Tweeple Twak (The Twitter App I’ve Been Dying To Show You)

When a friend showed me the Twitter app he was building not too long ago, I was pretty darned excited. I knew for a fact that this app would greatly appeal to Twitter users who would  like to keep track of their followers, especially in the wake of the great Twitter follower drop of 2008, courtesy of Twitter themselves.

The app is called Tweeple Twak and it lets you track your Twitter followers and keep an eye on trends. You can see when someone un-follows you and you have the option of sending a discrete message to that person to find out why they decided to do so. It may not win them back, but it certainly would provide some valuable insight into who’s unfollwing you and why. 

In addition, Tweeple Twak provides some nice charts and graphs that help you keep an eye on follower trends. Did you get a big bump in followers one month? Now you’ll be able to visualize when that spike happened. Lost a lot of folks one day? Maybe it was something you said. The service also promises other tools too, like individual reporting queues and email alert responders.

OK, now the bad news: the app is still in alpha. Private, you-can’t-get-in-yet alpha. However, there is an emailing waiting list on the homepage, so at least you can be notified when it opens up.

Update: David Risley has his review up now, too. Yep, it’s OK to blog about it. Josh tweeted it back on the 15th when I told him another site had discovered it.

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By now, you probably have heard the news about the Microsoft Sphere. From the same researchers who developed Surface, the Sphere is a similar multi-touch device except instead of being a table, it’s shaped like a globe. The sphere was built as a collaborative effort between Global Imagination, makers of a digital globe known as the “Magic Planet” and Microsoft R&D, who added the sphere’s multi-touch capabilities. The big question everyone wanted to know was what can the Sphere do? The obvious answer is that it can be used as a globe. With the Sphere, you can view a spinning globe that displays different views from Microsoft Virtual Earth. The Sphere can also be used to play games – like a unique spin on “Pong,” for example. It also lets you do other “Surface-like” things such as resizing photos, dragging photos across the sphere in real-time, or sending them to the other person across the sphere by pressing down on them.

For a closer look at what Sphere can do, check out this video:

The Office Labs site has released their first community prototype project: Speed Launch. (Community Prototypes are projects that Microsoft employees work on in their spare time.) Speed Launch is an application launcher, similar to Launchy, which I reviewed earlier here. 

With Speed Launch, you can quickly launch programs, documents, even frequently accessed websites. What makes Speed Launch different though, is that you can add items to it via drag-and-drop. For example, if you want to type “DVD” in order to launch Windows Media Player, you can just drag the Media Player icon to the Speed Launch app. Similar to how Launchy works (by pressing Alt+Spacebar), Speed Launch is accessed by typing Windows+C. Using some of its built-in functions, you can also use Speed Launch to do comparative web searches, Wikipedia searches, check weather, or check stocks, and more.

Speed Launch is available as a free download from here.

For those of you who haven’t taken the plunge with Ping.fm, I just came across a cool little cross-posting tool for Twitter/Identi.ca users. The app will post Identi.ca updates to your Twitter account automatically after you fill in the necessary information. The first post will only grab your latest Identi.ca update, and then, after that, all updates will be parsed and posted to Twitter every few minutes.

Of course, before you start using an app like this, you need to think carefully as to whether what you’re posting is relevant to both communities or if you’re pushing out cross-posting spam. For a good guideline on this subject matter, check out Rahsheen’s post on cross-posting etiquette.

Today, I asked this question on Twitter and I got some interesting responses:

Now I’m really curious. I was surprised to see so many NO’s. I guess I thought that most of the people following me on Twitter would probably be social media enthusiasts who loved the FriendFeed service, too. This is a great example of how you can gain valuable insight from a quick Twitter poll. And it also convinces me that the Twitter audience is becoming more diverse than ever - not everyone is as much of a social media crack addict as I once thought.

I decided to follow this up with a longer post on RWW tomorrow and a more in-depth poll. I hope you’ll check back in the morning and participate.

Note: This is a personal update. For those of you who read this blog solely for info about new web apps, you can skip this post.

Since Marshall will be getting married in September (congrats!), I will be going to this year’s DEMO conference as ReadWriteWeb’s representative. I have just one thing to say: Sweet! I’m so freaking excited.

Now, I’ve heard that there’s some sort of rivalry between DEMO and TechCrunch 50, but frankly people, I don’t care. I’m just excited to have the opportunity to get up close and personal with the technology debuted there and to blog all about it. (Well, as much as I’m physically capable of, that is). This will be my first conference, so I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s all about.

Well, I take that back. This is by no means my first conference – I’ve been to plenty – just not ones like this. I’ve been to some Microsoft events, but most of the conferences I’ve been to were furniture industry events. Yes, furniture.

A Little History

You see, before I worked as a pro blogger, I worked in I.T. and, during that time, I did a five-year stint with La-Z-Boy. While there, I went to all sorts of furniture-related events from Market to the GERS (now Escalate) annual conference to GERS Users Group regional meetings. (GERS/Escalate is big software player in furniture). Those were good times - the furniture industry was really interesting to me and I learned a lot there about business and technology.

However, working there also gave me valuable insight into how people relate to and use technology in the real world. At La-Z-Boy, part of my job involved training the new hires on the use of our systems. As anyone who has worked in retail knows, sales is a high turnover position. Because of that turnover, I had the opportunity to meet and teach a wide range of people from as young as 20 to as old as 60+. Remembering how these people – real people – thought about and used technology has helped to keep me grounded.

But it wasn’t just the furniture industry that gave me insight into this. I’ve actually worked in several different industries throughout my working life. For example, I spent a few years in Key West working in the hospitality and travel/tourism industry (and having a lot of fun) doing everything from working on a snorkel boat to working the front desk/concierge desk at B&B’s. When I returned to school for I.T. (yes, returned - I have an unused B.A. that I don’t like to admit to…..oops.), I helped pay the bills by working in an administrative position at a real estate office. I spent a few weeks at a software company before they went out of business and I spent my last year in I.T. in the finance industry.

You might called me unfocused, or perhaps someone who never figured out what she wanted to be when she grew up, but I like to think of myself as “well-rounded,” OK?

A “Real-World” Perspective Is Important

I’ve tried to hold onto this real-world perspective in my work, but it’s hard to do, especially when you’re passionate about technology – it’s very easy to get sucked into all this. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been guilty of preaching to the choir, and I doubt that will change the longer I am a part of this industry – it might even get worse! It’s hard to walk that line between being really enthusiastic about technology and being blind to its potential for real-world success.

However, I think it’s important to hang onto this perspective and give the web a dose of realism every once and while. So much of what is written in this industry is crafted by people whose cities are blanketed in wi-fi and where everyone around them has an iPhone. While on the one hand, that sounds like my own personal version of Utopia, it is not the real world…at least not yet. Even here in the not-backwards-at-all city of Tampa, Florida, a few of us got together for a “tweetup” just so we could finally connect in real life with other people like us – we’re still few and far between, it seems… but our numbers grow a little every day.

I do believe technology is important; I find it fascinating and interesting, and I think it can be a valuable tool no matter what industry you work in, but I think it’s important to remember that as technology/web 2.0/social media addicts, we’re at the far end of a wide spectrum of users. I believe it’s called the “bleeding edge.”

Anyway, I hope to bring some of this perspective as well as the insights that I have learned thus far to this year’s Blogorlando, where I will be presenting on the top of “New, New Media,” — if you’re in the neighborhood, feel free to drop by. I’m also going to the Sarasota Design Summit, whose focus this year will be on social and mobile media.

If you want to meet up at any of these events, please get with me on Twitter (@sarahintampa).

I bought an iPod Touch. Now, you may be wondering why a social media enthusiast like myself is out there buying a iPod Touch instead of an iPhone, and the truth is that it came down to cold, hard cash.

The problem was that both my husband and I have a T-Mobile account and neither of our contracts are up until February of next year. So in order to get an iPhone, I would either have to pony up the full asking price of the phone ($600) or pay the termination fee ($200) and then purchase the iPhone ($200) with the new AT&T contract. While the second option seems the most reasonable, both my husband and I agreed that we wouldn’t switch to AT&T until we can both cancel our T-Mobile contracts. The last thing we wanted is two cell phone bills for the next 6+ months. Also, when you’re trying to be frugal, it’s very hard to justify spending $600 or $400 on something that would only be $200 if you could be patient and wait.

Anyone who knows me, though, will know that being patient is not one of my strong suits. I am actually known in my family as the one who has shaking Christmas presents down to a science. And when shaking is unsuccessful, I will pull a corner back and take a peek. (For the record, I am now no longer allowed to touch any presents prior to opening them.)

So of course I’ve been looking for an angle that would allow me to get my hands on an iPhone for sometime. Unfortunately, my husband, newly pragmatic when it comes to money management, only saw the waste of spending the extra money and had no interest in the absolute and total joy that accompanies the holding of a shiny new device in my greedy little hands.

Enter the iPod Touch. The $300 8 GB iPod Touch.

I would be lying if I said that this article didn’t put the thought into my head. I wondered, if what I’m really looking to do is demo some darn apps and browse a few iPhone enabled websites like FFtoGo.com, then isn’t the Touch is all I really need? (That is, ahem, for now).

After convincing my husband of the practicality of this purchase (I can sell it in February to pay for the iPhone!), it was off to Target. Today, I’m the proud owner of the nifty little device and I get to play with a lot, if not all, of the apps that the iPhone owners are cooing about.

Am I still getting the iPhone come February? Heck yes. But at least I have something to tide me over until then.

Oh, and why is this a “bad, bad thing?” Because the husband wants to keep the device for himself now. That brings us up to $500 by the time I get the iPhone. So much for saving money.

FriendFeed

Better FriendFeed is a new Greasemonkey script based on the work done by Duncan Riley and AJ Batac. Basically, it’s a bunch of great FriendFeed scripts in one. With Better FriendFeed, you can do the following:

• Add and remove custom tabs to FriendFeed simply by specifying the URL and/or favicon UR
• Activate Cleaner FriendFeed to make everything a little "prettier"
• Configuration is located at Tools->Greasemonkey->User Script Commands->Better FriendFeed

The script creator notes that you should probably disable any other FriendFeed tabs scripts before installing this one.  However, I left my FriendFeed Tabs script installed (which adds Techmeme in a tab) and had no issues.

By default, the Better FriendFeed script adds Google Reader, Gmail, and Identi.ca to FriendFeed. Wow, I have those tabs open all the time! This is excellent. 

Oh, and how cool is this? If you have any questions or concerns, you can “dent” him on Identi.ca! (http://identi.ca/rahsheen) Nice!

Feedly

Next up, Feedly. For those of you who don’t know what or why Feedly is incredibly awesome, here’s a guide to get you started.

You wouldn’t really think of Feedly as something that needs a facelift, but it got one anyway by way of the Stylish Extension for Firefox. A blogger by the name of SLAX created a nice gray/blue dark skin for the site. You can click here to install it into Stylish.

Happy Friday!

When I was researching my RWW post this morning: “According to Study, Half of U.S. Adults Use Social Media,” I came across a pretty great slideshow on social media put out by Universal McCann (see below). There’s a huge amount of data in there, so I thought it was worth sharing. Enjoy!

You certainly have to hand it to the spammers – they are nothing if not resourceful. I have no idea how they’re doing this, but lately I’ve been getting tons (and I mean tons) of spam in my Gmail inbox. Not my Spam folder but my actual inbox. Although my email address is publicly available, it wasn’t until recently that I’ve actually seen spam in my inbox – usually, the Gmail spam filter kept most of it out of sight. Well, no more, it seems.

The latest tactic appears to be using Google’s own Groups to bypass the spam filter. I guess Google doesn’t like to block links to their own sites.

The emails will resemble the following:

The email address will (appear to) be from someone at Yahoo. And despite the fact that the subject line has the word “Viagra” in it – a clear indication to most spam filters about the nature of this email – the email doesn’t not get blocked.

Why’s that? I imagine it’s because the body of the email contains a link to groups.google.com – a site where the spammers are apparently taking up residence.

I clicked one of the links (I know, I don’t need a lecture about how dangerous that was); I just had to investigate. The page really does look like a real Google Groups page, albeit one with a splashy intro page. In fact, the URL in the address even reads http://groups.google.com/group/spammy_name_of_group_here:

So, is that how it’s going to be, huh? Google is letting the spammers come through because it’s driving pageviews to Google Groups? Not cool, Google, not cool.