I've Been Thinking About This…

Here’s another group of Twitter tools – this one for bloggers:

Twitter Username – by TechDebug/Lantrix

This converts any Twitter ‘@username’ string on your blog post to a link to ‘http://Twitter.com/username’, so that readers can follow that user or read their feed. This is running here, (temporarily, and will probably be deactivated because of the …)

Downside: It only works in the main post – not on comments or in the sidebar, which is disappointing – why wouldn’t the blogger want all occurrences identified and linked?

Twitip-ID – by Andy Bailey

This WP tool allows the blogger to add a Twitter field to the comment form, so the commenter can be reached that way.

Downside: Ever since WP 2.7, comments are not built by the code inside the comments.php file, so the documentation needs to be upgraded.

TwitterSplit and TwitterSplitter

When you twitter an interesting link to something, you send that URL as <your URL?interesting link>. When a user clicks on the URL you sent, it shows the interesting link in a frame with your banner on top.

Downside: Since I hate iframes and see it as just another cheap advertising trick, I can’t really recommend this one. But it’s a clever idea.

Twittar

Some people have a Gravatar – an icon that many types of blog engines support. For those that don’t have a Gravatar but do have Twitter, this plug-in pulls the avatar from their Twitter account (actually, it gives precedence to the Twitter avatar).

Downsides: Again, since WP 2.7, comments are not built by the code inside the comments.php file, so the documentation needs to be upgraded. Also, according to the comments on the site, it apparently loads slowly.

Bird Feeder – by Andrew Jaswa

When TwitterUpdater died (when I switched to WP 2.7), I found this plugin to send a Twitter message whenever a new post was published. Rock solid – does just one thing very well.

Downside (minimal): Doesn’t deal with all the events that TwitterUpdater did, but then I don’t use the other events either.

Tweetbacks – by Dan Zarrella

This tool is in beta right now. It works a bit like a pingback or traceback for your blog. Install it, and when someone references your URL in their Twitter, that Twitter will show up above your comment section.

Downside: The js code is hosted on Dan’s site, and things are getting very slow. So…

Quak Back – by Jeremy Hilton

…took the original code, improved the speed and made it run on the blog’s server. Then…

TweetSuite – by Dan Zarella

… turns the TweetBacks concept into server-side calls, along with a raft of other Twitter tools. An excellent concept, which I suspect will be improved and expanded over the next month or so. This one is now running on this blog – I’ve turned off Bird Feeder since that functionality is included here.

There’s a large listing of other Twitter clients and applications here (it’s not complete – it doesn’t have some of the ones in this post, for instance, but it’s a lot more complete than my little list!), so I won’t try building anymore lists – although if I find something I really love, I may document it at some time.

I’ve been enjoying Twitter for a while, and as the product has matured and stabilized it has gathered quite a few support tools. Some I’ve used, others I’ve just bookmarked. So, for your delectation, here’s the list.

I’m also playing with the idea of thumbnail previews of sites. These are coming from a repository at iwebtools; there’s a question in my mind as to how fast the thumbnails are built – of the 29 links in this post, only 4 were already built when I wrote it. (They claim the thumbnails are built within a few minutes, but I’ve been waiting for about two hours now.) Let me know in the comments if the preview (when it’s filled in) is handy or just an irritant to you. [Update: As of Feb 7 iWebtools still hadn't updated the thumbnails, so I've dropped the link.]

Clients

Twitter

Post up to 140 characters– like a teeny tiny blog, or your Facebook status line. It goes to people who follow you (your ‘tweets’); you can follow others, join groups.

Twhirl

“twhirl is a social software desktop client, based on the Adobe AIR platform. Some of twhirl’s features:

• runs on both Windows (2000/XP/Vista) and Mac OSX
• connects to multiple Twitter, laconi.ca, Friendfeed and seesmic accounts
• notifications on new messages
• shorten long URLs (using snurl, twurl or is.gd)
• cross-post twitter updates to Pownce and Jaiku
• post images to TwitPic
• search tweets using Twitter Search and TweetScan
• timeline filtering
• color schemes
• automatically check for new versions”

OutTwit (note: Not Outwit)

“If you are a Microsoft® Outlook® user, you probably have it open all the time. Now you can update your Twitter status and follow your friends without having to open any other applications. OutTwit seamlessly integrates Twitter into Outlook.

Some of OutTwit’s features:

• Update your Twitter status directly from Outlook.
• Receive your friend updates as Outlook messages.
• Archive, manage, group and search your tweets the same way you manage your email.
• Search, track keywords. OutTwit will automatically download ALL tweets matching the keywords you specify, even if you are not following the tweet sender. This feature is perfect for keeping up to date with the Twitter buzz on your name, brand, interests, etc.
• Group tweets by sender, topic, etc using the Search feature
• See new tweets at a glance.
• Assign custom folder and categories to new messages.
• Use Outlook’s “Reply” and “ReplyAll” commands to send twitter direct messages and @replies.
• Automatically sort new tweets into per-sender folders.
• Shorten URLs with tinyurl.
• See graphs of your Twitter usage statistics.
• Tweets sent to you (@replies and direct) are marked with high importance, so you can see them at a glance.”

Things I wish they’d implement/fix:

• If you type a message into the text area and then click somewhere else (to copy a link, for instance), the message vanishes. They say it’s because they’ve implemented the product using that function in Outlook, but I don’t find that a terribly satisfactory reason. Xobni and Lookout both run inside Outlook, and neither of them have this problem.
• I’d like to not receive messages that reply to someone I’m not following.  Of the last 100 Tweets I received from other people, 40% were replies I had no interest in.
• I’d like to have them pre-fetch pictures from services like twitpic/flickr and put them in the message, so I didn’t have to click through to my browser. 10% of my inbound Twitters contain picture URLs.

Thing is, this is my main Twitter pipe now. Other than the first 2 bullets above, I think it’s a tremendous product. I just want perfection (as I define it!).

HelloTxt

This client supports a huge number of services. Put your message in here and it will be sent simultaneously to any of the following that you’ve set up:

Bebo, BeeMood, blinko, Blip.fm, Blip.pl, Brightkite, Buboo, Custom Url, Facebook, Fanfou, Fazkut, Feecle, Flickr, Frazr, Friendfeed, Gozub, Hi5, Hictu, Identica, Jaiku, Jisko, Koornk, Kwippy, Linkedin, Meemi, Mexicodiario, MySpace, Numpa, Plaxo, Plerb, Plurk, Rejaw, Socialmedian, Tumblr, Twitter, Utterli, Yammer, you are.

You can define two groups (basically friends and business), and send messages to one or the other (or both) groups.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is like an extended version of Twhirl. Based on Adobe Air, it allows you to group feed into multiple columns by topic or group for easier focus. I found the interface a bit confusing – created columns I couldn’t get rid of easily/intuitively. Not bad, but needs some work. It is still in beta.

Sending

TwitSnip

Share text from other sites over Twitter. “TwitSnip is a simple tool for easily posting to Twitter. It lets you “quote” text on any web page. It does nifty things like looking up the @user for the website and linking back to the source. It shortens the URL too. It even tries to shorten the length of the tweet (when needed) using a twitabulary of short words.”

TwitPic

Share photos over Twitter. People can comment on the site, which goes back to you via your twitter feed.

TwitTube

Share videos over Twitter.

TweetShrink

OK, you want to type a bit more than 140 characters. How to squeeze it in? Use this service. Type in your message and it will compress it using SMS-style abbreviations.

That line became 13 characters shorter:

OK, U wnt 2 type a bit more than 140 characters. How 2 squeeze it in? Use this service. Type in yr msg, & it will compress it using SMS-style abbreviations.

Searching

Twitter search

Find a search term in the Twitter stream

Twitturls

“People post links in their twitter feed. We grab ‘em, visit ‘em, count ‘em, score ‘em and list ‘em. Today’s most tweeted links. This list is refactored every minute. A “what’s buzzing” on twitter.”

This site also displays the latest pictures and YouTube videos.

Twitt(URL)y

Tracks URLs in peoples’ Twitters, then finds who else is pointing to that URL to rate the popularity.

TwitPwr

Not sure I get the point of this. If you have a link to send to your tweets, put it in here. But if you don’t have links to send, you’d use another interface which will support the link anyway. Further, people visiting the link find it in a frame (blechh!) and your view is tracked. 2 Thumbs down.

TweeTree

“Tweetree puts your Twitter stream in a tree so you can see the posts people are replying to in context. It also pulls in lots of external content like twitpic photos, youtube videos and more, so that you can see them right in your stream without having to click through every link your friends post.”

Supported content: Youtube, Flickr, TwitPic, FriendFeed, Seesmic, Qik, Lala, Blip.fm, xkcd

PeopleBrowser

A powerful viewer into the Twitscape. Build your own group or monitor someone else’s. Watch the entire Twitterverse go by. See the latest trends in the conversations. Track news sites. Search by keyword. Send Twitters.

Other

Twitter status

Color codes the status of the Twitter system, and gives explanations

TweetScan

Download your Tweet history.

TwitterCounter

For those who think followers are important in quantity. This gives you a little badge to put on your website, and graphs your (or another twitterer’s) growth over time.

TwitTangle

As the number of people you follow goes up, you may not want to follow them all as soon as the tweets come in. Very painful to get started, and I don’t see the value. 1 Thumb down.

TwitterVenn – by Jeff Clark

Put in 2 or 3 search terms and build a Venn diagram. It also provides a tag cloud and a running feed at the bottom, either of which can be clicked. It’s a bit difficult to put the words in – uses a non-standard keyboard reader – but otherwise nice.

TwitterSpectrum – by Jeff Clark

Similar to TwitterVenn – ways to visualize relationships between words.

TweetWasters

How much time have people wasted reading someone’s twitters? This counts it. 2 ½ hours if you’ve been following me.

FriendOrFollow

Who are you following that isn’t following you back? Who’s following you that you aren’t following back? Here’s the quick way to find out.

MrTweet

Suggests other people to follow based on who you’re following. Clever idea if you want to connect to the influencers of the people you’re already following.

Xefer

Look at the times of day/week a person Twitters

Qwitter

Find out who’s leaving you. Qwitter checks your followers and notifies you as often as it can, depending on how many people are using it and how many followers they have.

TwitterGrader

Compare a Twitter user against the rest of the Twitterverse and get a ‘grade’. Also available is the ranking within the geographic area. My grade is 78, and I’m ranked 38th in my state (whoo).

FollowCost

How annoying would it be to follow a Twitterer? Basically, how many Tweets per day.

Twellow

Reads Twitters and automatically places the author into one or more categories based on Tweet content. So if you want to find people interested in a category, say pilots or pastors, antiques or pets, go to the front page and click through. It also allows you to search for people geographically, when you click on the ‘TwellowHood’ tab.

[Update, 19 Jan 09: That last paragraph got cut off somewhere along the way, sorry. And here's #30:

TweetGrid

Allows you to track up to 9 Twitter search terms, each in its own frame. Nice if you're looking for a number of words or phrases at the same time. ]

I’ve just installed the new version of Xobni – 1.6.3 – for Outlook. Xobni sits inside Outlook and acts as a helper, reading emails, indexing the content for searches and putting info about your contacts into a sidebar. I’ve used it quite a bit, although I have to say it puts a load on the system at Outlook startup time. Anyway, here are my thoughts on the new release:

• The download required me to uninstall the old version before I could install the new one. Not the best of approaches, but I did that. Then it re-indexed my email – again, not the most convenient approach.
• The new version links into Facebook to get certain pieces of information. I like the feature up to a point – problem is, a lot of my contacts have fairly common names, so I have to select the person I’m connecting to from a list – and there’s very little info about them, so often it’s just not possible to determine who this is. Not everyone on Facebook has a photo. When I do get a positive hit, though, it’s a winner.
• The LinkedIn connection from the previous incarnation is still there, and that’s a winner too. This time they’ve added Hoovers, which will go over ‘big’ with business-oriented users, and Skype contact support, which will go over big with a mostly different audience.
• There are some nice feature tweaks from the old version that I appreciate – the drop-down menu approach to the LinkedIn, Facebook & Hoover buttons; the new ‘Start over’ button (needed that!). I also like the more detailed aproach to the profile editing. The ability to pull info into the profile from verious sources available – photo from Outlook, LinkedIn, Facebook or Xobni; position & company info from Outlook, LinkedIn or Xobni – these are good additions. Behind the scenes there seem to have been a few adjustments – a little faster, I think, and the logic is definitely improved – it no longer confuses me with another Steve when it begins to build the indexes (it used to take about 30 minutes to figure out my correct name).
• Ranking still seems to be wrong based on the numbers – someone with 365 emails total is being ranked higher than someone with 366, and one friend with 3 total is ranked at 10, while another with 110 is ranked at 12! I don’t get that, but it’s not keeping me up at night.

At this point, the only confusion I have is – how do I merge profiles? It used to be that by giving 2 email addresses the same name, the profiles were merged. Now this doesn’t seem to happen. I liked the old approach, because it meant that I had all their current (and past) emails in one place (and it also merged their ranks); now if I click on someone I may not get the email I want.

My wishlist – include Twitter addresses, and allow me to send/receive my Twitters through the Xobni addon. I’m already using OutTwit for this – it has a few flaws, but combining products would be sweet. You could write the Twitter in the area currently used as the drop-down menu (hint, hint).

I got all excited about 3 months ago and decided to write a verse-of-the-day Twitter-bot. I had just bumped into Twitter a few days earlier (we don’t have a lot of this techy-stuff out here in New England), and I thought ‘just the thing’. Then the trouble started.

(more…)