twitter

Twitter is a great personal and social communications platform. But that's not all you can use it for.

I've dug through countless services to find some interesting, loopy, and just plain cool tools that allow you to do more than talk to friends. From receiving tweets when your clothes are clean to tracking packages, Twitter is a great place to solve many of the day's tasks.

PIMPY3WASH OK, so maybe you can't use this and it's only designed for one person, but PIMPY3WASH is the neatest washing machine hack I've seen, so I had … Read more

If there's such a thing as too much fun, we don't want to hear about it. Richard Blakeley grabs the guest mic and washes his hands of the CES 2008 prank once and for all. He also gets meta on the state of Internet video, helps us make fun of Twitter just a little more, and dishes tips on how to pick the perfect couture halter-top ensemble.

Unless you've been inhaling chloroform for the past year, chances are you've heard the name Richard Blakeley. Yeah, he's the senior video editor for Gawker Media, but that'… Read more

Zoho announced on Wednesday that in light of Google suspending Google Notebook, it has enhanced its own service, Zoho Notebook.

According to the company, it has added a Google Notebook import function, which allows users to import all their Google Notebooks into Zoho's software. The company also added the ability to link between notebooks, record audio and video, and chat with other Zoho users through a new instant-messaging application built into the software. The updated Zoho Notebook is available now.

Mixx, a Digg-like social site that caters to a more "mainstream" audience, has inked a deal with … Read more

Two services I use, Twhirl and Ping.fm, and one I don't, Seesmic, are getting integrated this week in ways that will likely help all of the products.

First up, Seesmic CEO Loic LeMeur just announced that the multi-posting tool Ping.fm now supports Seesmic, a video microblog service. Seesmic has a new API, which has made it possible for the Ping.fm team to allow embed a recording function for Seesmic videos within Ping.fm. It's very simple to use the Ping.fm service now to create a Seesmic video, but the real benefit is that you … Read more

Twitter on Tuesday announced a new limit on third-party access to its service via its application programming interface, or API. Later this week, according to Twitter developer Alex Payne, the Twitter platform will limit API calls from a single IP address at approved ("whitelisted") Twitter services to 20,000 per hour. This will affect services that use Twitter APIs in bulk for non-messaging functions, like managing followers. Normal calls to read and write status updates are not part of this change.

There is already an API limit in place for third-party applications that give users general access to … Read more

Social-network aggregator FriendFeed announced Tuesday that it's built in a Twitter friend importer, and my e-mail in-box was sort of thrown into shock.

See, here's the thing: I have a FriendFeed account, but I don't really use it; not enough of my friends do, and I've never found aggregators to really fit my social-networking habits in general. I'm a big Twitter user, however. So when FriendFeed instituted its Twitter contact import feature, I was flooded with dozens of subscription requests from people I'd never heard of. Before I was clued into the new tool, … Read more

I'm an unabashed New York Times fan boy. Warts and all, it remains the best edited daily newspaper in this country. Disagree? Then come find me on Twitter and let's mix it up. (My handle is "coopeydoop").

You won't have a chance to do the same with many Times reporters and editors--on Twitter or any other social network, for that matter. Batting it back and forth with the hoi polloi just isn't part of the drill. Not, mind you, because they lack for opinions or have no stomach for engagement.

The Poynter Institute reposted the text … Read more

I continue to marvel at the huge amount of coverage that Twitter gets from mainstream and business press, as well as the huge amount of traffic the service enjoys.

But while Twitter is becoming omnipresent in every layer of the media, the business remains a mystery. Ubiquity without clear methods of monetization can easily result in a situation where free really means free, with no way to make meaningful money.

The recent levels of Twitter adoption, attention, and omnipresence are starting to lean toward a situation where the company may never be able to effectively monetize the user base.

Don Reisinger wrote on CNET's Webware earlier this week about five Twitter improvements he's still waiting for. I completely agree with all of Don's points, but there is one key item that Twitter users and supporters are really awaiting: proof that the service will exist in the future.

By proof, I mean a business model, or even an inkling of a revenue stream to suggest that there is life beyond free and that users will remain loyal. … Read more

Within the past 30 minutes, I have received Twitter follower notifications from a couple of high-profile Twitterers, or so it would seem.

The subject line of one reads "Duncan Riley is now following you on Twitter!" Upon clicking through to the profile, it's obvious that this is not the Duncan Riley that we know from The Inquisitr, but rather an impostor trying to cash in on affiliate rewards from the sale of the book, 5 Steps to Twitter Success. According to the book's site, which I am not going to link to here, it is authored … Read more