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Twitter is hoping to lure in more newbies by making its home page more dynamic and user friendly.

Following some tweaks last year, the popular social network has revamped its home page once again. The new home page design, which rolled out Tuesday, now features a slowly scrolling list of randomly selected top tweets that change every few seconds. A rolling marquee near the top of the page displays a feed of hot trending topics. Hovering over any one topic reveals the latest tweet on that subject.

A "See who's here" window also displays thumbnail photos that … Read more

Handmark brings a satisfying Twitter environment to the Android operating system with its new TweetCaster Pro application. Now available in the Android Market and on Handmark's site for $4.99, TweetCaster Pro offers everything you'd expect from Twitter in a user-friendly design. We have just a couple of suggestions to make it better, though we think it's worth the price. You also can get an ad-supported free version that has the same features.

The download process was quick and incident-free. TweetCaster Pro takes up 850KB of memory; though that's not a lot of space, keep in … Read more

The slick, satisfying TweetCaster Pro offers nearly everything you'd expect from Twitter in a user-friendly design, including support for multiple accounts, Twitter trends, retweets, searches, and posts from people nearby, and Twitter lists. You can block and report spam, and quick-follow, add a photo, shrink a URL, geotag a status update, and, once you get the navigation worked out, follow and unfollow.

We like the visual interface with its five tabs for your full tweet list, tweets that just mention you, direct messages, your favorites, and any lists that you follow. Switching among Twitter accounts took a little navigation; … Read more

The Commodore VIC-20 wouldn't hold its own in today's PC market. The device, which was originally announced in 1980, boasted a whopping 1.02MHz processor and 5KB of RAM. At the time, it was state-of-the-art. And it lasted five years before being discontinued in 1985.

But now, 25 years after the VIC-20 was a viable computing machine, The Personal Computer Museum in Brantford, Ont., is resurrecting it to send out a tweet to Twitter. Gizmodo first reported on the story.

"The Personal Computer Museum is proud to make history on Saturday, February 20, with Twitter and the … Read more

The latest version of TweetDeck is out, and although it's a minor update it also introduces some useful changes worth noting. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux on Adobe AIR, the biggest change in TweetDeck 0.33 is an alteration to the program's guts that gives it more Twitter API breathing room.

TweetDeck now uses OAuth for calling Twitter's API. The API calls are how TweetDeck gets your tweet information from Twitter's servers, so this means that users can have TweetDeck update all their columns more regularly. In the previous version of TweetDeck, the API limit … Read more

This past year was not the best for new software developments. There were no surprising game-changers like Google Chrome in 2008, and no watershed moments. However, that doesn't mean there weren't some cool releases. I suspect that much of the best software of 2009 winds up becoming the foundation for innovations in 2010.

Obviously, the continuing development of Google Chrome was a major story, especially since it skyrocketed in market share based on its zippy engine and smooth JavaScript handling. If you're not using Chrome, you owe it to yourself to try it out. But it's … Read more

In a sign that both the movie industry and the Twitter industry are adapting to the times, TweetDeck released a promotional version of its Twitter-user software that sports a look and function tied to Warner Bros.' Sherlock Holmes movie and related 221B video game.

The Sherlock Holmes promotional version is called TweetDeck Telegram Co. and sports black-and-white icons and a couple period touches that try, but don't really succeed, to make you think you're in the 19th century. It also adds a new column for 221B-related tweets that tie into the online video game.

"Alongside the development … Read more

It has only been available for a day, but already the Zune HD's Twitter app is being updated after it was criticized by users for automatically abbreviating explicit words in users' tweets. It doesn't even give them the option of determining when or which words should be censored.

As you might expect, the Web is overflowing with unhappy users. Commenters on the Slashdot entry discussing the censors were up in arms over the feature. Quite a few of those folks echoed "rocket97's" comments, who said that the "[censors] should be an option, not a … Read more

Iran's elections topped Twitter's list of most popular topics of 2009, according to the microblogging site.

"Among all the keywords, hashtags, and phrases that proliferated throughout the year, one topic surfaced repeatedly," the company wrote in a blog post Tuesday. "Twitter users found the Iranian elections the most engaging topic of the year. The terms #iranelection, Iran and Tehran were all in the top-21 of Trending Topics, and #iranelection finished in a close second behind the regular weekly favorite #musicmonday."

The fact that Iran's elections rose to the top on Twitter is noteworthy … Read more