All 'Bout Twitter

TwitterGadget - Now Tweet from your GMail or iGoogle

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:26:00 +0000

TwitterGadget is a clean, robust and a hypercool web 2.0 gadget for Twitter which helps the user to tweet from his iGoogle homepage or directly from his Gmail account.

Features :

Auto refresh
Customizable
URL shortening (with trunc.it)
Symbol insertion
Keyboard shortcuts
Media uploads
Built-in search
Built-in translate
Easy retweets
Expand short-URLs
@reply autocomplete
Shrink long tweets
Saved searches

GMail has a wide reach throughout the world. A regular GMail user instead of using a desktop client for tweeting can choose TwitterGadget over a wide variety of clients available.Why should the user do that? Because having Twitter inside GMail is just awesome. TwitterGadget is a simple text box that sits on the lower left corner of the GMail window below the chat list. Most users keep their GMail open in a tab everytime they are online. So, when they need to tweet something all they need to do is go to GMail and tweet from there. Checking your mails and tweeting - both done in a single open tab! Aint it simple?

How to install Twitter Gadget inside GMail?

Installing TwitterGadget inside GMail is quite simple. Just follow the steps mentioned below.

1) Navigate to the 'Settings' section on Gmail and press 'Labs' tab!

2) Enable "Add any gadget by URL". This is a really useful tool which enables the user to add external gadgets to their GMail account similar to iGoogle.

3) Press the 'Gadgets' tab and enter the following URL in 'Add any gadget by its URL'.

http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml

4) You are done. The Twittergadget appears at the lower left corner of your GMail window below the chat section.

The gadget may appear too small at the beginning and you may even start doubting whether you can properly tweet from it. But, there are an awesome lot of functionalities you may not even imagine. The 'Advanced Section' shows that you can almost modify everything in the gadget. The user can choose a variety of themes for the gadget or one can even choose to bring in his/her own Twitter.com profile colours here. The height of the gadget can be increased.

Keyboard shortcuts can be enabled/disabled. I find this shortcuts to be another awesome functionality in this gadget. Listing down the few basic shortcuts for easy tweeting:

Keyboard shortcuts:

Home - Ctrl + H
Replies - Ctrl + R
Directs - Ctrl + D
Favorites - Ctrl + F
All - Ctrl + E

The user can also view the trending topics, saved searches or their own statistics from the gadget too. I find TwitterGadget to be really really cool because I used to have my GMail window open whenever I am online. For me, TwitterGadget really paves a way for easy tweeting. You go, TwitterGadget.

Follow TwitterGadget.

JTwitter - Java-Twitter application for mobile phones

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:17:00 +0000

JTwitter is a really nice application for easy tweeting from your Java enabled mobile phones. Many of us would have already known about various Twitter applications that work in iPhone's and Blackberry's. Leaving those aside, most of us are using only Java mobile phones and pity there are not many Twitter applications that work from the Java platform. JTwitter will definitely solve all your worries.

JTwitter can be easily installed onto your mobile phones. It allows you to enter twitter updates using your phone without having to send SMS's. You can view both your friends timeline and the public timeline. Automatic refreshing is unavailable, refreshing takes place only when you request it to. Thus the application can be kept open for a long time without the need to worry about running up data charges.

Drilldown:

An easy to use Mobile Java application for easy tweeting
View friends and public timeline
Handles only one Twitter account
No auto-refreshing

At present no free version of JTwitter is available for download. If you are interested in a pro version, it costs $10. JTwitter is available for download here. Check it out!

Twidroid - The ultimate Twitter client for all Android Devices

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:13:00 +0000

Twidroid is an ultimate Twitter client for Android mobile devices which comes in both Free and Pro Versions. Twidroid has been strongly dominating the Twitter-Android market ever since its release and it has not lost weight since then. Download Twitroid.

Differences between Free and Pro Versions:

Multi-account support (Both merged and single view)
Desktop Widget
Native bit.ly support
Video posting
List followers and friends
Color themes
Neat black pro application icon
Integrated buzz viewer (Powered by Twittersphere)
Support for future Twitter features

Similarities between Free and Pro Versions:

Fully featured Twitter client
Postings, mentions and direct messages
View user profiles
Follow/Unfollow users
Integrated search, saved searches
Auto-completion
URL shortening (Pro version comes with additional services like Posterous)
Photo posting
Direct sharing from android browser and gallery
Twitter trends
Geo-Location support
Background notifications
Custom alert ringtones
Landscape and Portrait operation
Identi.ca and compatible API support
API for the android application (Check it out here.)
Secure connection via SSL

Twidroid is the industry-standard Twitter client for android and among the most used Twitter applications across all platforms. Its available as a free and commercial pro-version that supports all well-known Twitter features as well as functionality that is customized to the capabilities of android devices. - Twidroid

Follow Twidroid.

Tweetizen - Discover Tweets That Matter You

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:57:00 +0000

Imagine if u can have instant access to the breaking news and latest tweets on all your areas of interest in one place rather than creating multiple Twitter accounts just for getting what you want. Now, Tweetizen makes it possible. Tweetizen is a simple web-based tool that helps to create a group which filters the tweets that are relevant you.

Tweetizen allows the users to create groups and to share it with others. You can create two types of groups - the one which filters tweets based on your interest and the other which filters tweets from your family and friends. After going through millions of tweets,Tweetizen's filtering mechanism provides the users with the pertinent tweets by taking the user's tags and keywords into consideration.

Steps

Sign-up using a Twitter account.
Create a group and select the type.
Enter either keywords and tags or username depending on the group type.
Share the results or embed to your own website.

The login process of this application is integrated with OAuth which allows secured authentication. You can also post your tweets from tweetizen.The best feature of this application is that, it provides an option for the users to embed their group on their own website or blog. If you own a website, then embedding this widget is a must, as it gives your users, a real-time streaming of tweets which makes your website dynamic and interactive.

Follow Tweetizen.

MATT - Multi Account Twitter Tweetering

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:25:00 +0000

Do you have multiple Twitter accounts? Do you find it troublesome to tweet in all your accounts? Now, Matt makes it easy to post to multiple Twitter accounts without having to log into each one every time.

Matt is a web app which is built using the Twitter API, the Django framework, aTechLabs, WebFaction,Python and jQuery. It's easy to use Matt.

Steps

Sign-up using any of your Twitter account.
Add the rest of your Twitter accounts which you want to manage.
Post your tweets to selected accounts at the same time.

Whenever you want to post your tweets, its enough for you to login into this one account in Matt alone. The user can post either to a single account alone or to multiple accounts at same time.

Drilldown

No need to remember all your Twitter account passwords.
Post tweets simultaneously on more than one Twitter account.
Powered by Carsonified.

As far as, more people are using Twitter for personal and professional reasons, the demand for this kind of web apps will increase. You can try this app here.

Follow Ryan.
Follow Carsonified.

Be-A-Magpie - A Twitter Advertising Network

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:30:00 +0000

Be-A-Magpie is an ad network for Twitter. It allows the twitterers to make money using their Twitter Network in a simple way. It provides a platform that enables the advertisers to share relevant, controlled and individualized content via social media optimization.

The users can sign-up either as a twitterer or as an advertiser. As far as payment process is concerned, this is handled by a web-commerce company PayPal, and hence, a PayPal account is a must.

For Twitterers

Unlike traditional social media optimization, it identifies key influencers for the users' brand and engages them to spread the word. There are a number of compensation models offered with different earning opportunities, at the pre-approval stage. Twitterers will be made aware of the compensation model linked to a particular campaign, enabling them to make an informed decision for their participation.

Be-A-Magpie works in the following way for the twitterers:

Twitterer signs up with Twitter account details for free.
Magpie service will identify campaigns which match the twitterer's account and occasionally tweet them.
Every time a campaign is aired on the twitterer's account Magpie will reward with cash.

Apart from this, for any new Advertiser who signs up through your personal referral link, you will earn a 30% commission of Magpie's transaction fees. Not just once, but for the whole first year Advertiser buys campaigns on Magpie!

For Advertisers

The advertisers can sign up and create campaigns, which consist of magpie-tweets (i.e. ads). Twitterers get paid for allowing Magpie to post magpie-tweets among their tweets.It is not necessary for all the advertisers to have a Twitter account.

Magpie works in the following way for the advertisers:

Create your campaigns providing a message and some keywords.
Key influencers within the Magpie-Twitterer group are automatically selected.
Your message is blended into the message stream of the selected Magpie-Twitterers.

Services like Be-A-Magpie also results in spam, caused by its affiliates trying to make money. Here are few suggestions you can follow, so that you don't annoy your followers:

Set the number of ads to a low display frequency.
Do not set auto approve ads instead manually review all the ads.
Choose ads to your twitter profile that you might normally tweet about.

With the right company targeting the right twitterers, services like Be-A-Magpie has a good market as it evolves.

Follow Be-A-Magpie.

Twittad - Place ads on your Twitter profile & earn easy money

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 07:24:00 +0000

Since Twitter started occupying a major chunk of business in viral mass media, advertisers have been really checking out various ways on how to advertise using Twitter. Twittad is really the place for them.

Twittad is a Social Media affinity Network that connects advertisers and Twitter users. By using Twittad, Twitter users can monetize their profiles and advertisers can reach the whole of Twitter - the website, 3rd Party Applications and Mobile devices.

Twittad will allow you to get some money as a result of your obsessive use of Twitter. Logging into Twittad can be either as a Twitter's signup or as an Advertiser's signup.

For a Twitter user:

There are two ways to monetize your Twitter profile:

Post Twitter account for advertisers to sponsor
Opt into advertisers campaign

While going on with the first option, follow the steps below:

Post Twitter accounts for advertisers to sponsor
Select duration and price
Wait for advertiser to sponsor
Accept/Deny the prosed ad within 48 hours
Once accepted, the ad is uploaded to your Twitter profile

Opting into the advertisers campaign is the newest feature and it allows you to search for available advertisers campaign based on what interests you. Simply explained, you can advertise/recommend a product from an advertiser that interests you and get paid to advertise it.

For advertisers:

Twittad offers two ways to advertise any product/brand on Twitter.

Target particular users:

The advertiser can search for available profiles based on categories of Twitter users, Demographics/Location and Price/Duration set by Twitter user.

Post ad campaign:

Twittad´s newest feature allows you to post a campaign for Twitter users to opt-into. For example, you can now post a campaign where you are willing to pay any Twitter user with over 500 followers $2.50 to advertise your product for 7 days.

Twittad 's technology will continually check to make sure that a Twitter user is serving the ad. Every hour the ad is served, the Twitter user will receive money in their Twittad account. Once the Twittad users account reaches $ 30 they can request payment. If Twitter user removes the image before the advertiser's time has expired, we alert the advertiser and they have the option to give negative feedback to the Twitter user. Advertiser will receive credit back from Twittad for the time their ad was not served. - Twittad

Follow Twittad.

Lily's Twitter Spellcheck Bot - Check spelling while tweeting on mobile phone

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 17:12:00 +0000

Lily is a Firefox add-on that allows users to create rich, complex applications in a web browser. With Lily it's possible to make programs that mashup the web or the desktop, visualize and animate data, modify webpages, play music, or connect to world outside the computer. Lily programs can be shared with other Lily users as text files or run by anyone as Firefox add-ons or standalone XULRunner applications. Lily runs on Mac, Windows or Linux, just like Firefox.

Twitter SpellCheck lets you check the spelling of a word from your cellphone. It uses the Twitter API to send and recieve messages from the cellphone and the Yahoo suggested Spelling service to look up the spelling. Two seperate Twitter accounts are required - one for Lily and the other one for yourself. You'll also need to enable your cellphone in the Twitter account settings. In the patch you'll need to add your Twitter user/pass as an argument to the twitter object. The new twitter object implements most of the api methods, including the direct message feature which I'm using in this patch. The code also includes an example of doing basic auth with xmlhttp. You can download it and the twitter spellchecker patch here.

There are two versions for download available

LILY PUBLIC BETA 3.0

The latest stable release. Includes documentation, demos and example code.

LILY NIGHTLY BUILD

The most recent nightly build. Experimental and untested. Use at your own risk.

Check out here on how to install .XPI files.

TwitterLit - Tweeting the first lines of books

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:40:00 +0000

TwitterLit is a fun application that serves up literary teasers twice daily - at exactly 9.00AM and 9.00PM Eastern Time. The first line of some book is posted without the author's name or book title. A link for the book in Amazon is posted along with the tweet. TwitterLit acts as a guessing game which enables users to guess the name of any book just by checking out the first line of it.

There have been many postive reviews from many news sites regarding TwitterLit :

The Guardian Blog calls TwitterLit "an intriguingly random way to discover new reads".
New York Magazine calls it "an extremely simple and extremely addictive site".

Three different versions of TwitterLit are available - US, UK and Canada.

Drilldown:

Random first line generator for users is available.
iPhone application can be downloaded at twitterlit.com/iphone.
TwitterLit gadget for Gmail is also available.
TwitterLit bookmarklet available.
Customizable Twitterlit widgets.
Users can suggest a first line in Twitterlit.

TwitterLit is an Amazon affiliate site. The links in the tweets contain TwitterLit's affiliate ID. Sales as a result of clicking links in TwitterLit will profit TwitterLit.

Follow TwitterLit US.
Follow TwitterLit UK.
Follow TwitterLit Canada.

TwInbox - Twitter add-in for Microsoft Outlook

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:43:00 +0000

TwInbox is a life-saving tool for Microsoft Outlook users. An Outlook user probably keeps it open at all time. So, in case if you are a power Outlook and Twitter user as well, just forget the need to use any other Twitter client to post your tweets. TwInbox seamlessly integrates Twitter into Outlook. TwInbox is a perfect Twitter client for any Outlook user from a Twitter newbie to a business professional.

TwInbox serves as an addon for Outlook and once it is installed into Outlook, TwInbox lets you to update, reply, search, and archive your Twitter messages right from your Outlook inbox. Prior to doing all this, after installation, the user has to enter his Twitter credentials. Also, it would be better if the user creates a new folder for placing incoming Twitter messages. The really interesting feature is the ability to track keywords with a search term and filter through those messages locally.

Drilldown:

Update Twitter status directly from Outlook
Recieve friend updates
Archive, manage, group and search Tweets just like managing emails
Group tweets by sender, topic
See new tweets at a glance
Use Outlook's "Reply" and "ReplyAll" command to send Twitter direct messages and @ replies
Shorten URLs with TinyURL
See graphs of Twitter usage statistics
@ replies and direct messages to you occupy high priority

Download TwInbox here. (Very minimalistic size of 490kb, so just give it a try!)

Twittermail - Now tweet directly from your email

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:19:00 +0000

Twittermail is a really useful service which helps the user to post to Twitter by sending an email. Login is using Twitter user ID and password. Once the user has logged into Twitter, they are supplied with a specific Twittermail email address. The Twittermail email id is unique for each and every user, hence it must be kept confidential.

Features:

Post to Twitter:

Send a message to your secret Twittermail id, which will be posted as a tweet in your timeline. Leave the subject line empty for a normal message.

Send photos:

Send a photo in email as an attachment, which will be posted in your timeline using Twitpic.

Recieve @ replies:

When a user sends you an @ reply, the message will be sent directly to your email id.

Recive the recent timeline:

Send an email with the subject 'Friends' or 'f', you will be sent a message with the last 20 posts from all your friends.

Send a loooooooooong tweet: (Innovative!)

Now, you need not worry about the 140-character limit in Twitter. When you send an email longer than 140 characters, the full message will be kept in Twittermail itself and only the first 140 characters of the message will be posted in Twitter with a 'Read More' link at the end.

Send tweets for the future: (Innovative!)

When the user has to post a particular tweet only after a while, all the user has to do is to include that particular time in the Subject of the email.

Twitter down? Use Twittermail: (Innovative!)

When you need to post a tweet very urgently, but everytime you try it says Twitter is down. It would be quite frustrating eh? Dont worry. Just send an email containing your message to Twittermail. Your tweet will be posted as soon as Twitter comes alive.

Follow Twittermail.

Twitsay - Send voice messages in Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:30:00 +0000

Twitsay allows you to leave a voice message on your Twitter account. All the user has to do is to call up a regional Twitsay number and leave a message. The account will be immediately forwarded and posted on the user's Twitter timeline. Initially, the service had regional numbers for Germany and Austria only. At present, numbers from Switzerland, UK, Paris and New York have also been added. Numbers from Japan and from the San Francisco Bay area are on the next list. Users from other places have to wait for a while to make use of this service.

Steps:

Login to Twitsay
Call up the regional Twitsay number
Leave a message
See the message on the Twitter timeline.

The user need not worry about cost, because the cost equals that of a local phone call depending on the dialing plan. The data (ie. the voice) you have recorded is encrypted and stored in the database and is used to send a voice message to Twitter. Only, if you have registered for Twitsay with your mobile number, the message will appear in your local timeline in Twitter else the message will be sent to the public timeline of Twitter.

A new service worth trying!

Follow Twitsay.

SnapTweet - Share Flickr Pictures on Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:53:00 +0000

SnapTweet is an easy to use service which makes it simple to post the user's latest Flickr photos to their Twitter stream.

SnapTweet allows the users to post their Flickr photos in a very simple way. The user has to send a direct message to @snaptweet, which grabs the link to the user's most recent public Flickr upload and sends a Twitter update with the text from user's direct message, with the link to the image appended.

SnapTweet also offers an auto-post feature. It allows the users to set up a special tag for this feature in their SnapTweet profile. The users should tag the photos with that special auto-post tag for auto-posting them. Also, for the users who would like their every emailed Flickr image to post to their Twitter stream, they can setup a default tag in Flickr that matches their SnapTweet auto-post tag.

There is a drawback to using tags - Timing. SnapTweet doesn’t do well in a real-time posting environment. A Twitter update is sent when synchronization between SnapTweet and Flickr occurs. This gets confusing, and it’s never fun to wonder when the user's tweet will post. It is recommended for the Flickr lover who prefers spending time in Flickr over Twitter.

Drilldown

Images posted to Flickr are optionally announced on Twitter.
No additional account required – either Twitter or Flickr is used for authentication.
Easy to post every emailed Flickr image on Twitter stream using Auto-post feature.

Follow SnapTweet.
Follow Damon.

Twiddeo - Twitter + Video!!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 08:32:00 +0000

What if instead of TELLING people what you are doing, you could SHOW them? Now, it is possible with Twiddeo. Twiddeo allows users to upload - via web or mobile (email) - videos and aggregate those videos into Twitter, the same way a standard Twitter update happens.

Twiddeo is a mash-up between Twitter API and vSocial's Social Media API. To use the Twiddeo service users authenticate with their Twitter username and password to enable web uploads and to generate a unique email address to send videos from their mobile device. It also allows users to directly record the video using their web cam.

The users can view the videos in Twitter site itself by using Twiddeo Greasemonkey script in Firefox. Twiddeo also displays the recent public videos uploaded by the users. Twiddeo allows users to continue using Twitter as the aggregator it has become — no need to be tied into a website or a standalone application — while enabling video as a service within Twitter. This lets users start sending and viewing video tweets within minutes.

Developers cultivate patience, because the Twiddeo API will be made available to the public eye soon.

Drilldown :

Public timeline shows the videos added to Twitter from Twiddeo
No separate login required. Twitter account is just enough.
Upload from your computer, send from your phone or record directly from your webcam.
Powered by vSocial Social Media API and vSocial Media Playr

Follow Jonathan Apostoles.
Follow Mike Luby.
Follow Brad Webb.
Follow Twiddeo

Twitterfone - Convert voice to text and post in Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 13:16:00 +0000

Wouldnt it be interesting if you can send voice messages to Twitter? Now, that's not exactly voice. But, your voice gets converted to text messages and are posted to your Twitter timeline.

In this context, Twitterfone is really an exceptional application. The conversion of spoken words to text has so far never been heard of in this social-networking industry. This service would really be useful to challenged users who cant use a regular keyboard to post their tweets.

All the user has to do is to register his mobile phone number along with his Twitter account to Twitterfone. The tweets are sent by calling up a local number and speaking your message to it. Twitterfone is really useful if you are on the go and dont have to time login to the internet and post your messages.

Drilldown:

Transcribes your voice to text and posts it on Twitter
Free service
Users regular phone minutes from your phone plan
Twitterfone numbers available in many countries!
No courtesy call, just answer your tweet over phone and hang up.
5-10 minutes after your call - Voila! You find your post on Twitter.
Ability to listen back to your Twitterfone stream before posting.
Record an @ reply by pressing 2
Send a direct message by pressing 3
Ability to listen to previous tweets as well

At present, Twitterfone is only in an invitation only mode. Once you have an invitation, you can register with the Twitterfone service. Validation of your mobile phone takes place during registration for security purposes. Wishes for everybody to get the invitation and try out Twitterfone. Definitely, a gud tool!

Twitux - Twitter client for Gnome

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 06:31:00 +0000

Twitux is a GTK+ Twitter client. Twitux displays your personal messages, your friends network and public timeline. The user can also send messages and reply @ messages.

Drilldown:

Display messages in notification, not count of tweets.
Uses secure HTTP connection (https)
Auto-refreshing of timeline
Tray area icon
Post new statuses
Send direct messages

Download Twitux.

Packages for Debian, Fedora, Foresight, Gentoo, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu are available for download.

Twitterpod - Twitter client for Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:26:00 +0000

If Twitterific isnt your favorite, then Twitterpod will really impress you. This is a stand along application which uses Core Data to store your tweets, making them available for searching etc. Other features includes a Smart Drawer ( a kind of mini web-browser), quick reply, Growl support, and more. What makes this application different from all the other applications you know, is its ability to archive all tweets that you have recieved.

Drilldown:

Search archives of Twitter conversations
QuartzComposer views
Smart Drawer
Works with Growl
Update checking with Sparkle
Quick posting with a tiny window

What is Growl?

Growl lets Mac OS X applications unintrusively tell you when things happen.

What is Sparkle?

Sparkle is an easy-to-use software update framework for Mac.

What is Smart Drawer?

Smart Drawer is a feature which is really great because when you browse over any tweet that comes with a hyperlink you need not go from one application to another in order to view the hyperlinks. The drawer gives you a snapshot of the link page. If you find the page, worth visiting on the first glance, view it in the browser else just trash it. Isnt it interesting?

Keyboard shortcuts are also available. Apple 2 sends an @ message and Apple 3 opens the particular person's profile in the browser.

The another feature is that a visualization tool allows you to have Twitter running as a screensaver. This nice little feature helps you to keep track of whats happening in Twitter.

A really nice Desktop Application. I give it a high five!

Follow Drikin.

Twitteroo - Desktop Twitter client for PC

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:06:00 +0000

Twitteroo is a desktop Twitter client for Windows.

Drilldown:

Update Twitter status from Desktop
URL shortening via rurl.org
Double click a particular tweet to send a Direct message to the user.
Sound notification of the arrival of a new tweet
View friends timeline
View public timeline
Automatic and manual refreshing
Support for international characters in status messages
Customize font size
Set transparency for Twitteroo window
Profile icon caching for faster tweeting

Follow Twitteroo.

Witty - Twitter client for Vista

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:03:00 +0000

Witty is an open-source, twitter client for Vista, that is powered by WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). Witty has seen a lot of updates since its inception. The latest version of Witty contains almost all Twitter traditional features of a desktop Twitter client. The latest version of Witty is 2.1.0.

Drilldown :

View Twitter timeline from the people you follow
Auto refreshing of timeline
View recent replies to you
Update your Twitter status
View and respond to Direct messages
Opening of links in the user's default browser

But, I would say the really nice thing is the UI of Witty. It comes with a totally uncluttered surface with four tabs Recent, Replies, User and Messages. There is a Refresh tab placed above all these four tabs. And, then the interactive features such as replying to an user, retweeting, sending a direct message can be viewed by rightclicking a particular user's tweet. The user can also choose from a variety of URL shortening services such as Tiny URL, Bit.ly, is.gd and cligs by pressing on the options tab.

Extra code-specific features:

Minimizing to the system tray
Spell checking
New messages displayed with a yellow fade technique
Custom styles and resources
Skins and skinning

Witty comes with three themes to choose from : Aero (default), Aero Compact and Cool Blue. Witty is really worth a try for Windows XP and Windows Vista users. The remarkable feature of Witty is its UI. Give it a try! Download Witty from here.

Follow Witty.

gtwitter - A linux Twitter client

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 10:13:00 +0000

gtwitter is a simple desktop client for Linux for direct interaction with Twitter. Once installed, it stays in the system tray and gets updates periodically.

Features :

Read friend's public timeline
Read overall public timeline
Post to Twitter directly
Refresh time can be set up manually
Images from friends timeline get cached up, thereby preventing slowing down
An icon for the notification area

What can be expected in the feature? :

History saving
Viewing direct messages

On Ubuntu, the package can be installed easily using the Synaptic Package Manager. Search for gtwitter in the package manager, and install it.

Snitter - a powerful desktop client for Mac and Windows

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 14:06:00 +0000

Snitter is an Adobe AIR powered desktop client for Mac and Windows. There is currently a Linux version of Adobe AIR in alpha testing but some functionalities are likely to be missing.

Drilldown:

Real time updating of tweets
@ replies are highlighted and reaches with a chirp sound
Clear, refresh current list of tweets
20 most recent tweets in timeline can be viewed
View 20 most recent replies
View 20 most recent direct messages
Filter friends and followers by name & screen name
Easy links for @ reply and for direct messages
Keyboard shortcuts
Favorites tab filters favorite tweets
Audible notification of new tweets
Minimizes to system tray
Auto-login

In the future:

Multi-user support
Third party plugins and functionality can be installed
Download themes and install thereby giving a complete, personalized Snitter experience.

Users can edit the style sheets on their own. Pressing on Options and leading to Edit User Styles will allow the user to edit the style sheet (CSS). Although, before trying this, it is requested the user should have a basic knowledge of CSS. All the personalized style sheets are requested to be posted in the Snitter Flickr group.

Follow Snitter.

YouTwit - Check out tweets with Google Maps

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 11:01:00 +0000

YouTwit presents the last status update a particular user has made along with the location from where the update has been made with the help of Google Maps API. YouTwit is a mashup with Google Maps.

The user is a presented with the map containing the latest status update a particular person has made with their location in any part of the earth. Also, the latest tweets are also presented before you if the particular user is tweeting at that time. The site asks for your Twitter username and password before letting you to view the tweets. If you dont enter the above requisites, you are just presented with the Google Map.

I noticed this : I entered the username of Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk). But the map showed the tweets of different people along with their location from their respective parts of the world which seems similar to Twittervision which we discussed earlier. Then, I tried again with Smashing Magazine's (@smashingmag). I got the same result.

Drilldown:

Real Time tweets along with the user's location

Backdrop:

Twittervision is better to me

Twittervision - Mapping tweets

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:12:00 +0000

Twittervision follows the same concept as Twittearth, which helps in mapping live tweets from all over the world. Twittervision is a mashup with Google Maps API. Live tweets from all over the world are shown in the map.

To begin with, the user need not do much. Once he enters the site, the map shows up and live tweets from all over the world at the particular time are also shown. The user can also choose the tweets to be in a multitude of languages which ranges from Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian to Turkish, Ukranian and Vietnamese. A total of 42 languages are left to the users choice to choose from.

Drilldown :

Variety of languages to choose from for the tweets to display
Live display of tweets
Useful to glance at the trend that's taking place.

Follow Twittervision.
Follow Dave Troy.

TweetVolume - Find popular keywords in Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:54:00 +0000

With millions and millions of people tweeting everyday and with thousands of tweets per minute, its very hard to locate and identify popular keywords in Twitter. TweetVolume is a really useful service which really solves the problem in this niche. TweetVolume is a service powered by Wowza and it makes use of Google and Twitter APIs.

The interface is really simple, yet powerful. Easy to manage and use. All the user has to do is enter the keywords in the textboxes provided and BAM! the user will be provided with a bar-graph which indicates the number of times the search term has been used. Multiple keywords can be compared side by side. A really useful tool for tracking down events, or to compare your popularity with anyone else. (Dont compare it with celebrities, you will be thoroughly disappointed! :P)

I had the urge to compare the bigwigs in different arenas - Google, Mashable, Twitter, Facebook & Apple. And, pretty stunning - the result was expected. Twitter leads the list and it wins by a pretty huge, huge margin.

Drilldown :

No login required.
Simple interface, powerful results.
Maximum of five keywords can be searched side by side.
Useful for searching single words and long phrases too.
Share chart with your friends.

Backdrop :

Logically, we find that Twitter wins heads first in the comparison made! But, what does the number at the bottom of the bargraphs indicate. Are they results for a month, a week or ....? No explanation given in the website, though I have seen a few comments by users regarding the same confusion.

Twitter Charts - Graph your tweets

noreply@blogger.com (Sathis Raj S) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:22:00 +0000

Twitter Charts is a Yahoo Pipes/Google Charts mashup. Twitter Charts graphs any users tweets based on a timeline that includes days of the week and by the hour. Twitter Charts is a really great way to check out how much active any user is on Twitter. Also, the engagement of the user with other users can also be found out by checking the chart, because it also reveals the portions of the tweets which are replies.

The Twitter user's tweets are gathered via Yahoo Pipes! and rendered using the Google Chart API. Check out the chart of Ashton Kutcher, the actor with the more number of followers:

The most interesting aspect of this project is that, other than the static files being served up by xefer.com itself, no other server-side processing is being done here; all the processing is being handled by Yahoo Pipes and Google, and of course Twitter itself which is ultimately hosting the raw data.

At the beginning when you enter a new user name, you can find the time taken by the chart to show up is really slow. But once done, you can find the subsequent runs to be faster because of Yahoo!'s caching of the generated output. If you really need to know, how the client side Javascript processing the raw data for Google Charts is done, kindly check it out here.

A really engaging tool to check out how you spend your time on Twitter. Twitter Charts is a product of Xefer.

Follow Xefer.