Twitter: R U fishing this wknd w/a cell phone?

We tried this last year for the Minnesota fishing opener with good success so let's give it another shot this year. I'm talking about using Twitter to share fishing reports and pictures with fellow anglers across Minnesota. The beauty of using Twitter is the communication is almost immediate—right from your boat, provided you have cell phone reception.

Setting up an account is easy, free and takes just a few minutes of your time. Go to www.Twitter.com and click on the "Get started now" button. Enter your name, a user name (this is how you will be seen on Twitter) and a password, plus a few other details and soon you'll be in business. If you're worried about privacy…just use a nickname and that will work, too.

Once you have a Twitter account communication is like a two-way street. You have the ability to share brief 140 character messages with the world. Brag about the fish you are catching…complain about the miserable weather…share a funny experience at the boat landing. The point is using Twitter on the fishing opener is like virtual coffee shop chatter. Best of all, you're not talking about the experiences the next day or when the weekend is over. Nope, on Twitter you can describe the action as it is happening.

If you are using a cell phone that doesn't have "smart phone" technology (BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, etc.) don't despair. You can still have most of the mobile Twitter functionality, it just takes a few more steps. Once you have an account—click on "settings" and then click on "mobile" for details on how you can send a "tweet" simply by sending an ordinary text message.

Now, if you want to send a picture from a non-smart phone it gets a bit more involved. Provided your phone has a camera, to send a picture to Twitter on a basic phone you will need to go to a website, such as www.TwitPic.com. This site automatically coordinates with Twitter so if you already established an account on Twitter you simply use that same login information for TwitPic. Again, once you logon for the first time go under "settings" and you will see an Email address which you can use to upload pictures. A picture that is uploaded to TwitPic will automatically appear on your Twitter updates, too.

The process I've just described is usually made a lot easier if you use one of the many applications available for a smart phone. Still, if everything sounds way too confusing don't despair…you can also have fun reading other peoples' tweets and you don't even have to sign up for anything.

Within a few days StarTribune.com will be aggregating all tweets using the hashtag #MNFishOpener. What this means is out of the millions of tweets made daily only the ones pertaining to the Minnesota fishing opener THAT ALSO INCLUDE THE #MNFishOpener copy will be shown. That's why it's important that when you tweet about the fishing opener somewhere included in that 140 character Twitter message it must also include the #MNFishOpener characters (not cap sensitive).

If you have questions or comments about any of this send me a message on Twitter (@jim7226). You can also follow my fishing tweets by clicking on: www.Twitter.com/jim7226. Now, rumor has it that Dennis Anderson will also be using Twitter this coming weekend. You can follow all of Dennis' tweets by linking to: www.Twitter.com/StribDennis.

Oh, and by the way…a quick word of advice. If you just landed a lunker and you happen to be fishing at your favorite honeyhole…be sure to turn off any geotagging features that might be enabled. If not, you might just suddenly discover a lot of fishing company appearing out of nowhere around your boat.