The Paisano®

Twinbox is the new name for Outlook plug-in formerly known as OutTwit while in beta. It’s the tool that allows you to work with twitter from within your Microsoft Outlook email client.

Obviously, this can never replace Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop when it comes to full-powered twitter clients but it can be the perfect solution for those who tweet while at work or those that use Outlook a lot like I do. For example, not only do I get all of my email for work and personal accounts in Outlook, but I also like getting my RSS feeds from my favorite blogs. Here’s how to add RSS feeds to your Outlook. 

Naturally, being able to work with twitter, email and RSS feeds from the same place makes life easier and saves a great deal of time. Here’s a brief video that shows how it works.

 Tungle.me has launched an interesting new service that uses social networking to make scheduling meetings online much easier. Doing this within the same company isn’t a problem with Microsoft Outlook on an Exchange email system because all employees can see each other’s busy calendar schedules and free times, but it’s a royal pain if you need to do this with someone outside your network. The more people involved with the meeting, the more difficult it becomes to schedule the meeting because of the increased amount of schedules to check. This usually leads to a ton of phone calls and emails circulating until an acceptable time is agreed upon.

There have been other online third party solutions such as TimeBridge, but they normally require you to join their service and you have to install some desktop software and require a fee in order to work. Tungle.Me avoids all of those things, although it is recommended that you install the Microsoft Outlook connector add-on for best results.

Here’s a short screencast of how Tungle.me works. It also includes a cool widget that you can embed on your blog or website.

Note: I’m hoping this service will work with our upcoming accounts, especially for large conventions and events that involve many schedules.

Despite all of the advancements we’ve made with web browsers, it’s still rather messy when it comes to printing pages from websites. We still kill too many trees by printing reams of pages full of superfluous junk we didn’t even want.

Enter PrintFriendly which is an easy service that makes things quick and easy. Just copy and paste the URL onto their site and you’ll get a printer-friendly version of the pages. You can use their tools to further remove any elements you don’t want/need.

There’s also a cool bookmarklet which makes things even quicker and easier while you’re surfing. Just click, preview and print. Very nice. Also, you can add a PrintFriendly button to your own site to make things easier for your visitors and readers.

Here’s a video of how it work.

From Windows IT Pro magazine’s CTRL-ALT-DEL section. These unfortunate URLs have been floating around the internet a long time, but it’s worth nothing that they’re still happily active and hilarious.

10. TeachersTalk is www.TeachStalk.com

9. Dollar Exchange is www.DollarSexchange.com

8. Therapist Finder  is www.theRapistFinder.com

7. A site called ‘Who Represents‘ where you can find the name of the agent that represents a celebrity. Their domain name… wait for it… is
www.WhorePresents.com

6. Then of course, there’s the Italian Power Generator company…
www.PowerGenitalia.com

5. Want to holiday in Lake Tahoe? Try their brochure website at
www.GotaHoe.com

4. World Taekwondo Federation becomes www.WTF.org

3. Speed of Art www.speedoFart.com or Pots of Art www.PotsoFart.com

2. If you’re looking for computer software, there’s always
www.ipAnywhere.com

1. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at
www.penisLand.net

No, it’s not a new social network for pervs and heavy-breathers in raincoats. It’s a twitter clone called Coathangr that doesn’t ask “What are you doing” but instead wants to know “What are you wearing”.

Basically, it’s target audience is going to be those fashionista’s that are into clothes, handbags, shoes and other accessories. Members get to share what’s in their closet and what they want to get. Others can help you find what you’re looking for and even help save you money by finding the best deals in your area or online.

The timeline looks very familiar, huh? You can just use text to share what you got on or you can take a photo or upload one you already have. You can follow other member’s closets just as you do on Twitter.

It’s an interesting concept but I wonder if there’ll be enough of an audience to sustain it longterm. I also happen to know a bunch of people who already do this kind of this on Twitter, the most popular being @JuliaRoy who also uses Flickr and 12secs to share her fabulous taste in fashion. Will she and others stop using Twitter and these other services to share their fashion updates on Coathangr instead? I don’t know but I guess we will see.

Speaking of raincoats, I guess we could see a few in some closets on Coathangr, huh?

Yes, I know how to spell! I was just trying to be cute with the title of this post. Hindsight is indeed 20/20, especially when it comes to web 2.0 startups. There’s no better example than with Twitter, the ultra hot buzzword these days. Let’s take a look back at some reviews of Twitter to see who got it early and those that didn’t.

Mis-tweeten

Leo Laporte made a bold statement 2 years ago when he decided to leave twitter for its chief rival at the time, Jaiku (since purchased by Google and hung out to die on the vine).
Goodbye Twitter, Hello Jaiku! When did you come back, Leo? heh heh

Ross Mayfield from Many 2 Many was close but no cigar in his review of Twttr in which he said “To me its reply-to-all baked in your phone.” However, he gets half credit for this, “If they support MMS and let me send a photo to twttr and CC flickr, it will be a killer app.  But for now, put my SMS’ in a sidebar widget or give me feeds I can splice.”

Tweet On the money

Almost from day one (July 2006!) Michael Arrington saw the potential of Twitter early on so kudo’s to Mr Techcrunch. It was called Twttr at the time and not even Odeo’s primary service offering. Michael astutely gave Twttr thumbs up and even predicted the failure of Odeo’s main product at the time.

Robert (@Scobleizer) Scoble compared Twitter & Pownce, the pet project from Kevin Rose of Digg in July 2007 and correctly described how and why Twitter was going to be more successful (note, he didn’t say better).

Veronica Belmont (@Veronica) from CNet TV back in May 2007 did this fun Prize Fight between Twitter and Jaiku. It was a heated battle but Twitter won in the final round!
 

Final Thoughts

I know it’s not easy to predict which services will make it and which ones won’t. There are many variables that go into these things. Many of the times, the best man doesn’t always win and the better technology doesn’t finish on top. A good example is the BetaMax format vs VHS. All experts will tell you that VHS was inferior but somehow it became the standard and the rest is history. Was Twitter VHS and Jaiku BetaMax? Does it even matter?

P.S. Twitter’s true birthdate?

Twitter wasn’t really born in 2006 as they’ll have us believe. That’s when they became available to the public. The germ of the idea (called Status) was born in July 2000.
Here’s more if you’re interested.

Our personal lives have begun to merge and blend into our professional lives online thanks to the massive success of social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Our once separate virtual worlds have begun to collide, mixing friends with clients and coworkers with family members. It all reminds me of a hilarious episode on Seinfeld called “Independent George” where Jerry’s friend George became hysterical when his world’s started to collide and his fiancé started being friends with one of his friends from his other world.

I know it might seem silly to some. After all, we are who we are. We shouldn’t really keep anything secret and isolated, do we? Some will argue rather convincingly that it’s best to keep personal lives totally separate from professional lives while others have no problems mixing everything up into one online existence (as I do).

I must admit that everything does change once you break down that wall that kept your worlds apart. I think it has more to do with the level of anonymity that one kept more than anything else. For example, some start with their real name (i.e. ChrisBrogan, GuyKawasaki, etc.) so privacy was never a concern. However, others started out with some trepidation and used an alias (cough…cough). I think those that began with a cloak of privacy have the harder time of letting their worlds collide and thus might require a longer period of adjustment in order to fully accept this major change.

In any event, no matter how you decide to manage your worlds, one thing is certain: We must be as authentic and as honest as we can be, no matter which world we’re in. Everything we share online is documented forever for all the world to see.

What NOT to do if you let your worlds collide online

10 Ways to Get fired on Twitter

Cisco fatty coverage

30 ways to lose your job on Twitter

Don’t insult Client or their town on twitter!

How to get fired Facebook-style

Woman Killed by Husband because of Facebook status change

The way we communicate on social sites like Twitter and Facebook has to evolve at some point when it comes to expressing ourselves beyond just plain text. I don’t mean merely by using video which has already begun with services such as Seesmic, 12secs and Utterli. I’m talking about allowing us to use visual aids similar to the way we can use emoticons when text messaging. You know, those little smiley faces we add at the end of IMs on GTalk?

Why must communication on social networks be limited to a static photo with text? For example, here’s a shot of some tweets from my twitter stream.

While it’s nice that Twitter allows us to change our avatar (our photo) anytime we want in our profile, it’s kind of a pain to do so. We have to login to our account on the twitter website (most of us use Twitter desktop clients) then go to our profile and then upload any new photo we want to use. The bad news is that we are limited to using and storing just one image at a time in our profile unlike other services such as Facebook which at least allows you to store several images at a time.

The other downside to this archaic method is that once you change your avatar, it’s change for every tweet you’ve sent. So, when someone reads your tweet from earlier in the day they’ll see the new image you uploaded not the face you had on when you sent the message. I think the avatar should only change from that point in time going forward.

Speaking of time, I truly believe that we should be allowed to change our avatar on the fly for each and every tweet much like we can with instant messages and emoticons and smileys. This would mean having the ability to store many different photos of ourselves in our profile with different expressions to reflect whatever mood we’re in. This would allow us to match our feelings with our tweets quickly and easily.

Gravatars

You might have heard of the term Gravatars which stands for Globally Recognized Avatar.
It’s a step in the right direction as it allows us to use our photo or image from one site to another. The Gravatar service is from auttomatic, the same people behind the WordPress blogging platform so they understand the value of allowing people to express themselves whether in blog posts or in the comments. The nice thing is that they let you store many different photos of yourself which you can change easily. The bad news is that not too many services support Gravatars at this time.

Smileys 2.0

Before you scoff at this idea, let me show you what’s already happening with regards to instant messaging. We’re moving further and further away from the old yellow smiley face and into animated emoticons even with sound effects and voice.

There’s even a new service called Smirk that allows you to record yourself with any webcam as video emoticons that you can use not only on chat messengers but also on some social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. Sadly, though, Twitter does not support this new format.

Final Thoughts

This isn’t a matter of if this happens but when. Some day soon we’ll be able to select a visual image of ourselves on the fly to instantly reflect our mood when posting a message on any social network including micro-blogging services like Twitter. Yes, we will also have tiny little live webcam feeds if that’s what we want to use. This could be called Micro-casting and very possible since the video service Seesmic purchased the twitter client twhirl and confirmed to me that they’re working on such an option.

In the mean time, it would be a great start if we could store many different photos of ourselves and allowed to change our avatar with a simple click for each message or tweet. It would give our communication on twitter another layer of information and only enhance the experience.

What do you think?

I’ve always been a fan of Adobe Air and all of the wonderful desktop applications that have been developed on that platform. Some of my favorites have been the twitter clients Twhirl and Tweetdeck. However, I’ve slowly become disillusioned by the whole concept of web services relying so much on desktop apps. It’s become more annoying as increasing scores of services have begun to release desktop apps for what really needs to remain where it is…in the cloud!

Letting the (Adobe) Air out of the Bubble

All this has lead me to make a decision to stop this desktop app for web services madness! With the exception of Tweetdeck, I will no longer download, install or update anymore Adobe Air applications! There, I said it. I will also do my best to replace TweetDeck once someone comes up with a better mousetrap for Twitter in the browser. The best one I’ve seen is Tweetree which Twitter should buy already!

Look, the future of the web needs to remain in the cloud, not on a local desktop. Some will argue “but what about working offline?” I reply “What about it?” How often are we really offline and not connected? On a plane? When you’re at your Aunt Tilley’s house in the middle of nowhere? Most of us have aircards and ways to connect and quite frankly the world will not end if you can’t work offline for whatever reason. Besides that, I’m all for things like Google Gears and technology that allows offline mode and online synchronization.

The thing that irks me is the whole reliance on downloading installing and updating multiple products on multiple systems. For example, let’s say you have three systems you use on a regular basis. A Home desktop, a work desktop and a laptop. Well, if you use several services that rely on an Adobe Air desktop application then that means you not only have to install Adobe air three times but also each of those apps and keep them all updated. To make matters worse, if you do any kind of tweaking or customization such as creating groups on TweetDeck, then you need to do it all over again on each computer! Yes, there are some convoluted ways you can backup the config files and copy them from here to there but that’s a pain in the neck. Desktop apps would be better served if they allowed us to store our settings in the cloud to sync with every installation we have but they don’t do that. Web apps do!

Google does a great job explaining why web apps make more sense than desktop apps and even mobile apps such as for the iPhone. I agree with their philosophy here and enjoy using their Google Tasks service not only in my browser but also on my iPhone because I never have to download or install or update anything. Best of all, it looks and feels and tastes like a standalone iPhone app! Brilliant. I wish others would follow their lead and just say no to Adobe Air. It’s time to suffocate this annoying trend once and for all.

On that note, here’s a video for NO AIR from Jordan Sparks

TwitterMASS is an interesting service that can help you build your Twitter network by automatically following everyone that uses a particular hashtag. For example, let’s say you want to follow everyone interested in South by SouthWest so you setup TwitterMASS to auto follow anyone that uses the #SXSW hashtag. The same is true with any other keyword or hashtag you setup such as #AmericanIdol and the wildly popular #FollowFriday.

Now some will have an issue with this method to building your network because it seems to be a shotgun approach that requires little thought or effort. Many prefer to meticulously build their network one follower at a time after careful review of each and every follower’s follow ratio, tweet stream content and style, blog posts and other public data. Others are not as picky about whom they follow.

***Update***
TwitterMass has added some new features including something called Auto Follow Friday that picks people based on who you’ve interacted most with each week”

Here’s a quick video on how easy it is to setup
3 New Followers in 3 Minutes from Jonathan Nelson on Vimeo.

Here’s the easy to use screen for creating an auto follow rule:

Notice the set timer option. That’s where you decide how long you will give these people you follow to follow you back before you unfollow them. You can give them 1 to 5 days or select the never expire option which means you don’t care if they follow you back or not. The set followers option lets you determine how many people to follow, 1 to 15 users ot follow them all. Here’s a video:

Using the Timer from Jonathan Nelson on Vimeo.

For those of you that don’t want to auto follow anyone, there’s an excellent manual method within TwitterMass that lets you search for people according to your keywords of choice. You can then manually pick and choose only those that you find interesting enough to follow.

Final thoughts

The jury is still out for me on this one. I’m still pondering whether or not this is the best way to grow your network. I know that there will be many that love this idea and just as many that will hate it. The beauty is that there’s a choice and it’s free to use (for now anyway). No matter what you decide, I think the manual method of finding valuable and interesting people to follow makes this service worth a shot anyway.
What do you think? Thumbs up or will it be some other finger?