Twitter posts

Filed under: Social Software, Microblogging

Twitter plans to cut the noise out of trending topics ... but how?

by Jay Hathaway Nov 6th 2009

Have you ever actually clicked on any of Twitter's trending topics? I don't want to sound like the old guy telling whippersnappers to get off his lawn, but trying to read almost any Twitter trend gives me a headache. There's so much spam with popular hashtags attached that even people who care about the trends aren't getting a great user experience. Twitter realizes this, and they're going to do something to cut down the noise.

The precise something that Twitter intends to do isn't really clear. Biz Stone's blog post is full of ambiguous language: "We're working to show higher quality results for trend queries by returning tweets that are more useful." It's not clear whether this means manually filtering trends in some way, or whether Twitter is introducing an algorithm to weight tweets by relevance. I think the average Twitter user is less concerned with the technical details, and more concerned with how effective this experiment will be at reducing junk tweets.

[via TechCrunch]

Tags: spam, trending topics, TrendingTopics, trends, twitter

Filed under: Google, Open Source, Browsers

Embed a (very) basic Twitter client in Google Chrome with the ChromedBird extension

by Lee Mathews Nov 5th 2009

Hot on the heels of my roundup of 15+ great extensions for Google Chrome, I've already found some more that deserve to be mentioned. First on the list: ChromedBird.

You probably guessed from the name, but yes, it's a minimal Twitter client which you can access from Chrome's main toolbar. It hides inside a little birdie button until you want to check your stream or post an update.

ChromedBird displays the last 5 tweets in your stream and allows you to post updates - and that's it. Links you paste into your updates are automatically shortened using bit.ly. Sure, it's a pretty stripped-down Twitter experience, but it's still nice to have close at hand when browsing with Chrome.

ChromeBird is a little buggy, but it's a very early build. I'll turn a blind eye, since we only get extension support in somewhat buggy dev builds (click here to download) of Chrome (or Chromium) right now anyway.

You can find the ChromedBird .crx over at ChromeExtensions.

Tags: .crx, chromium, dev channel, DevChannel, extensions, google chrome, GoogleChrome, twitter

Filed under: Social Software, Microblogging

Twitter officially adds Spanish-language support

by Jay Hathaway Nov 4th 2009

To butcher a quote from Spider-Man: with global power comes global responsibility. Now that Twitter has caught on around the world, it has to start supporting its many, many users who speak languages other than English. Spanish is the latest language to get official support from Twitter, announced in a blog post by Biz Stone. Appropriately, Biz wrote his announcement in Spanish.

In case you didn't study español in high school, here's the gist (Thanks, Google Translator! Thanks, high school Spanish teachers!):

Earlier this month, Twitter invited volunteers to translate the site into more languages. Biz thanks the volunteers who worked on the Spanish translation and explains that you can now change your language in Twitter's settings panel, or on the Twitter.com front page in the bottom right corner. He goes on to recommend some Spanish-speaking users to follow, including celebrities like NBA star Manu Ginobili.

Spanish is Twitter's third language, after English and Japanese.

Tags: language, spanish, twitter

Filed under: Business, Social Software

Amazon affiliate links now post to Twitter in two clicks

by Jay Hathaway Nov 4th 2009

In an email to members of its Amazon Associates program, Amazon.com started promoting Twitter integration for affiliate links. People have been posting Amazon links to Twitter for just about as long as Twitter's been around, but now it's an insanely easy two-click process, using the toolbar on any product page. This is good news for Associates, making Twitter a viable place to pick up some extra clicks and sales.

It's bad news if you hate product spam, though. Get prepared for a whole mess of folks starting up spammy Twitter accounts to take advantage of the new feature. Also get ready for well-intentioned friends who don't grasp Twitter etiquette to post some product links here and there. I'm not predicting a big storm, just a new minor nuisance.

The messages don't auto-post to your account, they just redirect you to Twitter.com with a pre-filled tweet. The text before the product names seem to rotate, and it includea stuff like "Great deal on," "Check out," and "Just saw on Amazon." I guess that'll make people who post frequent product links look a little bit less like spammers.

Tags: affiliate, amazon, Amazon associates, AmazonAssociates, sales, twitter

Filed under: Web services, Social Software, Microblogging

More Twitter List goodies: official list widgets!

by Jay Hathaway Nov 3rd 2009

Now that the new Lists feature has rolled out to everyone and become a big part of Twitter, the microblogging service has taken the logical next step and launched list widgets. That means you can embed a live version of your favorite Twitter list anywhere on the web. It doesn't even have to be your list, actually: if someone else has a favorite that you enjoy, you can make a widget of that, too.

Like the List-to-RSS solution I wrote about recently, list widgets allow you to follow a list without following everyone on it. Widgets also make it very easy to customize the appearance of your lists, as well as a bunch of other options. Live auto-updating is included - or you can set how often it loads new tweets - and you can also control the number of tweets that appear at once. Don't want to show avatars or hashtags? That's fine too, there are some checkboxes that will take care of it. This set of features makes widgets a great way to share your favorite Twitter content outside of Twitter.

[via TechCrunch]

Tags: list widgets, lists, ListWidgets, twitter, widgets

Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Social Software, Microblogging

New Seesmic beta is the first Twitter client to support lists

by Jay Hathaway Nov 2nd 2009

Seesmic might not be the best Twitter client, but it is the first to support the new lists feature. Users who sign up to Seesmic's mailing list can get access to the latest beta version of the Adobe AIR-based desktop client, including lists. List support is not complete yet: you can view your own lists and add people to them, but you can't see which lists have added you. It looks like you can create a new list, but you can't, yet -- if you check Twitter's web interface, you'll see your list isn't really there. These features are coming sooner than later, though, and this limited support is enough for Seesmic to call "first!"

I like the idea of lists in a Twitter client, but Seesmic really seems to be taking the kitchen sink approach to development. Last time we wrote about it, Facebook Page integration had just been added. There's a good chance you'll find one killer feature in Seesmic, whether it's pages, lists, or something else, but there'll be a bunch of other features that you don't need. Seesmic's strength is in being the first or only client to implement some of its features, but I think it's spreading a little thin in trying to be a top-flight client for both Twitter and Facebook.

Meanwhile, Seesmic's competitor in the "widescreen," AIR-based Twitter arena, Tweetdeck, is lagging behind on lists. Techcrunch reports that Tweetdeck plans to introduce the feature soon, though, with "extensive" integration.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Tags: beta, seesmic, seesmic desktop, SeesmicDesktop, twitter, twitter lists, TwitterLists

Filed under: Web services, Microblogging

Subscribe to Twitter's new lists as RSS feeds

by Jay Hathaway Nov 2nd 2009

If you're loving Twitter's new lists feature, but you're finding yourself a bit overwhelmed by following so many new people, there might be a better way to try out a list. One Twitter user has put together a list-to-RSS script. All you have to do is pop a list's URL into the site and drop the resulting feed URL into your reader. This way, you don't have to check the list on the web, and you don't have follow everyone on it.

Be warned, the list-to-RSS site has run into some rate-limit issues with Twitter's APIs, so you may have to check back periodically if it doesn't work for you on the first try. Meanwhile, if you're still looking for some good lists to subscribe to, may I recommend the Download Squad team list? Sebastian has also collected some great list recommendations and a step-by-step guide to using lists in an earlier Download Squad post.

Tags: lists, rss, rss feeds, RssFeeds, twitter, twitter lists, TwitterLists

Filed under: Internet, Social Software, Microblogging

Twitter Lists finally unrolled to the masses -- get your lists here!

by Sebastian Anthony Oct 29th 2009

Though Twitter seem to be having some stability issues, at the time of writing, almost every active Twitter user should now have access to the new Lists functionality.

We covered it briefly back when the beta started, but here's a quick guide on how to make them -- and how to get the most out of them, because really... this might be exactly the change we social media addicts have all been waiting for.

It's really quite easy. In three steps:

1. Visit the Twitter homepage. If you see the Lists box (as seen at the top of this entry), then you're good to go -- if it's not there, you'll have to wait until you're included in the testing, which should be really soon now.

2. Type in the name of someone that matches the list you're creating. Why this doesn't auto-complete using some kind of funky AJAX I do not know...

3. Finally, hit that new button that you've probably not seen before, and add them to a list!

And now you're done adding the first person to your first list! What now? Well... you can either make your own list of awesome people (or boring people to avoid?) -- or you can go and use the lists that other people have made!

Here are some good Twitter Lists to get started with -- I'll try to cater for everyone:

The Twitter Team -- good for up-to-the-minute news from the developer team itself. They can be quite funny too, from time to time...
Baseball Writers -- The Huffington Post have compiled this great list of sports-tweeters. Worth following if you're into baseball!
The Huffington Post also have an Iran list, a Democratic Rep. list, a Republican Rep. list... (you can view all their lists here.)
Musicians and Labels -- This one has a comprehensive collection of every record company and music magazine, and some bands/artists too.
And of course, we have a list of Download Squad's writers too!

If you have some great, comprehensive lists, please let me know, and I'll get them added -- there doesn't seem to be a List directory or search yet!

Update -- masterful fellow DownloadSquad blogger Lee has just discovered a Twitter Lists site called Listorious. It's really rather good.

Tags: lists, microblogging, social networking, SocialNetworking, twitter

Filed under: Utilities, Features, Windows, Microsoft

A bunch of fun and productivity-boosting gadgets for Windows 7

by Sebastian Anthony Oct 29th 2009

The number of gadgets for Windows 7, both made by Microsoft and third-party developers, has skyrocketed. Only a few months ago there was little choice and almost nothing worth calling home about -- but today, you're spoilt for choice! What you have here are a bunch of the most useful (or interesting) gadgets usable with your shiny-new OS, Windows 7.

Note: If you're going to be installing third-party gadgets, you'll be faced with a confirmation dialogue before they can install:

Just hit 'Install'! With that out of the way, on with the show!

1. Weather Bug: One of the things you'll soon notice about the gadgets I'm sharing here is that they all do one specific thing, and they do it well. I hate feature-creep. If I want to know the current weather -- then show me the damn weather.

Weather Bug lets you select a nearby weather station and shows you everything you might need to know: current temperature (Celsius or Fahrenheit), forecasted high and low, wind speed, and the current cloudiness (or lack of).

There's also a link for extended website-based information, and even a webcam stream if your weather station has one!

2. UEFA Informer: Here's one for the non-Americans (do Canadians like soccer?) -- a football gadget! Keep track of every major football (soccer) league in Europe, from Italian to English to even the Champion's League.

The greatest thing about this gadget is you can even pull up the recent results and upcoming matches in a given league, or for your favourite/most hated team.

There's an option in the settings to show even more leagues, so I assume it will be be kept updated -- perhaps to show the World Cup when that finally ticks around next summer?

3. Gmail Reader: There isn't really much I can say about this one. It tells you when you receive new mail. It tells you how many unread mail you currently have. It shows you the subject and sender of your unread mail.

What more do you want?

4. TweetZ: Apparently created to do away with the annoyances inherent to Twadget, TweetZ is a full-featured Twitter tool disguised as a desktop gadget.

Unfortunately its default setting is to tweet some birdsong annoyingly every time someone twits, but it's easy to turn off. As you can see in the screenshot, links are replaced with [link], and you can mouse-over them to see where they link to -- it even expands the link-shortening services, so you can actually see where you're going!

And it doesn't seem to steal away all of your CPU cycles like Tweetdeck does...

5.Facebook Explorer: Now you can stalk your friends without constantly alt-tabbing back to your Facebook browser tab! Not only can you see pending friend requests or event invitations but you can also see if you've been poked -- life-altering, I know! All of your friend's updates are here too, with a break-out box popping-up to give you more details if you click on an update.

You can't seem to comment on or 'like' anything though -- perhaps that will come at a later date? Or maybe this gadget has been designed with the idea of improving your productivity at work...? So there is a God...

Either way, confining Facebook to a gadget would seem like a sensible thing to do. I imagine most of us know what it feels like to be sucked into the Facebook Void, sometimes never to resurface.

Some gadget niches are missing; most notably: an RSS reader! There are still relatively few gadgets compared to other computer customisations and, perhaps surprisingly, there are no decent RSS readers as a result.

The only good one seems to be Google's own gadget which only works with Google Desktop. If someone out there wants to design an RSS feed-reading gadget that can log into Google Reader... you'd be a very popular man.

The best I can offer you is a system-tray notifier called GRaiN that was featured over on Lifehacker in July. Or, if you want to subscribe to a few individual feeds, the Hermes RSS reader gadget might satisfy you.

I've also not mentioned the thousands of system-diagnostic gadgets, or the Google Search gadgets -- I figured I would try and show you some new gadgets that you might not have seen before!

Tags: addons, facebook, features, gadgets, gmail, lists, plugins, rss, sports, twitter, weather, windows 7, Windows7

Filed under: Audio, Utilities, Web services

Pandora finally gets social sharing, via Facebook and Twitter

by Jay Hathaway Oct 28th 2009

There's a lot to love about the Pandora streaming music service. If you put together just the right combination of musical ingredients, you've got the modern-day equivalent of the perfect mixtape. Sending your brilliant Pandora station to a friend or 2 (or 200!) just got easier, with the addition of Facebook and Twitter sharing.

Until now, the only option for sharing your streaming radio stations was email. That feature is still around, including personalized "Station Gifting," which is a bit like a Pandora e-card. Twitter and Facebook sharing work with single songs or whole stations, and they place a link (along with any comments you want to add) into your public feed. Unfortunately, you still can't use these features to share with an individual friend via direct message, so you'll have to stick to email sharing for that.

[via CNET]

Tags: facebook, music, pandora, sharing, streaming, twitter

Filed under: Security

Phishing for the fail whale -- watch out, Twitterers!

by Sebastian Anthony Oct 28th 2009

Warning! There's a Twitter phish-fest going on at the moment. Hopefully you'll read this before you become an ill-fated Twit...!

If you receive a DM that looks something like this:

hi. this you on here? http://blogger.djh****.com

Do not use the link!

It will redirect you to a copycat Twitter log-in page, and then forward you to a fake fail whale -- and then later, when you least expect it, your account will have its avatar replaced with a naked girl that seems to be enjoying a deliciously unsymbolic and in-your-face penis. You will then, unwittingly, tell your friends all about fantastic dating websites that you've had a lot of success with recently. I think you'll all agree that's a fate even worse than a celebrity not responding to your well-thought-out and poignant tweet.

[via Sophos]

Tags: phishing, safety, social networking, SocialNetworking, twitter

Filed under: Search, Microblogging

Twitter takes deleted tweets out of search results

by Jay Hathaway Oct 26th 2009

Even before Twitter purchased Summize and turned it into Twitter Search, users started to realize that a deleted tweet was never truly deleted. If you knew what it said, you could easily find it by searching for some of the words, and even if you didn't, you could see someone's deleted tweets in the results for "from:username." M.G. Siegler over at TechCrunch noticed that after Twitter made high-profile search deals with Google and Microsoft, they also decided to clean up the problem and stop indexing deleted tweets.

This is a big win for personal privacy, because although Twitter Search is relatively low-volume and you'd have to know where to look to find a deleted tweet, the sheer number of Google searches that happen every day would inevitably result in people seeing tweets they weren't meant to. I think it's great that Twitter has closed this privacy loophole, but it's also important to think before you post anything, because with retweets, third-party aggregators and the like, your tweets aren't always going to be isolated to your Twitter page. Treating them as public, Google-indexable info is probably the best policy.

Tags: deleted, indexing, search, tweets, twitter

Filed under: OS Updates, Social Software

Microsoft's new Twitter account offers quick, brief Windows 7 tech support

by Brad Linder Oct 26th 2009

Windows 7 wasn't the only thing Microsoft launched last week. The company also introduced a new Twitter account, called @MicrosoftHelps, that offers customer support for Windows 7 users.

Basically, if you have a problem with Windows 7, a question about features, driver support or pretty much anything else, you can just direct it at @MicrosoftHelps, and it looks like there's actually a decent chance of getting a response. Of course, you could also try contacting Microsoft Support via email or phone. But I have to admit, I kind of like the idea of forcing tech support people to provide answers in 140 characters or less... even if a fair number of the messages posted in the company's Twitter feed include links to other web pages.

Oh yeah, and since there's no good way to charge for tech support over Twitter at this point, @MicrosoftHelps is available as a free public service for now.

[via MakeUseOf]

Tags: microsoft, microsofthelps, tech-support, twitter, windows-7, windows7

Filed under: Photo, Video, Web services, Microblogging

Yfrog now supports photo and video tweets from your webcam

by Jay Hathaway Oct 24th 2009

Yfrog, one of the most popular photo-posting services for Twitter, is making a move into video and offering webcam support. You can record and tweet, right from the Yfrog site. To get started, check the space where you'd normally see the option to upload an image or enter a URL: the new webcam option has been added right next to those. When the video window pops up, you can record a video, take a still shot, or take a still shot on a 5 second delay.

As always with Yfrog, the photos and videos you take are only a click away from being posted to Twitter. Because Yfrog is already one of the top players in the Twitter photo uploading game, and supported in several major Twitter apps, there's a good chance it could start to dominate the Twitter video arena, too. Currently, Twitvid and Twiddeo are two of the most popular options.

[via CNET]

Tags: photos, recording, twitter, video, webcam, yfrog

Filed under: Google, Search

It's not just Bing - Google makes Twitter search deal, too

by Jay Hathaway Oct 21st 2009

When Microsoft partnered with Twitter to allow its Bing search engine to index tweets in real time, it looked like they had finally gotten the jump on Google at something. Just hours later, Google VP Marissa Mayer announced that the big G had made a Twitter deal, too. Although Bing's Twitter product is out today, Google's won't be too far behind.

It looks like Google intends to use tweets to augment search results for up-to-the-minute data. In the official Google blog post on the subject, Mayer gives the example of weather conditions at a ski resort. Getting access to tweets is good for Google, but Bing still has the advantage of being the first to snag the Facebook deal. How long until Google gets one of those, as well?

Tags: bing, google, real-time, realtime, search, twitter

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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