Digital Turfhead: Tweets and apps

GCI's tech maven, Jim Black, shares some must-have digital add ons as well as some Twitter accounts you should be following. So power up that Ipod and dust off that Twitter account.

Digital turfhead

Alright - so I finally broke down and replaced my 7-year old second generation iPod with a slick new 4th generation iPod touch. My Verizon contract isn’t up for another year, and I refuse to pay $700-some-odd dollars for a ‘mid-contract’ iPhone. I figured this was the next-best option. (Wait. Are you accusing me of being an Apple fanboy? You bet.)

But I’m not writing to sell Apple, I’m writing to tout the fun and addicting app, “Stickman Golf.”

I actually found myself pulling off the cartpath into the shade the other day to play a few holes. Beautiful in its simplicity, ‘Stickman Golf’ is a blast. Of the courses I’ve been able to unlock, one has a par-10 hole among the par-7’s, and, if you can shoot par or better, you’ll unlock a new 9-hole course. But be careful! The first time I played an intermediate course I was +68. STICKMAN app.

Have you seen my Twackle? Actually, it’s not lost. It’s a tweet deck from over at SI.com that gathers sports related tweets in one place. Found there was a golf story tweet about Bryan Bigley - a golf course maintenance worker who made the cut and played in the Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte, NC. His father, Rob Bigley, is Golf Course Superintendent of Pinehaven Country Club in Albany, NY.

Like following the various professional golf tours? Check out Pro Golf Tweets, a collection of tweets from names like Kelly Tilghmann of the Golf Channel, Graeme McDowell, The PGA, John Daly, and Bubba Watson. It’s interesting to see what people ‘on the inside’ are thinking about.

Priddis Greens Golf & Country Club in Priddis, Alberta, Canada, is jumping on the twitter bandwagon. James Beebe, Golf Course Manager, together with assistants Chris Prodahl and Chad Armitage keep the nice layout of the Priddis BLOG going, and they are all tweeting from different parts of the facility at any given time. As sweltering heat and humidity signals the coming summer in the mid-Atlantic, you’ll find that Beebe informed his followers that Priddis suffered a 1.5 hour frost delay on May 30. Poor things...

So I guess since summer breaks out a little slower up in Canada, Superintendents and Agronomists there have more time for tweeting. Tom Margetts of Innovative Agronomics Inc in Ontario has a nice agronomy BLOG, and is actively tweeting from his deck. You can follow him on twitter.