The Twitter wave / La ola Twitter

Here in Argentina, and it seems the same around the world, there is a big buzz around Twitter. Different specific communities were created: Tuitiar (Twitter Argentina), Twitter Spain, MTVSpain or Twitter Chile.

But there is a recurrent question. What can exactly do with Twitter apart from messaging what you are doing in that exact moment? You can find some answers in Google looking for blogs about Twitter. A few months ago, I wrote a post with some suggestions.

Recently, I found out that Twitter has been entering the field of journalism. For instance, yesterday, looking for some help how to tweak Twitter, I found this post (spanish) about journalism and Twitter. In BlocdePeriodista, there is a link to an very interesting post (spanish) on how tools like Twitter or Facebook helped the Washington Post to cover the Virginia Tech Massacre.

Speaking of BlocdePeriodista, its autor who is also reporter and one of the creators of Tuitiar, speaks about Twitter in a video in this article from Clarín (spanish).

In journalism.co.uk, this story about a new site reportwitter.com aimed at unpacking the process of constructing and creating a story to display it along side "tweet".

What should have your web office suite?

According to Richard McManus, from Read/WriteWeb, a Web office suite should have at least these applications: email, calendar, word processor and spreadsheets.

Then, Josk Catone in a different post shares his personal view about some webwares that you should include in your Web office suite and why.

I already discussed some of them but there are some new interesting additions.

Screenshots: seven tools.

If for some reasons you take a lot of screenshots of web sites, here are seven tools that will help you.

I will start with some plug-ins or extensions you can add to your Firefox browser:

Save as image, Picnik for Firefox y ScreenGrab.

From those three, ScreenGrab would be the best because beside of letting you save screenshots of entire pages or what is on screen, you also have the option of choosing which part of the screen you will save.

Two plug-ins for Internet Explorer:

Webpage Capture and ieSnapshotter.

Two online services:

Thumbaliz: good for screenshots and webcamshots.

WebShotsPro: a good replacement for ScreenGrab when you are not using your own computer with this Firefox extension.

Gmail: the video

A compilation of clips submitted by Gmail fans as part of our collaborative video project. Selected from over 1,100 clips from fans in more than 65 countries. Learn more at http://mail.google.com/mvideo .

Joost: a new web OS

clipped from www.webware.com

Jooce: The beginnings of another Web OS

The concept is elemental Webware: Web OSes, at least in theory, put all the heavy lifting an operating system usually does on a server somewhere on the Net, while the interface gets funneled through a browser. With a Web OS, you don't need to worry about any additional software or storage on your local computer. This means any browser-equipped machine can become your personal machine with a simple log-in. And since all of your data is stored centrally, it's also generally easier to share and collaborate with others.

The downside is speed and the availability of apps. Jooce, in its current, pre-pre-release stage, is a Web OS that appears to have done a good job solving the speed issue. But I didn't see any serious applications to work with it.

GTD web apps.

GTD stands for Getting Things Done. They are applications that help you organize your days. Simply put, they are electronic agendas. It seems that many people are into it. But are they really necessary? Can you use something else that you already have and won't have to spend time learning how to use it.

A few days ago, I receive my subscription from Lifehack and there was an article, including interesting links, about GTD. In GTD Wannabe, 13 GTD web apps were reviewed. In HUB, a good look at the GTD 2.0 world. Finally, in What The Next Action, a post about five GTD systems that the autor stopped using and why.

Personally, I haven't had the necessity to use GTD system online or not. Two weeks ago, I registered to Pingme to check it out. It seems pretty interesting and complete, but I don't need it. I am well satisfied with my Netvibes or Pagesflakes To Do List window. But it is just me...

The seven faces of Firefox

Apart from its original version, I found today that there were six more specialized version of the ever popular browser: Firefox. Actually, they are basically the same thing except that come already bundled with some specific extensions.

For instance, the last version to come out is named: Firefox Campus Edition. It is aimed to the returning to class students. Basically, it’s a re-bundled Firefox with the FoxyTunes, StumbleUpon and Zotero add on preloaded. You can download the Firefox Campus Edition from the official website.

You also have the Firefox eBay edition that allows you to always be securely signed in so you can check out your eBay progress whenever you like. Customise your alerts and get the heads up when an auction you’re bidding on is about to end.

The other versions are not directly Firefox browsers, but are based on it and are named: Netscape Navigator 9 (Netscape users), Flock (social network users), Songbird (music lovers), Camino (Mac users).

Will Firefox announce the death of Netscape? It seems so.

A twitter top ten

I was looking for an another article. I found that one instead from the Splashcast site.

Add SXSW by SplashCast to your page

Top 10 Twitter Things:

Geotwitter - Twitter plus Google Maps shows where each minute’s Twitter users live.
Twitter on Technorati, Google and Ask.com. It really is mini-blogging - SMS and IM in blogsearch is an understated big deal.

Get info on user with “get username” text. Where else are you going to learn about who’s IMing or SMSing you within IM or SMS?

“Off.” Sent by phone, that stops phone updates. Wish other SMS services were so simple.

Twitter is great for liveblogging conference talks. I was in the beer tent while my friend broadcasted highlights from Production Companies 2.0 talk and it was just like I was there myself.

Twitter could save lives in a natural disaster.

Prom Queen - a tool to turn all your followers into friends.

“for a good time, twitter me” bathroom graffiti at Paradise on 6th street. Photo by Barantunde.

Friendly API + Good Blogger = Interesting company blog (ok, throw in some psychological addiction too.)

BART updates on Twitter, one of many cool things people have done. I don’t even live in the Bay and I still like this.

(the complete article here)

When you should not use email.

Sometimes email isn’t the right communication tool. Either you’re trying to get too much information from someone - or too many people - or you’re conveying too much information.

Dave Pollard not only discusses 10 situations where email probably isn’t a suitable communication tool, but also put together this flowchart for figuring out which tool is right.

Put a media player in your wiki.

(From Splashcast) I received this by email today:

ArmchairGM is really cool sports website built out of a wiki. A wiki, if you’re not familiar, is a website that anyone can edit (see also video below). ArmchairGM was acquired by a larger wiki company called Wikia last year. It’s a place for people to talk and write about sports. The site, which includes sections on most major sports, combines wiki and blog functionality with all kinds of other cool features. There’s games, Facebook-like newsfeeds and users can have “foes” in addition to friends!

If you’ve got a wiki of your own, for collaborating on anything, on PBWiki, Wikispaces or WetPaint, SplashCast will work for you too. Wikis are great for all kinds of purposes - now with SplashCast you can put channels of aggregated media on your wiki pages!

I was talking to one of the founders of ArmchairGM yesterday and I suggested that SplashCast could work well on the site for displaying video and photos. He reminded me that since the site is a wiki…anyone can edit it, including me! We discussed the most appropriate way to enter an existing community with a service like this; he suggested that I post a trial player or two and then ask for feedback in the site’s discussion forum. That’s great advice.

I believe that SplashCast ads value to the ArmchairGM site, so I put a demonstration together and posted players to the wiki pages for both Carlos Zambrano (who just signed a 5 year, $91m contract with the Cubs today) and the confessed steroid user Jason Giambi.

Restarting Windows without restarting your PC

clipped from http://www.codejacked.com/restarting-windows-without-restarting-your-pc-vista-or-xp/ Restarting Windows Without Restarting Your PC (Vista or XP) The trick is to hold down the SHIFT key when invoking the restart. Windows Vista: Select Start, then hover over the right arrow that is to the right of the padlock icon until the pop-up menu appears that contains “restart” as one of it’s choices. Hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “restart” choice. Windows XP: Select Start. Select “Shut Down…”. Change the drop-down combo box under “What do you want the computer to do?” to “Restart”. Hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “OK” button.

Servicios en linea para proteger tu PC.

En La Nación del lunes 13 de agosto, un interesante artículo por los que todavía se están preguntado qué hacer para proteger su compu contra los peligros de la red.

"Una guía con páginas Web y herramientas para defender la computadora de los ataques de virus, spyware y hijackers. Además, cómo evitar las nuevas amenazas."

El artículo completo aquí.

Megavideo beats Youtube

First, before talking about Megavideo, let's just say that I finally could upoad a video in my new spanish speaking SubiteYa online videosharing site. It was about time. I still don't know why because they never answered my emails. But, everything is fine now.

Back to this new video sharing site named: Megavideo beats Youtube. I am very pleased with it. I uploaded four videos so far. The connection seems a little bit faster than Youtube. With your free account, you can upload bigger and longer video. And if you pay for a Premium account, you get even more flexibility and Megavideo gives you priority for uploading and downloading. The only downside so far is the meager selection. But, time is on their side.

I did a little experience of my own. I recorded a video of Elmo Tickle me, a toy from Fisher Price, I brought back from Montreal as a gift to my wife and upcoming baby. Since, she saw it on Manana Informales, a few months ago, she has been crazy about it.

I uploaded the 11,4 meg video to Youtube, Megavideo, Dailymotion and SubiteYa. Which site was the fastest, Youtube with a time of 13 minutes 30 seconds. Then, Megavideo with 14 minutes 10 seconds, Dailymotion with 16 minutes 20 seconds and SubiteYa with 19 minutes 40 seconds. To have a greater scientifical validation, I should try it a few more times in the same conditions. I leave it to you, jejejeje.

To convince you about Megavideo, you can also listen to this charming spokeswoman who gives you ten good reasons to use Megavideo.

Splashcast: updating server infrastructure

I also received this update through email from Splashcast. If you are like me, not a regular user, but are not registered to the RSSfeed, this might interest you:

The good news is that we are scaling our server infrastructure to better support all our wonderful SplashCasters out there. We have been working with a great group of guys at Bandcon to provide CDN services and with 72MM to increase our database capacity.
The bad news is that the final steps in new server implementation requires some downtime tonight that will affect our website, the SplashCast console and all SplashCast players. We expect that this downtime will last approximately 1 hour. However, we are happy that in the six months since we launched, this is the first time that we have had to schedule a downtime.
This downtime will start tonight (Friday 8/10/2007) around 10PM Pacific coast time. We apologize in advance for the inconvenience, but are looking forward to the improvements that these changes will bring.
Please don’t hesitate to contact support if you have any questions.

You can send email through Twitter

The other day, from Lifehack, I received an update in which it was explained how you can send email through the Twitter application. If you don't already know, Twitter is a sort of group messenger where everyone connected can read your messages. Although you still have the option to send private messages to friends and followers.

But, if you are interested to email someone through Twitter, here is how to do it:

1. Firstly, set up Twitter to send notifications to your email account.
Twitter doesn’t do this natively, so you will have to use your Twitter RSS feed with something like rssfwd.com - this site will send any feed to your email as they come through with a small delay.

2. Using Gmail, or a similar email client, go to set up a new filter.
For any given contact you would want to be able to email via Twitter, add a code to the filter’s subject field. For instance, if you want to send Craig an email, add something like tocraig in the Subject field.

3. Then in the Forward it to box, add Craig’s email address while checking things like Skip the inbox etc.

Now any time you write a Twitter update with tocraig in it, that update will be forwarded - via rssfwd.com and your email account, to his email. It won’t look great, with rssfwd’s footer at the base and your Twitter username.

Subiteya

Subiteya is a new video sharing site for the world's spanish speaking community. It has a nice design. It looks simple enough. Maybe too much?

I have been trying to upload a video for two days. And it doesn't work. I don't know why. And I cannot find any info to help me on their site. Where is the information about time and size limit? And which format can I upload? I can't find it. I tried with Firefox and IE.

This is not the first video sharing site that I tried. I think I know how to handle them. Well it seems I've encounteres something new here.

And just check the video called: Coima. This means bribe in spanish. An argentinian policeman who arrested a driver was caught on tape trying to get a bribe.