When I first saw this demoed a few months ago the Microsoftie who showed it to me literally built TwitterVision in two minutes right in front of me without writing code. TwitterVision’s inventor told me he took four hours to do the same thing. Lets someone who isn’t a coder (like me) mashup various Web services easily and quickly.

This is a “small” thing from Microsoft. It isn’t going to get professional developers hot and bothered (at least I don’t think) but it is another piece of a Web strategy. If Microsoft released 10 small things like this then we’d start thinking that they “get” the Web again. What do you think?

Oh, and don’t think it’s just for TwitterVision clones, either. It’ll be interesting to see what people do with this. Start with the Overview page to see what it does.

This was the “small” thing I expected Microsoft to release at Mix.

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He’s been amazed at the response to it. He’s gotten emails from all over the world. It went up Sunday. He wrote it in four hours using Ruby on Rails. People have been telling him it’s the most addictive thing they’ve seen lately. He finds that almost scary. But, I told him I am probably going to buy a third monitor just to display TwitterVision. It’s just so cool to see Twitters in real time from around the world displayed on a moving Google map.

Anyway, it was fun to hear how he built it. I told him that he should add Starbucks icons randomly in between Twitters. That would freak people out. Thankfully he graciously declined to do that.

If you’re on Twitter you can tell Twitter your location by sending a message with “L:” in it. After the L: you should include your zip code or some other location information that Google Maps will understand. I did L:94019 since that’s my zip code. You’ll see my Twitter messages popup from Half Moon Bay, CA.

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