Making and managing the "Twitter Schema"

Everybody getting read for Bloomsday '09? Good. Because the changes start here tomorrow night.

We've got a brand-new web interface for following and interacting with the novel while reading the comic adaptation. There's a lot of bright, shiny new features there for people to play and, frankly, a lot of ways to help us get this thing done right.

But we can't show it to you yet. Not until tomorrow night.

To get people jazzed up for the new interface and get prepped for Bloomsday, we've been playing around with another nifty new application over on Twitter (to join us there just look for UlyssesSeen in your twitter search).

I've taken my general "schema" for how the novel's events and actions unfold, with some quotes, explanation of themes and links to historical figures, and created a "tweet-file" for getting your ULYSSES on 140 characters at a time. Starting on June 9th and running through the 15th, we'll be tweeting these tidbits for a few hours a day. Two or three chapters a day is a lot of Joyce of course, but hopefully this will help new readers get a little deeper into the novel before its celebration on the 16th. Reading ULYSSES for the first time is not an easy task, as anyone can tell you, but we hope this opens up some of the mysteries and cuts through to some of the reasons why this novel is so beautiful, funny, sad and really an experience you'll want to have again and again.

Then on Bloomsday itself, June 16th, an abbreviated and rather comical update of the day's events will come your way through twitter. Twenty hours of "what's Mr Bloom is doing now" in all its dirty detail. Pretty funny stuff when you break it all down.

So time to empty the cache on your browser, open yourself to the craziness of twitter and get ready for our new user interface tomorrow. Brand new ways to look at and enjoy a timeless and beautiful novel and some help getting through the harder bits of its earthiness to the gems of language and liveliness that form its center.

-Rob