(Credit:
CNET Networks)
The Marble of Doom is a cute site created by some folks who clearly have a good sense of humor about waiting for their computer to finish processing. It's Mac-centric, and aimed to track all the time you've lost due to the Mac's version of the hourglass, also known as the "marble of doom" and "spinning beach ball of death." Whenever this happens, you just have to sit there and wait it out, leading to a somewhat inevitable destruction of any productivity.
The site tracks this time, and sorts it out by the application, assuming you're willing to repeatedly input it when you get the chance. You can choose anywhere from 5 seconds to 5 minutes. The current leader for most lag is Adobe Photoshop, with Firefox and Safari nipping at its heels.
The site was created by folks from The IconFactory and ARTIS Software and had already amassed over 136 years (of failure) since launching this morning; however, the counter was reset after the site went down about just after 1 p.m. PST due to Digg traffic. Despite its tongue-in-cheek humor, the site got me wishing there was actually a user-friendly feature like this to track how much time you've spent actively using applications, and when they're unresponsive--in part for the user, as well as the developers.
[via Digg]We covered Twitter in early January, and since then it's gotten a lot of buzz (especially at SXSW this week.) As cool as it is, there are several ways to improve the experience. You can make viewing posts faster, read "tweets" through RSS, and more. Check out these Twitter accessories:
Mac widget Twitterific
(Credit: The Iconfactory)1. Twitter apps and widgets: Get Twitter out of your Web browser and onto your desktop. For Windows users we recommend Twitteroo, a simple and small desktop app that's good for monitoring and posting to your twitter feed. Vista users also can try Twadget, which runs in the gadget sidebar. For the Mac, there's Twitterific, which advanced users will like for its hot key support, allowing for quick scrolling and sorting through feeds using keyboard shortcuts.
If you want to dig deeper into Twitter apps, try the Twitter Fan Wiki.
2. Twitter via WAP: Twitter was built for SMS, but some phones have rotten SMS clients and many users have to pay for SMS messages. An alternative is Twapper (review), a Web page that displays Twitter messages in a very phone-friendly format. It doesn't let you post messages, though.
3. Mapping services: GeoTwitter shows the latest public Twitter posts on a large Google map. You can click any of the pins to read the post. Twitterami takes a different approach, using location announcement service Frappr to show where Twitter users reside and linking to their feeds.
A Flash Twitter badge
(Credit: CNET Networks)4. Twitter badges: Put badges on your blog or social networking profile to show off your Twitter feed. Twitter gives you three flavors to choose from, including a friends' timeline that shows the last five posts from your Twitter friends. Instead of visiting your page on Twitter, they'll be able to see it on your site.
5. Blogging: Besides putting the badges on your site, there's not really a way to publish through typical blogs yet, which is where Alex King's Wordpress plug-in comes in handy. If you've got a Wordpress blog, you can simply install this plug-in and publish right to your Twitter feed without having to visit Twitter's site. There also are options to archive and grab Twitter updates to copy straight into a new blog post.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
6. RSS: Avoid Twitter's site completely by adding your friends' Twitter RSS feeds to your favorite reader. In fact, if you're using a single page aggregator such as Netvibes or Pageflakes, you can set up your own tab for just Twitter feeds. There's even a Twitter module that lets you post straight right from your Netvibes page. You can find a person's RSS feed at the bottom left of their Twitter page. If you're using Firefox, clicking on the RSS icon on the address bar will give you the option to subscribe. For IE7, just click the orange RSS button under the refresh button.
One thing none of these apps will do: improve Twitter's overall reliability. The service grew so fast last week that it is now regularly overloading the Twitter servers. The team is working on reinforcing the platform.
Rafe Needleman contributed to this post.
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