Let’s see how you can make use of this exciting new Twitter feature!

Popular Twitter clients like TweetDeck and Seesmic have supported creating Groups of users. However, these Groups were specific to the client and could not be transferred if you changed your client. Lists are the “official” Twitter Groups, meaning that once you create a Twitter List, you will be able to follow it from any client that supports Twitter Lists. Almost all the Twitter clients will eventually support Twitter Lists, with Seesmic Beta and Brizzly already doing so.

The advantages of using Twitter Lists are:

• Ability to follow specific people more closely
• Ability to follow a set of brands, blogs, companies, or news sources
• Ability to follow types of people like tech bloggers, celebrities, sport teams, politicians
• If you simply follow Lists created by others, you don’t need to maintain and update the List yourself

In this article, we will see how you can create and follow Twitter Lists using Twitter’s web interface.

Create a List

It is simple to create a list. On the Twitter homepage, you will see a Lists section below the search box, with a New List link. Clicking it brings up the Create a new list dialog.

Specify a name for the list, which will used for creating the list URL. If you use spaces in the name, they are converted to dashes. So a list named “my good friends” gets a URL of twitter.com/yourname/my-good-friends.

Public lists are visible to everyone and anyone can follow them. Private lists you create are only visible to you, and not even visible to the members of the list. Once you click the Create list button, you have created an empty list. Next step is to add members to the list.

Add/Remove Members

There are multiple ways in which you can add people to a list. Once you create a list, Twitter shows you a Find People search box to add people to your newly created list.

Alternatively, you can add people to a list from their Twitter profile page. All Twitter profile pages now include a Lists button that you can use to add or remove people from a list.

Another way is to add people to a list from your own or anyone else’s Following or Followers pages. Each user in the list of following or followers has a Lists button that you can use as shown below.

As you can see, you can also use any of the above 3 ways to create a new list and add the corresponding user at once. In the same way as adding people, you can also use any of the 3 ways to remove people from a list. On the list page, you can Edit or Delete a list from the links at the top right.

Follow a List

Suppose you want to follow all the MakeUseOf writers on Twitter. On the MakeUseOf Twitter profile page, you will see @MakeUseOf/staff under the Lists section on the right. Clicking it takes you to the @MakeUseOf/staff List page.

From here, click Follow this list to follow the list – simple!

Once you start following a list, you will see a link to it in the Lists section on the right on your Twitter home page. Click on it to see the tweets from members of that list. As in the above screenshot, you can see how many people a list follows and how many people follow the list.

Discover Cool Lists

The best place to discover cool lists is Listorious, a third-party website that tracks popular lists.

You can find the most popular Twitter Lists on different subject areas. Lists are categorized using tags into sections like News, Art, Sports, Politics, Humor, Health, etc. Of course, if you have friends on Twitter, you can always see which lists they are following as well.

Are you excited about this new Twitter feature? Share your favorite lists with us in the comments and don’t forget to follow the MakeUseOf staff list!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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This can take a while because the Android Market, which is the Google equivalent of the Apple iTunes store, has lots of good stuff. Granted not as much stuff as the Apple iTunes store, but it’s slowly getting there. So, just like a kid in a candy store, you are likely to start installing everything to see what it is all like.

But in the long term, you can’t install everything you find (phone performance would take a serious hit if you installed the kitchen sink) so finally you have to scale back to the best, most essential apps.

To help all you fellow new Android users out, here’s the ones I personally consider to be keepers. After less than a week, I am still looking and refining my phone but the following are ones I will find really hard to get rid of. To find them, just go to the Android Market on your phone and search for them.

Meebo

As someone who makes his living online, being able to chat to my colleagues and other contacts is a must. Pidgin is my favourite IM app but until they make a mobile version of their software, Meebo seems to be the best option for multi-client instant messaging.

An online account from the Meebo website doesn’t seem to be needed for this app. Just add your instant messaging ID’s and passwords and log in. You may be asked to confirm all your contacts again (it asked me to confirm 5 of my contacts who have been on my Pidgin IM list for over a year) and then you will see everyone in a neat vertical list.

If you are more of an AIM fan, check out the Android app Hi AIM. Yahoo Messenger fans can download Hi Yahoo, ICQ users have ICQLive (does anyone still use ICQ?) and Windows Live Messenger users can use Hi MSN Beta. But honestly, if you use more than one of these apps (and who doesn’t these days?) then Meebo is an easier tidier option.

Skype Lite

Another of my requirements, when buying the Android phone, was that it had to be able to run Skype. Not all mobiles can run the Skype Lite app (my partner bought a Palm Pre phone last week and then discovered that it doesn’t run Skype. Boy is she unhappy!).

The Skype Lite app (as it name suggests) is a slimmed down bare-bones app that allows you to call your Skype contacts via your mobile (so very useful for national and international calls). You can also instant message your contacts.

But what Skype Lite will NOT do (at least for me here in Germany) is allow me to send SMS messages, which is rather inconvenient as I am a big SMS sender.  You also can’t receive video.

Nevertheless Skype Lite is an extremely useful app to have on your mobile phone and absolutely essential if you need to make a national or international call (and you don’t want to pay your mobile company’s extortionate standard rates).

Twidroid

The next essential thing I needed on my phone was a good Twitter app. As someone who is really getting into the swing of twittering, I needed something other than visiting the mobile version of the site.  I needed a proper app which would allow me to follow / unfollow people as well as do other things such as make changes to my Twitter profile. I found it in Twidroid.

Twidroid allows you to do virtually everything you can do on the regular Twitter site, as well as give you a nice clean easy to navigate interface to read and respond to tweets. You can also read peoples profiles and follow / unfollow them.

If that wasn’t enough, you can also be notified on your Android desktop when new tweets have arrived (and you can choose what notification tone you want). But having this one is actually a battery drainer so I chose to switch it off. As well as a battery killer, it is also a productivity killer. I don’t want to be looking at my phone every 5 minutes reading the latest tweets. I can easily wait a couple of hours and then scroll through them all in one go.

Facebook

I am not THAT much into Facebook but every now and then I like to visit the site and see what my friends are saying. Android has a nice Facebook app which, like the Twitter app, puts everything into a nice compact easy-to-read format.

You can like / dislike entries, write on peoples walls, comment, upload photos, poke people, send friend and invite requests and much more.

One of the things I really like is that, to refresh the app, you just need to shake your phone! That’s right, find out who has just poked you by shaking the Droid.

Again you can be notified on the Android notification bar at the top when new updates come in (as well as get an unique sound to alert you). But once again, these features are battery drainers and if you have a battery which runs out after a day, then it would be best to switch off all the instant notifications.

Last.FM

The phone shouldn’t only be for work but also for play.  It should be able to relax you when you’re feeling a bit stressed out. Until Android develops a back massage app, then Last.FM is the best app for you to close your eyes for 5 minutes and unwind.

Just like the website, the Last.FM app allows you to

• Log into your account and listen to music.
• Choose a radio station (or start a new one),
• Say who you like listening to and the Last.FM app will find similar artists and play them.
• Like / dislike the currently playing song
• Skip to the next song

The quality of the music sound will depend entirely on your phone speakers but my Android phone came with headphones and the Last.FM music sounds fine through them.

In the next post, we will discuss the next 5 free Android apps you should be putting on your Android phone. In the meantime, what do you think of these 5? Do you have these ones or do you prefer better free alternatives? Let us know what you think in the comments, and stay tuned for part two.

[Update: 10 Free Android Apps For Your New Android Mobile (Part 2)]

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The point is, Twitter can be quite the tool to get your proverbial head around. When things are tough, it’s nice to have a little help.  It’s for that reason that a blog like Twitip.com comes in handy. Twitip.com shares tips about how to Twitter. In fact, that’s what the name means: Twit-tip.

There are 7 topics of Twitter tips Twitip.com covers.

(1) Twitter for beginners

Twitip.com has help for the beginner Twitter user just learning how to Twitter. First of all, if you check out the bottom of the page, you’ll find a list of posts written specifically to help someone starting out.

There’s also a whole category of posts directed towards the beginner. Some good posts from this category are the:

- Concise Guide to Understanding Replies, Mentions and Direct Messages on Twitter – Part 1 and Part 2
- Tame The Beast: How To Use Twitter So It Doesn’t Suck Up Your Time And Attention
- How to Get Noticed on Twitter.

(2) How to get Twitter followers

One of the difficult parts of getting going with Twitter is building a following. It would be nice if we had more than our parents and best friend following us. One of the reasons for using Twitter is to be heard, right?  With posts like

- How to Grow an Interested Following on Twitter using RSS,
- 6 “REAL” Reasons Why Followers Follow,
- Get More Followers by Spending Less Time on Twitter

we can get a little bit of help.

(3) Twitter tools

As you know from reading MakeUseOf, there are many tools being developed to make Twitter a better, more productive tool:

• Three More Great Twitter Tools Worth A Look
• Twitter Tweaks: 5 Tools To Make You An Elite Tweep
• Hoot! An In-Depth Look At Online Twitter Client – HootSuite
• Learn How to Schedule Future Tweets With Taweet

Well, there just so happens to be a category on Twitip.com covering Twitter tools too. Sometimes it’s interesting to hear different voices, ideas and opinions on the same subject. Check out Tweepi – Twitter Follow Management With Stats and How To Use CoTweet To Join The Conversation.

(4) General Twitter tips

It’s great to get tips from people who have experience! If we can find anything good to learn about how to use Twitter, it could be found in the Tips category. Check these tips out: When NOT to Tweet, Twitter – The Art of Influence, and Get More Mileage Out of Your Blog Archives with Twitter Teasers

(5) Twitter for business

Businesses are getting into Twitter BIG time! There are several businesses I follow just so I can keep up with new developments. Businesses use Twitter in several ways, one of which is to build a brand. Apparently you can also use Twitter to find a job!  Who knew?

(6) Twitter Users

Twitip.com also has a whole category about how to find out WHO to follow. Are you new to Twitter and you don’t know who to follow? Find out who’s who and how to find the people YOU would want to listen to. Try these posts: The Top 12 Unique Causes to Follow on Twitter, Moms: The Spiders on the Social Media Web, and Twitter: The Real-Time Answer Engine.

(7) Twitter news

This category is all about news about Twitter. For instance, since Twitter released its “List” feature, there’s been some buzz about it. Check out these 2 articles talking about it: Twitter Lists In Detail or, “Yo Dawg, I Heard U Like Lists!” and 8 Things to Consider Before Using Twitter Lists.

If you like to read blogs (and hopefully you do because MakeUseOf is an awesome one!) and you want some help with Twitter, you really need to check out Twitip.com.  It’s a blog that is offering help!

Closer to home, don’t forget to check out our very own Twitter Guide: Best Practices and Tips [PDF Guide] to help you get started with Twitter.

Image credits: MorgueFile.com

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Enter Taweet.  Learn how to schedule future tweets!

There are a few tools I’ve come across that allow you to schedule posts for the future. Taweet is here to hopefully change the way we think about Twitter and tweeting from “thinking about the past” to “what’s going on in the future.” Twitter asks “What are you doing?” Taweet asks “What are you doing IN THE FUTURE?”

Taweet, as you can probably tell, majors on the art of the future tweet.  It allows for, amongst other things, talking about what’s going to happen, such as events or plans.

Taweet actually offers several perks that can enhance your Twittering: tweet scheduling, threaded discussions, AND multiple account management. Let’s see what these are all about!

Taweet provides you with a way how to schedule tweets for the future. There are several reasons someone would want to do this. If you want to create a buzz or get the word out about something in the future, a properly timed tweet could play a decent role. Also you can use Taweet as a kind of social calendar, letting your followers know what you’ve got going on.

Taweet has an interesting way of posting future tweets. The user interface makes it quite simple to choose the date and time.

When the tweet is posted,it gives the time and a link to the post on Taweet.com, allowing the viewer to comment.

This is where threaded comments come in. I for one like the idea of having the comments threaded directly beneath my tweet so I can get a handle on the conversation. Taweet does this for you and the result is something similar to what Facebook does with its updates and comments.

Taweet also gives you the option to add multiple Twitter accounts. This makes it easier to switch between them. Hey, if you like tweeting in the future with one account, why not all of them?

Signing up is really easy.  If you’re on the front page, you’ll notice the “Sign in with Twitter” button. Hit it.

Next you’ll have to be willing to allow Taweet to connect to your Twitter account.  If you want to use Taweet, you’ve got to hit “allow.”

You’re then asked the question, “Would you like to link this account with one previously used on Taweet?“  If you’re new to Taweet, the obvious answer is “I’m new to Taweet.”

After you enter your email address, a confirmation email is sent to you.  Before progressing any further, you have to check your email and click on the confirmation link.

Finally you’re given the controls!

So there you have it; yet another Twitter tool emerges filling yet another void!  There is obviously more to Taweet, such as searching other users’ future posts to find out what’s going on in the future.  To me, this tool seems simple enough to use but it also has the possibility to change the way we think about and use Twitter.

Now you too can learn to tweet for the future!

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First off, a company could want multiple users on one Twitter account in order to share from different departments, etc. or to just split the time it would take to run a successful company Twitter account.  A ministry may want multiple users on one Twitter account, too, to help communicate with the world about what’s going on.  MAYBE a multi-writer blog would want each of the writers to contribute tweets so their Twitter stream remains active.  There could be MANY reasons for what I call a “muli-twit” Twitter account.

There are several issues that could arise from assigning multiple users on Twitter accounts.  A company or organization may have hesitations about relinquishing access to employees.  There should be some kind of control over an organization’s brand.  You’d probably want specific people or a specific department in control of PR or public relations.  It only makes sense that those same people (or that same department) should be in control of what goes out in a company Twitter stream.  So, how can we reconcile the need for a “multi-twit” Twitter account and the PR nightmare it could impose?  Check out TweetFunnel (free while in beta)!

I like how TweetFunnel works.  In fact it reminds me of how a multi-author blog operates.  Basically TweetFunnel allows you to have three levels of twits: an Administrator, a publisher, and a contributor. The administrator creates the account and has the abilities to create users and review and publish tweets. The publisher can review and, you guessed it, publish tweets.  And then there’s the contributor who only had the ability to write and submit tweets to the administrator or publisher for approval.

A publisher or Administrator has several options to choose from when a tweet is submitted by a contributor: approve and post, approve and schedule the tweet to be posted at a later time, hold until later posting or scheduling, or outright reject the tweet.

Let’s take this opportunity to see how this tool works!  First, hit the “try out our free beta” button from this page.

Then, fill in the form.

You’re then offered the opportunity to sign into your newly created account.

The obvious next step is to add a Twitter account.  You are offered two options — to use Twitter’s authentication method (recommended) or enter your Twitter account user name and password.

Once you add the Twitter account, you are now ready to get things set up.  You’ll want to do things like activate the scheduler (it’ll ask for your timezone so timed tweeting will work right) and add bit.ly or bud.url URL shortner accounts (so you can track clicks on links tweeted).

Once that’s done, you can go ahead and hit the settings tab at the top right-hand corner of the site.  Here you can make changes to your profile, manager users and their roles, and manage Twitter accounts including their credentials and scheduler settings.  If your profile and Twitter account is already setup, hit the link to edit users and roles.

From here you can either invite a new user or add a new user.  When you add a new user, just fill in the fields, choose the role, and choose the Twitter account the user will tweet on.

Once your user is set up, the screen will look like this when they log in.

For the sake of demonstration, I went ahead and added a contributor to my account so I can demonstrate how tweeting and moderating tweets works.  When a contributor tweets, here’s what they’ll see.

As an administrator (or publisher if I had one set up), I’d head to Review Queue button to find the tweet awaiting moderation.  You are then given the option to post immediately, post later, or to reject the tweet altogether.

As of right now, it seems as if you can designate a specific time for the tweet to be published.  You can set at which increments future tweets are published.  I’m hoping they’ll eventually allow administrators and publishers to edit tweet times, perhaps the order of future tweets, and if there’s a typo it would be nice to be able to go and fix it before it’s published (it seems once scheduled, there’s no editing possible).

Other than those issues, TweetFunnel could be an amiable competitor so some of the other web-based twitter applications such as HootSuite or PeopleBrowsr.  Remember, they ARE still in beta so I’m sure there’s still some work for them to do and I’m sure they’d appreciate your feedback!

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If you have no idea of what I’m talking about, check these posts out: 9 Ways To Use Twitter – No Website Necessary, 4 Tools for More Productive Twittering, 3 More Cool Twitter Tools To Do Your Tweeting With, 4 Good Alternatives to TweetDeck & Seesmic Desktop (Twitter Desktop Clients).

One such web-based tool is HootSuite. Yes, it’s web-based, meaning you can sign in almost anywhere there’s an Internet connection, unlike TweetDeck which is a desktop program. These days, there are many different web-based Twitter clients being made so I want to go through what perhaps sets HootSuite apart from the rest.

The first thing that makes HootSuite worth trying out is how easy it is to personalize.

There are so many ways you can tweak HootSuite to make it suit your needs such as the ability to have personalized columns. Adding columns is as easy as hitting the “Add Column” plus sign.

And up pops the option box!

You can have columns for almost anything you can think of including DMs, mentions, sent tweets, and even keyword tracking and  searches.

Keep an eye on your brand! If you ever want to know what people are saying about you, your business or your brand on Twitter, you’d probably head over to search.twitter.com and run a search for your company’s name, your name, or your brand. You’ll then get a list of the latest tweets containing that information. HootSuite makes it a whole lot easier! By setting up a column searching for your name or brand, you can keep an easy eye out for those tweets!

One cool way columns can help you organize all of those twits you want to follow is groups. Adding twits to groups is as easy as clicking on the avatar and dragging it into the desired group!

Want the columns in a specific order? No problem! It’s as easy as dragging them to the desired slot!

Another cool thing you can do with search columns (columns you are running a search for keywords, etc.) is you can embed them into you website or blog!  What I see as a downside is that this option seems to only be available for search columns. I’m not sure why. Still cool anyway, right?

Just look for the code symbol.

Customize the widget to your liking.

Copy and paste the code into your site.

Viola! You’ll have an updating Twitter search widget for your site or blog!

There is only so much screen real estate that we have to deal with. If you are like me, you’ll end up with many different columns and there’s just not enough room! That’s where tabs come in!  Help organize groups of columns with personalized tabs!

How refreshing like a warm spring breeze blowing in the window! Organize groups of columns with tabs, naming them any way you want! You can have a friends tab and have columns such as “hometown”, “college”, and “church”. Then you can have a news tab with columns such as “local”, “regional”, and “national”.  Whatever you want.

HootSuite also makes working as a team really easy by letting you do things such as assigning others to access and tweet and control several different Twitter accounts, all in one HootSuite account!

You can choose which twitter account you want to tweet a message with, or you can tweet the same message across several, reaching all of your audiences at once!

I only have one Twitter account, but you get the drift!

There is so much more that HootSuite allows you do such as, URL shortening using Ow.ly, click statistics to see how many clicks you get on links tweeted, and the infamous Hootlet for your link posting pleasure!  It even allows you to set a future time for your tweet to be tweeted! Give HootSuite a whirl! You may actually be able to get a handle on what’s going on in this Twittersphere we keep hearing about!

What tools do you use with Twitter and why?  What makes it better, worse or different from HootSuite?

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It’s proven its usefulness in incredibly diverging scenarios, ranging from loud egocentrics to real-time news aggregation during disasters. For a more extensive read on Twitter, check out the MakeUseOf PDF Guidebook to Twitter.

Nevertheless, it’s always refreshing to see a Twitter alternative hit the market and challenge the active powers. After all, competition lies at the very foundation of progress.

Yahoo! Meme

Meme, Yahoo’s new microblogging platform is a Twitter-challenger that should be taken seriously. Even though it’s been running a short while in Portugal, it’s just recently been launched for the English-speaking public. I was lucky enough to receive an early invite.

The opinions on Meme deviate – it’s been called a serious Twitter-killer by some, a superfluous clone by others. In this article we’ll try to compare the features of both platforms – not to blatantly conclude which is better, but to look which prevails in what area.

Where Meme Beats Twitter

There are a few areas where Meme makes Twitter bite dust – a few features that aren’t included in the latter contestant, or not as actively.

Media-rich and extended post functionality

Contrary to Twitter, which is mostly text-based, this Twitter alternative not only supports, but focuses on media-rich posts.

There are four different kinds of posts; text, picture, video and audio. The latter three allow you to post media from your hard drive or an internet location – as well as supply it with a caption. Video and audio players are embedded in post overviews so you can play everything on spot.

Obviously, Meme also supports text posts. The main difference to Twitter, however, is that you can type up to 2000 characters – the equivalent of roughly fourteen tweets.

Meme also supports basic HTML mark-up, allowing you to type in bold, italic and create links.

Reposting and commenting

Another defining feature of Meme is the reposting functionality. Sure, retweeting is possible as well, but it’s far more limited.

Next to each post you’ll see a repost button, as well as the number of times it’s been spread around already. By clicking the button, you instantly repost the item to your stream. As you can in the screenshot below, you can attach a personal comment to the repost – this will be visible to the source, as well as your followers, but will not be carried in any subsequent reposts.

Each repost also includes two names at the bottom – the one who you reposted it from, and the original source. This ensures that the spiritual ‘legacy’ of a post is always carried on, no matter how many reposts have passed.

Of course, reposting isn’t the only way to comment on someone else’s activity. Every post in Meme also gets its own page. On there, multiple people can comment in a threaded view.

Where Meme Fails Twitter

Every coin has two sides, and Meme is still far from perfect. There are a number of areas where the Twitter alternative still fails Twitter, due to missing features or functionality.

Content

I hate saying it, but Meme is still far inferior to Twitter in terms of content. A large majority of people on Meme just post ‘funny and cool’ pictures all day long – which is entertaining at the start, but quickly gets tiresome. At the time being, there’s a huge shortage of people who have something meaningful to add. Looking solely at content, Meme might be heading the same way as Tumblr.

Of course, this is not a permanent conclusion. Twitter started out the same way, and quality of content is bound to improve over time. Nevertheless, it can’t be ignored.

Searchability

The searchability of Meme is very limited at the moment – not to say ‘nonexistent’. It’s not possible yet to search posts, or search ‘topics’ like in Twitter.

Twitter’s real-time search is one of its great strengths, and because of its complete absence in Meme, this is an obvious failure.

Third-Party Backing

Last but not least, third-party applications also aren’t available. Where Twitter is supported by an abundance of online and offline client applications, as well as hundreds of cool ‘bots’, Meme is completely stand-alone. The biggest (and only) link to the outside-WWW is RSS functionality.

Conclusion?

There are a few wins, a few fails. Whom you regard as the winner is completely subjective. You’ll have to carefully consider which features you value most in a microblogging platform. Personally, I’m a Memer – what are you, and why?

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But that’s just first impressions. To make that tall claim stick, I need to go deeper into the new Trillian and take it around the block a few times.

A multi-protocol chat client will be judged by the services it supports. Using Trillian Astra you can connect to manage – Google, MySpace IM, Skype, AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and IRC. With that you get support for POP3 and IMAP email lookup for your email accounts with a single click logon. RSS feed updates add to the keeping track features of the multi-chat client.

But the thick icing on the cake is that that the latest version has sunk its fangs into Facebook and Twitter. Two places where we are doing most of our social schmoozing these days.

With the whole cluster of features, where do I start? Let’s start at the beginning.

Quick and easy Install

Sometimes the way a software installs itself says a lot about the work that has been put into the program. Trillian doesn’t disappoint. The 14.6MB download is all in one go. The installer gives you the option of installing a bundled Ask.com toolbar. Uncheck to say no (if you want) and continue.

The first active step involves the registration of a new Astra account. It’s the first part of a three step process –

To configure the IM and web services, you have to put checks against the services you want to include followed by their log-in details.

That’s more or less it…Trillian Astra launches in all of its thematic glory.

The look does draw a ‘wow’.

I guess for now only Digsby comes close to the sleek skinnable interface of Trillian (are you looking at the Trillian Cordonata skin?). The interface can be designed on two default skins – the ultra modern one I mentioned and the other more sober and lighter Cobalt. Skins can be changed to different colors and without a restart. Support for Windows Vista Glass and Windows 7 effects is provided. Custom windows (like a new contact list) with a new look can also be done.

Trillian comes with a huge emoticon pack and more can be added. Emoticons and other objects are also arranged around compatibility with Yahoo and MSN.

There are two versions…is the free version a poor cousin?

Just when you are starting to enjoy the goodies, you see the notice that the installed Pro features will go away after 29 days. The truth is the Pro version offers some extras but it does not in any way take away from the standalone appeal of the free version.

The differences in brief can be glimpsed in this screenshot taken from the site –

Trillian Astra (Free) still offers a very rich set of features…most of us which I am sure the avid chatter would find more than adequate.

Trillian Astra and features galore (400+ actually!)

I don’t think you are expecting me to discuss all the 400 plus features here. Especially when, the full features page does a neat job if listing them very systematically. You can sort the features by type or alphabetically. More importantly, you can filter the features by – All, Show Premium Features Only, or Show New or Better Only. All premium features on the page and in the software Preferences settings are marked out by a little gear icon.

Also check out the page detailing all the screenshots for the chat client.

What’s really great about Trillian Astra

Straight out, I would say the support for Facebook and Twitter. These two are the cool places to hang out these days and Trillian does a great job at integrating then within all the chat services.

For Facebook – you get notification alerts with any new message, Facebook contacts become a part of your Trillian contact list and you can have real time chat conversations with them. Trillian also lets you update your status and access all Facebook feeds instantly.

For Twitter – follow and respond to tweets from Trillian. Re-tweet and follow Tweeter trends directly from your contact list. The TinyURL shortening service is an automatic service too. Put someone in your ignore list if they are Tweeting too much.

We shouldn’t forget Skype. Trillian doesn’t substitute Skype but becomes an integrated interface for Skype, if you have it installed. It includes your Skype contacts and receives incoming Skype calls through its own notification system. Thus, it acts like a call assistant to Skype.

Basic video support has been brought into Trillian. Though it’s not full screen view in the free version, you get what Trillian calls the Movie View. The window dims when a call begins and text feeds in just like onscreen subtitles.

A lot of widgets also add entertainment value (Flickr, Videogame console, My Sport etc) and functional help (World Time Clock, Business Card, Weather etc).

The full features page is worth a dekko. You are sure to find a host of other features to like.

Does it connect and deliver?

The feature set is in place and as far as first impressions go, Trillian seems light on its feet. It’s fast to start up and doesn’t seem to hog much of memory. Trillian says a lot of memory and bandwidth improvements have gone into the latest version. For now, I believe them because it does feel slick. The only con could be that the bundle of features might be a bit too complex for a section of users. And like all multi-protocol services, how nimble would Trillian be when updates start rolling in.

Trillian Astra (ver.4) is supported on Windows XP, Vista and 7. (The Mac OS X and iPhone versions are in the works.)

So is Trillian Astra the best multi-protocol instant messaging client yet? My own vote is theirs…what about yours?

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Even though half the universe is on Twitter these days, beginning out of nothing isn’t always that evident. If you really want your Twitter to fly high, it doesn’t end with just creating an account.

Especially with this many people on Twitter, it’s important to know the tools you’re working with, and the dazzling reach of this innovating technology.

It’s for this purpose that MakeUseOf has been working on The Complete Guide to Twitter – our next PDF manual, filled to bursting with Twitter-knowhow.

In over forty pages (!), our very own publishing editor Mark O’Neill, tackles every Twitter feature, tip and trick you can think of. Learn to work the interface, to Tweet from your desktop, cool Twitter bots and funniest people to follow. With this free manual, Mark will make sure you get your black belt in Twitter.

Download The Complete Guide to Twitter now in PDF, or read it online on Scribd.com, no price and no strings attached.

If you enjoyed this release, be sure to check out our other PDF manuals!

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Of course, that is just one scenario where screencasts are useful. Some other popular examples where screencasts are used include:

• Showing off your skills at using Photoshop or some other complex app
• Creating “How To” videos for use in your blog posts
• Creating e-Learning tutorials

How to Create Screencasts With Screenr

Screenr makes creating and sharing screencasts very simple. You need to have the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed on your system and the Java plugin enabled in your browser, but Screenr itself is a web app so you don’t need to install it. Screenr will prompt you to automatically install Java if you don’t have it, hence there is no need to install it separately beforehand.

Screenr works on both PCs and Macs. Screencasts are created in high-definition Flash format so they can be played everywhere on the web, including on iPhones. You can also use your microphone to record your voice during the screencast. Screenr is used exclusively with Twitter and all screencasts are public. For other options, you should check out 5 Free Screencasting Apps for Creating Video Tutorials.

Create Your Screencast

For the sake of this article, let’s say I want to create a screencast of a walkthrough of the new Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus software.

Go to Screenr and login directly with Twitter using OAuth. Clicking the Record your screencast now! button loads the recorder. You can record screencasts of up to 5 minutes length.

In the recorder, you can select the audio option for your screencast. For our example, I minimized the browser window, and loaded the Security Essentials window. I then resized the recorder window to fit the Security Essentials window. This optimizes the screencast for clarity as well as download size.

After clicking the red Record button, I viewed all the tabs in the Security Essentials app, as if I were performing a walkthrough. All my actions are automatically recorded. When I was finished, I clicked Done.

Publish and Share Your Screencast

When you are finished, you are automatically taken to the Screenr website, where you can preview, describe, publish, and share your screencast. You have the option of tweeting your screencast automatically or do it separately. Once you publish, you can see Screenr making web and iPhone versions of your screencast and uploading them.

The Share section on the right lets you embed your screencast on a blog, upload it to YouTube, download an mp4 version, or delete it from your profile. Here is the sample screencast I created using Screenr:

When you share screencasts on Twitter via Screenr, users who view your screencast can share and comment on them. They can ReTweet your screencast to share it with others, and their comments are sent to you as Twitter @Replies.

Will you use Screenr for your screencasting needs? Did you find it easy to use? Tell us in the comments!

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The Unique People Focus

While handling all your email and social networking communication from one place is a no-brainer, there is a tremendous benefit of using Threadsy that is not readily apparent before you use it. Imagine you’re responding to a friend or colleague’s email discussing a specific topic. With your regular webmail, you will simply respond to the topic being discussed in the email, right?

Now, in Threadsy, while you are replying to her via email, you see her Facebook status or recent tweet – “Just got tickets for the U2 concert!” – and you just might add something to your email. Threadsy makes this possible via the automatic Profile View, which you shall see below. In this way, Threadsy lets you focus on people, not the medium of communication you or they might prefer. You don’t miss a person’s recent status updates just because you don’t use Facebook or Twitter often enough.

The Integrated View

Threadsy keeps it simple by showing all your email and social networking communication in two columns or streams. The Inbound column has messages specifically addressed to you. This includes Email, Twitter @replies and Direct Messages, and your Facebook Inbox. The Unbound column shows feeds that you follow, such as your Twitter stream and Facebook friends’ status updates. You can adjust the width of the Unbound column using the arrow sliders in between the two panes.

Note that Threadsy is not a Personal Information Manager. If you want calendar, notes, RSS feeds, etc. all in one place, check out Life.io. Threadsy focuses on communication and excels by keeping it simple. At present, you need to add a webmail account to use Threadsy, so for example, you can’t use it with just your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Adding Accounts

Adding your email and social networking accounts is as easy as pie, but you do need to provide your login credentials to Threadsy. Twitter OAuth is coming soon and you can use Facebook connect after you have logged in. For webmail accounts, Threadsy supports AOL, Gmail (and Google Apps), Hotmail and Yahoo! US.

Inbound: What’s Sent To You

The Inbound column shows all your messages in a chronological sequence, whether they are email, Twitter replies, or Facebook messages. Icons at the right of each message help you quickly identify the type of message. You can quickly filter messages by type using the tabs at the top for your webmail, Facebook, and Twitter.

Simply hovering your mouse over a message without actually opening it gives you options to quickly reply, retweet, delete, favorite or archive it. Click an email or Facebook message to open and read it.

Unbound: What You’re Following

The Unbound column displays your Twitter and Facebook feeds also in chronological sequence. You can filter the stream using the Facebook or Twitter tabs at the top. You can post your own Facebook status updates or Twitter tweets from within the box at the top.

The Chat tab in the Unbound column allows you to use Instant Messaging with your IM contacts.

Twitter Stream

The Twitter stream in the Unbound column shows pictures and videos inline. This allows you to play videos without leaving Threadsy.

Hovering your mouse over a tweet brings up quick Reply, ReTweet, and Favorite buttons.

Facebook Feed

Like many desktop clients, Threadsy has inbuilt support for interacting with your Facebook stream – without installing anything. You can like items, view comments and enter your own comments.

View Profiles Automatically

Whenever you click on a tweet or view an email message, Threadsy shows you a profile snapshot of the person in the right Unbound column. I found it a quick and easy way to connect with people on other networks. For example, here is a profile view of Kristen, one of our new writers at MakeUseOf:

Threadsy collects information from dozens of sites; and shows you a bio, recent photos, and recent status updates on Facebook and Twitter. This is incredibly useful as it provides the context for you to respond appropriately to the person. You can directly jump to the person’s profile on any of the listed networks to connect.

Want to start using Threadsy right away? Click this link to get an instant invite, exclusively for MakeUseOf readers. Don’t forget to give us your feedback in the comments!

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There are several reasons why this may be a preferred way to use Twitter:

• Running a separate Twitter desktop client application (usually with Adobe AIR) takes up additional system resources, which can slowdown your system.
• Integrate Twitter smoothly in your workflow, since you don’t need to switch between the browser and an application.
• You don’t need to download anything and are always using the latest version automatically.
• If you wish, you can switch between different web apps easily and swiftly.
• Web apps provide some special features not available in common desktop apps.

Which web-based apps should you use? What are their unique features when compared to the common Twitter desktop clients? In this article, we will look at four Twitter web apps and highlight their unique features so that you can choose the right one to make use of.

HootSuite

HootSuite is an easy-to-use but powerful Twitter application. The interface is very flexible and you can create nice layouts just the way you want them. You can have multiple tabs, with each tab showing up to four columns of tweets. You can drag and drop columns and tabs, change width of columns, and set individual refresh intervals for each tab. Columns can be used for Groups, Mentions, DMs, and Searches just like other apps.

The unique features of HootSuite are:

• Co-workers can tweet from the same Twitter account
• You can track the number of clicks on the links you tweet
• You can schedule tweets for later
• You can feed any RSS/Atom feed to your Twitter account
• You can use Ping.fm with HootSuite to broadcast tweets to other networks
• The Hootlet is a bookmarklet for your browser toolbar to tweet about a web page

Brizzly

Brizzly is the newest web app for Twitter, at present in beta for which you can quickly get an invite just by signing up. It is extremely easy to use, has an uncluttered, clean look, and you will find yourself tweeting within minutes. You can use up to 5 Twitter accounts and create up to 5 groups.

Brizzly’s claim to fame is for the following:

• Inline view of pictures, maps, and videos from a variety of sources
• Save drafts of Tweets like just like email drafts
• Temporarily “mute” prolific tweeters to hide their updates in your stream
• Easily view or edit explanations of Twitter’s trending topics
• Keyboard shortcuts for power users
• Upload pictures directly via Brizzly and track their number of clicks

TwitHive

TwitHive is a different breed among these Twitter web apps. TwitHive uses the term “channels” to describe what essentially become columns once you create them. You can have a highly customized Twitter client because of the flexibility you have in defining channels.

A channel, or column, can be made up of Tweets, Groups, DMs, and Search. The Tweets column can additionally be filtered to display Conversations (tweets with an @reply), Questions, ReTweets, Links, or Keywords. In the example above, I have 3 columns set to display ReTweets, Tweets with Links, and a Search column for Facebook. Also, it is easy to track keyword or brand mentions with TwitHive.

Seesmic Web

Seesmic Desktop’s web-based cousin is not as powerful, but has a few nifty features you won’t find in its desktop version. It is easy to use and offers a choice of two different color schemes. At present, it does not support multiple Twitter accounts and does not allow you to create groups. While these features are just around the corner, Seesmic Web is an attractive option if you are following a limited number of people from a single account.

Seesmic Web has the following standout features:

• Gmail-like interface that lets you view large number of tweets instantly
• Inline previews of pictures, maps, and videos on mouseover
• Threaded DM conversation view (as shown below)
• Support for French, German, Chinese and Romanian languages

Did you find the post useful? Did we miss your favorite Twitter web-app? Tell us in the comments!

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Time and time again, Twitter has proven itself to be the fastest medium for delivering breaking news. Sure, the mainstream media like the BBC and CNN have their own updated websites, but they’re usually minutes slower to the punch and simply no match for the millions of Twitter users reporting in real time from the scene.

While inaccurate tweets do exist and you probably won’t find any in-depth news coverage, the community as a whole serves as a prominent source in breaking news alerts first and spreading the word, allowing others to at least know about what’s going on.

As those old G.I. Joe PSAs put it, “knowing is half the battle,” so let’s get right to it and find out how to track breaking news online with Twitter.

Follow the News

There are plenty of great Twitter accounts that specialize in bringing you only breaking news alerts. CNN’s (@cnnbrk) is the most popular, but if you’re looking for more updates daily, BNO News (@breakingnews) does it best.

Other good ones include Reuters (@reuters), ABC News (@abc), CBS News (@cbsnews), the BBC (@bbcbreaking), The New York Times (@nytimes), and NPR News (@nprnews) just to name a few.

Search for Updates

Once you have an idea of what’s happening, it’s easy to search for the latest updates and information. As well as providing the ability to monitor trending topics, Twitter’s own search service allows you to search for keywords. Twazzup, Monitter, and Tweet Scan are also great services for real-time results.

If you’re looking for pictures, head over to PicFog.

The real time image search service searches for picture links in tweets and continuously updates automatically. Learn more about PicFog in the MakeUseOf Directory.

Track the Buzz

When a breaking news event occurs, plenty of websites allow you to follow just how hot the story is. Very Recent is one of them, which plainly displays any news buzz on Twitter.

The issue of accuracy does come into play here however, with tweets that are false and not news at all coming up. For that, turn to Muck Rack. The site compiles journalists’ Twitter accounts from major media outlets all into one place. The result is real-time reporting from reliable sources.

Breaking news alerts can also take some time to make it onto aggregators like Google and Yahoo! News. That’s why there’s TweetNews.

This unique search engine was created by a Yahoo! programmer Vik Singh. It relies on Twitter updates for fresh news to compare to stories that have not yet garnered enough links for a high ranking in a traditional algorithm. You can read more about TweetNews on his blog.

For more, check out these Tools, Apps and Bots to Improve Your Twitter Experience and 5 Great Multi-Source News Websites.

How do you get your breaking news? On Twitter or elsewhere? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: Gabe’s Guide

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Readtwit is a 3-step service that will seamlessly integrates this aggregation power of the people you follow – into your RSS reader.

3 steps and you’re good to go

Readtwit, a new web service by Lionite does one simple thing – it captures weblinks from your Twitter stream and then publishes the content as an RSS feed. You can then use any feed reading application to read it.

The process is composed of the three following steps:

• Go to Readtwit and press the big ‘Get fed‘ button.

• Allow Readtwit to access your Twitter account (no password needed).

• Choose your RSS reader (and if it’s not there click the ‘Get me the feed‘ button and paste the feed into your reader)

The image below displays the result: the original tweet and below it the full text, in Google Reader.

Information-overload preventing  features

Readtwit automatically prevents content duplication caused by retweets. It does that by grouping together similar links that are sent in the same time-frame. Once you’ve set up your RSS feed, you can further tweak Readtwit to prevent (or at least minimize) information overload.

First, you can filter out specific users. This feature will help you keep focused on useful content, as you can set it to not display links by people who post too much (and also exclude yourself, in order to not get back the links you post, as retweets).

If there are topics that do not interest you, it is possible to filter them out as well. In the image below, you can see that I have set Readtwit to not display iPhone related hashtags – as it does not interest me. I wish I could set this filter to my whole RSS stream, but at the moment I’ll have to do it only with my Twitter links.

Next, choose whether to get the full stories or just a summary and set the Feed update interval, which determines the amount of content you get.

Twitter as a human content-aggregator

Effectively, Readtwit closes a circle that turns Twitter into a human content aggregator. This is because you can now subscribe to top experts in your field of interest and get an RSS feed with the best content – chosen by them. You might even want to set up another Twitter account, one that will serve you only as a content source.

Future additions

The guys over at Readtwit are working on other additions for the service, among them are the followings:

• White-list filtering (Twitter username or hashtags) to include targeted content only.
• Filtering by popularity (over or under a certain threshold).
• Creation of specific feed types (technology, sports, politics etc.)
• Multiple feed management (with separate filters / content type)
• Feed analytics.

Follow @readtwitapp for further updates.

Check out Readtwit

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Why Lifestream?

There are different incentives for lifestreaming:

• Most people use lifestreaming to present a unified view of their online activities to their friends. Those who subscribe or view your lifestream do not need to visit different websites to see your pictures, writing, videos, etc. Your lifestream is your “Centralized Me” on the web.
• Lifestreaming is also a way to permanently backup your online data. Your tweets get archived automatically. Your photos get backed up, just in case. Your blog posts get backed up, in case your blog is hacked.
• Lifestreaming can be a way to maintain an active blog when you don’t always have time to write blog posts.
• Create “stories” about an event. Let’s say you went on a weekend trip during which you tweeted, uploaded a few photos to Flickr, and a video to YouTube. Your trip can be easily shared as a “story” without searching for the content on different sites.
• Some people use lifestreaming for personal recollection and memories. What did you do on the web on your last birthday or anniversary? Your lifestream will show it to you.

How do you start lifestreaming? Let’s find out.

#1: Add Sources for your Lifestream

After you sign up and verify your email address, set your time zone. You can then choose the sources to add to your lifestream. There are 16 sources supported, from Facebook, RSS Blog Feeds and Flickr/Picasa photos to Twitter, Last.fm/YouTube, and social bookmarking sites like SumbleUpon/Digg/Delicious.

You do not need to supply any passwords because StoryTlr will simply pick up what is already publicly available via your profile on the various services. With Twitter, you can hide your @replies so that conversational tweets don’t clutter your lifestream. Once StoryTlr has collected all your information you are ready to personalize your lifestream.

#2: Select a Theme

On the Configure > Design tab, you can choose a theme just like you do for a blog. There are 8 pre-built themes ready to be used.

You can also choose a custom background and header image.

#3: Select Pages

StoryTlr creates a full lifestream view, but also lets you create custom pages with filtered sources and more. Go to Configure > Pages, and choose the number and type of pages you would like on your site. A Dashboard page provides an overview of recent activities, while photo/video pages provide a gallery with slideshow.

You can drag and drop to change the order of the pages as you like. At any time, use the View tab to see how your website looks.

Your lifestream is ready! Use the View tab to see your lifestream. You can change your theme and tweak your pages any time you want. Your StoryTlr website is also like a blog – you can update your status Facebook style, write a blog post Blogger/Wordpress style and get comments on your posts.

For more advanced customization, see the next steps. All the following steps are optional.

#4: Customize Avatar and Widgets

It’s a good idea to display your own avatar and introduce yourself with a bio. Go to Configure > Profile to do this.

In the Configure > Widgets section, you can select which widgets to display in your sidebar. If you have setup your avatar, choose the Avatar and Profile widget.

#5: Create Stories

You can automatically “pluck out” a certain time period of your lifestream to create a story. This works best when you make a trip, attend a conference, go on vacation or attend an event like a wedding. On the StoryTell page, choose the time period and select the sources to build your story.

Some interesting events have been captured as stories in StoryTlr, like for example, the Hudson river plane crash story above.

#6: Advanced Customization

If you are geeky enough, there is more you can do with StoryTlr:

• Use your own domain (or subdomain) for your lifestream
• Setup Disqus commenting on your StoryTlr site
• Create your own CSS to customize your site
• Automatically cross-post your lifestream to Twitter

What are you waiting for? Go to StoryTlr and start lifestreaming! Oh, and don’t forget to share your lifestream and stories with us in the comments!

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But then there are considerations of not wanting to be seen tweeting while at work. Now we surely encourage you to do your work with all the required zeal, but it is always nice to know a tool or two that may be used in such a situation or are simple and plain fun to use otherwise as well.

Here are two of the ‘Undercover Twitter clients’, which give you an interface that people don’t generally associate with Twitter.

SpreadTweet

SpreadTweet gives you a Microsoft Excel-like interface to access Twitter. Your tweets are nicely listed as the contents of the spreadsheet and you can use the ‘formula bar’ to send out a tweet.

There are different versions available to match the look of Excel 2003, Excel 2007 or to match the Office OSX look and feel. Most of the buttons and options of the ‘Excel interface’ are non functional, but you can check replies, direct messages or refresh.

The desktop version of this Twitter client requires Adobe AIR. There is also a web version which defaults to Office OSX look. With all the browser toolbars around, it may not be the best disguise ever, although full screen mode would look convincing if you are on a Mac. Overall – SpreadTweet looks convincing and does a good job at replicating the Excel interface, although the taskbar button gives it away easily.

Quitter

Next up in line is Quitter. Quitter is a Twitter client that’s like tweeting from the command line. While this may seem archaic, Quitter offers some really cool features:

First and foremost, its only 43 KB in size and you don’t need to install it (though it requires .NET framework). Just double click the file and you are ready. Quitter then creates an XML file containing the configuration details. Quitter requires you to grant access to your Twitter account, it would take you to the Twitter page and generate a pin should you choose to allow it. Enter that pin in Quitter and you are ready to tweet.

Quitter can do most of the things that you would expect from a Twitter client. It allows you to:

• Read, post, reply and retweet.
• Organize the people you follow into groups and read tweets by group.
• Filter tweets from specific users or that contain certain #hashtags.
• Shorten URL’s
• Easily open tweeted links from other users in your default browser (no copy/paste needed)
• Send and receive direct messages
• Follow or unfollow other users

All this is of course achieved via simple commands like:

Quitter is surprisingly functional and fun to use, although I am still wondering why it was named Quitter. Any guesses?

Both SpreadTweet and Quitter are handy applications that don’t look like Twitter clients. While SpreadTweet gives you an Excel-like interface, it offers limited functionality. Quitter offers nice features and a geeky command line interface that some of us cherish better than others!

Do you know of other Twitter clients that offer unconventional interfaces?

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To be able to revise quickly and often, it helps if the information is terse and to the point highlighting only the important aspects. Something like an application cheat sheet or a poster that you can print and pin to a board or keep on your desk.

Here are some application cheat sheets for commonly used software that will hopefully make you more productive.

Microsoft Office

Need to get that report typed and formatted quickly? Can’t find your way around the ribbon interface? Check these out:

Explains the ribbon interface, smart shapes, which format to choose and how to do things like adding a digital signature, protecting the document and other little tips. (Download)

Excel 2007 (Download)	Word 2007 (Download)
PowerPoint 2007 (Download)	Outlook 2007 (Download)

If you are interested in other Office applications or different version of Microsoft Office, Customguide is a great resource.

Browsers

Browsers are among most commonly used software these days. You may be using Firefox or Chrome or Opera or even Internet Explorer, the bottomline is you need to get online and browsers help you in doing so. It is always nice to know your browser inside out and have some tricks up your sleeves, here are some cheat sheets that should get you started:

Google Chrome

Contains keyboard shortcuts, command line switches and the about:urls (Go there) (PDF)

Firefox

Contains keyboard shortcuts, highlights important directories related to Firefox, and presents a trick or two. It has not been updated for a long time but the information still stands good for Firefox 3.5 (Go there) ( PDF )

Linux

This is a huge 18 x 18 in poster that presents you – “The Anatomy of a Linux System”. It has a plethora of information about Linux, top Linux magazines, top Linux sites. In addition, it lists the popular software on Linux systems along with the sites and useful books (it’s from O’Reilly after all) on each of them. (More) (Download)

Lists commonly used commands, switches and what they do. Good for beginners. (Download)

Looking for something a little more advanced? Linux Administrator’s Quick Reference card has you covered with the important files and commands you need to know for system administration. (Download) Credit: Jialong He

Vi/Vim

One of my personal favorites, I actually learned Vim way back using this. It is a complete tutorial and apart from the all inclusive version, there are ones for individual chapters. You can download the SVG versions and scale them to make a wallpaper if you like! (Download)

Photoshop

Concisely lists all the common Photoshop shortcuts you should know to make your work easier and faster. (Download for CS4) (Other Photoshop Versions)

Twitter

Twitter finds its way into everything these days, how could we not have a reference sheet for Twitter?

Packed with all kinds of information about Twitter including important pages, desktop clients, widgets and apps, a definition of various Twitter buzzwords and ethics! (Download)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

It has tons of information on what to include in tags, redirects, sitemap syntax, robots.txt syntax and much more. Presents lots of useful information in a tiny little booklet. A must for anyone working with SEO. (Download)

Looking for more?

I bet you are. Didn’t find the one you were looking for? Well there were too many of them to fit in one post. If you are looking for a specific application cheat sheet fire up the request in the comments section, someone might drop you a link. There are two great resources for posters and cheat sheets here and here. If you ever created one for yourself we would love to see them too!

Plus, don’t forget that MakeUseOf have our very own cheat sheets. Click here to check them out and if you like them, download them for free!

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You see, I didn’t tweet from a PC, nor am I the owner of a high-tech iPhone. I am what you could call a “low-tech tweeter”. I own a Samsung Tocco Lite mobile phone which cost me just under 130 Euros – pretty average if I do say so myself. When you dismiss the touch screen, all the other features are basic and it’s a little slow with carrying out tasks. There is no Wi-Fi and no 3G. Yet, I still tweet while on the move with photos, links and status updates.

I would like to demonstrate a few low-tech ways to Twitter from a cell phone.

Firstly, let me say that to tweet from the top deck of a bus, the beach or a mountain all you need is a mobile phone such as the ancient artifact seen here on the right.

Twitter supports SMS tweets. All you have to do is log into your Twitter account and select ‘Settings’ up in the top right-hand corner of you screen. From the list of tabs that appear, select ‘Devices’ and enter your cell phone number. Then, verify your phone by texting the code that appears on your screen to the Twitter phone number beside it. Also, save this number as this is the number you’ll send your tweets to via SMS.

If you live in the US, UK or other major territories then you can toggle whether or not you want to receive tweets from other people to your phone by sending ‘ON’ or ‘OFF’ to that number.

This is all well and good if you’re a basic tweeter but many of us like a little more interactivity. A previous review of mine here on MakeUseOf holds the answer – Snaptu. In summary, Snaptu is an application for basic cell phones that uses GPRS to get you the weather, film reviews, news, sports updates, allows you to use Facebook and more to the point in this case, Twitter.

The Twitter function is highly detailed and better than what you’d expect for a basic cell phone app. You can tweet till the cows come home by selecting ‘Update Status’, scroll down through hundreds of tweets, reply to tweets, follow links in tweets and view people’s profiles. More information on that little gem in my original review here.

But hey, what about pictures? Well, I tried several applications and I can safely say that for basic cell phones they just don’t make the cut so e-mail is your best option.

I actually think this is better than using applications which require you to start them up and take the picture using their bad camera function. With e-mail, you simply snap and send when you wish. I suggest using TwitPic, which Mark recently reviewed. Go to their site and create an account using your Twitter ID.

Then, click ‘Settings’ and use the options there to set up your e-mail function. You’ll be given a unique e-mail address to which you can send your snaps. A sample one might be JoeBloggs.4528@twitpic.com. Also, when you’re sending the e-mail from your phone, use the subject line as your tweet. As you can see from the picture I tweeted above, my subject line was “My train is here! Yay!”. Needless to say, this will also appear in a link and message on your Twitter profile.

You can use the above methods of low-tech tweeting on basically any cell phone that is post-2005. Once it has a camera and GPRS or EDGE, you should be fine. One tip I will give is to watch out for GPRS charges. They can be costly on some networks. My carrier has a cap of 99c per day and many others the world over offer similar packages. Just phone your network to enquire.

So, how do YOU tweet? Are you old-school or high-tech?

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But the one thing that Twitter does NOT allow, by default, is the ability to post pictures. That is where TwitPic and Flickr comes in.  By posting your pictures to one of these services, a short URL is automatically generated and then posted on your Twitter stream in seconds.

Let’s take a look at both services and see how they can help you with posting pictures on Twitter. We’ll also see how they stack up against one another.

TwitPic

TwitPic is not new but it is one of those services that I constantly heard about but never got around to trying it out. I finally tried it out today and I am amazed at how easy it is to use. With just a few clicks, you can start posting pictures to Twitter for all to see.

You need to give TwitPic your Twitter credentials and after logging in, you will see a Photo Upload page. I decided to upload a photo of me in my new A-Team t-shirt :

After uploading the picture to TwitPic, a unique URL is created and that URL is then posted to your Twitter account for people to click on and view.   Easy.  Nothing to it.

But TwitPic also has a few other features worth mentioning. They also collects the replies to your TwitPic tweet and lists them on the unique TwitPic page underneath your photo. As you can see here, I have got one reply already to my A-Team t-shirt picture. You can also reply on the TwitPic page to everyone who sent Tweets and those replies will then also be posted to your Twitter stream.

TwitPic also gives you a unique email address which you can use to email pictures in. It says on the site that it is for “sending pictures from your phone” but I tested it from my Gmail address on a normal PC and it worked fine. The picture appeared on my TwitPic account within 5 minutes of sending it.

You can also choose to not have your pictures show up on Twitter but to be honest, why would you choose that option? The whole point of using TwitPic is to post pictures on Twitter. Not having the picture links posted to Twitter would be like going to the airport but refusing to get on the plane.

TwitPic also has a Public Timeline of all the photos passing through their site. You can also subscribe by RSS to have all the photos sent to you if photo gazing is your thing (and if you have the time to look at them all).

The one downside to Twitpic is that they don’t have their own branded search engine to look for other pictures. Your own pictures are neatly laid out in your account but if you want to search for other peoples pictures, Twitpic doesn’t offer a search engine. This seems to be a rather amazing oversight.

You will have to look for pictures using a Twitter image search engine, two of which I will briefly look at towards the end of this article. But if you want to search the Twitpic site, you will have to go to Google and use the site: search term.   So to find actress Demi Moore’s pictures (Demi is a big user of Twitpic), go to Google and type :

site:twitpic.com Demi Moore

Flickr

Now there are probably a lot of people out there who don’t want to give out their Twitter details. In that case, another possibility is Flickr. Flickr connects to your Twitter account using their API and so no password is inputted.  It’s all done through “tokens”.

I tried looking to see if it was possible to post to Twitter using Picasa Web Albums but I was unable to find a solution. If you know of one, please do let us know in the comments.

Anyway, back to Flickr.   Here’s how to post to Twitter using Flickr.

Go to the picture on Flickr that you want to post to Twitter.  You need to be logged into Flickr first and it doesn’t have to be your picture. You can tweet any picture on Flickr you want.

Click on “Blog This” on the bar above the picture

If you don’t have Twitter set up yet on your Flickr account, you can click through to a menu asking you which blog you want to send the picture to. Twitter is near the bottom.

Flickr will then connect to Twitter and Twitter will ask you if you want to grant access to Flickr. Say yes and then you will be redirected back to the Flickr photo page. When you click on “Blog This” again, you should now see this :

Now just click on that Twitter link and you’ll be taken to a preview page where you will see the photo along with a text box to write your Tweet. As you can see, the link to the photo has already been shrunk into a short Flic.kr URL.

Click “post entry” and then go to your Twitter stream. You should now see the Tweet there along with the link to the picture.  It’s all done in seconds.

Like Twitpic, Flickr also gives you a unique email address to email your pictures into your Twitter account.

As far as I can see, these are the two easiest ways to send pictures to Flickr.  As I said, if you know of a way to do this with Picasa Web Albums, please do let us know in the comments how to do it.

There are two Twitter picture services which I like if you want to see what people are uploading – Twitcaps and Twicsay although I slightly prefer Twitcaps because it connects my pictures with my last tweet. Twicsy just generates lots of random, sometimes pointless, tags for the pictures.  But both offer good search and real-time updating of pictures to Twitter.

How do you go about posting pictures on Twitter? Do you know of any other good alternative methods apart from Twitpic and Flickr? Or any good alternatives to Twitcaps and Twicsay? Let us know all about them in the comments.

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Although this seems to work fine (and I used it all day today for searches), you seem to be limited to the first four search results only.  So this wouldn’t be something that you could use for deep searching.   But if you are looking for the correct URL of a website, the Wikipedia entry for something, basically anything that would – in theory – show up in the first few results, then you could use these bots instead.   No different from Google’s “Are You Feeling Lucky?“.

The bots are for Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger (so no AIM love it seems).   But a lot of people now have a Google account so the lack of AIM shouldn’t be a hindrance.

Just add the following chat bot depending on what service you use :

Google Talk – sbot@bot.im
Yahoo Messenger – searchbot@ymail.com
Windows Live Messenger – searchbot@live.com

As soon as you’ve added the account to your contact list, it should go online virtually right away and then you can start searching.

Searching is very straight forward.   If you want to search Twitter, just type t and then your search term.   So :

t makeuseof.com

and this will give you :

I think for Twitter, 4 results is not really enough. You need probably at least 10-15 to give you a better overview. 4 is just too random.

For Google, type g followed by your search term.   For Bing, precede your search query with b and can you guess what it is for Yahoo?   Yep, you guessed it!  y.   I know, it’s tough to follow but I’ll try and not get too far ahead, OK?

So searching Google for MakeUseOf :

And you get pretty much the same results with Yahoo and Bing.

There’s not much more you can say about it – it’s just a no frills search function for your IM program which will give you the first four results for any given search query.  I am personally finding it very useful because if I am in a Firefox tab and I don’t want to break the writing flow by opening up a new tab for Google, I can just quickly open up my Pidgin program with a keyboard shortcut and quickly type a quick search into one of these bots.

I look up all my dictionary definitions using Google using the define search parameter and I thought for a moment that I could use this bot to make all my dictionary lookups without having to open the browser.   THAT would have been REALLY useful. But the define parameter doesn’t work with this bot.   Strange.  I hope the bot writers can fix this little glitch.

Make the define parameter work so you can do dictionary searches and increase the number of search results to between 10-15 and these bots will become even extremely more useful.   What do you think?  What else could they add to make these bots even better?

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I know, “need to know” is rather relative.  There are those out there who think the whole world needs to know when they’re eating a taco, sitting on the couch in their PJs, or, even scarier, DRIVING to work (wait until you’re stopped to tweet, PLEASE!).  But I think we’ve all been there – is there an easier way to share links on Twitter?

The long way around is to highlight and copy the URL, go to your favorite URL shortening service, paste it in, grab the shortened URL, go to your favorite Twitter client (or Twitter directly) and paste the URL with a quote or phrase.  For a veteran computer user, this process doesn’t take ALL that long, but the process CAN be automated and we ALL like that, don’t we?

Enter TBUZZ by our friends over at Arc90.  TBUZZ is a little project of theirs that brings us a nifty little bookmarklet that makes tweeting a current web page VERY easy.  Visit TBUZZ and drag the button to your bookmarks toolbar,

and click it when you’re visiting a site you want to tweet about.  It is that easy, however the wonderfullness does not stop there.  Here are three tricks that TBUZZ does that makes when you want to share links on Twitter SO much easier.

1) Shortening the URL is taken care of automatically.

Don’t want to take that extra step to make sure the URL is shortened?  When you hit the bookmarklet to tweet the post, TBUZZ automatically hooks you up with a bit.ly link making it so that the website’s address doesn’t take up the whole 140 character tweet.  Did I say, AUTOMATICALLY?  There’s no copying the address, visiting the bit.ly site, pasting the address, and grabbing the shortened URL.  It’s all done for you!

2) Quoting a portion of the site is taken care of easily.

When tweeting about a new link you’ve found, sharing what’s going on on the web, sharing just some shortened URL doesn’t help much, does it?  No one’s interest would be peeked and if someone DOES wonder, who wants to click a link that they know nothing about what to expect?  That’s no fun and I’m sure not safe.

The best thing to do is to give a blurb about the link, but, better yet, give a short quotation from the page.  If you do both, you’re on your way to tweeting proficiency!  Again, TBUZZ saves the day, and some much needed energy and time.  All you have to do is highlight the portion you want to quote before clicking the bookmarklet, and you’re given a nifty popup with the shortened URL, the quotation in… you’ll never guess… quotation marks, AND the opportunity to add your own blurb!  PERFECT!

3) Checking out what others are saying about the link is done for you automatically.

Last but not least, once you click the bookmarklet, you’re given a list of tweets from other people who have also found, liked, and tweeted about the same link.  From here you can, instead of tweeting the link, respond to other tweets about the link.  It’s also really neat seeing the already going on conversation about the link.  What are others saying?  How popular is this link?  Do some of these people have some of the same interests as I do?  Very cool.

There are many Twitter tools out there.  TBUZZ is another quality contender I think you’ll have a hard time living without.   However, if you have an easier way to share links on Twitter, we would love to hear about it in the comments.

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What Is Your Twitter Reputation?

Can your reputation be measured? Yes, there are many services that claim to do that using different methods. You can check your reputation on free Twitter tools like Twitterank, Twitter Grader, Twitterholic, Twinfluence, Twitalyzer, and Klout. There is no single model that defines Twitter reputation, and this guide tries to combine all the different approaches used by such tools and suggested by experts.

Your Twitter reputation is important because:

• It may well be the first impression you make on the social web.
• Everything on Twitter is public (assuming you don’t protect your updates, which is 90% of Twitterers). This means your colleagues, current employer or potential recruiter can always see your Twitter profile and your tweets.
• Reputation will play an increasingly important role in search rankings. Already, third-party Twitter search engines like Topsy and Tweefind incorporate ranking in their search results, and Twitter itself is also on the way to ranking search results.

Convinced? Let’s get started.

1. Your Profile

Use your real name, a (decent) profile picture, a meaningful bio, and a link to your website, blog, or social profile. If you have a custom background on your profile page, people are more likely to follow you back.

2. Follow Authentic People

Don’t engage in any “get hundreds of followers quickly” schemes. Follow people you’re already friends with on other social networks. Then grow your Twitterverse as you get comfortable. Use our previously covered 9 sites and 4 ways to find Twitter friends based on geography and common interests.

I use the free Twitter tool Topify to get informative emails when someone follows me. It shows useful information like level of engagement, percentage of tweets containing links, and recent tweets to help decide whether to follow back.

3. Manage Your Followers and Friends

The days of “higher the number of followers, higher your reputation” are becoming a thing of the past, thanks to paid services that allow buying followers. Think of your reputation if there were half-naked women showing up as your followers!

Block suspicious accounts, spammers and bots from following you. I have recently started using Tweet Blocker to filter and clean my followers list and it works like a charm. Another service I find indispensable is Twerp Scan, which shows me a list of my contacts along with details of their number of follows, followers, ratio, etc. You can easily sort the list to weed out nasty spammers and indecent folks right within the app.

4. Get ReTweeted

The best way to increase your reach and influence on Twitter is to get retweeted. Statistical studies of retweets have found that links, quotes, trending topics, breaking news, questions, and creative/novel tweets are more likely to get retweeted. Shrink your tweet and reduce its length to around 100-110 characters so that it becomes easier for others to retweet without editing.

5. Mix Your Tweet Types

Do not restrict yourself to tweeting out informative links or indulging in pointless babble. Use a mix of tweets that are status updates, links, retweets, questions, and self-promotions for your blog posts.

6. Spread Your Tweets Over the Day

Services such as Tweet Stats let you see how your tweets are distributed through the day. Don’t send out a large number of tweets in short time spans and then disappear. Distribute your tweeting activity evenly through the day, using planned “Twitter-breaks” from your work. If you are going to be offline for a considerable amount of time, let your followers know.

7. Be Responsive and Engage in Conversation

Tools like Topify and Mr. Tweet now show your level of engagement. This influences whether people using such tools will follow you back.

Reply to others’ tweets using @Replies. Answer all @Replies and Direct Messages sent to you. Let people see that you don’t use Twitter simply to promote your links. Try to answer people’s questions and if you can’t, be a helping hand by retweeting them.

8. Don’t Misuse Hashtags

A UK furniture firm suffered a huge blow to their reputation on Twitter as they sent out marketing messages using #hashtags that were meant for completely unrelated topics. The Twitter community uses #hashtags for tracking specific topics they are interested in, so stick to conventions.

9. Avoid Many Twitter IDs from a Single IP Address

Some experts have proposed that multiple Twitter IDs created from the same IP address should have a lower Twitter rank in searches. This is a counter measure against spammers and bots who abuse Twitter accounts. If for whatever reason, you need to create a large number of legitimate Twitter accounts, don’t do it from the same computer.

10. Use DMs with Discretion

If I get automated DMs after I follow someone, I unfollow them. The same with people who play mafia-style Twitter games and send me invites to play via DMs.

Do not send Direct Messages to people you’ve recently started being friends with on Twitter. Most people consider DMs to be private messages that they share only with good friends. Use @Replies wherever possible, unless you want to discuss a sensitive issue that warrants a DM.

11 Use Recommendations

Recommendations are a great way to discover and be discovered. The most popular method on Twitter is the #FollowFriday hash tag. Like everything else in social media, the more you give, the more you get, so if you like this method, use it to give recommendations to others.

A better recommendation engine is Mr. Tweet, which is getting popular. It gives me decent recommendations since I joined, along with useful statistics.

12. Monitor Your Brand

If you own a brand name, create a search to monitor for all mentions of your brand. Most popular Twitter clients let you create saved searches, some like Seesmic Web even let you sync your saved searches with those on Twitter’s website.

Will these techniques help you enhance your Twitter reputation? Have any other suggestions? Do let us know in the comments!

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Let’s go over some cool Twitter search tips and see how to set up queries that will get you a personally tailored stream of great content.

Step 1 – Choose A Topic Or A Combination Of Topics

In Twitter’s search engine, write a search string that contains the topic or topics that interest you. For example, let’s search videos about productivity.

Our query:

productivity video

Note that writing more topics (words), or ones that show up in lower frequency will yield less results. This is not necessarily a bad thing since you don’t want to be flooded. You want to set up the optimal query to get you just the desired number of results – not too much, not too less.

Step 2 – Get Only Links

People’s opinions are great and interesting, but usually you’d like to find links to full content and not just the 140 characters tweet about it. To find only tweets that contain links add “filter:links” (without quotation marks) to the query.

Our query:

productivity video filter:links

Step 3 – Remove Unwanted Results & Spam

Sometimes you have to filter out popular topics (because they keep showing up in the search results) or spam-tweets. You might also want to refine your query to not find topics you don’t find interesting. Add to the query the topics you don’t want to show up and the Twitter accounts of the spammer, with a minus sign before each of them.

In the example query I got a lot of tweets from an account named @xxxtuber (see image below), so I added “-xxxtuber”.

Our query:

productivity video  filter:links -xxxtuber

Step 4 – Filter Out (Or Get Only) Retweets

If quite a few people retweeted the same link, you might get it over and over again in the search results. To prevent this, filter out retweets by adding -RT (notice the minus sign before it).

On the other hand, a retweet might indicate a higher quality result. This is because at least two people recommended that link – the person who originally tweeted it and the person who retweeted it. Therefore, you can try to add the word RT (without the minus sign) to the query. It will filter out tweets that were not retweeted, and may upgrade your search results.

Our query:

productivity video  filter:links -xxxtuber RT

Step 5 – Subscribe To The Query

Now that you know how to use Twitter to build the perfect query for your needs, be sure to subscribe to its RSS feed. Click the RSS feed for your query in the top right hand corner of the screen.

I recommend you refine the search query once in a while to get better results. Add different words, try with or without retweets, filter out certain results, and so on.

Please share with us your favourite Twitter search tips and search queries in the comments below.

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You’ll be notified everytime there is a new post on the MakeUseOf Blog, a web app review on the MakeUseOf Directory or something new on Geeky Fun.

Plus we would love it if you would re-tweet the posts and discuss them, so more people get to know about us and join our community.

Thank you!

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What does LifeIO bring in the already overcrowded space of web applications? Well, the concept itself is not exactly new, but the implementation is the one of the best I’ve seen so far. Integration is good when it’s done right. Think about Apple products – they all fit together from the hardware to software and support.

It’s much more convenient to have everything you need to manage your online social life in one place, especially if it does a great job at interfacing with all that information; allowing you to sift through stuff that you want to see. Having all the tools you need in a sleek one stop shop – how could you say no to that? LifeIo is the free, complete productivity suite for web 2.0.

LifeIO, like the name suggests, aims to be the bus on which information travels to and from you, hence IO(input/output), by aggregating your email, RSS, contacts, social networking accounts, calendar, tasks and even a basic note taking application. Add another couple of new features and applications in the mix, and you might be on your way to the online operating system.

Even more tech-oriented people will recognize that those types of apps represent 90% of the functionality you need day-to-day. A bit of polish here and there, integration with lightweight OS (Google Chrome OS?) via something like Mozilla Prism and you might have just stumbled on the next paradigm shift in computing.

Now that we’ve built up a bit of excitement about LifeOS, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. The design is simple and straightforward; Mac OS users will notice that someone has been reading up on the Apple User Interface Development Guidelines. A bar at the top contains the list of available applications:

• Now – aggregates information from all the other applications and brings them together into one window. The user can then glance at the RSS feeds, email, upcoming calendar events and tasks without navigating to the respective application.
• Mail – will import email from the major service providers (Yahoo, Gmail, AOL) as well as standard POP mailboxes, so you can check your email online from anywhere. Unfortunately, the wizard will import your Gmail via POP by default, but you can manually set up IMAP if you wish. The interface is rather barebones at the moment, and represents a downgrade for someone used with Gmail’s filters, labels, add-ons and incredibly fast search function. That being said, Yahoo Mail users will be glad to have a responsive, simple interface to check email anywhere. A big plus is the preview function; just hover the mouse over a message and a (small font) text-only version of the message will pop up like a ‘Tool Tip’ or Growl notification.

  

• Calendar – nothing fancy, just straight-up usability. All the important features are covered. If you’re used to iCal or Google Cal, the switch couldn’t be easier.
• To-do – you’ve guessed it, it’s a task management application. While it certainly doesn’t compete with OmniFocus, it has more functionality than Google Tasks. It’s got Due Date fields, importance and categories.
• Notes – a stepchild of WordPad and TextEdit, it hasn’t got the functionality of Google Docs, but works for quick note taking.
• RSS reader – is essentially a clone of Google Reader, complete with the left sidebar and everything else you could expect. One hiccup though, the actual articles will open in a separate window instead of expanding inside the list.
• Social – a bit underpowered for now, the Social application currently will only integrate with Twitter. It lets you see your contact’s tweets and post your own. A few screenshots I saw of upcoming version include Flickr integration, and I’m sure that they will add more services with time.

  

• Shopping – a search + RSS subscribing features will make sure you’ll be always up to date with prices on Amazon, Craigslist, Yahoo, iTunes and Fandango.
• Settings – another striking resemblance with OS X, this app provides quick access to all available settings.

If you‘re like me, you’re getting worried just about now. LifeIO sounds cool, but can I trust it with my login information for Google, Twitter and maybe more? Bruce Specter is not new to the scene; he’s the guy that made Web Cal – Yahoo’s calendar program. Plus, everything is transferred via https.

How about a surprise? The first 50 users to sign up with this link will get into the private beta right now. For more cool web apps reviews, you should definitely check out this page.

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Before we get started, you must activate Gmail Gadgets by navigating to Settings then Labs and enabling “Add any gadget by URL.”

Now navigate to Settings > Gadgets to add new gadgets to your Gmail account:

All of the Gadgets listed must be installed by URL. Simply copy the URLs below and paste into your Gmail Gadgets settings box and press “Add.”

1. TwitterGadget makes it easy to view and update your Twitter account without visiting the Twitter homepage.

The URL for the Twitter Gadget is: http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml

2. Wikipedia Search helps you search Wikipedia directly from Gmail – whether it’s for research or just for fun.

The URL for Wikipedia Search is: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/wikipedia.xml

3. Use FriendFeed? Get the FriendFeed Gmail Gadget, so you can keep track of your friends on this popular Social networking/sharing service.

The URL for the FriendFeed Gadget is: http://friendfeed.com/embed/googlegadget/spec

4. A must-have gadget for those of us who communicate regularly with people around the world is the World Clock gadget. It has locations all around the world and continuously updates the time, so you know when it’s bedtime in Paris and not to expect a speedy response to your emails!

The URL for the World Clock Gadget is: http://gad.getpla.net/poly/clock.xml

5. Track the current trends on Digg with the Digg Gadget. Features include selecting stories by sub-section and access to your settings.

The URL for the Digg Gadget is: http://digg.com/goog/ig.xml

6. The Facebook Gadget can be added directly to Gmail by adding this handy gadget. Do a lot of things you’d normally do at Facebook.com directly from your sidebar. The URL for Facebook Gadget is: http://www.brianngo.net/ig/facebook.xml

7. Quickly shorten links with the Bit.ly URL Shortener Gadget. Whether you are emailing links or sending to friends via Google Chat, shorten long URLs with the Bit.ly URL shortener gadget.

The URL for the Bit.ly URL Shortener Gadget is: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/107368512201818821991/bitly-shortener.xml

8. MySpace can also be accessed via Google Gadget. Install this gadget and log in to your MySpace account to access friends, notes and more.

The URL for the MySpace Gadget is: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/100080069921643878012/myspace.xml

9. Use the Google Calculator to perform simple and complex math problems or convert weights from metric to English or vice versa right from Gmail.

The URL for the Google Calculator Gadget is: http://calebegg.com/calc.xml

10. And just for fun, add the Chuck Norris facts Gadget to Gmail. Get a couple of laughs a day and some funny facts to share with friends.

The URL for the Chuck Norris Facts Gadget is: http://marsupialmusic.net/stu/scripts/chucknorris.xml

Which Google gadgets sit on YOUR Gmail sidebar?   Let us know in the comments.

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Here I will discuss 3 of my favorite latest discoveries.

Twi.tt

Twi.tt is a service that allows you to create and share pictures, videos, documents, audio and even polls. When you go onto Twi.tt you firstly need to sign into your Twitter account. Twi.tt uses the OAuth method for logging users in so it is secure and Twi.tt do not store your Twitter username and password.

If you have never logged into a Twitter service using OAuth before it is as simple as two clicks. First click the Sign in with Twitter button and then click Allow when you have been taken to Twitter.

Twi.tt allows you to upload pictures, videos, documents and audio from your computer, link to it via a URL or capture pictures, videos and audio straight from your computer. They are also planning on adding support for emails in a few days.

When creating a poll you have 112 characters for the poll question and there is no limit for the number of poll answers. You also have the option of disallowing repeated votes and not posting your poll to Twitter.

When your poll has been created you will be given a link to it and a link to it will also be posted on your Twitter feed if you did not select the option to not post there.

The profile page that Twi.tt creates for you is almost identical to your Twitter account as it has your background image and your profile image. People also have the option to comment on content that you have posted.

Tweepler

Tweepler is a service that was created by @coryschop that lets you organize people (also known as tweeple) that are following you and who you are following.

To login in to Tweepler you must enter your Twitter username and password at the top of the site. When you hover over Why? next to the login form you will see that they state your details are encrypted and not stored.

When you log in you are shown a list of people that are following you but you are not following back. These are listed as Unprocessed Followers. If you do not want to add a person you can move them to the ignore bucket by pressing the arrow to the right. If you want to follow a person back you click the arrow to the right of their name.

You will be able to see everyone’s username, name, website, location and their bio. But if you click on more details you will get

• Information on the average number of tweets they post per day.
• The total number of tweets they have posted.
• Information on the number of followers they have
• The number of people they are following along with a ratio of following:followers. Their three latest tweets are also displayed.

It is possible to sort users by newest followers, oldest followers, name and username. If you don’t want to bother going through all of the Unprocessed followers you can click the Follow All or Ignore All button at the bottom of the page.

Tweetboard

Tweetboard is one of the most unique Twitter tools I have came across to date. What Tweetboard allows you to do is add a Twitter conversation for your site so that viewers can post messages and others can reply all in an easy to follow nested view.

Tweetboard is still in alpha but you can grab an invite by requesting one on the Tweetboard website by clicking the “Request a free alpha invite!” button. When you click the button it will take you to Twitter where you must send the message that is entered upon load.

When your account has been set up you will be notified. From the Tweetboard you can then grab the javascript snippet of code that will be placed on your website for Tweetboard to function. On certain content management systems and blogs the code may not work as intended to so some tweaking may be needed.

Tweetboard is a really good way of increasing traffic to your website and also a great solution of getting to know what your visitors think of your website.

If you have a favorite Twitter tool or service then post a comment below and share it with us.

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While Friendfeed does have many features and options, when you get to a good start and invest a little time to figure everything out you’ll see it’s not so complicated after all.  You might even save some time normally spent on Twitter, Facebook or reading blogs because you can do all of that on Friendfeed and replace some other services you are using – and have some fun and meet interesting people while doing it!

Sign up

Sign up easily on Friendfeed by entering your details or better yet sign in using your Google, Facebook or Twitter account. When you use Twitter it will import your data such as your avatar, description and username and even look to see which of your friends are already on Friendfeed.

If you don’t use any other account to sign up you can choose your first people to subscribe to on the suggested user list.

You can sign up directly or using an existing account.

Click “settings” in the upper right corner below your name and set your display name, username, description and avatar. Take some time to pick a nice photograph of yourself or any avatar that suits you because it will be next to anything you post.

Next you can tell Friendfeed when to notify you of any new messages or comments by e-mail, IM or the Friendfeed notifier. There are also themes but for now you can only choose one of the pre-made themes that only you will see to prevent the users from having a nauseating Myspace experience.

Add your feeds

The most obvious use of Friendfeed is to enter all your feeds to show others and view the feeds of your friends. Even if you only have something like a Twitter and Flickr account this can be useful because it’s an easy way to share your items and receive comments.

To add your service go to settings and click add/edit at services. There are currently 58 services available and you can also add any other service that has an RSS-feed such as your blog.

There are 58 services or you can any other RSS-feed

Find your friends and new people

Import from multiple sources

You can import your friends from other places or send them an invite e-mail. You can add a website or RSS-feed that is not on Friendfeed yet by adding them as an imaginary friend. Click “browse/edit friends” and “find friends” to see some suggested people who your friends are subscribed to.

You will quickly find some other interesting users by reading your Friendfeed and watching people there who aren’t your friend yet. Tip: strangers have a little white balloon next to them instead of your friend’s light-blue one. There are also people who make their own suggested user lists. I can highly recommend Louis Gray’s monthly lists.

Configure pushing items to twitter

You can make some items go to your Twitter followers. It’s very convenient and can replace some services such as Twitpic or Twitterfeed. You do want to set your preferences though because you don’t want to flood your followers. There’s also a check-mark next to any new item you post that lets you choose whether to post to Twitter or not.

Install the bookmarklet

If you install the Friendfeed bookmarklet you can open a little pop-up on any website that you visit to share it with your Friendfeed subscribers. Add images from the page by clicking on them, choose a group on Friendfeed to share it with and whether you want to send it to Twitter.

This makes sharing with people very easy and replaces some other bookmarklets that share to twitter. It works with most browsers since it’s a bookmark and not a plugin. Sending an e-mail to share@friendfeed.com will also post this to your feed. This is nice for sending pictures from your phone.

Reading your friendfeed

Now that you have some friends in your feed, it’s time to familiarize yourself with the layout.  First you’ll notice that there are people in there that you haven’t subscribed to yourself. These are FOAF (friend of a friend) items that your friends have liked or commented on. Below an item you can expand the comment and comment or like an item yourself. Liking makes an item show in the feed of your friends.

Interact as much as you can because this really is one of the best aspects of Friendfeed and makes you appear on other people’s feeds. Sharing an item with people on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit or Del.icio.us can be done by clicking “Share”. Hiding is an important feature because it helps you control the firehose of items. Click “Hide” to remove certain items out of your feed. I have hidden all items from Twitter without any comments or likes. See, that really creates some room in your feed. Clicking “Best of day” in the menu brings up the most discussed an liked items of your friends. So everybody’s “Best of day” is different.

Put your friends into lists

Another great way of controlling the flow is lists. You can add friends to multiple lists. You start out with “Favorites”, “Personal” and “Professional”. Your standard feed is called “Home feed”. I suggest putting everybody in your home feed and adding some people to your “Favorites” whose updates you don’t want to miss. If you subscribe to more people you can add lists for certain subjects, languages or ‘tryout’ favorites with people that can promote to your “favorites”. Every list has it’s own “Best of day” link at the bottom.

Try out the advanced search feature

The search feature is really useful but requires some getting used to. It has also replaced some features that had their own buttons so there really are many things you can do with it. For instance in the top search bar while on a page, type the beginning of a friend’s name to go to their feed.

Advanced search lets you really slice and dice all items on there. Want to find Flickr items with at least 15 likes? Or anything about the iPhone in your favorites list? No problem. Best thing is, you can save searches which then get a button in the sidebar and the results will update in real-time.

Join or create a group

In a group there are people who share an interest. It’s a great way to find some new active people to subscribe to. For instance there is an Apple group, a Friendfeed feedback group or a Movie review group.

You can also create a group about a subject that you’re passionate about. I have recently created the Nokia newsgroup. Another way to use groups is to create a private group with some friends or colleagues to collaborate and share and discuss items from the web.  The MakeUseOf group is for reading and discussing all the posts from MakeUseOf.

I hope this has helped people who haven’t joined Friendfeed yet and needed some questions answered first before taking the leap.   If you have any other Friendfeed questions not covered here, please leave them in the comments.

Image Credit : adKinn

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Increasingly, you’ll turn to Twitter. Twitter is rapidly becoming a place for people to share and discuss music, and is a great way to find new and interesting things to listen to. Lots of artists are active on Twitter, as are countless fans. But Twitter presents a new problem: how do you weed through that to find the good stuff?

Well, for a long time, according to The Hype Machine, a tracker of popular music around the Web, there was no good answer. There were answers, sure, but none did what they were supposed to do.

So The Hype Machine created the Twitter Music Chart, a brand-new way of tracking what is the most popular type of music in the Twitterverse. It’s the Billboard Hot 100 meets what you actually care about – a winning combination, in my book.

The Twitter Music Chart is created based on a very particular formula, simply described on the website: “Each tweet gets points based on the user’s influence, then we add them up to find what’s hot in the past 3 days.”

This is a novel, and smart, way of creating the charts. It’s not just measuring what people are talking about (though it’s certainly doing that) – it’s figuring out how many people are likely to be listening to a song that got tweeted. If Ashton Kutcher tweets a song, odds are some of his 2.5 million followers are going to listen to it – thus, it gets more points from The Hype Machine than if I tweeted it.

When you go to the Twitter Music Chart, you’ll see the most popular songs on Twitter over the last three days. You can see the title and artist of the song, who originally tweeted it, who else has tweeted it, the number of points it got (the number used by The Hype Machine to figure out where the song belongs), and even gives you a chance to listen to the song.

If you click on a song, it’ll take you to a page that lets you share the song on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere, as well as see more of who’s talking about it and how to buy it. If you vote for the track on Twitter, it’ll immediately get added to the votes on the Twitter Music Chart.

The biggest problem is that the list is only pulled from, and The Hype Machine only cares about, links from Twitter to The Hype Machine. Because of that, the list tends to be very niche-heavy, but I’ll say I still loved a lot of the music that came up. Tons of remixes and mashups, as well as some old classics – the music really runs the gamut.

If you’ve got an account with The Hype Machine, you can log in to favorite a particular song to your account, for easy access later. Otherwise, pretty much everything on the page is available to you. Across the bottom of the screen lives the player, where you can play, pause, or even buy a track from a variety of sources.

If you’re a Twitter user, you can follow the Hype Machine Twitter Account for tweets of the latest popular songs – delivering the popular stuff right into your Twitter stream.

One other thing I enjoyed about the Twitter Music Chart was the link, on the right side of the page, to check how many points The Hype Machine would give you for a tweeted song. It’s another measure of your Twitter influence, but is fun to cross-check with all the other people promoting songs.

It’s not a perfect chart, and nothing will be until it deals with all the music around Twitter, but it’s a great step in the right direction, and a cool way to find new music online.

What other online music charts are out there?

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