12 posts tagged “social network and groups”

Twinkle for iPhone lets you surf Twitter by location

Post a Comment

Got a jailbroken iPhone? Then you've got to download a fantastic app called Twinkle that's doing some amazing things to make Twitter even more useful for people while they're out and about. Besides being a delightfully simple Twitter client (see also: ThinCloud and Hahlo), Twilight's killer app is its location tool which taps into the LocateMe feature introduced in iPhone firmware version 1.1.3. Using this it can narrow down not only where you are (to be included in your Tweets), but also let you see who's around you anywhere from one to 252,000 miles away using local cell phone towers or your Wi-Fi connection.

You might be wondering how this would be useful for anyone besides potential stalkers. The answer is that if you're in a Twitter-rich city, drilling down to 1-5 mile radius around you will let you know all sorts of things going on in your area as they're happening.

Twinkle's other fantastic feature, which I demo in the video below, is the built-in photo integration which uses the iPhone's camera to take pictures you can attach to your Tweets. The only catch is that you've got to be using Twinkle to see the photos. It's fantastically simple, and something I think will make its way into Twitter applications for other handsets.

We've featured disaster preparedness tools using Twitter several times before, but Twinkle puts it together in a portable, user-friendly package. I fully expect it to be released as a standalone application in the iPhone App Store in a few months when Apple updates the firmware.

Related: Twitter + Maps = Global stream of consciousness

Get Twitter friends out of Twubble

Post a Comment

I'm kind of a jerk on Twitter. I have more followers than people I'm following, but that's about to change due to a service called Twubble. It scans your Twitter friends to see who they're following then gives you recommendations based on whatever connections it can find. Similar to DiggSuggest, which I looked at last month, the more people you're friends with the more results you'll get. It's also nice enough to let you know which of your friends are following the people from the search results, as well as throw in their real name and a quick link to a Google search in case you want to do a brief background check.

The tool was designed by Bob Lee, who's one of the lead engineers working on Google's mobile phone platform Android. The guy's also got some ridiculous photography skills which you can check out here.

[via FaceReviews and DownloadSquad]

Twubble finds people for you to follow based on who your friends are following. It can take some of the guess work out of finding new people to Twitstalk.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Mixwit reimagines the Web mix tape (legally)

Post a Comment

Rafe and I enjoyed playing around with Muxtape yesterday (review), but were turned off by the uploader and potential limited life span of the service due to its lenient position on copyrights. If you're looking for a slightly more flashy experience, and one that works without having to upload 50MB of music from your hard drive, check out Mixwit. It lets you create gorgeous-looking Web mix tapes to share with others and pulls in media from various streaming services such as Seeqpod and SkreemR.

Maybe its greatest asset is that the players look like real compact cassette tapes, with moving spools to match how far you are through the mix and each song. You can tweak the look and feel of the tape, the font, and the playlist with a wonderfully simple Flex editor. If you feel like going back to make changes, you can also go in and add, reorder, or get rid of songs that don't make the cut.

The one bummer is that linking to playlists is not as simple as an affair as it is on Muxtape, which gives you your own personal URL. The upside is that you can create multiple mixes using a central account.

Mixwit tapes can be embedded in all the major social networks, along with any regular blog, which I've done below.

See also: Create viral mixtapes with Fuzz

LinkedIn's business directory goes live

Professional networking site LinkedIn has launched the beta version of its business directory, called LinkedIn Company Profiles, with data provided by BusinessWeek and Capital IQ supplementing LinkedIn's member information. Over 150,000 companies and organizations are indexed in the directory, working it into a Hoovers-esque database that ties into LinkedIn's social features.

A LinkedIn Company Profiles page includes a number of basic statistics pulled from BusinessWeek's database, such as company size and history. But for the most part, the rest of the business' page consists of information from employees of that company who have LinkedIn profiles, like a list of "new hires" (LinkedIn members who have recently added a current affiliation with that company) and recent promotions, other businesses that have seen people hired from that company, and demographic tidbits like median age and education information.

At first glance, LinkedIn's business directory seems like it will be fairly useful for people who are looking to make connections at a given company, dig up information before interviewing for a job or accepting a position, or just looking for interesting facts. Accuracy, of course, is an issue when it comes to the data gathered from LinkedIn profiles--the networking site has 20 million members, but the workforce of one company (or even an individual branch of a larger company) may be represented far more heavily than another.

Google's company page on the LinkedIn Company Profiles directory.

(Credit: LinkedIn)

Joongel makes searching social sites simpler

Joongel (rate it!) is a new plug-in for Firefox and IE7 that lets you search through various social media and news sites using the same query. Unlike a search aggregator that mixes up all the results, you have to view them on each service's results page. It's simply emulating the same effect of having each site's custom search installed in your browser's built-in search bar.

If you're a search junkie, this is a whole lot faster than having to navigate to each site and then use the search tool. Essentially it's saving you one click each time you want to look for something. At the same time it's taking away some of the business your browser's creators are getting by replacing the stock search engine modules with this one.

The Joongel plug-in comes in two flavors: one for social media sites like Digg, Reddit, and Delicious, and a "standard" one that includes reference tools like Wikipedia, Technorati, and Yahoo Answers. Those who don't want to install the plug-in can give it a spin (in any browser) by clicking on the screenshot below.

Joongel's social media search toolbar gives you quick access to several social news and media sites and the search engines that go with them. To give it a spin, click on the graphic above.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Coordinatr is a new events communication service that's been designed for creating spontaneous get-togethers amongst tight knit groups of friends. The setup is similar to MyPunchbowl and Crusher, with just a few form fields that need to be filled out in order to create an event. What makes the service particularly useful is its integration with high profile media sharing sites and a great mobile service that lets you send quick distributed messages to the rest of your party friends.

While MyPunchBowl was one of the first of these services to really embrace that people using these services share their party media elsewhere, Coordinatr takes the process a step further by simply giving everyone with access to the event page a special tag to use. Adding that tag to photos (on Flickr) and videos (on YouTube) will automatically add them to the community page without requiring anyone with administrative access to the event to have to link up content manually.

There are all sorts of notifications options for Coordinatr. All of them can be toggled through various e-mail addresses and even SMS text messages to various phones. (click to enlarge)

Coordinatr

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Besides media sharing (usually an afterthought when the hangover wears off), the core part of the service--inviting and adding friends, is all handled through Plaxo, which lets you plug in your e-mail credentials and nab contacts without having to create an invite in each e-mail service. Pretty standard stuff really, but Coordinatr is smart enough to let you create custom groups of friends from those contacts that you can send out quick invites en masse the next time around.

Those same people on your quick lists can also elect to sign up to a mobile notification service that lets you send out SMS notifications, be it a quick location change or other important information. If I were to go back in time to my high school days, I could see this being a helpful way alert the rest of my fellow party goers if the cops had just shown up.

At first glance I was quick to dismiss Coordinatr as a late entrant to the events planning game, but it brings to the table a few handy features that innovate the space. Whether or not that's enough to push it into people's minds when they're planning events might be a stretch. I often run into a lot of resistance urging some of my friends to try out some of the newer events services we write about. Many are simply engrained in old systems like Evite, with too much fear to try some of the next generation planning services like Socializr, MyPunchbowl, and Crushr in order to avoid confusing their guests.

The best way going forward may simply be a convergence app for all of these events services, similar to what we've seen with tools like FriendFeed, Profileactic, et al. People want one place to view all this information, and there's still not a service that does it.

Your party start page has your events, plus events your friends are taking part in. (note: we'd never have a Webware party on a Monday)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Twiddla takes home SXSW award despite sluggish performance

Collaborative whiteboarding applications can be handy tools for small groups looking to do some brainstorming despite geographical displacement. Meet Twiddla, a free tool that lets you mark up media and live Web sites, or simply organize ideas together on a virtual whiteboard. It also tacks on live communication with text chat and free VoIP conference calling that doesn't require additional plug-ins or software.

The application won an award for technical achievement at last night's SXSW Interactive Web Awards. While technologically fantastic, in my testing I ran up against some noticeable speed and local resource problems. At times I found the application to be nearly unusable despite its simple interface and snappy menus. At other times it was incredibly responsive.

In any case, Twiddla's packing a lot of features that might attract users of premium paid collaborative services such as ConceptShare and Octopz who are seeking a very simple way to get feedback on Web design or photography. It could also easily replace WebEx for a large number of people who use the tool simply for its text chat and shared work space.

One of Twiddla's killer applications is the built-in screenshot tool. It will snap the current iteration of the whiteboard and save it into both your saved media folder and the meeting's history archive. For photo or Web design consulting, this gives you the option of coming back to a work space and editing content asynchronously.

I'm holding off on giving Twiddla a thumbs up for the time being. It simply didn't perform as well as I think it should to make me ditch some of the alternatives. However, I'm happy to see some little guys come up and show WebEx and others like the recently Google-acquired Marratech what can be done on the user interface side to make these tools simple and attractive.

Read Web pages at the same time with others, and make live markups to a site on the fly. You can also chat live with others either via text or VoIP conference calling.

(Credit: CNET Networks)