(Hint: scroll through and “Load more” to see all the action)

Last week we announced the first ever NC State Fair location-based scavenger hunt powered by TriOut that will take place on Thursday, October 14 from 3:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. To navigate the scavenger hunt we have placed eight QR Codes around the NC State Fair that you will need to scan with a QR Codes Reader for clues. The first QR Code is placed at the Deep Fried TriangleTweetup tent which has the first clue to get you started, where you can pick up a map to help guide you and met Lawrence Ingraham @lawpower, Founder/lead developer of TriOut to answer any questions you may have. Once you start the scavenger hunt look for the QR Code signs around the NC State Fair like the one below to scan.

Note you must start at the Deep Fried TriangleTweetup tent and go in order from one to eight to successfully complete the scavenger hunt and finish back at the tent to claim your prize.

Although the location-based scavenger hunt is powered by TriOut, we would love for everyone to use our new iPhone app [iTunes link] to scan the QR Codes around the NC State Fair but we realize that everyone doesn’t own an iPhone. Keeping that in mind while working with the fair’s planning/pr team we made sure that any mobile phone user with a QR Code reader could participate in the scavenger hunt. Still, with QR Codes being fairly new to the majority of the USA population most mobile phone users are unaware if they have a QR Code reader on their mobile phones. With that being said here’s a list of resources to find a free QR Code reader for the iPhone, Android, Palm Windows Mobile, Nokia & Blackberry mobile phones so everyone can participate in the scavenger hunt.

Blackberry:
Blackberry Messenger has a build in QR Code reader or search blackberry app world for QR Code Reader

Windows Mobile:
i-nigma
Scanlife.

Android:
QuickMark QR Code Reader
i-nigma

Nokia:
Nokia barcode reader

If you have a Nokia N82, N93, N93i, N95, N95 8GB, E66, E71, E90 or 6220 Classic (APAC variants) you will find the Nokia Barcode Reader pre-installed on your device, ready to scan mobile codes around you. For Nokia N78, 6210 Navigator, N96 and 6220 Classic (non-APAC variants) you can download the application via the following link: Nokia Barcode Reader. Download to a computer and transfer it to your mobile device. Via http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/scan.htm

Palm OS:
i-nigma

iPhone: Again we would love for you to use the new TriOut iPhone app [iTunes link] but other iPhone QR Code reader apps are:
Mirascape [iTunes link]
QR Code Reader and Scanner [iTunes link]

Scanlife seems to have a QR Code reader for most mobile platforms too:

Also note if you downloaded the SPARKcon iPhone or Android app it has a built in QR Code reader as well.

Other QR Code Reader resources are:
PercentMobile – QR Code Reader Finder
http://getqrreader.com/
QR-Code Readers
QR Code readers
QR Code and 2d Barcode Readers

Good luck to everyone participating in the NC State Fair location-based scavenger hunt powered by TriOut. If you have any questions during the scavenger hunt we’ll be monitoring Twitter most of the day so feel free to send a tweet to @TriOut if needed.

If you use a QR Code Reader that’s not listed above let me know in the comments.

Here are some more details we’ve posted over the last few weeks:

• Details behind the tweetup: Entertainers/artist edition
• Details behind the tweetup: Deep-fried food samples edition
• Details behind the tweetup: Tweetup badges
• Details behind the tweetup: #deepfriedhunt edition
• Details behind the tweetup: Swag and sponsorship edition

Also, we wanted to go over a few details to hopefully answer any questions you may have.  If you’re wondering about something we don’t cover here, leave us a comment here on the blog or tweet it on over to @NCStateFair. Still haven’t registered? Sign up at http://deepfriedtriangletweetup.eventbrite.com.

• Where: Folk Festival tent (circled in the top right-hand corner above)
• When: Thursday, Oct. 22, 7 to 9 p.m. (The Fair stays open until midnight, so plan on sticking around.)
• Parking: The best option for getting to the State Fair is to take a bus or use one of three park and ride locations.  We’ll have CAT and DATA buses coming out to the fairgrounds on Thursday. Learn more aboutpark and ride locations and bus stops and schedules here. If you drive out, free parking is available on State Fair, Carter-Finley Football Stadium and RBC Center properties. Fairgoers are encouraged to take Wade Avenue to the Edwards Mill Extension to park in these lots. Because Food Lion Hunger Relief Day is always busy, we suggest allowing yourself plenty of time to get here – after all, if you get here early there will be plenty to see and do. Ginny Skalski posted a great roundup of tips on getting to the Fair on her blog.
• Admission: Bring four cans of food and get in free. (Bring more than four, and be our hero!) Volunteers will be at all of the main gates taking these cans. If you don’t have cans, you can purchase admission tickets online and print them out or buy them at any of the gates for $7.
• Bring your charger: We’ll have a charging station set up in case your juice runs low.
• WiFi: The fairgrounds has free WiFi. You’ll be asked to complete a short online registration form, then you’ll be good to go.
• Hashtags: We’ll use the #triangletweetup hashtag for the event to keep up with everyone’s tweets. Once you hit the road for the deep-fried scavenger hunt, you’ll be using #deepfriedhunt to submit your answers.
• Meet your planners: Make sure to follow @NCStateFair and @triangletweetup. Also, follow organizers Wayne Sutton  (@waynesutton) and Jeff Cohen (@dgtlpapercuts), who have helped us put this event together along with their Our Hashtag partners Kipp (@kbodnar32) and Ryan Boyles (@theRab). On the N.C. State Fair side, the Press Office is also on Twitter: Follow Karlie Justus (@KarlieJ), Jen Nixon (@jennix5), Natalie Alford (@joynatalie), Andrea Ashby (@aashby), BrianLong (@brian_long66) and Paul Jones (@pmarshalljones).

We wouldn’t want to let our tweeps down when it comes to cool (free!) stuff. At the N.C. State Fair, we have many awesome sponsors, agriculture commodity groups, entertainers and friends who have donated their time and swag to the Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup, and we want to highlight them here.

In addition to the other artists and entertainers at the tweetup, we have one more to add to the list. You may have heard us raving about the L’Oreal Paris Color Space tent that debuted at the Fair this year. (You can check out the deep-fried bloggers’ glam makeover experience here.) Lucky for us, L’Oreal Paris will have two consultants on hand at the tweetup to provide mini-makeovers for tweeps to get extra avatar-ready. They’ll also have a free Telescopic Mascara for everyone who receives a makeover.

Now, onto the swag!

Rolling giveaways – Throughout the night, we’ll have contests every 15 minutes for:

* Tickets to the last weekend showing of West Side Story at @NCTheatre and dinner at The Duck and Dumpling courtesy of Empire Eats
* Promo codes for the @StateFairApp
* A free weekend stay at Hampton Inn Raleigh Midtown (@HampInnRaleighM)

Swag bags, full of:

* Reusable tote bags from the N.C. Pork Council
* Custom @TweetupBadges
* 2009 Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup posters
* Free coffee coupons from @McDonalds and @McCafeYourDay
* Green Pledge Station pass to complete the Green NC scavenger hunt (to earn a free State Fair t-shirt)
* Soda coozies from @FoodLion
* Gear from the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina (@FoodBankCENC)
* $10 in coupons from @SubwayFreshBuzz
* Key chains from the N.C. Egg Association
* @NCStateFair bumper stickers and magnet photo frames

And thanks again to these additional sponsors:

* Mimi the Clown
* Michelle Harrell, @Poodlemama
* Al the Artist
* Chef’s D’Lites
* The Murphy House
* Woody’s City Market
* N&T Concessions
* @TriangleTweetup
* pici.me by Adam Covati (@covati)
* Steve Trash (@GreenSteveTrash)

We think this is sure to be a great time, so register today to get in on the fun!

The Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup is upon us, and we are busy getting all of the final details in place. We have lots of fun stuff planned for the Folk Festival tent (including artists and entertainers who will be there, the awesome food you’ll be able to sample and the deep-fried Tweetup Badges we’ll have for the first 250 attendees), but we also have one adventure planned for tweeps outside of the tweetup’s home base.

We’ll have a Twitter-themed scavenger hunt that will take you up, down and around the fairgrounds in search of Twitter-related attractions, stops and hidden treasures. The #deepfriedhunt will have 10 stops, but you’ll only be required to complete five of the tasks. Once you complete the hunt, you’ll have until 9:30 p.m. Thursday night to head back to the Folk Festival tent to receive your prize, a 2009 N.C. State Fair T-shirt modeled off of the Fair’s vintage-inspired Web site and posters:

Complete our deep-fried, Twitter-themed scavenger hunt and this bad boy is yours.

Here are just a few samples of things we’ll have you searching for:

* A Fail Whale’s second cousin on the Midway
* The Twitter bird’s home on the fairgrounds, if it were to compete in the livestock shows
* The blue-ribbon opposite of #FAIL
* A recycled, environmentally friendly tweet

Does that get you curious? We’ll have more clues, of course, for you at registration, in both a paper format and an online format. We’ll have a mix of tasks (for example, some stops may have a picture option for scavenger hunters with camera phones) so everyone can get in on the fun, and all of the stops will require you to tweet out an answer marked with the hashtag #deepfriedhunt. We’ll use that to keep up with our scavenger hunt tweeps across the fairgrounds.

Be sure to register for the Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup to get in on the fun. Also, since we’re in deep-fried crunch time before the tweetup, check back tomorrow and Wednesday for your remaining round-up of details, including the Techy edition and Swag edition. Stay tuned!

So now our tweeps know about the artists and entertainers coming to the Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup, as well as the awesome food they’ll be able to sample. But what about the all-important tweetup staple known as the tweetup badge?

No sweat–we have you covered!

This is actually one of the elements of the tweetup that we’re most excited about, mainly because we’ve never gotten badges before. And we have to admit, these are pretty snazzy.

We want to give a big shout out to Rich Drake, owner of Tweetup Badges, for his help in designing the badges. He was awesome to work with and really made the entire process fun and easy. It was his idea to use the red-and-white checkered pattern we use in the header of the Deep Fried blog, and we made sure to include an area for attendees to write in their names, as well as their Twitter handles.

On the back of the badges you’ll see Tweetup Badges’ logo and tag line, “helping you put names to faces in the offline world.” We’re excited to do just that at the Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup. Also, Rich helped us place a QR code on the back that will take you straight to the N.C. State Fair Web site for all the Fair info you’ll need during your visit. Rich explains how a QR code works on his blog:

The QR code on the back of the tweetup badges is meant to be a time saver (and it’s cool). The concept is simple. With a phone equipped with a camera and a QR code reader, you simply scan the code on the back of the tweetup badge and the phone takes you to a website, in this case, the N.C. State Fair Web site. There are QR code readers available for most “smart” phones, and most of them are free.

Want a badge of your own? We have 250 badges to give out to our tweeps, so be sure to register at deepfriedtriangletweetup.eventbrite.com.

As we get closer and closer to the Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup, we wanted to give you a little more information on what you can expect at the event beyond lots of tweeting, lots of friends and lots of N.C. State Fair lovers.

Last week we told you about some of the fun artists and entertainers we’ll have out at the first Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup. (Who is getting a Fail Whale painted on their face?)

If you haven’t joined in on the fun yet, be sure to register for the event here, and come out to the Folk Festival tent on Food Lion Hunger Relief Day Thursday, Oct. 22, from 7 to 9 p.m.

This update is the all-important “deep-fried food sample” edition. Since it wouldn’t be a deep-fried tweetup without some deep-fried food, we made sure to roundup some tasty food samples for our tweeps.

If food is the number one reason people come to the N.C. State Fair and tweeting is the number one reason people come to tweetups, we expect some serious “nom nom nom” tweets out of attendees. (Don’t worry: Sodas and water will also be provided to wash down all of this deep-fried yumminess.)

These four foods are also making their N.C. State Fair debuts this year, so come out and be a part of history in the making:

• Funnel cake fries from N & T Concessions. Just like the perennial Fair favorite, but with a portable twist. Who can resist a cross between powdered sugar goodness and the convenience of a french fry?
• Chicken-fried bacon from Chef Thomas’ Chef’s D’Lites. Just like it sounds, these strips of bacon are covered in batter and deep-fried like chicken-fried steak.
• Buffalo chicken rangoons from Raleigh’s own Woody’s City Market. These bite-sized, deep-fried dumplings (similar to the crab rangoons available in many Chinese restaurants) will be filled with some of Woody’s famous buffalo chicken.
• Chocolate-covered bacon from The Murphy House. Bacon lovers will have to contain themselves, since we’ll have not one, but two twists on the ever-popular bacon. A mix of savory, sweet and salty, chocolate-covered bacon got some rave reviews at our pre-Fair media lunch, but you’ll have to come decide for yourself. (Steph’s Strawberries will also have chocolate-covered bacon for sale on the fairgrounds near the Hobbies and Handicrafts Building.)

We were lucky enough to try out the chocolate-covered bacon at this week’s preview event. We can’t wait to see you at the tweetup and hear what you think!

We’ll be “releasing” these details every few days leading up to Thursday, Oct. 22, when four cans will get you into the fairgrounds for free. (If you don’t have four cans on you, you can always pay admission at the gate.) Keep an eye on the NC State Fair blog, on the Twitter account and on here on the Triangle Tweetup site to get the inside scoop, and be sure to register for the event to join in on the fun.

First up: The entertainer edition. We’ll have fun artists and entertainers from around the fairgrounds join us at the tweetup. But, of course, they’ll have a special social media twist:

* You’re heard of wearing your heart on your sleeve…but what about wearing a Twitter bird on your face? Mimi the Clown (who owns The Melody Maker entertainment company) will be on hand to work her magic with face paint and a brush. This won’t be just any facepainting booth, however; Mimi will adorn tweeps’ faces with Twitter birds, Fail Whales, the Twitter symbol, hashtags and more social media icons.

* Michelle Harrell, who has appeared at previous fairs as the living statue “Statue Viva” and returns this year with Michelle’s Magical Poodles, will be at the tweetup. Michelle uses social media to track her travels across the country as the “Poodle Mama” on YouTube and Twitter.

* Al the Artist will be on hand in his cartoon car to draw caricatures on specially designed tweetup posters. These would make fun avatar/profile pictures. (Hint, hint!)

* Our Twitter friend Adam Covati will bring his Twitter photobooth Pici Me to the tweetup. Adam created the photo generator, which, according to his site, “enables guests at any social gathering to generate buzz about a hot ongoing event by sharing pictures via Twitter.” Well, we know this event will be hot–after all, it is deep-fried.

Stay tuned for more information coming up on the food, swag, scavenger hunt and more. We’ll see you there!

Join us on Thursday, Oct. 22 at the first Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup at the N.C. State Fair. The event will be held in the Folk Festival Tent from 7 to 9 p.m. on Food Lion Hunger Relief Day. Bring four cans of food for Free entry to the fair. Register here for free for the Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup.

There is a brief agenda for the evening, followed by plenty of socializing (or networking if you’re looking for work or clients). First, we want to publicly congratulate Jazzy Chad on his new gig with Twitter. Don’t worry, he’s staying in Raleigh, and will be helping them out part-time. According to this blog post (written by former Triangle resident, Twitter employee and our friend Doug Williams), Chad was such an integral part of the Twitter community in both his creation of Tweetgrid and his customer support, that Twitter took notice.

The second item is the use of professional tools for Twitter. With the new release of the Twitter 101 Guide for Business, and the current crop of tools to manage not just one account, but multiple accounts, we will discuss what works for different cases and why. This is the perfect opportunity to learn more about Twitter, and other social media tools, for your company. Bring your questions and your networking skills. Tweetups have a great mix of people with a variety of experiences.

And finally, we will also get psyched up for Ignite Raleigh, which is happening Wednesday. We hope to see you there, but if not, we’ll probably see you somewhere this week.

Thanks,
The OurHashtag Team
Wayne, Kipp, Jeff, Ryan

Agenda (beta)

7:00 p.m. Triangle Tweetup starts
7:10 p.m. Welcome & Announcements (Triangle Tweetup Team )
7:20 p.m.  Bronto host  welcome by Joe Colopy @Colopy , CEO of Bronto @Bronto

Capture Carolina welcome and introduction from Will Hardison @CaptureCarolina

7:25 p.m. Panel:  Brands, Business and Twitter moderated by Kipp Bodnar @kbodnar32

Panelists:

• Dave Thomas, @DavidBThomas, SAS, Social Media Manager
• Thor Kessler, @RaleighGrande, Raleigh Grande Movie Theater, General Manager
• Ryan Boyles, @theRab, IBM, Project Zero Community Manager
  
• Spencer Dempsey, @DurhamChamber, Research & Information Coordinator, Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce

7:50 p.m. Announcements:

Mike Rundle @Mik9r announcing: Beak a new mac twitter app.

Heather O’Sullivan, @HeatherO coworking in Apex

Ryan Boyles,  Raleigh Twestival charity recap and update. Plus a video sneak peek from Ignite Raleigh.

Iconfactory: Twitterrific 2.0 for the iPhone 1st public demo.

8:15 p.m. Social:
Don’t worry, this will go by fast and after all the speakers it will be time for tweeting, drinking, eating and networking.

Reminders:

Door prizes will be announced next week along with contest rules, be sure to follow @TriangleTweetup for updates.

@josh_hofer who took the awesome photos at the last Triangle Tweetup will be taking pictures again for the tweetup photo booth.

Bring your Toiletries to help out the local homeless shelter, more information here: Donate Toiletries at the Triangle Tweetup to help local homeless shelter

The hashtag for the event is #TriangleTweetup … we should be trending by 7:20 …

As of  4:00 p.m we have 137 tweeple register to attend. If you have not registered it’s free and you can do so by going here: http://triangletweetup20.eventbrite.com

If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor of TriangleTweetup.org  see the sponsor page or email community@triangletweetup.org

A big thanks to the other Triangle Tweetup team members: @dgtlpapercuts @ginnyskal @kbodnar32 @theRab @ToAsTySnAcKs for being awesome!

@WayneSutton

If you have been wondering what those terms with a # sign are all over Twitter, and flowing through to Facebook for folks updating status using Twitter, they are called #hashtags. In the early days of Twitter, as users were creating new methods for using the microblogging service, people adopted the #keyword standard from IRC (internet relay chat) to connect conversations. Since Twitter is a stream, and by default does not thread conversations, common hashtags are a way to link tweets about the same topic. The most common uses of #hashtags are to categorize current news or pop culture items, link tweets to common topics, and to track conversations at events. People also use #hashtags for emphasis on their tweets to indicate #success or #fail.

There are lots of tools that have been developed to track, view, analyze and understand #hashtags. The original ones were hashtags.org, which shows stats of #hashtags, and twemes.com, which aggregates tweets with #common hashtags. The development of Summize, now owned by Twitter and located at search.twitter.com
introduced the trending topics. The site shows the real-time, top ten topics on Twitter. Many of these are #hashtags, but frequently, commonly tweeted terms show up here. This makes trending topics about more than #hashtags. If you are interested in how to be a trending topic, here’s a post that analyzes some data about the subject. And based on this, we will need over 1500 tweets to become a trending topic. Big goal, but look at all the people who will be attending the event.

Many sites have been created to help people understand what #hashtags mean, like
hashdictionary.com, tagal.us and Whatthetrend.com. There is even a local podcast by Jaytheblogger discussing trending #hashtags called Hashtagnation.com. Another local site that lets you view multiple searches on one screen is TweetGrid, developed by Raleigh’s own JazzyChad. Another tool that now links up to your Twitter account is TweetChat.com, which lets you search for a #hashtag and returns a Twitter stream on your Twitter page and you can reply with that #hashtag easily. This lets you join the conversation. Go to the Twitter Wiki page for more tools that let you interact with #hashtags.

Note that desktop applications for using Twitter like TweetDeck creates links from #hashtags that take you to a Twitter Search page of the #hashtag, while the web interface of Twitter does not treat #hashtags different from any other text.

If you need a better understanding of #hashtags, ask someone at tonight’s TriangleTweetup. There will be lots of people who can help you get more out of your Twitter conversations.

pici.me enables guests at any social gathering to generate buzz about a hot ongoing event by sharing pictures via twitter. Currently in beta, pici.me provides an intuitive self-serve way to capture and tweet pictures of your attendees. The tweets, which can be modified to suit any event, not only serve to create buzz (and trend your #hashtag), but also promote any and all event sponsors or causes.

Created by @covati (also the creator of idek.net), pici.me is being debuted at the TriangleTweetup on April 30 at Bronto.

For those of you who are new to twitter and don’t know the history Twitterrific was one of the first, if not the first desktop Twitter application available. It was launched on January 15, 2007 (see the version history here: http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific_history) The iPhone version of Twitterrific was one of the first twitter iPhone apps too and was included in the iTunes App store [iTunes link] when it was first released.

Let’s not forget about the twitterrific bird. For a long time, people thought the twitterrific bird was Twitter’s logo and many people still use it when showing their tweets on blogs … illegally. The bird does rock, but iconfactory makes application icons so they’re just good at what they do.

I had a chance to interview a few members of the iconfactory team about the history of the company and twitterrific a few months ago, take a look, so you’ll know who they are when they arrive on Thursday.

One of the masterminds behind Twitterrific is Craig Hockenberry @chockenberry and he tweeted about the new http://twitterrific.com website that gives us a glance of the new Twitterrific 2.0 application for the iPhone. It has been almost 2 years since the iPhone version of Twitterrific was released and we’re excited that the first public demo of Twitterrific 2.0 for the iPhone will be on display at Triangle Tweetup.

So to @talosman Talos Tsui – @gedeon Gedeon Maheux – @chockenberry – @piraino Anthony Piraino – @ifcorey Corey Marion and the rest of the iconfactory team, thank you for your contributions to twitter, making a great app and attending Triangle Tweetup.

See you on Thursday

@WayneSutton

Introducing Twitter Twister!

Possible Rules:

Triangle Tweetup or anyone affiliated with Triangle Tweetup is not responsible for:

- Your loss of balance
- Injuries
- Broken marriages due to the closeness of contestants
- Poor cell phone reception
- Twitter being down

–From @instanttaylor’s Ghost Writer–

Their clients—public and private companies, as well as non-profits and government agencies—rely on DesignHammer for an Internet presence that helps differentiate their organization from the competition. They design, develop, and host websites of varying complexity, including online stores, content management systems, and custom e-newsletters.

This locally owned and operated company was ranked as one of the top ten Internet Design and Marketing firms in the Triangle Area by the Triangle Business Journal for 2005. Follow them on Twitter @DesignHammer to see what they are up to and thank them for sponsoring TriangleTweetup.

And here is the list of door prizes:

Blu Seafood (Twitter: @bluseafood): $25 Restaurant Gift Certificate

Bronto (Twitter: @Bronto): BrontoNation Gift Packs

Carrboro Creative Coworking (Twitter: @CarrboroCowork): T-Shirt (woman size only)

Chatham Journal (Twitter: @chathamnc): Coffee Mugs and Hats

Claustrophobia (iTunes link) (Twitter: @sonofalink): Promo Code for Free iPhone game

Crazy Like That (Twitter: @crazylikethat) T-Shirt with buttons & stickers

DSI Comedy Theater (Twitter: @DSIComedy) Improv 101 Class and Comedy Show Tickets

Edward McKay (Twitter: @EdMcKay) $25.00 Bookstore Gift Certificate

LoneRider Beer (Twitter: @LoneRiderBeer): 1 growler (64 oz) to be filled at the LoneRider’s brewery.

Raleigh Grande (Twitter: @RaleighGrande) Movie Tickets

Schmap: T-Shirt and iTunes Gift Card

Wilmington/Cape Fear Visitor’s Bureau (Twitter: @visitcapefearnc): Summer is Almost Here Beach Packs

Make sure you thank our door prize sponsors with Tweet love. Items listed subject to change.