twitter

The Real Deal 131: Syndication overload

Tom and Rafe discuss ways to deal with the overload of blogs, miniblogs, social networks and more. Listen now: Download today's podcast… Read more

'Capitol Tweet' widget follows Congress on Twitter

Now that the House and Senate have adopted rules allowing congressmen to join the Web 2.0 world, they can tweet to their hearts' content. Accordingly, a new widget released by a government transparency group allows people to follow their favorite politicians' latest micro-blogs.

The Sunlight Foundation's "Capitol Tweet" widget provides updates every 10 minutes from the latest tweets from members of Congress.

Before both chambers of Congress adjusted their respective Franking rules, which govern how Congressmen can communicate with their constituents, members of Congress were not allowed to use third-party sites, such as Twitter or YouTube, … Read more

Taking on Twitter with open-source software

Earlier this summer, just as Twitter started to really pick up steam, the microblogging service began to have major stability problems.

The more users who signed up, the more the site seemed to be down, and it became nearly as commonplace to see the so-called "fail whale"--signifying that a desired operation wouldn't go through--as it was to have the service work properly.

For countless users, this was extremely frustrating, as Twitter had become the live conversation medium of choice for many early-adopters. And into this vacuum jumped a series of other microblogging services, each trying to … Read more

Tracking 'green' news as it grows, with Twitter

People use Twitter to warn of natural dangers including earthquakes and hurricanes. Other environmentally related uses for the micro-blogging tool include measuring energy use at home and rigging up plants to "tell" Twitter when they're thirsty.

For a green-news junkie overwhelmed by dozens or even hundreds of RSS feeds, Twitter can be an entertaining and mobile filter. Writers at blogs and traditional publications increasingly use it to broadcast 140-character alerts of stories and observations, which can provide an early and more casual take on their blog posts and formal articles.

Plus, you can interact with the authors … Read more

TwitterBerry 0.7 Beta 4 brings refreshing additions

TwitterBerry, a popular third-party Twitter application for BlackBerry, has just received an infusion of small, but significant changes that make the application much smoother to work with.

With version 0.7 Beta 4, you can set your friends' timeline to auto-update, a big time saver. You'll also no longer have to leave a timeline to reload it; this new beta lets you refresh the page from the BlackBerry context menu.

TwitterBerry has also grown deeper, now caching up to 200 tweets across the friends timeline, replies timeline, and direct messages. Improvements on the back end give TwitterBerry a boost … Read more

Socialtext co-founder: Enterprise Twitter isn't enough

Enterprise social software company Socialtext is releasing Socialtext 3.0, with the features we previewed here in April: the corporate social network Socialtext People, and a revised home page for business users, Socialtext Dashboard.

These functions, plus a revised and streamlined user interface, will be embedded in the Socialtext suite, along with a new feature that records a running stream of who's doing what and where on the system, which users can subscribe to from their profile pages or their dashboards. It's almost, but not quite, Socialtext's own Twitter for enterprise customers. Missing is the capability for … Read more

Give Digsby another chance

The first iteration of multiprotocol chat-client Digsby that circulated earlier this year made a splash, but fell short of its potential. Although it incorporated e-mail and social-networking notifications with its instant-messaging services, it was a massive resource pig. Even users with top-of-the-line computers found the drag it caused not to be worth the convenience of having all communications wrapped up in a pretty bow.

The latest version, released last week, is a huge step forward in the resources department. In the changelog for this release, Build 32 r17926, the publisher directly addresses the RAM hogging. ''We optimized from the ground … Read more

Election season comes to Twitter

Now live, from the team behind Twitter: a site for tracking "tweets" pertaining to the fast-approaching U.S. presidential elections. Enter an election-related post on the page and it will appear in the continually-updating feed, which also aggregates other Twitter posts that contain election-related terms like the candidates' names.

In July, Twitter announced that it had acquired Summize, a popular search tool based on the Twitter application program interface (API). Now called Twitter Search, the Summize technology appears to be behind the filters on the election site.

If the 2004 elections hailed the debut of bloggers and the … Read more

Expanding the Twitter club for the rest of us

So there I was, watching the replay of Katie Couric's interview with Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin when a tweet flew by on my Twitter transom. Dan Gillmor was asking why the Democrats' Joe Biden didn't get equal grief for making dopey remarks. Among the Best of Joe-isms was his recent blooper confusing the timeline for FDR and the age of television.

Well, I think I have an answer. But I've taken an oath to keep my big mouth shut for the remainder of the political season--at least on these pages. (If you want to bore … Read more