Below, the six most annoying articles from Twitter’s late-March tipping point, each worse than the last.

Just one question: What are you doing? [Taz Tagore, Toronto Star, Mar. 21]: A freelance submission at the moment the Star decided they must feature Twitter in their pages: “I set out to understand what makes a good tweet and, by extension, uncover why some of us are obsessed with Twitter.com. Is there an art or a science to Twittering successfully, so that tweets enthrall rather than annoy?”

When a Twitterer becomes a Twit [Diane Ziomislic, Toronto Star, Mar. 22]: First attempt to make an issue of @mayormiller getting the rhythm of 140-character updates: “Tweeting mayors looking to connect with populace risk alienating them with banalities, critics say.”

Twitter beats email, friends find [Corey Mintz, Toronto Star, Mar. 24]: Restaurant reviewer recaps Twitter exchange with friend who doesn’t know the abbreviation “IMO.”

24 hrs of tweets [Sarah Hampson, Globe and Mail, Mar. 26]: Columnist follows celebrity tweeters for a day, comes up with this conclusion: “We twitter to hope we matter. That’s as profound as it gets, I think. Mostly, it’s a way to feel cool. It’s a new social elixir, like smoking was at the height of its popularity. You do it because everyone else is. For now, anyway. Life is like walking through a funhouse. It’s dark, people are pushing, and you can’t turn around. You just follow the cracks of light.”

Pro athletes turning into ‘twits’ [Bruce Arthur, National Post, Mar. 26]: “Now, this correspondent’s first instinct regarding this latest Internet fad is one of rather undisguised contempt. Twitter is, in its most popular form, a vapid regression of the language for those without the patience, facility, or spelling ability to properly blog. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but Twitter seems to be doing its level best to demolish that assertion. (Now that I am old, this column will contain a number of blatant generalizations about Twitter, the Internet, and kids these days. Oh, how they dress, those kids.)”

Ego tweeto, ergo sum [Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail, Mar. 28]: “If you thought Facebook was banal, try Twitter. It makes people who write their thoughts on Facebook sound like Shakespeare. Of course, it’s also possible I’m too old and out of it.”

RELATED: A decade long search for tomorrow by Larrry Borsato.

MUSIC

iPod Classic, the 160-gigabyte version, is with me everywhere I go — I need as much space as I can get so I don’t have to keep deleting and re-filling the thing to suit my moods.

Beats by Dr. Dre headphones are great for anything with a good solid beat or a thick low-end. When I need something with a bit more range I head over to my trusty set of Shure in-ear headphones, which still sound great after a few years, even if the cables are starting to get a bit ratty in places.

The Korg Kaossilator, which is a touchpad-based synth with basic looping capabilities, works when I’m in the mood for music-making. Lots of old-school fun.

PHOTO

Canon Rebel XTi teamed with a Sigma 120-400mm telephoto lens are my favourites for shooting birds in the field. The lens is crazy heavy, but it’s a relatively inexpensive one — with optical image stabilization built in — allowing me to get good shots even when I’m shooting free-hand.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 works when I don’t want to sling a massive piece of glass: a 10-megapixel model with great wide-angle capabilities, amazing macro, and fantastic manual control. It’s like an SLR crammed into a small point-and-shoot body.

VIDEO

Sony XDCAM EX1 is the one I’m most likely to use for an event: a card-based full HD camera, with a reasonably compact form factor. We first got a chance to see this in action on the set of The Lab, where it impressed us by providing a picture that was almost indistinguishable from a professional camera five times the price. Sold!

WORK

MacBook Pro, a pre-unibody model, is still going strong. Not only is it great for my day-to-day tasks like email, writing and research, but it doubles as my mobile Final Cut edit machine when we hit events like the Consumer Electronics Show. It’s also the machine I use to compose all of the music we use for Butterscotch productions. I’ve decorated the lid of my machine with a removable sticker from Toronto-based GelaSkins.

iPhone helps me keep in touch with the rest of the world while I’m on the go. I’m almost always using the email app, the Facebook app, or the Twiterriffic client. It’s also my main gaming device — I’m insanely addicted to Peggle. I’ve got the phone wrapped up in the Mophie Juice Pack Air, a combo hardcase/extended life battery pack that gives me about twice the battery power as iPhone on its own.

BlueAnt ST3 is a Bluetooth speakerphone that isn’t technically in the gadget bag — but I use it in the car all the time, as it allows you to answer incoming calls by saying “OK” or “answer” rather than forcing you to push a button. It also downloads your address book from your phone, and uses a synthesized voice to tell you who’s calling, so you don’t have to glance down at your phone’s display. A truly hands-free device, the speakerphone portion attaches to the metal visor clip with a strong magnet, which means you can easily switch it to the other side of the visor when the sun is strong — or detach it when you have to bring it indoors to recharge.

LEISURE

Amazon Kindle, freshly available in Canada, is my latest addition. Its e-ink display is small but clear, and won’t cause eyestrain like a backlit LCD screen would. The one disappointment so far is the relative lack of titles available in the Canadian version of the Kindle store. This will hopefully change now that the hardware is available here.

THE BAG ITSELF

Tom Bihn Super Ego, with optional Brain Cell notebook sleeve, was the solution after wearing out several other bags. This one has 27 litres of cargo space, and it even comes with a water-resistant top zipper, which means it won’t leak in the rain. Big enough to hold my lunch containers, too.

PREVIOUSLY: Wayne MacPhail finds faith in his iPhone

You got a problem with the future? Then they don’t want your kind hanging around nextMEDIA, a two-day conference at the Design Exchange to wind down another year, as the pause button pushed last fall amidst the economic meltdown gets lifted a little bit. What awaits on the other side? A service from Rogers allowing their customers across Canada to access TV shows they weren’t going to watch on TV won over attendees. Also, smartphones that push information people barely care to know. Gavin Purcell, supervising producer of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, turned up to tell attendees that you can’t predict which online bits will go viral — “so stop trying.” And certainly, if there’s anything that Toronto-based content providers have experience with, it’s stopping trying.

Not everything produced for the web needs to be so self-consciously clever, though — the ones making money aren’t fretting over the future of journalism, or delusions of creative integrity induced by rock ‘n’ roll rebels like Pearl Jam. So, if 90 per cent of Canadians are really visiting a social media site every month, as claimed by perennial enthusiast Bryan Segal of comScore, best to figure out how to adapt topics of interest to 90 per cent of the population. That means deferring to regular folk few media types care to meet.

“Crowdsourcing might be the biggest thing since radio,” proclaimed advertising executive Chuck Porter this morning, while citing the shift from a read-only society back to a read-write one, which sounds familiar. “Someone’s doing Larry Lessig’s bit,” observed a lurker already on the cluetrain — but if it’s new to you, it’s still new!

Consider how, over the past decade, most conversations about media were guided by the assumption that all media was better in the preceding decade. Yet, the same sentiment was expressed throughout the decade before that, and so on. These past 10 transformative years will merit no such fond reminiscences — the high-wired Millennial generation won’t buy that one. Where does that leave a grown-up trying to generate an advertising buck or two today? Cashing any cheques they can while waiting for somebody else to figure out a formula that works. This ain’t an art form worth starving for.

Wayne MacPhail has been around the media block, and back again, starting three decades ago as a photographer, editor and writer at Hamilton magazine, then moving to daily journalism in 1983 at the Hamilton Spectator. He founded Southam InfoLab in 1991, a research and development space for the newspaper chain. After doing the content creation circuit through a string of online networks — MSN, Canoe, Sympatico, @Home and AOL Canada — he now teaches online journalism at the University of Western Ontario and Ryerson University, and runs his own consulting company, w8nc. Starting next week, MacPhail will be contributing regular technology reviews for Mondoville, which makes him the ideal candidate for this first peek inside a mediamaker’s gadget bag. Read his photo, sound, video and more picks below.

PHOTO

Canon G9 shoots RAW, has a smooth 6x zoom, a live histogram, an optical viewfinder and a great macro range. Plus, it shoots outstanding 4:3 video and, almost unique among point-and-shoots, the ability to do stop motion video — which is always amusing when there is a BBQ, or IKEA furniture to assemble. It has the low light vision of a LASIK eye surgery patient, but it’s a tank, unless you drop it right on its open lens. (Like I’d do that for a third time.)

Fujifilm F200EXR has a remarkably sharp lens and a unique sensor that can act as a regular 12-megapixel CCD or can double expose 6-megapixel images to create either extremely low noise or with extended dynamic range. The camera also knows when it’s time to shift into macro mode or which scene setting to use. Perfect for candids at conferences, or street photography.

iPhone is basically a pinhole camera attached to a 3-megapixel sensor with the dynamic range of a 1950s Philco TV. But, I kind of like it. The phone is perfect for grabbing shots of posters, products or location. The same camera also serves as a barcode reader (I use Red Laser). The camera can also serve as an eye for augmented reality apps like Layars and, as a magnifier for small type. Oh yeah, it shoots video too.

SOUND

Zoom H2 has four on-board mics are outstanding and can switch from a 90 degree front pickup to a 120 degree rear pattern to a full surround capture. Plus it can take a mini-plug external mic (and phones). The quality of the recordings from this unit are stunningly good.

iPhone — again with the iPhone. The voice recorder app on the iPhone is pretty solid, but I actually like Bias’s iProRecorder better. Plus, I love AudioBoo for on-the-go podcasting. One advantage of is you can record yourself without looking like you’re doing anything other than talking on the iPhone.

VIDEO

Canon HFS100 shoots sharp, well-saturated 8-megapixel stills as well as excellent HD video. I often use it for both stills and video on the same shoot.

Canon HF200 is the HFS100’s smaller sibling. The HF200 only handles 3-megapixel stills and it’s not as hardy in lowlight. Both it’s pocketable in my Scott e-vest and is a solid AVCHD performer.

iPhone yet again: with the recent release of Reel Producer, I can shoot, edit and title a mini-doc on my phone and upload it to YouTube without heading home. Amazing, really.

POST SCRIPT

I have recently shifted from a fine point pen and a small Moleskine notebook to a LiveScribe pen and its associated Anoto paper. LiveScribe not only captures digital ink but synchronizes the sound it records with built-in (or external) stereo mics. The result is a Harry Potter-like magic notebook that can replay any audio its heard when I touch on any word, phrase or note I made when the sound came into the world.

UPCOMING: Wayne will be online on Monday, November 16 at 6 p.m. (EST) taking part in the live Edupunk event put on by students from his MakerCulture class.