So any of you observant readers will notice a newly added feature to the side bar.

I have added a home made Twitter widget below the the ‘About Me’ section of the template. There are a number of reasons why I have done this. One is that it uses Javascript, and Javascript only, to pull the data from the website and display in a way that looks nice. I have never done this before and so wanted to give a try. This was relatively easy (with the help of JQuery of course) and was completed in a night.

Also, since the new Tumblr redesign, there is a feature that posts a small message to Twitter when a new post is created. And as my Twitter updates my Facebook status, people on my Facebook will get an instant link to the post. This will not only increase traffic and give me a wider audience, its a pretty nice feature!

The reason I hadn’t done this to begin with is that Twitter also created a Text post on my Tumblr. It wasn’t styled very well and pretty much took over my feed. This wasn’t particular what I was after but there was not much other option. Then, when you think about it, if I enabled Tumblr to post to my Twitter I would create an endless loop.

For example. I post a picture on tumblr. This would then post a link on Twitter. Which would then create a text post on my Tumblr. Which would then send a message to Twitter. Which would again post the tweet on Tumblr…

You get the picture.

When you put all these reason together, a Twitter widget seemed the obvious choice. It is fairly simple at the moment. I may make it a bit more sophisticated, such as add links if one is given in the tweet etc. Although, ideally, I would like a site that displayed my Tumblr, any blog posts, my tweets, my photos, my Last.Fm loved tracks and any links from Delicious. But I shall write about that another day!

For now, enjoy the new widget! Let me know what you think.