Alex tweets to a top job

Teesside University graduate Alex Milburn devised an application for his final-year project to enable Twitter users to view their ‘Twitter Timeline'.

Alex, 22, from Great Ayton, is now working as a web developer for MyKnowledgeMap in York, which specialises in making e-learning solutions.

Alex returns to Middlesbrough today to receive his First Class degree BSc (Hons) Business Computing.

Alex’s project was called Albatross, a Silverlight application on Microsoft which collects Twitter blogs and plots them on a visual timeline. The blogs are represented by coloured shapes and plotted along the timeline by the date they were created. When the user clicks on the shapes, an information box is opened, showing the blog and other details about the user.

My degree gave me the skills I needed for this job Alex said: 'Quite a lot of my friends use Twitter and they thought it was a good idea. Albatross can be used for pleasure but also in a professional context. Working teams can look at their messages over a time period to see what they’ve been doing, without having to scroll through previous blogs. His project was displayed at the University’s annual computing exhibition ExpoTees.

Alex said of his new job, which started in June: 'The company is quite upfront and on the cutting edge of development. Currently I'm working in a team which is creating an iphone application for Leeds University. This sort of work is fresh and upcoming and I’m enjoying this team work and the atmosphere. 'My degree gave me the skills I needed for this job. My year out on placement gave me some valuable experience, and helped nurture my computing skills to a professional level.

'And in final year I improved upon my programming skills by learning about new technologies, which were then applied into my Twitter project. So all in all my degree has got me where I am now.'

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