twitter

Back in 2007, we put out two April Fools' Day posts chronicling fake and absurd start-ups. One was a Google Maps mashup for rodent sightings in New York restaurants. The other was a prenatal version of Twitter where unborn children could post status updates. A few readers took the bait in the comment sections, but it appears our ideas weren't so far off, as both have come to fruition just a year and a half later.

The first is, true-to-form, a maps mashup where New York City residents can see where local eateries have had rat-related health code violations. … Read more

These data portability announcements keep rolling on: On Monday, Google announced that its Google Friend Connect product, which plugs social-networking features into participating sites, is now compatible with Twitter.

So what does this mean? Well, if you go to a site that uses Google Friend Connect, you can opt to use your Twitter credentials to log in to it. Then, as the official Google blog explained, you can then find which of your other Twitter friends are using the same site. Also, you can send out a "tweet" announcing that you've joined up.

Twitter was one of … Read more

Zannel, a media-rich microblogging service that launched in late 2007, has a new and free iPhone application that puts many of its features on to the popular portable device.

Called CityWatch, the app takes a similar approach to Loopt and Whrrl in allowing you to see and interact with what's going on in your general proximity. It does this by taking each item that's been posted to Zannel and overlaying it onto a map using its geo tag. This also includes items from other networks, like Twitter, Flickr, and eventually any other service that has an open API.… Read more

It may not be the glossiest Twitter app for iPhone and iPod Touch, but it is among the fastest and easiest to use. You'll be able to post and refresh the screen from each of the four tabs. Your friends' timeline is the logical default, followed by replies, direct messages, and a search screen that can also show you public tweets from people nearby.

Composing messages is especially cool. After pressing the word balloon, you can begin tapping the keyboard or can press one of three buttons to geotag your tweet, take or upload a photo, and select a … Read more

Twitter may be the leader in the micro-blogging space, but it's missing key features--features its competitors offer. Will Twitter pick up on these omissions? We know groups are coming to Twitter, but we're not so sure about some of these other useful features...

Friendfeed: Twitter++

Although some say Friendfeed isn't a direct competitor to Twitter, I think it is. Twitter has one way to deliver content to the service--you type a thought in 140 characters or fewer and post it--but consider the fact that Friendfeed can do that in a flash, as well as import your blog, … Read more

Strangely, Twitter seems to take only a passive interest in its own propagation, leaving third-party developers like Orangatame Software fill the void. The free application TwitterBerry gives BlackBerry owners plenty of room to post tweets and read friends' time lines.

The default screen asks Twitter's hallmark question, "What are you doing?" If you don't feel like answering, you can press the BlackBerry's menu key to peruse your friends' time line or the public time line, sift through direct messages and replies, and search your own history of tweets. TwitterBerry isn't nearly as flashy-looking as … Read more

Twitter-to-FriendFeed Contact Sync is a simple, but useful tool to find Twitter buddies who are on FriendFeed. If you're considering FriendFeed, this is a great way to automatically populate your subscriptions list with people you may already be following elsewhere.

It works by tapping into your Twitter friends list and cross-referencing your follows with FriendFeed users. By giving it your FriendFeed nickname and API key (which can be found here), it will provide you with simple one-click subscription buttons that can be clicked without taking you off the page.

In case you're hesitant about giving out your security … Read more

Built on Adobe AIR, Twhirl is a stand-out desktop Twitter service that rolls the functionality of many ancillary services into one. For example, Twhirl automatically posts TinyURLs in place of long URLs, sends photos to TwitPic, and searches for Twitter topics using a built-in TweetScan engine. In the settings, you can configure Twhirl to cross-post updates to Jaiku and Pownce, much like the service Ping.fm.

Though cheery, the interface is also economical, providing extensive options for viewing and updating statuses and messages for all your Twitter, Friendfeed, and now laconi.ca accounts without overcrowding the small screen. The preferences … Read more

Nerdz is a really simple way to manage a group of your favorite Twitter users. You simply drop in the names of the people you want to keep track of and it pushes their tweets onto a gray background with each tweet fading away as it gets older.

To add more names to your Nerdz list you just add them to the end of the URL, and they'll be re-ordered alphabetically. You can send this link to anyone else as a quick way to give them suggestions of people to subscribe to, or simply use it as a no-software … Read more