Singapore, 26 May 2010 – The Infocomm Accessibility Centre (IAC) announced today that it has launched a month-long civic movement titled The Tweet Meet to encourage members of the public to help bridge the digital divide for people with disabilities. The civic movement will culminate in a digital picnic at SMU Campus Green on 26 June, where people with disabilities and the public will have the unique opportunity to interact with each other physically and via online platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Skype.

This initiative is part of the ‘SOW – It’s Time To Grow’ campaign to encourage the public to Know Somebody, Grow Somebody and sign up someone they know with disabilities who has little or no computer knowledge to take up one of the many Infocomm Technology (IT) courses offered at IAC.

The Tweet Meet aims to connect more people with disabilities to the online world and encourage them to take up IT skills through this civic movement. Members of the public can participate by tweeting about the movement at #TweetMeetSG, join the Facebook group Tweet Meet Singapore and pledge their attendance at the event at SMU Campus Green on 26 June, be a volunteer to help out at the event or sign up somebody they know with disabilities who will benefit from one of the highly subsidised IT courses available at the Centre.
Managed by the Society for the Physically Disabled, the IAC opened its doors in July 2008 offering IT training to people across disability types, be it physical, intellectual, visual or hearing-related. The Centre provides basic level courses on computer fundamentals, web design, digital music and digital media to intermediate level courses on Photoshop, digital music, digital illustration and video editing.

The IAC houses Asia’s first Assistive Technology Loan Library with resources tailored to people with disabilities and the Centre also provides an IT Apprenticeship Programme encompassing on-the-job training for capable trainees so they can hone their skills in a workplace environment and enhance their employment opportunities.

As of 1 May 2010, more than 1,815 training places have been offered and the Centre aims to offer 1,000 new training places by December 2010.

“We are organising The Tweet Meet to rally Singaporeans from all walks of life to help us narrow the digital divide for people with disabilities. Many people are not aware that people with disabilities need special tools to help them learn IT skills and IAC provides these courses. IT skills have become so integral in our lives that most jobs require computer knowledge these days. We want to help people with disabilities become more independent and improve their employability in today’s marketplace by enabling as many of them as possible,” said Ms Chia Woon Yee, Director of Technology for Society for the Physically Disabled.

The month-long civic movement will culminate with The Tweet Meet event held at SMU Campus Green on 26 June from 4pm to 6pm where members of the public can tweet while enjoying a picnic in the park. The most active twitterer and Facebook participant will get a chance to win attractive prizes. There will be live music performances and opportunities for members of the public to interact digitally and physically with people with disabilities. Volunteers are also streaming in to pledge their commitment to the cause. These volunteers will help out at the event and they will also be visiting the homes of people with disabilities to help them log onto the Internet and learn basic IT skills so they can interact with members of the public at The Tweet Meet and begin their learning journey.

For more information on the IT courses offered by the IAC, please refer to Annex A. Follow us on Twitter at #TweetMeetSG and join our Facebook group Tweet Meet Singapore. For more information on The Tweet Meet or to sign up somebody for an IT course at IAC, please visit www.iacentre.org.sg/tweetmeetsg.

According to Twitter’s FAQ, it states:

Why can’t I see all my tweets? My tweet count is _,___. Are they lost?
The good news is they’re not lost or gone! We have all your tweets. The bad news is that we currently only allow you to see the 3200 most recent tweets (this could also be construed as good news, as that number could be lower than 3200). The other good news is that we are eventually going to build something that will allow you to see ALL your tweets. Among the gazillion things we want to do to make Twitter better, this hasn’t yet reached the top of our list, which is largely based on what we hear from people like you. At some point, you’ll be able to get on a twime machine, visit your twistory, and tweminisce. That will be a fun day!

That means if you got more than 3,200 tweets, you are pretty much screwed if you want to get your first tweet. There are services like My First Tweet and My Tweet 16 which allows you to get your first tweet.

My Tweet 16 did not have a gracious way of telling user, “hey you got more than 3,200 tweets and hence we can’t obtain your first tweet”. Instead it still displays the so called “your first tweet” which is totally fake if you got more than 3,200 tweets. It is basically listing your (YOUR_CURRENT_TWEET_COUNT – 3200)th tweet.

My First Tweet on the other hand is much better, if you got more than 3,200 tweets it will just prompt you “Sorry, something went wrong. This is what I have recorded as your error: Too Many Tweets.”.

I tried Googling, Binging and Yahooing but still could not get any answers. Suddenly Internet Archive came to my mind! Just enter your Twitter URL which is http://twitter.com/YOUR_USERNAME. For mine, it is http://twitter.com/gamerz.

It should be able to list the archives of your Twitter page, click on the earliest archive and it should bring your to a cache page of your Twitter page during that period. Here is an example http://web.archive.org/web/20080118191247/http://twitter.com/gamerz.

As you can see, it list down all the tweets that you have during that period. That page listed 4 tweets for me which matches the Updates count on that page. And hence the last tweet on that page should technically be your first tweet. There is no way to confirm that till Twitter have a time machine or something in the future.

Here is my first tweet according to the Internet Archive:

After midterm exams, now comes exams