All 'Bout Twitter: Twitter Connect

Showing posts with label Twitter Connect. Show all posts

TwitterGadget - Now Tweet from your GMail or iGoogle

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 4:26 AM View Comments

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.

Twitsay - Send voice messages in Twitter

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 6:30 AM View Comments

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.

Twitterfone - Convert voice to text and post in Twitter

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 6:16 AM View Comments

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!

Twitku - Read and post on Twitter & Jaiku at once

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 3:00 AM View Comments

Twitku is a web service that lets the user to check out the posts on Twitter and Jaiku simulataneously. Also, the user can post on Twitter or Jaiku or both from Twitku itself. Twitku can be partially compared to Meebo.

The public timeline from both Twitter and Jaiku are presented before the user. Also, a small "Post Message" window at the side, lets the user to post on Twitter and Jaiku by checking on the checkbox. Twitku is useful for users who use both Twitter and Jaiku frequently. The interface is very simple. The API's of both Twitter and Jaiku are responsible for making this service possible.

Before posting or checking out their status, the user is requested to login to Twitter with their Twitter username and password. While posting into Jaiku, the user is asked to login using Jaiku username and Jaiku API Key. Auto-refreshing of the public timelines of both Twitter and Jaiku take place every 300 seconds.

Once logged in, the user can view their private Twitter feeds and replies to them. And, in case of Jaiku, the user can view either their private feeds and public feeds. The user can also change the default arrangement of Twitter and Jaiku timelines according to their wish.

Drill down:

Simultaneously post a single message to both accounts
Tiny URLs are shown as their respective original URLs.
URLs are turned into clickable links
Flickr photo URLs show thumbnails
Foreign characters are supported

Back drop:

Twitter API calls are limited to 70 per hour

Really useful for Twitter & Jaiku maniacs!

TwitterSnooze - Temporarily suspend your verbose friends

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 9:40 AM View Comments

Definitely your friends are not spammers, but when you are in a particular situation where you need to shut up your verbose friends for a while - user TwitterSnooze.

Why TwitterSnooze?

It's a good tool to avoid a blast of tweets from a conference you are not attending... just snooze the conference goers for a few days.
It's a nice way to get back at someone for saying something stupid... give them the silent treatment ;)
It's a good way to ignore someone that just flooded your timeline for no good reason... but it was just a one-time offense and doesn't merit permanent unfollowing.

So, its very much simple. Login to TwitterSnooze with your Twitter username and password, also mention the user who you want to snooze. Mention the time period for which you need to snooze the particular user which can vary from 1-30 days. But, a slight disadvantage is that the particular user whom you are snoozing will be updated with an email stating they have been unfollowed. Anyways, you can remedy the situation by checking on an option which allows you to inform in your timeline, that the particular user is just been snoozed and not totally unfollowed. The user will be automatically followed back, once the particular time-period for snoozing is over.

A definite try-out! A definite high five!

Follow AndrewParker

Twerp Scan - Eliminate spammers in Twitter

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 2:33 AM View Comments

Every Twitter user who has a public profile in Twitter has atleast a small percentage of spammers who are following them, and the spammers annoy them by sending the same tweets again and again.. If you have a large number of follower base, it would be really difficult to find out and eliminate the spammers. Most of you would have tried eliminating them, but we just could not go on with it again and again. Need of a tool to find out spammers? Make was to TwerpScan.

Now within a really small amount of time, there has been an enormous increase in Twitter users,

and with it an increase in bots who pose as users in Twitter. What do spammers gain by following you? Twitter Karma is working out here. When someone follows you, most of us have a tendency to follow them back, and most of us do without even bothering to check out the profile of the user. And, when in any case you begin following a spammer. That's it! Your Twitter timeline would be crowded with a flurry of Tweets from the particular user. How do we solve this? A quick glance at the recent tweets of any user will be helpful to find out whether the user is a perfect, innocent Twitter user [:P] or any arrogant bot. But if you really have a large amount of follower and following base, then you are in a really bad situation. TwerpScan comes in handy here.

User is asked to sign in with his/her Twitter username and password. Twerpscan will check out the number of followers of all your contacts, the number of people they are following and then try to compute the ratio between the two. The user can easily sort the list of their contacts, display them in variable batches of 20 to 100 people, and the user can follow, unfollow or block contacts then and there, on the spot. Isnt it easy?

Follow TwerpScan.

TwitterLocal - Find Twitter users near you!

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 7:38 AM View Comments

There is an entire gamut of tools to help find out new people in Twitter, but would it not be interesting if you are able to find out people who are near your locality? Interesting, isnt it? Make way to Twitterlocal.

TwitterLocal is an Adobe AIR based application which

helps to find people in your geographical area. The user has to enter the location and the radius within which to find the tweets.

Features :

Location can be indicated either by pincode or city/state combination
Multiple locations can also be indicated in different panes
No username is required

TwitterLocal was previously functioning as a web tool along with the AIR application. But since, Twitter has recently cut out their Jabber feed from TwitterLocal, the application is now solely relying on the XML API.

Follow MattKing.

Twitter100 - Check out your followers easily

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 3:49 AM View Comments

Twitter 100 is an amazing tool to easily manage all your followers. The Twitter homepage lists all your followers in a waterfall-like model. When many users are following you, it becomes a difficult task to eliminate people who you consider spam and check out for some interesting people whom you may like to follow. The mashup is really simple and it helps you to follow people by listing them in a single page.

The user needs to just enter his Twitter username. The listing of the 100 followers is based on the recent updates in your followers list. Auto refreshes take place and the user is given with the choice to set his/her own auto-refresh rate. The listing of the Twitter users is in the form of a grid. The listing is done along with the particular user's latest tweet.

Almost all Twitter users with a large amount of follower base find it difficult to check out their friends latest tweets on Twitter. Twitter100 really solves this problems for people with such a kind of difficulty. The grid like appearance of Twitter100 with the listing of users is really simple and effective.

Twitter 100 is given a high five!

Follow Akiyan.

MyTweeple - Manage your followers easily

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 8:39 AM View Comments

MyTweeple is an easy place for Twitter follower management. It provides you an overview of all your Twitter friends and thereby helping you to easily follow, unfollow and block Twitter users.

Three steps are required for access to MyTweeple :

Sign in with Twitter
Sync with Twitter
Ho! Thats it! Now easily follow, unfollow and block users.

Features :

MyTweeple uses autodiscovery to search each person's More info URL to search for RSS and Atom feeds.
Mouseover the View link which enables you to see the particular user's tweets on Twitter.
Users are limited only to 100 Twitter API calls per enough, though I think this is more than enough for most users.
You can also view the recent updates of your followers and the number of followers they follow.

Follow MyTweeple
Follow Shannon Whitley

Crowd Status - Creating groups in Twitter

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 7:26 AM View Comments

With the overabundance of followers and their tweets, its highly possible that you miss the tweets of your near and dear ones. I have been experiencing this for quite a while. And, then I heard of CrowdStatus. Now, this new tool helps the user to create group pages to see what your friends, colleagues, family members etc. are upto.

Crowdstatus is made up of crowds, each crowd contains people and each person in the crowd has a status. This means that you can see what everyones current status is in a crowd. Think of crowdstatus as a twitter group.

CrowdStatus is very much in the beginning stage now. The site states that, they are definitely in Alpha. At present, the site works only with Twitter and you can add people to your crowd only if they have a Twitter account. CrowdStatus is created by Darren Stuart. He has stated that this is a personal project till now and not to ask about any business models. (Hence an inference can be made, that the project is very much in the beginning stage and more updates can be expected in the near future.) Users can also request features to be added to the site.

A very interesting and innovative startup! A definite high five!

Follow Darren.

Twitter Karma - Catch up easily with your followers

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 6:43 AM View Comments

Consider this situation - You have thousands and thousands of followers. Managing your Twitter account with thousands and thousands of followers is really a herculean task. (In short, you are in deep shit! :P) To ease you in this task, ahoy - make way to Twitter Karma.

Twitter Karma is developed by Dossy Shiobara. (Do contact Dossy and give her a high five!) It is a Flash application that fetches your followers as soon as you click the Whack! button on the page. This helps you to easily sift through your friends and manage them. By default, your friends (or followers) is sorted on the basis of the most recent update i.e. your follower who has posted the most recent tweet among all appears first in the list. The user can also arrange the list alphabetically in an ascending or descending manner on the basis of their Twitter ID. Filtering of lists can also be easily done - only friends or only followers, all friends or all followers, and mutual friends. You can also easily unfollow users.

Follow TwitterKarma.
Follow Dossy.

GeoChirp - Locate people on Twitter by using a map

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 10:58 PM View Comments

GeoChirp is a simple map based tool for locating Tweeples within a specific geography. GeoChirp can be innovatively used for marketing. The user clicks on an area in the map and with the specified keyword entered, he can find out people within a radius of 1-50Kms. from the area who tweet with the specified keyword. Didnt get it?

For example, if you want to know Tweeples who tweet about "Social Media" in New York. You click on New York in the map either switching Universal Search ON or OFF and then filter your search results by using the keyword, Social Media in this case. BAM! Within a few seconds, you are presented with Tweeples tweeting about Social Media in and around New York.

GeoChirp is a mashup of Twitter and Google Maps with Auto Refresh capability. The users can also subsribe for an RSS Feed of their search results. So once, GeoChirp finds out some news users for your specified search query, you are immediately intimated.

Features:

Ability to search upto 50Kms from the specified destination. (Universal Search)
Simple and Interactive AJAX Interface.

Steps:

Set Location
Set Filter
See Results

Follow GeoChirp.
Follow Rohit Sengar - GeoChirp's Main Programmer.

Localtweeps - Localize your Twittosphere

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 7:11 AM View Comments

LocalTweeps helps the user to find other Twitter users nearby his locality. The user is requested to enter the pincode. And, the user will be notified when some other twitterers join Twitter with the ZIP he has provided. LocalTweeps can be used to promote event or any other special gatherings in your city. At present, LocalTweeps services are being provided in United States, United Kingdom and Canada.

The tool maps Twitter profiles and content geographically. Once the user enters his pincode, he is taken to his Twitter homepage with a tweet that reads "Just listed myself in http://localtweeps.com Local Twitter Directory in ZIP XXXXX". Once the user updates that particular tweet, his profile will get listed in the Local Tweeps directory. Local Tweeps also lists down top cities and top states.

At the time of posting, USA forms the major market for LocalTweeps with 82% user base followed by Germany and India. LocalTweeps is a very useful solution to find other twitterers nearby your location who share your tastes.

Follow LocalTweeps.

Tweetmondo - Finds Twitterers Nearby

Posted by Simbu On 10:14 AM View Comments

Tweetmondo is a local realtime Twitter user search engine. It gets the user's location and it'll show the Twitterers who are close to that location. The more precise the location is, equally more precise the results will be. The user icons appear on Google Map. A brief bio of the users will be displayed and we can follow the users directly from Tweetmondo. If the user wants to avoid being found by other users, there's a privacy setting available for that too.

Results come from different sources, including Tweetmondo’s crawler, that listens to Twitter public timeline and indexes users with location information, as well as locations informed by Tweetmondo users while visiting Tweetmondo’s website. Tweetmondo is also available for layar- a mobile Augmented Reality browser. It allows the users to find Tweeple and Tweets nearby.

Follow Tweetmondo.

Nearby Tweets - Search people in your locality

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 8:08 AM View Comments

Nearby Tweets extends Twitter to its true potential thereby making Twitter a geography centric tool for networking and a business tool for building customer relationships and monitoring real time buzz. Nearby Tweets enables the user to check out for other Twitterers nearby his/her location. The tool lets you know who is recently active on Twitter and is tweeting near the location you entered.

Nearby Tweets is dynamic and displays the Twitter users who recently tweeted. Thereby, the more you update, the more you show up on Nearby Tweets and hence you get more number of followers. You can also filter the search results to certain keywords. The user can also set the radius for the search.

Nearby Tweets is a really useful application if you want to find fellow Twitterers nearby your location. Nearby Tweets was built using Twitter's search API, Google Maps API and the Google AJAX API.

Follow Nearby Tweets.

Twitter Job Search - Job search in Twitter

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 12:23 AM View Comments

Job search engines have become an integral part of Web 2.0 right from the very beginning. Lots of job search engines are springing up day by day. But, definitely a job search engine using the Twitter API is something one should sit and take notice. TwitterJobSearch is one such magnificient tool.

How it works?

TwitterJobSearch mainly looks at context. Search for the position you want in the job. An advanced section is also provided in the search area where you can eliminate some words in the search thereby removing off unwanted search results. Semantic tools are used for the search. If your job search is matched, then you are intimated of it. Users can also browse Jobs from different categories rather than search for it. At the time of posting, around 17 different parent categories are available with each category containing a plethora of sections. For example, the IT and Internet category contains .Net Developer, Ajax, C# Developer, Flash, Java, PHP, SEO, Web Developer and various other categories. Users can also search for the buzz in Twitter. Recruiters are also provided with a separate section to post their job. When recruiters post something related to jobs, TwitterJobSearch immediately indexes the tweet. Twitter username and password is required for signing in.

Widgets are also provided by the site. Moreover, a Mozilla search plugin is also available.

Follow TwitterJobSearch.

Twitter Grader - Keep up with your Twitter Rankings

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 12:10 AM View Comments

Twitter Grader is a tool that allows the user to know his Twitter Grade and will give out suggestions on how to improve his Twitter grade and how to improve his/her sphere of influence on Twitter. The interface of Twitter Grader is majestic. Twitter Grader is one another tool created along with a set of another tools like Website Grader, Press Release Grader and Facebook Grader.

No Login is required in order to access the basic features. Once you enter your username, you

are provided with your grade out of 100. The user's account summary is also provided and a tweet cloud which presents you with the most used words in your tweets. The user can also enter a Twitter username in the box provided to check whether the user is following you.

How it works?

The Twitter algorithm is simple and straightforward. Your grade is calculated on the basis of

Number of followers - More the number of followers, higher your Twitter Grade
Power of followers - Higher the Twitter grade of your followers, higher your Twitter Grade. Works similar to Google's Page Rank algorithm.
Updates - More the number of updates, higher your Twitter Grade.
Time of Last update - Calculated on the basis of your recent update.
Follower/Following Ratio - The higher the ratio, the higher your Twitter Grade.
Engagement - The more the number of retweets of your post, the higher the Twitter Grade.

Know more about Twitter Grader ranking here.

The other features

Certain other interesting features are also provided in Twitter Grader. A Twitter Elite section is provided which gives you the Top Users, Top in Location, Top Cities, Top US Cities and Top Countries according to the grade calculated.

Twitter Grader is one tool you dare not miss if you are an active Twitterer. HIGH FIVE!

Follow Grader.

Twitter Friends - Your relevant network on Twitter

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 11:06 AM View Comments

Twitter Friends is a tool which allows you to find friends on Twitter.

Features:

helps you to find out relevant people with your taste from the vast network of Twitter contacts.
helps you to visualize the network of your contacts and your contact's contacts.
helps you to find out your online Twitter friends.
gives you statistics regarding your Twitter account.
gives you the most conversational Twitterers and those who are posting the most links.

No password is required for logging into Twitter Friends. Most features can be accessed without logging in. But, if you want to find out your online Twitter friends, you need to login.

Twitter Friends is powered by Twitter Search, Google Visualization API and JIT Library.

Follow Benedikt Koehler.

GroupTweet - Share Tweets only with your community

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 4:56 AM View Comments

GroupTweet works based on the information from the Twitter API. The goal of GroupTweet is to share your tweets only among a particular group and vice-versa.

Sign up is simple. Create a new Twitter account. The Twitter account is common for your whole group. This Group Twitter account is required in order to sign into GroupTweet. Now, request all the group members to follow the group's Twitter account. In order, the group Twitter account must also follow all the members. Members of the group can direct their tweet to other members by sending a direct message to the group account. That's it. Your work is done.

Now, its time for GroupTweet to start its work. GroupTweet will be listening for all the direct messages sent to your group's Twitter account. When a direct message is recieved, GroupTweet will publish the message on your group's Twitter account. Thus, it enables all the members of the group to recieve the message.

GroupTweet solves a particular problem in Twitter by enabling the users to send tweets only to a certain particular group of followers the user chooses.

Follow GroupTweet.

Tweet Scan - Search Keywords on Twitter

Posted by Sathis Raj S On 6:55 AM View Comments

Tweet Scan is a Twitter-based search engine. Tweet Scan lets the user search the Twitter's public timeline for snippets of text (also, called keywords) queried by the user. Tweet Scan also provides you an easy way to network with people who share your interests.

Tweet Scan not only searches Twitter, but also identi.ca, The TWIT Army canteen, bleeper.de, fun.ohhh.no, Suffice to Say and MicroCiaran. User profiles can also be searched and the results can be availed via email, RSS and JSON. A facility like Google Alerts, is also provided by Tweet Scan. Email alerts can be set up in Tweet Scan wherein the user will be intimated once his set of keywords are mentioned in Twitter and the other sites.

The users can also search for people to follow using the User Search in Tweet Scan. This searches for the Twitter profiles indexed by Tweet Scan. Tweet Scan also provides you with Historical Search wherein the user can also search for 220 Million Tweets dating back to November 1st, 2007. But, the Historical Search facility is not free. It can be availed only by paying a nominal fee of $20/year.

Our database consists of 220,660,667 messages from Twitter and another 1,627,559 from identi.ca. It's still growing as you read this. You can search by keyword, by time down to the second, by microblogging service or by user. Access is available only to subscribers so register, subscribe, and you'll see a link on your control panel for Historical Search. - David Sterry

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