Ok that might be a little bit of exaggeration but the new version of TweetDeck really has gotten an awesome speed boost.

Twitter introduced User Streams API earlier that allowed for instant delivery of tweets. The older API allowed for the clients tto check for new tweets every few minutes.

TweetDeck launched a new version with the User Streams API but I found it a bit buggy to use. Today, in a new version update, TweetDeck has brought the User Streams API into the main version.

Once you install the new version v0.36, you will have the new stream feature enabled. The tweets you see are in real time and are updated as they happen instead of the old way where TweetDeck would poll every few minutes for new updates.

This can be really useful and kind of give the same functionality of TwitterFall.com inside TweetDeck.

However, if you follow a large number of people on Twitter, this could get overwhelming. You can easily turn this off and go back to the old method by going to

Settings –> Twitter –> Enable realtime Twitter streaming

and disabling it.

TweetDeck has a few tips on using the new feature

You can’t just expect to jump into your F-14 and start buzzing the tower without a few pointers. So here are a few key articles from our support site that should help you understand some of the finer points of streaming updates in TweetDeck.

• Twitter may throttle your search results under certain circumstances
• Searches have slightly different rules – here are some tips
• You might want to reduce the amount of popup notifications – read about how TweetDeck batches notifications when streaming
• You can see when you get added to Lists in your New Followers column
• When someone favourites your tweet, you will be notified in your Mentions column
• Twitter does not yet include Lists in the Streaming API. Voice your support for them to be included here.

Other than that, just strap yourself in and enjoy Twitter the way it was meant to be – in TweetDeck and in true real-time!

If you are thinking you may not use this feature and don’t need to upgrade your TweetDeck, think again. Twitter seems to have made another major architectural change behind the scenes.

Twitter is switching to a new way of assigning unique identifiers to each tweet in it’s database. This new method, dubbed "Snowflake", has forced us to make some fundamental changes behind the scenes in TweetDeck. 

The result of all this techno-jiggery-pokery is that you *must* update to at least v0.36 urgently. If you have not upgraded before 24th November then your TweetDeck will start going very wrong.

So, make sure you update your TweetDeck before Nov 24.

{ via TweetDeck }

TweetDeck Goes Supersonic With a New Update - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/08/02 (RSS)

If you are on Twitter, you will really like this new tool I just found.

I have come across many tools and recommendation service including Twitter’s own now-extinct recommendation list to find and follow new people.

After being on Twitter for more than 2 years I have the ‘following too many people’ bloat. I follow way too many people and I can’t remember why I follow some of them for the life of me.

Manage Twitter let’s you find Twitter users who aren’t following you back, users who have been inactive and for how long, users who are talkative or quiet, etc.

You can look through inactive users and simply unfollow them all in one shot.

I simply love the simplicity with which I could clean up my Twitter feed. I have been following dead accounts, really really talkative accounts, and people I once found interesting but no longer relevant to my interest now, etc. I was able to unfollow close to a 100 people in under 5 minutes!

All you have to do is connect ManageTwitter to your account using OAuth and then it loads up your account and presents with the screen as shown in the first screenshot. Then it’s easy going from there.

Check out ManageTwitter.com today.

Hardly the time to pimp our Twitter accounts. But, hey now that you have unfollowed some unwanted accounts, here are a few of our interesting ones to consider:

• @KIntheHouse – me
• @TopiPhone – Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad stuff (Top iPhone Resource)
• @TopiPad – Apple iPad news (TopiPadResource.com)
• @theCamerani – Digital camera deals, photography stuff (Camerani.com)
• @KarshanMedia – WordPress and web design stuff (KarShanMedia.com)

Instant Fat Trimming For Your Twitter Account - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/04/21 (RSS)

I just came across another cool service that lets me download my tweets in one shot as a PDF ebook.

You just need to sign in with your twitter account at TweetBook.in. Then you have the choice to download all your tweets or just your favorites as a PDF.

If you have a lot of tweets and if it takes longer than 10 minutes for the PDF to appear, make sure you logout and log back in.

TweetBook.in

Create a PDF Book of All Your Tweets - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/03/14 (RSS)

How can you see what you did for your last birthday?

How can you tell how you were ‘feeling’ on your last vacation?

MemoLane is a new startup in private beta that aims to aggregate your social life and show it to you in a beautiful timeline.

It is an online time machine where you can view your social network updates in a nice timeline. MemoLane becomes your personal time machine to go back in time to check what you have been up to.

Once signed in, you setup MemoLane with your different social network accounts. MemoLane works in the background to grab your updates and creates a beautiful timeline shown by the lines at the bottom of the page.

When you set up individual social network accounts, you are given a choice of making your updates public, or for memolane friends or totally private.

I set it up so my twitter updates are public, my Flickr & Facebook updates available to friends.

You can hover over the lines to select a date you are interested and view the happenings of the day.

You can easily browse through nearby dates with a scroll menu as well.

I was able to use the invite code ‘makeuseof’ to sign up for an account. You may be able to find an invite code by searching on Google.

Try MemoLane

Check out the following video demo

I really hope there will be an Apple iPad app for this service. It is just perfect for that medium any way you look at it.

Take a Walk Down Your MemoLane - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/01/17 (RSS)

They also brought out several interesting ones like Mozilla Prism, Ubiquity, Firefox Sync, BeSpin,  etc.

F1 is a new social sharing Firefox extension. Once installed, it makes it easy to share web links and content via Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Google Apps, Yahoo Mail, etc.

If the name F1 has you wondering if it is related to Formula 1, no it is not. You access the sharing service by pressing the F1 key when in Firefox. Hence, the name F1.

Once you configure and authenticate the services you want to share links with, just hit F1 while surfing to share content. It’s as easy as pie.

If you are on certain keyboard configuration where the F1 key may not be the best to use, you can disable that in the settings. You can just use the Share button in your Firefox toolbar.

While in settings, you can also configure to bookmark all the links you share with F1. You can find these bookmarks as unsorted and can all also search with keyword F1.

I have installed F1 in my Firefox and starting to use it regularly and really like it. I would like to see more services added to it.

F1 Firefox extension

Don’t forget to check out the best Firefox extensions list I have put up.

Mozilla Labs Brings Out a Social Sharing Firefox Extension - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2010/12/15 (RSS)

If you ever wish to leave a particular network, all the history of your activity thee is gone… poof!

I think about this all the time and in an effort to save my tweets, I added a subdomain to this site and have been saving all my tweets at twitter.shankrila.com. (I just noticed this had stopped gathering tweets in May )

But, what about the other social network platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.?

ThinkUp is an open source project founded by the former Lifehacker editor Gina Trapani.

ThinkUp captures your posts, replies, retweets, friends, followers, and links on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. We’ll be adding more networks in the future. ThinkUp stores your social data in a database you control, and makes it easy to search, sort, filter, export, and visualize in useful ways.

ThinkUp is WordPress-like where in you download the code and run it in your own web server in a public domain (a requirement for Twitter API). You need PHP5 and a MySQL database to store the data collected.

Once installed ThinkUp offers a dizzying array of features to visualize and interact with your social data.

ThinkUp Features

• Archive all of your social data for your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Search, sort and filter the data.
• Export some or all of your data into a spreadsheet
• View all of your friends’ replies to your messages. Even display it in a Google Map if location is enabled.
• View insightful charts of key stats like number of followers, posting behaviours, etc.
• Stream of all photos or links your friends have posted
• Sort replies to your tweets or Facebook status updates by location
• Get insights on followers and friends
• Complete list of replies to your questions. Even integrates with WordPress.

ThinkUp is in beta and continues to add new features. One awesome thing to note about ThinkUp is that it is extendable with plugins. With it being open source, developers can add other social networks like Flickr, Youtube, etc. via plugins.

If you have a web server, download ThinkUp and kick the tires a bit. I am sure gonna do that this week.

Download ThinkUp

Archive All Your Social Data With ThinkUp - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2010/09/30 (RSS)

But, with so many friends over at Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and their contact information different or incomplete in different areas it is a pain in the rear to keep them updated in Gmail.

I try to do that for people I stay in touch with all the time. But, that isn’t ideal if you wanted to know something about a person instantly without having to login to other networks and see what you can find out about them.

Recently, we looked a service called Rapportive that sits alongside Gmail and pulls public information about your contacts from a variety of social networks.

Rainmaker.cc is a new service that takes it one step further.

Rainmaker can sync your contact data from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and updates Google Contacts for you. You just connect Rainmaker with your social networks and it can pull in your contacts.

It nicely shows your contacts based on the business name as well as their name in a searcheable column. Once you select the person of interest, you just click on ‘Make it rain’ to sync info for that contact. That is counted as one raindrop.

Rainmaker is FREE for 25 one-time raindrops and there are plans you can purchase that gives you monthly raindrops to use. You can see the pricing here in this image

You can set your contacts to update any time there is a change in real time. Also, you can choose to connect with contacts automatically on LinkedIn and follow contacts on Twitter while setting this up.

You can just sign in with your Gmail account and try Rainmaker for free.  The service holds true to its name and you can see rain reference everywhere starting from the plan names.

Try Rainmaker

Rainmaker Fills Your Google Contacts With Social Info - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2010/09/29 (RSS)

Flock has just released a new version of their social browser this time based on Chromium. Chromium is the open source browser project Google made Open Source when they released the Google Chrome browser.

Flock has ditched Mozilla’s Firefox and has moved over to Google Chrome as its base and totally re-engineered their social browser.

For those new to Flock, it is a social web browser where they let you add all your social networking accounts and provide easy access to them as well as nice integration so you can seamless share content with your friends as you browse.

Here is what I found on the Flock blog

These are exciting times around the Flock offices and in our wider community. As many of you know, we recently launched the New Flock Social Browser and the response from our users and people new to the Flock experience has been phenomenal. A core focus of the new Flock is to help users better manage the large volume of information and relationships they interact with online each day and we’ve been blown away to see that our first 20,000 new Flock beta users have viewed, managed and interacted with over 100,000,000 "activities" in the Flock sidebar in the first 3 weeks of using product! ("activities" include tweets, DMs, status updates, comments, feeds, requests, invites, photo upload notifications, etc, etc.)

Right now, the new Flock browser (beta) seems to support only Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. But, the integration is similar to the one before. You could see the Twitter, Facebook updates in the sidebar. Also, you could see them as a unified view if you use multiple accounts and just want to check them together.

You could also add your favorite RSS feeds in the mix.

Earlier, I believe they had integrated Delicious, StumbleUpon, Gmail, etc but the new motto ‘Built for Twitter and Facebook’ probably makes it clear on their intentions to keep things focused on these 2 powerhouses.

I have been using Google Chrome more and more lately for casual surfing and Firefox for Web development. I am giving Flock a try to see if it really aids my social networking seamlessly while working just like Google Chrome. if it does, we will have a winner here with most Google Chrome fans.

The new Flock beta is now only available on Windows and you can enter your email address to get notified for a Mac version.

Download New Flock browser

New Flock Social Browser Based on Chromium - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2010/08/24 (RSS)

Rapportive is a web solution that replaces the ad column in Gmail with a rich contact profile.

Rapportive shows you everything about your contacts right inside your inbox.

You can immediately see what people look like, where they’re based, and what they do. You can establish rapport by mentioning shared interests. You can grow your network by connecting on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and more. And you can record thoughts for later by leaving notes.

Imagine relationship management built into your email. For free.

Rapportive is available as an add-on for Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Mailplane app. If you have tried Xobni for Microsoft Outlook, Rapportive does the same for Gmail.

The extension works by checking the email address of the person you are looking at with publicly available social network presences, pictures.

You can find what your contacts are upto in the social networks, connect with them in more meaningful ways and even add notes about them that will appear with their profile everytime.

After using it for a day, I found a few of my friends on Flickr which I never knew before, found a few contacts on Linked In, and some in Facebook and Twitter.

I can’t believe I didn’t have this before in my Gmail! I highly recommend trying out Rapportive right away!

Try Rapportive

Rich Contact Profiles Inside Gmail with Rapportive - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2010/08/17 (RSS)

But, consuming Twitter on the web can get boring. Even the excellent Twitter desktop client like TweetDeck can only do so much in consuming that ever-flowing river of information.

How can you make it interesting to consume your Twitter content in an interesting way?

Paper.li is a web service that has made a great attempt at this. Paper.li aims at presenting your Twitter feed like a daily newspaper.

Once you provide a Twitter username or a hashtag or a topic, Paper.li will analyze that user and their followers and present the Twitter feed in an interesting format just like a daily newspaper.

When you do this for the first time, it could take some time for it to import you and your followers and process that information. Once done, it is automatically updated every 24 hours.

The newspaper contains content from your own tweets plus the people you follow. Check out the Top iPhone Resource newspaper I created for our sister iPhone blog at @TopiPhone. (I tweet at @KIntheHouse about various tech stuff. )

You can also retweet, reply, favorite, follow, unfollow directly from the papers you read. You can create multiple newspapers and also just search for newspapers already created and follow it. You can also promote your newspaper directly on Twitter right from paper.li.

if you are a heavy Twitter user or want to see what Twitter is all about, Paper.li provides an exciting new way to check it out and consume.

Paper.li is to Twitter where Feedly is for Google Reader.

Visit Paper.li

Read Your Twitter As a Daily Newspaper – Paper.li - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2010/08/05 (RSS)

TweetDeck version 0.34 just came out with some amazing additions and here is a quick run down

• Google Buzz support – One of the first clients to offer desktop client for Google Buzz. You can post to buzz with no character limit and also include your location data. You can comment and like your friends’ posts. You can also mute conversations to focus on just a few people.
• FourSquare support – FourSquare is one of the popular ‘check-in’ location based services. Now, you can use TweetDeck to check-in, find your friends, see tips and current visitos on Venue profile pages.
• Location support – Find yourself on a map and add location information to your tweets.
• Map View – You can view location coded updates in a Google Map
• Schedule updates – this is the biggest feature for me. You can now schedule your updates!!
• Support for other APIs – TweetDeck now supports other major APIs for updates such as Tumblr, WordPress and StatusNet.
• Custom URL shorteners – You can also add your own custom URL shorteners with the new APIs.
• TwitVid – Support for video uploads using TwitVid. You can even record with your webcam and post it to your update.
• Global filters – hide those annoying auto updates from your otherwise lovely friends.

TweetDeck was an awesome desktop social network client before and it just became even more powerful in my eyes! Here is the full changelog of all the bug fixes and new features in this latest version.

TweetDeck is also available for iPhone & Apple iPad.

Download TweetDeck

TweetDeck Gets Google Buzz, FourSquare & More - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2010/05/21 (RSS)

I just came across a new app via TechCrunch called TweetBracket by YCombinator startup 140bets.com.

TweetBracket is an interesting mix of NCAA interest and Twitter. And it is very simple to use and play.

Sign in to Twitter using oAuth and get presented with a random matchup from today’s games. select the team you think will win, optionally tweet your choice to your followers. Rinse and repeat.

You connect your Twitter account with 140bets with your email and they keep track of your picks throughout the tournament. prizes are awarded to tweeps with most correct predictions for each round.

After a couple of picks, it presents your followers so you can invite them to play as well.

TweetBracket is a very interesting sign of apps to come based on binary answers from Twitter users like the earlier Tweet Idol app.

So, have a little fun with your Twitter account in the March Madness 2010.

Try TweetBracket.com

Share Your March Madness Picks With TweetBracket - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2010/03/18 (RSS)

Gist lets you connect your contacts from your email (Gmail, Outlook), Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc and gives you valuable insights about them and the companies you communicate with.

As the name implies, it instantly gives you news and insight into a contact or company almost working like a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool for you.

Gist provides great insight into your various communication tools by bringing them all together in one clean neat interface.

Gist not only brings your various contacts into one place it even prioritizes them by importance. Any time you are looking at a contact or a company, Gist shows you contact information, online news article mentioning the contact, RSS feeds, links and attachments exchanged via email, Twitter exchanges, etc.

Now you can create your Gist profile like your Facebook Profile and get found by others.

If you are a small business or a freelance leveraging social media to improve your business, you will see the power of Gist instantly. It brings your contacts and companies to your fingertips and helps you find the best prospects for the day.

Gist iPhone app helps you get all this cool information right on your smartphone.

Try Gist

Do You Have a Gist of Social Media? - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2010/02/24 (RSS)

Location aware social network updates are so useful in so many contexts. But, announcing where you are at any particular time also comes with a danger.

You are telling the world one place you are not at. Your home.

PleaseRobMe.com is a site that is built with raising an awareness of this danger.

The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc. Because all this site is, is a dressed up Twitter search page. Everybody can get this information.

With sites like FourSquare make it very attractive to ‘colonize’ places you visit, it might be rewarding to become the Mayor of the local coffee shop. But, is it worth the risk of telling anyone who has an eye on your profile that no one is at your home?

This gets worse when your friends want to ‘colonize’ your home which means they have to enter your home address to tell everyone else where they are – your home.

So, next time you use one of these social networks to announce to the world where you are, be aware, that you could actually be screaming – Please rob me!

Are You Screaming Please Rob Me With SN Updates? - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2010/02/22 (RSS)

HootSuite is a professional web based Twitter management tool. You can read my HootSuite review here.

Hootsuite has now updated with a few more features

Facebook Integration

Once you link your HootSuite account with your Facebook account, you can update your Facebook status, etc right from within Hootsuite. The cool thing is that if you had a Facebook Fan Page, you can also update it from HootSuite.

LinkedIn Integration

Hootsuite now supports posting updates to your LinkedIn status as well.

Ping.fm

Ping.fm users can use HootSuite to post updates. You could use Ping.fm in turn will update other social networks that Hootsuite doesn’t support yet. (like delicious, flickr, etc)

Twitter Lists

Twitter introduced Lists feature recently and now HootSuite supports Twitter Lists.

I have long used HootSuite’s bookmarklet to post links via HootSuite but looking into the new Hootsuite Firefox add-on. But the function basically seems like the bookmarklet so I may end up uninstalling it to shave off extra Firefox add-ons I don’t need.

HootSuite has become a valuable blogging tool for me as I can measure what links have been successful in driving traffic to my blogs via Twitter. Now, I can measure the same through Facebook wall updates and fan page updates as well.

I am really excited about the HootSuite iPhone app coming soon!

HootSuite Updates With Facebook LinkedIn Integration - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2009/12/03 (RSS)

Adobe Air platform probably has the most number of Twitter clients. Adbobe AIR is a new technology that brings web applications to your desktop via a familiar desktop app like interface.

A few popular Twitter clients on Adobe AIR are Twhirl, TweetDeck, DestroyTwitter, Seesmic, etc. I used Twhirl for the longest time and since converted to TweetDeck after it started supporting multiple Twitter accounts after a nudge from my buddy @MattJabs.

If for some reason you are looking for a non-Adobe AIR Twitter client for your Windows desktop, I just came across a stylish new client.

Blu Windows Twitter Client

Blu is a .NET based Windows desktop Twitter client developed by thirteen23. Blu has a fun and stylish instant messenger like interface. Plus, it has ample transparency effect to blend very well with your Windows Vista or Windows 7 desktop. It works great in my Windows XP as well.

Let’s look at a few features that sets Blu apart from the others.

Blu Windows Twitter Client Features

• Unlimited Tweets – Blue lets you view unlimited tweets and it automatically loads as you scroll down
• Bottom bar – houses the most frequently used bottons – Faves, Home, Replies, Direct, Update and a Refresh
• User Profile – Just click on a user picture to see their profile with their Twitter stats. You can favorite, follow/unfollow and block user.
• Replies – Replies tab shows your replies. You can follow the conversation easily by clicking the blue arrow by the user name to see your previous tweet. To Reply, just hit the reply arrow. It even remembers your scroll position when you switch back!
• Direct Messages – tab shows your direct messages. It sports Message and delete buttons.
• TinyUrl integration – Just add your link to the tweet as you are typing and it is automatically converted into a tinyurl link on the fly. No need to push a button or put your url into a separate box!
• Settings – A settings tab to turn on/off – audible tweets, auto login, log your twitter sessions, custom proxy support, client opacity, refresh frequency, etc.
• Faves – As you are tweeting, you can click on a user picture and add them to your faves to quickly follow certain people’s tweets easily.

lu takes advantage of some of the cool user interface experiences that could be brought to a desktop app like

• Your Twitter windows keeps refreshing even as you are typing a Twitter update in a overlay box
• The Twitter update box has a cool overlay that shows your character count in bug bold numbers in a non-intrusive way
• Any tweet, on clicking, flips to become a Twitter update box!
• A cool visual notifications when the client is refreshing with little lines going across the client border

Blu is a minimal Twitter client that offers enough features for a regular Twitter user. It may not offer as many features as the other Adobe Air stalwarts but could be an invaluable replacement where you can’t run Adobe AIR for some reason.

Download Blu (Windows only – requires .Net 3.5 SP1)

Personally, for me to use a Twitter client I have come to require certain features that makes it very efficient to Twitter. Search tweets and users, bit.ly/ow.ly url shorteners support, multiple account support, some form of font/color customizations, etc. But, Blu will definitely satisfy if your needs are simpler and if you are looking for a lightweight alternative.

If you are looking for a professional Twitter client, check out my HootSuite review.

Stylish Non Adobe Air Windows Twitter Client – Blu - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2009/08/24 (RSS)