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Ten Cool Twitter Tools

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In a previous article, I explained how Twitter is a great way to help yourself grow as a blogger, but now it is time to help you keep track of your Twitter account. These are some of the tools I have found very useful, and while not all of us have varying opinions on how useful Twitter can and will be, it is time to take advantage of social networking.

I find micro-blogging quite fascinating at the moment. Now it is time to help you keep track of your Twitter account. Just like all most aspects of blogging, there are tools to help you with Twitter.

These are some of the tools I have found very useful, and while all of us have varying opinions on how useful Twitter can and will be, it is time to find out what makes Twitter so fun and productive to use.

TwitterFeed—One of the more useful third-party applications, TwitterFeed provides users with the ability to import content feeds. This is great for promoting your blog(s); it could also have many other uses for those clever enough to exploit them.

TwitterFone—What’s better than texting to Twitter? Talking to Twitter might be it. There are a few quirks with this service, but it is great for those moments when you need to briefly Tweet about something. Voice recognition seems to work well.

Twhirl—I can’t prove it, but I am certain that Twhirl is the most popular third-party Twitter client available right now. It is multi-platform and it works well. Even I use it, and you should too.

TweetStats—Tech geeks and statistics freaks beware—TweetStats might just appeal to those statistical stats that you all desire. It is not directly useful or productive, but it can tell you how addicted to Twitter you really are. Maybe you’ll cut back on your usage after seeing the data.

Twitterholic—Who’s number one? Although I don’t particularly care, you might be well on your way to making this list, and if you are, it could be worth keeping tabs on. Feel free to send some of your followers my way!

Hashtags—One issue with Twitter is that it is difficult to find people talking about the same thing. This is no longer the case. Hashtags allows you to mark a post for inclusion within a conversation. Check it out.

AutoComplete—One of my most desired features with Twitter would be an auto-complete function; similar to what you’d get in a fancy HTML editor. Well, it isn’t supported in Twhirl just yet, but for those of you that use the web-based interface, this script called Twitter Auto Complete will have you covered. No longer must you struggle to remember your friend’s handles.

TrackThis—I tend to do most of my shopping online, and with that usually comes tracking numbers. Sometimes I’d need to check individual sites to remember tracking numbers, but other times I’d just completely forget. TrackThis allows you to have a service message you via Twitter of package updates, and this means no more having to check emails or sites to know where your stuff is located.

TweetBeep—TweetBeep is a tool that can alert you when certain keywords and/or domains are being discussed on Twitter. For example, I could set up an alert that would notify me when anyone links to Performancing, and I will be notified via email on an hourly or daily basis. This is a great resource for managing a smaller blog or tracking discussions relevant to you and your company.

TweetWire—A news tracking site for tweets? Wow! Okay, so it isn’t as good as The New York Times, but TweetWire is an interesting look at what people are talking about. It isn’t perfect, and I just noticed some weird stories continually showing up in a few sections, but when it is working, it is nice to glance through. With some massive improvements, I could see this service becoming fairly useful.

Got any cool tools that I missed? Let me know in the comments section!

Twitter: The Talk of the Web, and for Good Reason

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If you think back to over 23 years ago, when short messaging service (SMS) technology came to be, you might realize how impressive it is that such an old technology still exist. SMS has brought new and inspiring ideas for today’s “web 2.0” applications and services. It is this same technology which has empowered Twitter to flourish.

Right now, Twitter is becoming the talk of the web, and if you don’t believe that, just listen to any recent episode of This Week in Tech. You just can’t avoid it, and it has become a really big deal. Is it a bandwagon? Absolutely, but this one is certainly worth the effort of jumping on.

Recently, applications like FriendFeed and Plurk are trying to do what Twitter has already done. FriendFeed, at its current state, isn’t going to win. I’m only following seven people, and it is far too much information to digest. If I was following 40 people, I would have already given up.

Plurk, however, takes it a step further by displaying information via timelines. Unfortunately, they made it into more of a game with the karma system. At least 70% of the stuff I have seen on there is just an attempt to increase karma. Honestly, it is a stupid idea! I mean, why ask users to add noise? In the end, most “plurks” have an artificial quality. I’d invite someone to argue this point with me, but I’ve already given up on the service; at least until the karma system is removed.

When I first experienced these mini-blogging services, I thought it was interesting that they limited people to 140 characters. I thought it was pointless. Honestly, I thought they were all doomed to failure. Gosh, I so very wrong. It now appears that frequent chunks of small information can entertain users as much as a two hour movie. It can sometimes be annoying, but overall, I enjoy knowing what people are up to.

The reason why Twitter is so appealing to people is that it gives users the ability to instantaneously connect with friends, colleagues, peers, and acquaintances through the internet. Not only that, but it allows us to use third-party applications to stay in touch as well. I simply can’t name a previous instance when this has been attempted on such a grand scale.

Now, I am sure that the vision of Twitter when it first started was very different then today—which is made obvious due the issues of scaling the application—but it is Twitter that has opened our eyes to what is just a small glimpse into the future of the social web. It is such a simple concept, but it is one that works well.

Third-party Support

Twitter is also a shining example of how openness can really pay off in this day of technological rivalry. Jaiku, at once considered a great threat (and some still consider superior) to Twitter, has stumbled by failing to support by third-parties. Now owned by Google, Jaiku still fails to attract as many users as its competition.

It makes sense—Twitter is made fun and interactive by the applications and services developed around it. In some sense, you could consider Twitter as a framework to building your social timeline which can shared with friends. Twitter is nothing without the third-party support it has today. It is almost like Facebook; its appeal has been with third-party applications.

The Future

I understand that they have had a tremendous amount of technical issues. The service was not designed for the purpose it serves today. Fortunately, things are starting to resume normal operation.

The development team has learned from their mistakes. However, they need to re-write the Twitter system now. There is no point in continually building on a design concept for another purpose. They would do themselves a huge favor by optimizing everything now.

Regardless, Twitter is growing, and it will forever have a place in technological history.

What are your opinions on Twitter and its new and old competition? Do you believe Twitter will survive? Let me know in the comments section.

Online Office Suite Roundup

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Some of you might be a fan of desktop applications for writing, but an increasing number of folks are going web-based to get the job done. If you fit in the latter group, this article is for you. Web-based office is the new “thing” that all the competing companies want to be on top of; as we all know, competition is good for getting a better product. So, if you are considering a move, make sure you know what is available first.

Adobe

Adobe kicks things off with Buzzword, an application I first became familiar with while working at Mashable. I was impressed with how it looked—stunningly beautiful. Unfortunately, there were a few features I thought were missing (e.g. spell-check, export options, etc.), but they seem to have tightened things up since then, and it was recently acquired by Adobe—so, it is now in good hands.

There are a few things I should point out: the application is built completely in Flash (probably why Adobe acquired it); there is no auto-complete functionality, and I really miss this feature; and while the interface is beautiful, it sometimes takes awhile to remember where things are located. These concerns are fairly minor, but some of you might not appreciate the flash framework as much as others.

The TeqEdge blog provides a close look into Buzzword.

Google Docs

Google Docs has been available for almost two years, and it is one of the first online office suites that I actually used for a lengthy period of time—for good reason, it works well. During the beginning, I had a few complaints with the rich-text editor, but most of them have been resolved with time. Overall, Google Docs offers great document management and collaboration, and is easily one of the best of the bunch.

The collaboration feature is absolutely amazing, and previous co-workers and I constantly put it to good use. It is not a SubEthaEdit, but it still works very well.

PC World offers their opinions on Google Docs.

Zoho

Zoho offers a slew of applications from its online office suite, and the writing application is really well done. Zoho Writer provides an interface that might be more desirable than what Google has conjured up. The development team is always adding improvements, and I think Zoho has the most potential to expand in the near future. Also, I really enjoy the fact that Zoho Writer uses a tabbed interface; it is very desirable when working with multiple documents.

CNET has opinions about the Zoho Office suite.

ThinkFree

ThinkFree is probably the closest experience to Microsoft Office that you can get online. Users also benefit from experience that the company has—ThinkFree is one of the oldest web-based office suites around. There is also a premium edition which integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Office. It works well, and the interface will be familiar to all MS Office users.

ExtremeTech has an in-depth review of ThinkFree.

Judgement

Zoho certainly offers the most types of products, and is more of a complete office suite. I also can’t get over those tabs which I love so much, and many of you might appreciate them. You can also, ironically enough, use your Google identity to sign up for Zoho; something to think about.

BuzzWord from Adobe certainly has the flash and flair, but it still needs some time to mature. However, if you are addicted to pretty things, give BuzzWord a try, and you might be able to contribute to the growth of the application.

I wouldn’t really choose one over another unless you are already using a service that integrates into your workflow. For example, if you are using Gmail, you might be better off using Google Docs for the integration, and ThinkFree could easily integrate into your Microsoft Word application if you can’t completely separate yourself from a desktop word processor.

No matter which product you choose, you can be sure that the competition is just heating up, and improvements are going to be coming fast as Microsoft tries to integrate their office suite with the internet. All of the aforementioned applications are free, and most offer a nice amount of space for storing files.

Let me know what you think of each!

WordPress and Drupal Compared—The Pro’s and Cons of Each CMS

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Should you use WordPress or Drupal for your next project—this is a common and fair question to ask. I have been using both content management systems, and both have their pro’s and cons. Planning for your project’s needs is critical in determining which CMS be sufficient.

Both content management systems are a pleasure to work with, but each one is better suited for certain demands. Overall, both WordPress and Drupal offer an amazing experience, but which one is right for you?

WordPress

WordPress is one of the most sought after publishing platform by new bloggers, and is unquestionably one of the most popular.

Pro’s

  • Easy process for migrating to Drupal
  • Simple install
  • Many themes available
  • Easily customizable
  • Very stable
  • Quickly ready for production
  • Built-in image and media handling
  • Popularity ensures third-party support will not be a problem

Cons

  • Look elsewhere for community-based sites
  • Extendable, but there are limitations
  • Questionable security (but reasonable turnaround time on fixes)
  • User roles are fairly restricted

Drupal

Drupal is an excellent choice for people that wish to create expandable and community focused sites.

Pro’s

  • If you can think it, you can create it
  • Amazing centralized community on the Drupal site
  • Powerful, extendable modules
  • Relatively easy to develop modules
  • Easy API reference
  • Fast growing
  • User roles completely customizable
  • New data types (nodes) are easily created and extended

Cons

  • Difficult and time consuming task for migrating to WordPress
  • The available themes leave much to be desired
  • Management of the site can become a full-time job
  • Lack of a built-in rich text editor (can be added with a module)
  • Lackluster image handling

The Outcome

The simplicity and efficiency of WordPress is amazing. I enjoy knowing that I can install WordPress and be blogging within minutes. It is familiar to me, and it works.

WordPress has also come a long way to maturing as a proper CMS, and more websites are finding it to be a great way to handle complex sites. (Revision 3‘s latest site was built using WordPress.) With time, I slowly see the WordPress development community making changes to the back-end to allow more expandability—similar to Drupal, but it will never be able to outperform Drupal in this manner alone, that is, unless there is a complete re-write (which is highly unlikely any time soon).

The amount of effort it requires to manage a Drupal site might not be worth it. This is also true if you are juggling multiple blogs. It can be a handful, and this is not the ideal situation for plenty of people.

I would reserve use of Drupal to sites that will be more than just a typical blog. If you want to create a community around a blog, then Drupal is perfectly fine. If your site will be handling many types of media, and needs to be extendable for the future, then Drupal, again, is an excellent choice.

To sum it all up, if you want a system that will work without the need to extend your blog into something more in the future, use WordPress, but if you want a CMS that can act as a blog and so much more, consider using Drupal. Something to keep in mind is the fact that WordPress’s export functions would easily allow you to move to Drupal, if required.

Feed Placement and Design Tips

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You know that icon, the one that is basically synonymous with representing a feed? Yeah, the one that we all see on a daily basis whenever we traverse the ever-growing blogosphere. Well, its placement is more important than we all give credit for, and if you want people to subscribe to your content, then you should be willing to optimize the placement of your feed links and images. Unsurprisingly, many people opt for the obvious and sometimes ridiculous locations instead. I made the same mistakes when I began my blogging career, but now I will share some insight that I have gained with experience.

Why It Matters

Why does the location matter so much? People have a natural tendency to leave a page after getting to the end of an article. The end of the article is essentially the gateway to spur those users onto something else. That, or the back button is pushed on the browser. Even I have the same tendencies when it comes to browsing blogs.

Suggestions On Feed Placement

Why do so many blogs have the feed located on the upper right portion of the page? The sidebar is understandable, but if you think of it from a logical standpoint, the most used browser controls are on the top left portion of the screen. However, I have never subscribed to a blog without reading some of the content first, and if there is any scrolling that needs to be done, I would likely not see the feed icon anyways. Point is, you can have a feed on the top of your page, and it might be effective for users that have arrived to your page naturally, but it is not good for those that are in a hurry.

Around the sides and near the end of your content is where your feed placement should be. The eyes naturally progress downwards, and once the content is over, users are likely going to take the opportunity to glance down a little bit further just to make sure that they are not missing anything else or are looking for the comments section. These locations are optimal places for feeds.

Browsers are starting to get more creative at detecting feeds, and that is great, but if you have to use the browser to subscribe to the content on a site, then the site in question obviously didn’t do a good job with their feed placement.

Text or Image Link?

Should you use a text link or image to represent the link to your subscription feed? Text has the benefit of being able to be rendered in any browser available today, but images stand-out and make an impression. Why not use both?

I believe that there should always be a text link to your subscription feed at the end of each of your blog entries. If you make a good impression with your content, when the eyes come to the end, you want them to go directly to your feed. You could make an attempt to integrate it with your content, but you could also distance it. However, try to draw the attention of the reader to your feed.

With an image link, the image itself should be the drawing point, and it should be unique and recognizable. Some of you might believe sticking to plain and simple designs will be sufficient enough, but I think that innovation will win a subscription more often than not. Don’t get me wrong, the content needs to be great, but there are certainly things you can do to help users make their way to your content feed.

Feed Image Resources

Standard RSS Icon

Glass Style Feed Icons

RSS Icons Orb

30 Free Vector Feed Icons

Is it Really a Big Deal?

Is it really a big deal, you might be asking yourself. It made a difference on one of my blogs. While I went on the front page of Digg for the first time on my smaller blog, I only had an icon for my feed on the extreme top-right portion of the page. The aftermath was that I only ended up gaining about 30 subscribers out of the 13,000 unique visitors.

Now, if I had properly set up the location of my feed at the end of my article in question, I might have ended up an impressive amount of new subscribers, but now I will never know. Don’t make the same mistake I did.

Mistakes I Have Made Since Becoming A Pro Blogger

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A Big Mistake

“Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted”—Italian Proverb

I’ve been a professional blogger for around two years now, and I got my big break at Mashable. I managed to make a name for myself within the short time I was there, but a lack of creative freedom to write about what I wanted lead me to not being as enthusiastic about my job as I once was. The money was great, but it wasn’t worth the cost of having to write about what others wanted me to write about while my ideas were shot down left and right. I have to express myself freely in order to work well.

Was leaving a mistake? Absolutely not! It lead to other opportunities which I enjoy including this Performancing job which I love. I also started a blog for the first time in nearly a year, OnlyJames—my personal blog.

There are, unfortunately, mistakes which I have made that have taken their toll. Each one is an experience that I had to learn from if I expected to progress as a professional blogger.

My Mistakes

Passing Up TV Time

Problem

G4TV—previously TechTV then G4TechTV—wanted me to appear on Attack of the Show—one of the most popular shows on G4TV—to do a 5 – 10 minute panel discussion with an editor from PC World or PC Magazine after I wrote an article about the potential death of Yahoo. Yes, it this is national television.

Sean O’Rourke, producer of Attack of the Show, sent me an email inquiring if I would be interested in taking part of the show:

James,

I am a producer with G4TV’s Attack of the Show. We came accross your article about the death of Yahoo yesterday as we were planning our story for today’s show. Today on our show we’re going to be having a panel discussion on this topic and I am wondering if you would like to participate? The segment is sort of like something you might see on a cable news show. It will be you and one other guest talking about the points regarding Yahoo.

You would come to a satellite location so you can be on our show.

Sorry for the speed of this email but the show is at 4PM PST. I need to book people quickly.

I, reluctantly, rejected this opportunity. It was more of a fear about making myself look like an idiot than anything. I was questioning myself, and I wasn’t very confident with what I would have done on the show. Everyone else said I should do it, but I was the only one that was not ready.

After watching “The Loop,”—the portion of the show I would have been on—it was beyond obvious that both of the panel members didn’t have much of a clue about what they were talking about. It almost felt like both panel members were reading from my article. I was almost ready to kick myself by realizing how simple it would have all been. I had an opportunity to make myself into some technology genius that has been on national television, but instead I am an idiot for not doing the show.

It was one of the more prevalent bonehead moves on my part, and if I don’t ever get the chance to go on television again, I will forever have this chip on my shoulder. I must hope that I write something so impressive again as to have a television network notice it. Can’t be too hard, right?

Solution

If given an opportunity that will be great, take it!

Not Backing Up Data

Problem

After joining Performancing, CirtexHosting decided it was time to delete my site and replace it with a backup copy around four months old. The problem was that they forgot to inform me of this before it happened, and a simple email could have saved plenty of people from headaches. As a result, I was not very happy when this happened.

All sites need to have backups just in case something like this happens, right? Well, I had an automated backup performed on a weekly basis, and, furthermore, I backed up the entire site manually at the end of the month. I figured this was enough, and I felt comfortable knowing that my host would backup my data on occasion—everything was supposed to be perfect!

I would quickly learn that my perfect world was ruined when the automated backups were failing on the attempted restores, and the manual backup revealed that many of my images were never actually being backed up for some reason or another.

The end result is a blog without hundreds of pictures, many articles, and my motivation to fix it. To make matters worse, I restored everything on a different content management system which makes it extremely difficult to go back to WordPress.

After consideration of how much effort it would require to get what I want out of the CMS I switched to, it is simply not worth it at this time, and I am still hesitant to go out and hire someone to design what I envision. The blog in question just sits as I try to think of what to do with it. I am not blessed with the skills of artistic design, and I don’t have much time to tinker with things.

This mistake could probably be explained in another way: maybe, just maybe, all I need to realize is that I got what I paid for. I got ripped off, but I did, in fact, receive what I paid for. I tried going to cheap route, and it came back to haunt me. It was a huge and costly mistake.

Solution

Always test backups and sign with a reliable hosting company.

Anti-Social

Problem

When I first started blogging professionally, I was not a very social person. This, of course, reflects my life outside of the internet as well as on it. Soon enough, with my desire to become a successful blogger, I started realizing that I would need to change if I was going to get anywhere in a realistic time-frame.

Blogging, from my perspective, is all about being social—you are communicating to people that read your content, but that isn’t good enough on its own. I was kidding myself by thinking I was social by simply writing on my blog. Only within this past year I began realizing the mistakes I was making. I needed to network myself more, but I wasn’t doing it correctly.

A lot of opportunities that could have been had when I first started blogging were lost as a result. I should have been more outgoing.

Now I talk to bloggers on a daily basis, and I am making new friends that are far more knowledgeable on the topics I write about. I’m learning from some of the best, and as my contacts grow, hopefully the opportunities will too.

Solution

Be more social—it can help create new relationships and opportunities throughout the blogosphere.

Mistakes Happen To Us All

Hopefully, reading about my mistakes as a blogger will help you to realize yours. Acknowledge them. These are not moments you dwell on, but, instead, you learn from them. Try your best to avoid making the same mistakes again.

I am interested in hearing about your biggest mistakes since becoming a blogger. Is there anything you wished you have done differently? Any opportunities that evaded you? Tell us about them in the comments section.

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[Image Credit: Your Choice – A 1970 Ford Pinto or 10 Piece Chicken Nuggets From Wendy’s?—Sister72 | CC]

Document Collaboration in Real-Time with SubEthaEdit

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Creating and editing documents has, understandably, been a fairly lonely task for bloggers. Fortunately, SubEthaEdit by The Coding Monkeys changes all that by giving users the power to collaborate instantaneously. Multiple people can create and edit content in real-time, and beyond being fun, it is extremely useful as well.

Recently, Macworld posted a video explaining the tools they use in their workflow, and the first tool they mentioned was SubEthaEdit. It came to my suprise to learn what was possible with SubEthaEdit—I already had the application installed, but I was unaware of the potential until after watching the video.

Only one thought came to mind—that’s freaking awesome!

The application has certainly been put to the test:

SubEthaEdit has been used to take notes together at conferences like O’Reilly’s OS X Conference, Open Source Convention, Emerging Technology Conference, PyCon, NECC, WWDC and Siggraph. With its new web page export feature you can store these notes with all collaborative metadata intact.

Still, we all must realize that doing anything over the internet in real-time is quite an achievement, but text editing has not received quite the attention it deserves. The question of whether or not there is a market for this right now is valid, and there are several technical challenges with real-time collaboration.

Regardless of the technical problems and awesomeness of it all, it doesn’t mean anything until you actually dig in and play. That is why I am here.

Review

Interface

SubEthaEdit Interface

First impressions of SubEthaEdit based on the interface were not promising. This was so true that I actually have had the application installed for two weeks. I only used it yesterday after learning about some of its more interesting functionality.

Essentially, SubEthaEdit is a barebones text editing client with the ability to select several types of formats for editing text. C++, AppleScript, HTML, Python, Javascript, and many other programming languages are available. So, if you are also a programmer, you might appreciate the interface more than I would. All of that aside, it is still perfectly fine for writers.

The interesting part of the entire interface is the document access area (also called the participants tab. Within this area, you will be notified of people that can connect to your document to modify it in real-time, but you will read more on that later.

There is not much in the way of text formatting. However, you can modify the text editing environment to take on different color schemes and text fonts, but beyond that, there is not much to the editing experience. It gets the job done, but there are better and more visually appealing editors available like TextWrangler.

Features

You don’t install SubEthaEdit purely for its text editing capabilities—you install SubEthaEdit for the real-time collaboration, and that is exactly what I am going to focus on here.

Let me answer the most obvious question first: how can more than one person possibly create/edit a document at the same time? Well, it isn’t as confusing as you would imagine. Editing can be done instantly, but you can lock out certain people from making changes to keep things simple. However, it never felt overwhelming, but I only had one other person to test it with.

SubEthaEdit always lets you know where your friend’s text caret is located at so the participants can avoid writing in the same area (unless you want to, which can be just as fun). It is quite fascinating to see where your co-editors will intend on writing, and you can also see when they highlight text.

When collaborating, all text is highlighted by default with a specified color which represents each person’s input within the document currently being edited. This is very nice for being able to tell which text has been modified by who. It also allows for corrections to stand out. Most of these features are customizable though, so if you prefer having only the text, it is only a few clicks away.

Regardless, it all comes down to the collaboration ability with SubEthaEdit, and this is the application to do that. It does it very well. Just make sure to save on occasion. I had an incident where I was writing a portion of this article and my girlfriend accidentally deleted the entire article. Thankfully, after restarting the document, I was able to restore the file I had saved earlier on. Other than that, everything was great.

Overall

SubEthaEdit will probably never have the lights shined upon it like Microsoft Word does, but this little application offers functionality that can’t be ignored or performed by competition. If you are working with a group of people and taking the work seriously, SubEthaEdit is an obvious investment.

In any other case, it is a fun application to try out with a few friends at least once. But $43.50 (considering exchange rates) is not worth it unless you are using it on a daily basis. There is a 30 day trial period.

Final Thoughts

I spent a few hours with my girlfriend playing with SubEthaEdit, and we had plenty of fun writing together in real-time. We used it more like a chat conversation than anything else, but I could definitely see the potential.

There are a few other projects that are attempting to do what SubEthaEdit has done. Gobby is the best competition available right now, but I have not tried it.

SubEthaEdit comes with a 30 day trial, and it can be downloaded here.

If you have any thoughts on live collaboration, please let them be known in the comments section. It is an exciting technology, but it still needs to be adopted by many users before developers will invest so much time trying to create this technology. Do you think you would use something like this in the future? Let everyone know!

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