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8 Tools That Will Make You a Procrastination Ninja at Work

procrastination tools Unarguably, the best way to beat work at the office is to take a power nap. Or buy an iPhone. Procrastinating at work should be in the HR policy. It’s good for morale and a wonderful stress buster. But alas, there are some offices where even putting your feet up could get you a pink slip.

Twiddling your thumbs or playing Solitaire is old fashioned. Especially when procrastinating at work has entered the dictionary with words like cyberslacking. Some call it goldbricking or simply sitting on one’s butt.

Wasting time at work will remain the most popular office activity after water-cooler gossip. So it pays to do two things in the digital age.

First, win over the IT admin guy who monitors the internet traffic. Second, learn how to optimize your time-wasting with the help of a few web-based procrastination tools. I can’t help you with the former, but for the latter, here are eight tools to make you a procrastination ninja at work.

Hide Running Programs Quickly

how to procrastinate

Quicksilver fingers using the Alt-Tab key combination is the easiest way to switch windows. It’s really is important if you are wasting time on one application and your boss is approaching.

But if you fingers slip, there’s a free lightweight app called OuttaSight which helps you hide open windows completely, or minimize them as an icon to the system tray (its hotkey is aptly named the Boss Key). We have mentioned the free software before in more detail.

Our readers helped us out with a few more suggestions. Check out Mr. Hyde and Hocus Pocus.

If you want to keep the inappropriate sites out of sight in Firefox, check out the hideBad and Panic Firefox add-ons for managing browser tabs.

While Away Time with Proxy Browsing

how to procrastinate

We have covered a lot of ground on proxy servers and unblocking your favorite websites while at school or work. Here’s the complete list of posts on getting past firewalls at work. Another great list on privacy tools is available at EPIC Online Guide to Practical Privacy Tools.

And Do it Behind VANISHD

procrastination tools

The idea is to browse the web without others seeing what you are up to. Regain your office privacy by using VANISHD to cover your original browsing window behind a disguise. The covering ‘disguise’ is another webpage (or any of the MS Office apps) that for all intents and purposes is harmless. Like your company homepage or a presentation you are working on. The neat trick is that you can use a smaller viewing window to see what’s on the hidden window by dragging it over the covering window. Watch the demo video below or read more about it in our directory.

Tweet Away To Glory At Work

The easiest way would be to tweet via your cell phone. But for the browser based ones, here are two workarounds.

how to procrastinate

SpreadTweet is an online application that makes your Twitter account look like a spreadsheet. There’s also a desktop version which runs on Adobe Air. You can give it the look of Office OS X, Office 2003, or Office 2007.

TweetSwitch is an online app that lets you tweet and receive your tweets from any instant messenger or via email. You need to log-in at TweetSwitch and add the accounts on which you would like to receive your tweets.

Using the Twitter at work while cocking a snook at the restrictions is easy because of the sheer number of third party Twitter apps available. I have covered just two.

Online Video Watching with Double Vision

procrastination tools

Double Vision Lite is a free (but ad-supported) browser that lets you watch online videos (YouTube, Hulu, NetFlix etc) while doing other work. The trick it employs is a customizable transparency setting that can fade in and fade out the Double Vision window. You can set the transparency and watch a video and work on an application that’s below it. Double Vision also functions like a regular browser so browser based video conferencing and other tasks can be easily done. You can also use the CTRL+ESC key to quickly hide the browser.

P:S – You might need admin privileges to install this on your machine. Always a problem at an office.

Can’t You See I’m Busy

ways to procrastinate

Can’t You See I’m Busy is a very unique website that we have covered earlier. But it deserves a place of its own here because it has 3 games that will make it seem like you are working on serious things like Excel spreadsheets, writing reports, or evaluating the company’s growth.

Of course, there’s a lot of casual game fun to have on Google Search too.

Do Some Blog Work with MS Word & Email

ways to procrastinate

Nobody is going to give a second glance if you have MS Word open on your desktop. They will if you have Windows Live Writer or anything else opened up. So, why not use MS Word to post your blog posts from office as we showed you in Using MS Word 2007 for Fast and Easy Blogging.

You can also use email to post to your blog. Microblogging with Posterous and Tumblr for instance is dead easy, while WordPress needs a bit of configuration.

Daily Dose of Reading

procrastination tools

DailyLit is a web service that delivers a small excerpt serially from the book of your choice to your email, mobile, or RSS feed. One passage per day, till the book is finished. Read a bit more on it here.

Just how concerned we are with your not getting caught while you goof off is amply demonstrated with these three guilt-free posts:

Don’t worry; a cyberslacking petition is on its way! Till then, let us know your favorite ninja technique to give the run around to your boss.

Image credit: L-T-L

Pluggio – A Great Online Twitter Client For Netbook Users

twitter client you don't have to download It seems that every other web application that is popping up these days somehow has something to do with Twitter. And why shouldn’t it? Long gone are the days when you had to explain to people what Twitter was, and it has since become a common household name. One of the latest websites catering to the seemingly insatiable Twitter demand is Pluggio, a third party web-based Twitter client you don’t have to download.

Pluggio is entirely web-based, which is great news for netbook users who don’t want to use up precious resources on a Twitter client. And as far as web-based clients are concerned, Pluggio certainly gives the other apps a run for their money. With the free version of Pluggio, you get 150 scheduled tweets and 1000 Twitter API calls per day. You can also add up to 5 different Twitter accounts to follow. Despite capping certain features in the free version, there are a lot of reasons to give Pluggio a try.

Browsing tweets is divided into a series of tabs – under the heading of Twitter Streams. You can browse all your DMs and replies together, browse replies only, or even your own tweets. Other tabs include your received and sent messages, your favourite tweets, and saved searches.

twitter client you don't have to download

You can also add other Twitter users or lists, essentially bookmarking them for easy access.

One of our favourite Pluggio features is the ability to see which of your tweets have been retweeted and by who.

twitter client

From any given tweet you can choose to reply to the person who tweeted it, or all people mentioned in it, follow or unfollow users, view profiles, and direct message the user. You can also add the tweet to your favourites, or a user to one of your lists.

When retweeting, you can choose to either edit or add your two cents to the tweet, or retweet verbatim using Twitter’s native retweet method.

twitter client

One of the major criticisms of Twitter as a service has been how difficult it can sometimes be to follow a conversation, and sadly, Pluggio has not taken this into account, and this is probably the biggest drawback to using their service.

Information included on a user’s profile includes their bio, real name, number of friends and followers and the number of updates. One inaccurate piece of information that seems to be featured on all profiles is the date they joined – all defaulting to December 1969.

twitter client

Tweeting from Pluggio is easy. Simply click the green speech bubble, and a small window will come up allowing you to type your tweet, shorten links, schedule your tweet, and choose what other services you want to update simultaneously. Another shortcoming is the inability to add pictures directly from within Pluggio.

twitter clients

With Ping.fm integration, Pluggio allows you to simultaneously send your update to other social networks such as Facebook, FriendFeed, Google Buzz and LinkedIn. Once you’ve entered your Ping.fm API, each service that has already been added to your Ping account will be available on Pluggio. You can choose to simultaneously update several services at the same time all the time, or on a case-by-case basis.

twitter clients

Scheduling tweets can be done in one of two ways.

twitter clients

You can add Tweets to a rolling schedule or schedule it for a specific time. The rolling schedule defaults to once every hour, every day of the week, but can be edited to suit your preferences.

Once you have your rolling schedule set up to suit your needs, any tweets you add to it will be listed with the times they are to be posted.

To schedule a tweet for a specific date and time, simply enter the details as shown in the screenshot below.

Pluggio can also suggest new people to follow based on certain criteria that you can choose in the settings. You can add filters of either specific keywords used in tweets, or tweets within a radius of a certain location. These results can be further narrowed down by restrictions on the number of followers/friends, when they last tweeted, or how old their account is.

You can also receive ‘unfollow suggestions,’ if being followed back is an issue that concerns you. All suggestions can also be delivered to you by email. Suggestions for free accounts are capped at 40 per day.

Another unique Pluggio feature is the ability to add RSS feeds from your favourite websites, or specific search terms on Yahoo or Google, and follow them right there alongside your tweets.

A list of the latest blog posts, or search results will be displayed, and from there you can schedule a tweet of the link, flag the story, edit and tweet or retweet instantly. It may not be instantly obvious how to remove an RSS feed or search term. Clicking the feed’s icon will allow you to edit or delete it. With the free version of Pluggio you can only add up to 5 RSS feeds or Google/Yahoo search feeds.

Additional features are the ability to search public timeline, manage your Twitter lists, and Pluggio also has a bookmarklet which you can drag to your bookmarks bar to quickly tweet links you visit in your browser. The site still has a bit of room for improvement, and with the introduction of a few of the missing essential features, it will become a true powerhouse for all your tweeting needs.

Be sure to also take a look at Mahendra’s article featuring 4 web-based Twitter clients that will also come in handy with netbook users.

Have you used Pluggio? Let us know what you think of it in the comments.

Our latest mega giveaway: zozi is sponsoring a FREE 7-day, wine-tasting trip in New Zealand for two. Here’s how you can sign up. Contest ends June 25th.

Cool Websites and Tools [May 26th]

Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory.

List Your Website Here!

Geocitiesizer – Does anyone remember Geocities? The once hot Internet property that allowed anyone on the web to have their own website. If you don’t, you should taker a look at Wondertonic’s Geocitiesizer that converts any regular website to a Geocities era web property and lets you see how it’d have looked. Read more: Geocitiesizer: Take Any Website Back To The Geocities Days.

		CaricatureMaker – Lots of tools let you convert photos into caricatures. However, CaricatureMaker is a little different than these automated tools since it lets you create a caricature faces completely from scratch by choosing specific styles for various features. Read more: CaricatureMaker: Create Funny Caricatures Faces Online.

		BatchGeo – is a free web service that takes a number of location addresses as inputs, then generates a map with those locations already pinpointed. The data which users enter is similar to a spreadsheet format, having rows and columns. Read more: BatchGeo: Automatically Maps Spreadsheet Address Data.

		Flattr – A number of online causes ask us to donate our money. Some internet users however can only donate a small amount. This poses a problem because often the transfer fee exceeds this small amount and the donation becomes useless. To remedy this, social micropayment platform Flattr was created. Read more: Flattr: Social Micropayment Platform For Donations.

		Like It? Tweet It! – Numerous addons and extensions make it easier to tweet about the website we are currently visiting. But as a website developer, how can you be sure that your visitor has such a tool? What if they do not have such a tool but want to share your website? To make sure that does not happen to your website, you can use “Like It? Tweet It.” Read more: Like it? Tweet it!: Twitter Website Widget That Let Users Tweet.

List Your Website Here!

These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed.

Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!

Two Awesome Free iPad Twitter Clients

ipad twitter clients A slew of awesome iPad social networking apps are coming online that are taking great advantage of the devices great display and added space.

In this review, we’ll look at two free Twitter client for the iPad. Both of the apps are well established Twitter clients that are already available for both the Mac and the iPhone.

1- Twitterrific for the iPad

Among the social networking apps to first get an iPad update is the terrific free Twitterrific for the iPad [iTunes Store link]. I have been using it as my main Twitter app on my iPhone, so I was elated to see it come so quickly to the iPad.

ipad twitter clients

When you download Twitterrific, the first thing you notice is how well designed it is for the iPad‘s format. It makes great use of the extra screen real estate, and nothing about the app seems wasted in terms of the user interface.

Twitterrific contains all the features that you find in the browser version of Twitter, plus additional ones. In landscape mode, all the features of the app are upfront and accessible. In the sidebar, you can access all your tweets, Mentions, direct messages, searches, favorites, list and trends. What’s useful about this features is that these menu items are not hidden, and thus you don’t need to make several taps in order to access say your saved searches.

ipad twitter clients

You also get a couple of tweet posting options. You can add photos from you iPad photo library and you can upload to other Twitter related services like Posterous, TwitPic, and TwitVid.

twitter client

In landscape mode, the sidebar disappears but you can easily access with a single tap of your Twitter name. The menu bar items are there as well for sending new tweets and refreshing updates. The menu bar also includes a quick access to your Twitter account.

The free version of Twitterrific is of course ad-supported, but the ads are very unobtrusive; and to be honest, I’ve clicked on them more than I do on ads of most favorite websites. The only drawback to the free version of Twitterrific is that if you want to add multiple Twitter accounts to the app, you have to upgrade to the paid version of the app.

If you’re not a heavy Twitter user, Twitterrific is a great free app that you will want to have on your iPad.

2- TweetDeck for iPad

If you are a Twitter power user, I would suggest TweetDeck [iTunes Store link] for both your Mac and your iPad. As with Twitterrific, TweetDeck makes excellent use of the iPad format. And what’s unique about TweetDeck is that you can have several columns of tweet streams open at one time. So one column may consist of All Friends tweets, another of your Mentions, and few more of your favorite keyword searches.

twitter client

And just because only three columns can be viewed on the screen at one time, it doesn’t mean you can‘t have several more open; for all you have to do is slide columns to the left to see more of the.

twitter client

Another cool feature is that when you tap and hold on a tweet, menu controls (reply, retweet, direct message, favorite) pop-up for easy access and navigation.

ipad twitter client

In portrait mode, you of course can only view two columns at a time, and the top half of the screen gets filled with a single tweet based on a selected tweet in one of the columns. This seems sort of redundant in my view, but for some users, it could be useful for better viewing of single messages.

TweetDeck has various other features, including tagging, geotagging, map links, and adding photos from your photo library.

Some users have complained in the iTunes App Store that TweetDeck has been crashing a lot. If this occurs, you might try shutting down your iPad and restarting it to see if there’s better performance. I haven’t used the app enough to gauge the performance in this regard.

TweetDeck is totally free and the developers have written about additional features for version 2 of the application.

So what Twitter client are you using on your iPad? Let us know how it’s working.

We NEED Your Comments!!! Please do share your thoughts in article comments.

9 Websites To Show You The Hottest Stuff on Twitter Now

twitter search We’ve already taken a look at how to find currently popular online stuff from different sources, but there’s no denying the magnitude of content that can be found in just one place – on Twitter. There are countless ways to filter through the noise, and find the tweets about stuff that matters to you, whether it’s based on a specific topic or based on popularity.

In this article, we’ll take a look at search Twitter for the most popular stories by the number of retweets or favourites a tweet receives, as well as how to find specific kinds of interesting information on Twitter.

Search Twitter For Information Based On Popularity

TweetMeme

There are a variety of services for finding the most retweeted blog posts, stories and articles linked on Twitter, the most popular and influential of which is TweetMeme. Stories on TweetMeme can be browsed by the most popular from all categories in the past 24 hours, the past 7 days, or by specific categories including Entertainment, Comedy, Gaming, and Technology amongst others.

Content can be further broken down by News, Images and Videos. TweetMeme also allows you to keep up to date with the content on their site by subscribing to their RSS feeds. TweetMeme is also searchable if you want to find the hottest stories on specific topics.

twitter search

Logging into TweetMeme with your Twitter account will then enable you to retweet the stories that you want to share with your followers directly from within their website.

twitter search

TweetMeme also have a few extra goodies for users including a bookmarklet, a retweet button or chicklet for your blog posts, and plugins making it easy to incorporate the button on your blog.

DailyRT

DailyRT takes a similar approach to TweetMeme, by ranking the most popular Tweets in the past hour, 24 hours or 7 days. The difference however, is that the content is not limited to blog posts and articles, but also includes the most popular tweets in general.

twitter search engine

This does have its downside of course, as the most popular tweets are not necessarily the most informative. Using their search feature however allows users to harness the information found on DailyRT and get the most out of it. One interesting feature found on DailyRT includes the ability to search for the most retweeted items from specific users.

twitter search engine

Logging in with your Twitter account allows you to retweet directly from the website, but gives you no choice in the wording, and each retweet includes a direct link to the DailyRT homepage. DailyRT has a list on Twitter of the 50 most retweeted members on Twitter.

Thoora

Thoora is another site that plugs into the information on Twitter letting people know what the most popular stories are, but it also gets its statistics from the number of blog posts and news articles covering a certain topic. Each article is accompanied by the number of retweets as well as the number of articles or blog posts found online.

twitter search engine

Information is broken down into categories including Business, Controversy and Sci/Tech, amongst others. Stories can also be browsed by the newest developing stories, stories that are currently popular and by those that have been popular for the past week.

Signing up for an account allows you to share the content on Facebook, Buzz, Twitter and via Email, and discuss the stories on the website. Opening up any given story is where Thoora truly excels in comparison to other similar sites. It provides users with statistics on the story, recent tweets about it, links from blogs and official news sources.

Finding Tweets With The Most Favourites

Favstar

Another method of tracking popularity on Twitter is keeping track of how many favourites any given tweet has. Favstar does just that. This might not necessarily lead to a wealth of information and links, but it’s interesting and funny nonetheless. The website gives users a way to pass some free time, reading jokes, interesting witticisms and commentaries on current affairs, and you’ll even find the occasional link to an article or video.

search twitter keywords

Tweets are divided into popular, rising and new. Signing in with your Twitter account allows you to quickly follow interesting users featured on Favstar, add tweets to your favourites, and even retweet. Favstar should however come with a warning that it is not at all PG. Favstar also has a three lists worth following – Tech and Social Media Tweeters, Celebrity Tweeters and Funny, Entertaining or Insightful Tweeters.

search twitter keywords

You can also search Twitter for specific users to see which of their tweets have received the most favourites. The website is available in English, German and Japanese.

Finding Job Listings

Micro.Vois

Micro.Vois features tweets relating to freelance work. Tweets listed on the site are divided into users looking for freelancer work, and users who are looking to hire freelancers – and it does so in a very simple way. Micro.Vois uses Twitter’s hashtags to label the tweets, using #havework or #wantwork to distinguish the tweets from the rest of the chatter online.

search twitter keywords

The listings can also be further narrowed down by profession, with web development, programming, graphics, writing and miscellaneous jobs.

TweetyJobs

TweetyJobs is another site that features job listings mentioned on Twitter. One main difference between Micro.Vois and TweetyJobs is the fact that the latter is searchable. You can search for a specific job title in a specific city or zip code, and filter the results into either listings from corporate sites or Twitter.

Finding Items for Sale

TwitShop

TwitShop is another listings site that uses Twitter’s hashtags to aggregate its information. If you have an item for sale, appending the hashtags, #forsale, #4sale or #auction, will ensure that your tweet shows up on the site.

TwitShop is searchable, so if you want to buy something in particular from another Twitter user, it’s easy to find.

CheapTweet

CheapTweet, like TwitShop, aggregates items that are for sale on Twitter. It features listings in a variety of categories including Tech, Food and Home & Family, amongst others. Not only does it provide you with listings, but users can also vote on how good a deal each listing is.

Finding Popular Music

We Are Hunted

We Are Hunted is a slick site which combs Twitter, along with other social media sites like Facebook and MySpace to give you a list of the 99 most popular songs at the moment. If you want to listen to all 99 songs, simply start at number 1, and it will automatically play through the entire list. You can also limit the results to only the songs that are popular on Twitter.

It also allows you to share any given song on Twitter, Facebook or via email. If you want a more extensive list of what music is currently popular on Twitter, check out David’s article on using The Hype Machine to do just that.

In the the future, we’ll take a look at more ways to search Twitter to get the most out of the content, including finding out what new movies are popular on Twitter, how to find personalised content for you, and sites that list all the information available on specific topics.

How do you find the content that matters to you on Twitter? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: Dave Smith

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4 Easy Ways to Embed Twitter Tweets into Your Blog with Blackbird

how to embed twitter into your website If you’ve ever wanted to post a Twitter tweet on your blog, you will know it can be tedious work. First you have to take a screenshot of the tweet, then you have to edit it and upload the image before you can embed it into your content.

Earlier this month, Robin Sloan – who works for Twitter – developed a hack for Twitter Media that potentially makes it much easier to embed Twitter updates into your website or blog. Blackbird Pie, as it’s called, allows users to submit the URLs of specific tweets so it can give you HTML code to embed onto your blog.

Whether this will be a feature added to Twitter in the future has yet to be seen, but the process is much simpler than the traditional copy & paste.

In this article, I will go over the 4 methods you can use to embed tweets onto your blog using Blackbird and its extensions and alternatives.

1. Bake A Tweet With Blackbird Pie

how to embed twitter into your website

Blackbird Pie can be found on the Twitter Media page. To generate an embeddable tweet, all you need to do is paste the URL of a single tweet in the box and click Bake it.

how to embed twitter into your website

Once you do this, a box appears showing you how the tweet will look on your site, as well as another box with the HTML code.

The page does indicate that the embed is not guaranteed to work on your blog platform or site because it is a newly developed feature. However, I have tested it on WordPress and it was successful. If you’re familiar with HTML/CSS, you could also tweak the code to get your tweet looking the way you want.

2. Try The Publitweet Blackbird Bookmarklet

An alternative to Blackbird Pie, Publitweet has developed a dynamic bookmarklet for embedding your tweets that they claim is easier to use than Twitter Media’s version.

put twitter in blog

To use the bookmarklet, simply go to this page and drag the link up to your bookmark bar.

put twitter in blog

Once the link is placed, navigate to the URL of the tweet you would like to copy. When you’re on the page, just click the bookmark link and a box will appear with your HTML code. All you have to do now is paste the code to your blog and your tweet will be embedded into your post.

Publitweet also has a script that allows you make your embedded tweets embeddable themselves so others can place them on their site. You can find the script here.

3. Install The WordPress Plugin

If you’re using WordPress and would like to use the embeddable tweet feature, Themergency has a Twitter Blackbird Pie WordPress plugin just for you. Just download the plugin and install it the way you would any other extension on WordPress and you’ll be generating embeddable tweets in no time.

[Note]: When using the plugin, your fonts and backgrounds from Twitter are kept intact, whereas methods previously mentioned may alter your text to match the rest of the font on your blog.

4. The Blackbird For Chrome Extension

put twitter in blog

If you’re more familiar with (or simply like to use) Google Chrome extensions over all else, there is one for Blackbird. You can find the extension on this page. Just click Install and you’re done.

This extension is very minimalist and is in the form of a little blackbird that sits up in your URL box that appears whenever you are on a single tweet’s URL page.

When on such a page just click the bird and a drop-down box appears with your tweet and the HTML code, very similar to the original Twitter Blackbird Pie page.

Conclusion

What do you think of this new hack/feature? Are you going to be embedding tweets into your blog posts more often now? Should Twitter implement this into the site?

Leave your thoughts, ideas, concerns, and opinions below in the comments section!

Image Credit: *clairity*

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tDash – Online Twitter Client That Makes Managing Unread Tweets Easy

Twitter client you don't have to download Twitter streams flow in and out fast, making it really easy to miss and forget important announcements that get buried and left behind, especially if you follow very active Twitter users. Third-party Twitter clients give you a much more intricate interface for Twitter.com but aside from Tweetdeck, these clients bring tweets in that might bypass you unless you’re actively chasing after the streams.

Web-based Twitter client tDash (which was featured on MakeUseOf before) aims to help you catch up with all those unread tweets in a productive and organized manner much like an RSS reader. It is a Twitter client you don’t have to download. In fact, tDash developers have made it clear that their project was created with the Google Reader interface and functionality in mind.

Twitter client you don't have to download

Sporting a minimalistic and easy-to-navigate interface (see full-size screenshot), tDash also has its very own handy TwitPic-like service in case you want a quick way to post a picture from your desktop.

Let’s see what features this smart Twitter client has to offer.

tDash Won’t Store Your Twitter User Information

Your email account probably already gets enough spam so registering a new account with your email (and remembering another password) shouldn’t be the way to go. tDash knows that and uses OAuth to help you skip getting yet another account and avoid storing your Twitter password.

Twitter client you don't have to download

It Supports Multiple Accounts

twitter client If you have multiple Twitter accounts, you must have lots more unread tweets! Thus, tDash makes it easy to sort unread items by account. As tDash doesn’t ask you to register an account, there’s no way to link all your accounts together, but this shouldn’t be a problem, unless you own a bunch of Twitter accounts.

Mark Users’ Tweets As Read By Pressing the Spacebar

Every Twitter user will be displayed in a sidebar to the right, like every blog is shown as a folder in Google Reader. You’ll be able to see the fresh, unread items from each user and mark each one as read (by pressing the spacebar, which will bring you to the next unread item) or all of the user’s tweets by pressing on Mark folder as read.

Alternatively, you can also mark all incoming tweets as read. If you wish to see the read items, just check the Show Read box and then on Fetch now! or press ‘u’ to refresh the updates. You can customize the order in which the tweets show up first.

Aside from viewing your friends’ Twitter streams, tDash also has other sections that behave as Google Reader folders and can be marked as unread/read: Lists, Mentions/DMs which is in Folders and Trends.

twitter client

Easy-To-Remember Keyboard Shortcuts

This will probably win Google Reader users since the J and K keys are assigned to go to the next or previous unread tweet. Alternatively, if you don’t use Google Reader, you can still easily memorize the keyboard shortcuts for next and previous items by using the N and P keys respectively.

Here’s the rest of the easily memorizable shortcuts.

twitter client

One-Click Picture Tweeting & A Few More Goodies

If you’re on your computer and want to quickly send out a picture, upload it to tDash and see it instantly online or copy the shortened URL (that would be something like http://tdash.org/ABC) and share it with friends.

This image-sharing service isn’t a full-blown Posterous, as you won’t see a way to email in your photo from your mobile. Nevertheless, tDash is much more capable as an excellent Twitter client than a mobile picture-sharing service. It expands shortened URLs, conversations and provides image previews, all in-line.

If you want to go to the actual webpage, simply pressing on the ‘o’ key will bring you to the site (refer to the keyboard shortcuts above). Got an URL that has your tweet going beyond 140 characters? As you send your tweet out, tDash will bounce back with a Bit.ly-ed URL, which you’ll see expanded right away in the dashboard. Native retweet is also supported in case you want to instantly retweet something without having to edit the tweet.

On its website, tDash lists auto-refresh, Twitter search, and syncing across multiple browsers as features you might see brought to life soon. Until then, tDash is still a genius, easy-to-use and powerful breed between a web-based RSS reader and Twitter.com.

If catching up with your unread items in Twitter isn’t something you’re looking for, check out these other Twitter clients we have reviewed:

Windows desktop programs: Twittastic, Sobees, Seesmic Look and alternative clients.
Mac clients: YoruFukurou and other Mac clients.
The above and other platforms/Adobe AIR applications: Twhirl, Posty, DestroyTwitter, Seesmic Desktop.
Browser extensions/plugins: Chromed Bird, Echofon plugin for Firefox.
Web-based: Hootsuite and a few others.
Multi-platform (desktop, mobile): Tweetdeck and Echofon.

What are your experiences with web-based Twitter clients? Let us know in the comments if you have tried and liked tDash!

We NEED Your Comments!!! Please do share your thoughts in article comments.

How To Personalize Skype’s Mood Messages With Twitter

The little blue bird called Twitter is flapping its wings everywhere. For most of us excessively chatty folks out there, it’s important to keep up with all the tweets the bird makes. Like a lot of others, Twitter is my first port of call just after my inbox. My Skype address is the other place you can find me.

But Twitter is where it all seems to be happening. Then again, I need to have my Skype kept open too. Of course, it’s no big deal to have both of them open alongside each other. Although, it does do some slight harm to my attention spans. The fact that I can connect Skype to Twitter makes the whole superfluous problem less so.

Think of any chat application and you are sure to find some way to link it with Twitter. Heck, in the end it’s all about social networking. So it is with these four Twitter to Skype apps.

These four apps have a single point agenda – let your Skype contacts know what you are tweeting about. Skype displays a status message or what it calls the mood. In this box, you can write your own message, and even use a video to show your mood more animatedly.

These Twitter apps use your freshly posted tweet as a way to personalize your Skype mood. Here’s how they do it.

MySkwitter

skype status twitter

MySkwitter personalizes your Skype Mood with your latest tweet. Like all mood messages, your contacts can see what you are tweeting about. MySkwitter is available as a Skype Extra and you can install it directly from the Skype Extras Manager.

After installation, you have to feed in your Skype User ID and Twitter log-in details to map both to each other.

Note:

- The configuration are saved in a text file located at – %userprofile%\TweetConfig.txt. To reconfigure the settings, delete the text file.

- Skype Extras are not officially supported anymore as of September, 2009. Though, the gallery and the Skype Extras Manager Manager still continue to exist. No new Extras are being added.

Skitter

skype status twitter

Skitter also works similarly to MySkwitter. The plug-in connects to your Twitter account (you don’t have to give the password), and displays your tweets in the Mood box. The Mood box is thus kept refreshed with the Tweets as it updates every minute.

Twype

skype status update

Twype is a small system tray application that monitors your Twitter account and updates Skype’s mood area with the latest tweet. Optionally, it can also post the currently playing track on Winamp, if you have it open.

According to the author’s notes, Winamp takes precedence over Twitter. But if you pause the media player, then the mood area reverts to the tweet. The tweets get auto-refreshed every 5 minutes.

Twype is a labor of love for the developer who coded it around his own personal habits. It’s a neat little app that works without the need for an installation.

SyncMood

skype status update

SyncMood got its inspiration from Twype and it is a similar System Tray plug-in. The essential difference between the two is that in SyncMood, you can configure the update interval and also set it up to ignore @reply tweets.

You need to have Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 installed.

These four apps are very basic in the way they let you personalize Skype’s status message with a tweet. Although I was a bit disappointed not to find a Skype plug-in that would let me go the other way – post a message to Twitter or even use Skype as an instant messaging Twitter client. A one-time web service called twitter4skype doesn’t seem to be working anymore.

But until an application like that comes along, I can make do with these four to keep my friends on Skype abreast with my tweets.

Image Credit: malthe

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5 Twitter Translation Tools That Help With Tweets In Other Languages

The whole world speaks on Twitter, and today it has become a language of its own. As you are reading this in English, it’s a high probability that you tweet in the language that has become the common tongue for the world.

But as Twitter grows in popularity in remote corners of the world, so will the use of other languages on it.

Twitter itself says on its blog that 60% of registered Twitter accounts come from outside the US. Twitter itself speaks six languages. But the world speaks so many more. Add to the mix, the increasing mating between cell phones and Twitter apps and very soon multilingual tweets will be flying about from one corner of the world to the other.

Tweets may be 140 characters long but the real time information they bring is sometimes deeper in impact. It would be a pity to miss out on a good tweet just because you weren’t born a linguist. Thanks to a few Twitter translation tools, you don’t need to take language courses.

Here’s a look at five of these online Twitter translation tools. Most of the Tweet translation services are mashups of Google Translate. Ultimately, the only thing that sets them apart from each other is the way they take in your tweet and tweet out the result.

Twanslate

twitter translation tool

Twanslate is an experimental Firefox add-on that adds a feature to translate an incoming tweet into English. Using Google’s Translate service, the add-on functions as a simple button (a little globe icon) below any tweet that’s in another language. You can then click it and convert the tweet into English. The add-on works in your Twitter stream as well as an individual user’s public tweets page.

Twieee

twitter translation tool

Twieee is a Twitter translation tool that gives you eight languages to tweet in – Arabic, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese. And English of course. You can pick a language from the homepage and log in with your Twitter credentials. Your Twitter stream is displayed in the original language and the one you opted for. Using the language choice dropdown, you can also enter a tweet and directly submit it as a translated one.

The service is in beta. A few page errors that crop up while submitting and the absence of a How-to on the way the web app works are two early minuses for Twieee right now. Twieee also uses Google Translate.

Twinslator

twitter translation tool

Twinslator lets you type in your tweet and sent as a translated text in any of the languages in the dropdown. You can choose to send only the translated tweet or both the original as well as the translated one (Twins your Tweets). From the dropdown, it gives you 42 languages to choose from.

Tweetrans

Tweetrans detects the original language and gives you the option to tweet it in over 40 languages. You do not have to depend on Tweetrans as you can use your own Twitter client and the @tweetrans Twitter name with the translate language code. For example, @tweetrans 2fr your message here is the standard format. 2fr is the language code for French. Tweetrans detects your original language (say, English) and translates it on the fly to French. The other language codes are given on the site.

Also, using the format (for example) – en2fr, you can give both languages in a language pair (i.e., translate from and translate to language). You will receive a @Reply with the translation in the specified language within 60 seconds.

Twenglish

Okay, this one is actually not a serious Twitter ‘translation’ tool. Twenglish is for those who like to tweet like Twirds. Twirds is ‘Twitterspeak’ and a language of its own and if you are going to be a Twitter nerd, it’s what you will talk in. You will get the purpose of this Twitter fun tool from the screenshot. I hope you get why it’s a “twool that lets you tweet like a twird”.

And if you are a Star Trek fan, try out the Tweet in Klingon if you want to avoid doublespeak and keep peace in the Federation.

These services give you the help to not only understand someone’s natural language, but also create a bit of impact in 140 characters or less by tweeting in theirs. That’s a small step towards living amicably in a global village – one tweet at a time.

Tweet in and let us know if you find these Twitter language services helpful. And maybe you know a few other similar services that we missed?

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YoruFukurou – A Sleek Twitter Client For Mac Users [Mac]

There is no shortage of free Twitter clients for all platforms, but YoruFukurou, a Mac-only client, offers a couple of interesting features not found in some of the more popular apps. Its clean, minimalist interface, along with its highly customizable appearance should make it a popular option amongst Mac users.

YoruFukurou, or as it’s known in English, NightOwl, is a Twitter client for Mac that allows users to save tabbed searches, customise the app’s toolbar, and has easy access buttons for sharing what you are currently listening to in iTunes or browsing in Safari.

YoruFukurou’s strength lies in how customisable the application is. You can change the colour of the text and backgrounds, using specific colours to highlight mentions or DMs in your personal timeline.

twitter for mac

You can also choose to display your tweets regularly, or you can use YoruFukurou’s Mini-View, where all tweets are collapsed until you select one to open.

twitter for mac

The toolbar is also customisable, allowing you to add or remove buttons, giving you easy access to your preferred options. The buttons that can be added or removed include a Home button, which takes you the Twitter home page in your web browser, a refresh button, and a button that allows you to mark all tweets as read.

Another set of buttons that you can choose to use are the filter buttons – which allow you to filter your timeline displaying either all tweets, tweets from one specific account, or all tweets from a specific conversation. Using the search button, you can search the tweets that appear in your timeline only.

twitter for mac

While you can look up a user’s bio and display their latest tweet using the ‘Drawer’ button, the current release does not allow you to follow/unfollow them. This has been remedied in the Beta release that is also available for download.

twitter apps for mac

The Beta release also includes support for Twitter lists, adds YFrog support for images, and allows you to edit your profile from within the client.

You can view all tweets in five default tabs: Timeline, Mentions, Direct Messages, Favourites and a Search tab, that allows you to search all public tweets.

twitter apps for mac

The Tabs can also be customized, in a manner similar to Tweetdeck’s columns.

twitter apps for mac

You are able to create custom tabs for specific users, with the ability to add more than one user to a tab, or to create custom tabs using keywords.

When it comes to tweeting itself, YoruFukurou allows you to shorten URLs, with bit.ly, TinyURL, is.gd and j.mp support. You can also add images, but it should be mentioned that the process is slightly different from other clients. Rather than type the tweet, and then add the image, click on ‘Upload image,’ choose the image you want to share, and add the text in the ‘comment‘ section. Clicking upload will send the tweet to your timeline.

You can also easily share the URL and title from the page you are browsing in Safari, or share the iTunes song you are listening to.

You can reply to tweets or add them to your favourites with the easy-access buttons on each tweet. Bringing up the right-click menu gives you more options including reply to all, send DM, retweet, retweet with comment, amongst others.

One interesting feature that YoruFukurou offers is the ability to ‘block’ specific users you are following without unfollowing them. If you’re following someone, and would rather not see their tweets, you can temporarily block them. There is a similar mute feature in the web client Brizzly, but YoruFukurou takes it one step further by allowing you to block certain keywords or expressions. This feature can be useful if you’re planning to watch a movie, or are following a popular TV show, and don’t want to read any spoilers on Twitter.

YoruFukurou features both growl and sound notifications which can be customised to include new tweets in your timeline, mentions, and DMs amongst others.

Have you tried out the YoruFukurou Twitter client for Mac? Let us know what you think of it in the comments.

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