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Jason Calacanis just posted about a new tool from Mahalo, currently in beta, that will let you post links to Mahalo, ma.gnolia, del.icio.us, tumblr, google and jaiku. I suspect more will come as well. I’ve been beta testing it for a week or so already, getting the inside scoop from Jason on Twitter. This is a pretty cool app and I suggest giving it a shot, especially for anyone who collects links like I do. It’ll save you a lot of time posting it to all the various social bookmarking sites. I’ve just started dabbling in submitting links to Mahalo but I’m liking the process pretty well. Unlike previous attempts at a human powered (directory), dmoz.org, Mahalo seems free of the corruption that plagues dmoz to this day, along with the weeks, or months it takes to wait to get denied.

Give the plugin a try here: Mahalo Follow.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, Mahalo, Jaiku, del.ici.us, tumblr, ma.gnolia

Macworld is slowing down Twitter today. Macworld is a huge phenomenon for Mac addicts, and I’m quickly becoming one. I can’t wait to see how much impact SXSW has on Twitter this year. Last year it practically launched it into space.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, Twitter News

Tweet What You Eat is a pretty cool idea for a Twitter Bot. I’ve lost nearly 35 pounds total and 10 of that in the last 6-7 weeks. I love anything that helps me along that goal and since I use twitter alot anyway,
Tweet What You Eat looks like a fun and easy way to help keep track of what I’m eating. If you’ve never written down what you eat and drink in a day I think you would be shocked at how much you actually consume. Those nibbles here and there add up.

TWYE works just like most bots, you follow, they follow and you direct message them your updates. Here’s their instructions:

• You make friends with ‘TWYE’ through Twitter. Simply tweet or twit ‘follow twye.’
• ‘TWYE’ then makes friends with you. In order for that to happen, you must follow the setup steps.
• You then send direct messages to TWYE with food items you’ve eaten like this, ‘d twye yogurt cup.’
• Tweetwhatyoueat.com checks the direct messages going to the TWYE account at regular intervals and parses and stores the contents and displays them in your diary.

This looks pretty slick and is already being featured on Lifehacker, so you know it’s going to bet some serious usage.

via lifehacker

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, Twitter Bots, Tweet What You Eat

Please excuse the mess, we’ve had a template mix up and I think the original may be lost. Argh!

It’s been that kinda day today.

Update: Thanks to my host who had a recent backup, the theme has mostly been restored. I have to apply some small css tweaks I made, but basically it’s fully functional again! Woot.

I’m sure you’ve seen me talk about wanting a client that manages most of my social network. Most of them have APIs, so why not? Finally, someone’s put together an IM style client that notifies you of updates, lets you manage friends, media, links, feeds… the whole ball of wax. Here is a video tour straight from 8hands, check this out:

The 8hands Video Tour from 8hands on Vimeo.

This is extremely cool. I’m installing it now

via download squaid via nicki

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, Twitter Clients, 8hands

twhirl is the latest Twitter Client I’ve come across using the Adobe AIR package. AIR makes it possible to run the same code on both Windows and Mac (others?) which I like. I hate finding some cool app and it only be for one system. As a developer, I use Windows, Linux and a Mac and I like finding tools that work on all three systems, which is rare. Adobe’s AIR is a step in the right direction.

twhirl looks like it’s off to a solid start. Just check out these features:

• runs on both Windows (XP/Vista) and Mac OSX
• automatically fetches your friends’ status updates, as well as replies and direct messages for you, into an all-in-one timeline
• color-coding different types of messages
• connecting to multiple Twitter accounts
• keyboard shortcuts
• sys tray / dock icon support
• visual and audible notifications on new tweets, configurable and with preview
• view, add and remove favorites
• shorten long URLs (using snurl.com)
• (un)follow users from twhirl
• automatically checking for twhirl updates
• changeable color schemes
• NEW: retweet a received tweet
• NEW: search public tweets (powered by terraminds)
• NEW: timeline filtering

Looks well worth giving a shot. I’m still looking forward to a client like this that supports Pownce and all the others that have API’s. This way I can post to all my microblogging hot spots at once.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, Twitter Clients, twhirl, Adobe, AIR

Chris Garrett wrote A Quick Introduction to Twitter for Bloggers, which is probably one of the best collections of advice for anyone new to Twitter that I’ve seen. While it doesn’t really get into the technical details, the quick intro is all about networking and using Twitter to take full advantage of it in terms of promoting yourself and your blog. Nice work.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, Twitter Tutorials

Damon posted a comment on the Twitter Stats post where I pointed out his excellent perl script. Damon’s project also inspired a version of Twitter Stats Using Ruby and a Web Based version, which is pretty cool. He also mentions he’s wanting to get his up on the web too.

Quick reference to Damon’s original perl script.

Anyone seen a php one? If not, please don’t tell me I have to write it, or I just might!

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, Twitter Stats, Perl, Ruby

I refuse to converse with idiots who wear Bluetooth headsets all day
- Henry Rollins

It’s a trend I can’t stand myself. I hated it when people would ramble aimlessly through the grocery store on their cellphones driving the carts as badly as they do their cars. Now you get people wearing these headsets all day long. The thing that bothers me most is the trend of people working wearing them and talking on them. As if customer service wasn’t bad enough, now I have to wait for some wage slave to finish chatting to ring me up, or listen to some guy argue with his girlfriend while he’s installing sheet rock? You want to impress me with that thing then hang sheet rock and do customer support on the headset. Get paid twice for the same hours!

The question of what Twitter is going to do to make money seems to come up now and then. So far, there seems to be no attempt to make money with the service. Are they waiting for critical mass? Are they holding out for a buy out? Are they going to sell the solution as a platform?

Jason Calicanis offers three business models that make Twitter a billion-dollar business in 12-24 months:

1. In feed advertising
2. SMS Advertising
3. Subscriptions

You may remember Jason was big on pushing Google into offering professional level webmail for clients. Free services with optional premium or business class versions that are on faster servers makes a lot of sense. When I worked at 451 we paid for the pro version of Akismet, a service you can get for free. I think a combination of any of these would work pretty well.

Jason’s post was in response to Allen’s Is Twitter F’ed? post. Evan, the guy behind blogger.com, odeo and others, has been known to build a tool before he has a business model for it. In fact, blogger wasn’t even the software they set out to write. They wrote that to help them in their own office while working on another project. So do they already have a business plan and it’s not just apparent yet? Or will they simply have to figure out a way to make money?

If you look at the number of tweets on the site sent via the web, I don’t see any reason they couldn’t also put some ads on the Twitter.com, like Pownce, Facebook and other services do. The people using Twitter are probably still in the top 10% of internet users, the influencer’s and I’m sure advertisers would pay a premium to get their message in front of those people.

Right now, all we can do is wait and see what they do.