers to have a chance to meet us, so we set up a reader meetup at the Sunset Valley Barnes and Noble:

Location: Barnes & Noble – Sunset Valley
5601 Brodie Lane Suite 300, Austin, TX 78745 Google Map
Phone: 512-892-3493

Date and Time: March 9, 2006 6pm-7pm

Please RSVP using Upcoming.org so that we don’t feel like we’re going to be waiting at the bookstore all alone:

• Upcoming.org: Starling Studios Reader Meetup at Barnes and Noble Sunset Valley (Friday, March 9, 2007)

We are going to hang around for an hour, gathering readers and then we are going to let you pick a restaurant where we can eat and hang out for longer if you want. We are really interested in what we can do to make The Quotations Page a better place to be. What are you interested in? What bores you? How can we help you? Come with ideas and helpful hints because we’re all ears!

We are going to be in Austin, Texas from March 8-13th this year and we want to meet up with the readers of the Quotations Page. We want to hear your ideas about the site, what you like, what you hate and how we can be better.

Here’s the problem: We don’t really know the town. We’re hoping that you folks can tell us the best place and day to meet.

Please email us if you would like to come to the meetup here:

• Quotations Page Meetup: Contact Laura Moncur

We are excited to meet our readers face to face and hear just what you want from us!