twitter

Get simple group Twitter updates with Nerdz

Nerdz is a really simple way to manage a group of your favorite Twitter users. You simply drop in the names of the people you want to keep track of and it pushes their tweets onto a gray background with each tweet fading away as it gets older.

To add more names to your Nerdz list you just add them to the end of the URL, and they'll be re-ordered alphabetically. You can send this link to anyone else as a quick way to give them suggestions of people to subscribe to, or simply use it as a no-software … Read more

All-in-one voice search

Extremely simple and easy to use, Vlingo's iPhone application blows away its rivals--so far. The free service lets you speak your search, contact names, and Facebook and Twitter updates into the phone, featuring great service support from the get-go. It also includes basics like speech-to-text searches of Google maps, contact dialing, and queries of multiple search providers.

Like most iPhone applications, Vlingo could use a built-in browser. It never crashed on us, and fails with grace when you've reached a data blind spot.

Boarding helps you find other stranded travelers

If you're going to be traveling solo in a few weeks for round two of the holiday season, worth checking out is the Boarding Project. It's a social service that uses Twitter to helps you meet up with others at the same airport. To use it you simply tweet #boarding along with your airport code. It'll send you a reply with a link to the other Twitter users who you can message directly to meet up with.

What's neat is that Boarding Project's system does not require users to sign up for anything. It also … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 864: Crabs in a bucket

In today's show, Molly gets a new favorite metaphor, Apple deletes the very thought that you should run antivirus on a Mac, .Tel gets our wallets at the ready, and poor widdle Windows' market share drops below 90 percent. The horror! Listen now: Download today's podcast

EPISODE 864

Apple deletes Mac antivirus suggestion http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10111958-83.html

Twitter CEO: The revenue’s coming soon, but I won’t tell you how http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10112037-2.html

.Tel them where to find you http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/tel-them-where-to-find-you/

Vista SP2: What's … Read more

Twitter CEO: The revenue's coming soon, but I won't tell you how

At a Churchill Club event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams brushed off--again--criticisms that the company is slow to turn on its revenue-generating engines.

At first, it sounded like Williams was a bit lost on the revenue front. "We will make money, and I can't say exactly how because...we can't predict how the businesses we're in will work." As he has before, he hinted at generating fees from sales-related Twitter content and from corporate users.

But as the conversation went on, one got the impression that Williams actually has … Read more

Should Microsoft buy itself some cool?

Cool is a slippery customer. One minute, you have it, and the next, it seems to desert you like a bon mot on a date.

Once, for perhaps four minutes, Boy George was cool. Yet today he appears to be somewhat over the weight limit for the dohyo, and he was in court apparently admitting to handcuffing a male escort. Against, in this case, the escort's will.

Which leads me to thinking of Microsoft. A fine company that still sometimes endures the image vestiges of an accountant in, um, an office building. So very PC. Yet, like so many … Read more

Get your customized Twitter background with TwitBacks

People with a good-looking custom Twitter background have been the envy of ordinary Twitter users without the Photoshop skills to make their own. TwitBacks is looking to make those same rich profiles available to everyone. It only took me a few minutes to pimp out my Twitter profile with my very own custom background.

TwitBacks currently features six different themes that you can choose from, but promises more in the future. I couldn't get photo upload to work correctly, but I have seen other users who have been able to upload, so that may be an isolated issue. I … Read more

The information flow from Mumbai

As the tragic events unfolded in Mumbai, India, the Internet backchannel came to the foreground with messages, photos, and videos from the masses using Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and so-called citizen reporting sites such as Global Voices, as well as CNN and NDTV.

The terrorist attacks have left more than 100 dead and several hundred wounded in Mumbai, the country's financial center.

As you would expect, the flow of information has been chaotic and potentially unreliable, which presents some problems, especially for those with family or friends at risk. A few posts on Techmeme question the quality of Twitter messages, … Read more

Twitter: No more outbound texts for Canada

This can't be good. Just a few months after restricting its U.K.-based text-messaging number due to cost issues, Twitter has done the same for Canada.

The microblogging service has cut outbound SMS messages for the folks up north, citing "unexpected changes in our billing." Costs had been doubling for a few months.

Basically, this means Canadian Twitter users will be able to send numbers to its short code, 21212, but not receive them that way. They can instead use the Twitter mobile site or one of many third-party mobile apps to see what their friends … Read more

Why is Yahoo peddling old plug-ins?

It's hard not to pity Yahoo's very public decline, but that doesn't keep us from scratching our heads over the once-great Silicon Valley powerhouse's recent promotion of a plug-in that debuted a year ago and which its developers say is sorely outdated.

An early November post on Yahoo's Messenger blog promoted the Twitter-Sync plug-in, published by New Zealand developers WackyB.

Twitter-Sync, last updated on Yahoo's plug-in site over a year ago on September 6, 2007, is curiously said to sync Twitter and Yahoo status updates only with Yahoo Messenger 9.0, which was released … Read more