Filed under: Windows, Social Software

Digsby is a multi-protocol chat and social networking client that lets you update your Facebook, MySpace and Twitter status or chat with your AIM, Windows Live, Google Talk, or Yahoo! Messenger. Overall, it’s a pretty awesome little utility if you’d rather use one application to track all of your accounts at once. But it’s historically been a bit of a resource hog.

Now there’s a new alpha version that reduces the CPU use by about 30 percent, improves file transfers for AIM and Windows Live users, and lets you set the status updates on MySpace accounts. There are also new emoticon boxes.

Probably the best part is that it just feels a bit faster. In the past, Digsby had a tendency to make my computer lock up for a second or two before displaying incoming IM messages. Now it doesn’t.

You can find out how to join Digsby’s group of Alpha testers at the Digsby blog. Bear in mind, once you become an Alpha tester you’re signing up to receive less stable versions of the software and you could experience some bugs.

[via WebWare]

Digsby Alpha reduces CPU usage, smoother performance originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Text, Social Software, web 2.0, Web

Most desktop Twitter clients have a decent built-in way to monitor search topics, but they’ll all cut into your API allowance. While I’ve never run into that problem myself, I know that it does happen to some people I follow. One way to free up some calls? Use Tweet Grid to monitor search terms.

When you land on their site, you’ll first select a grid layout. You can choose anything from 1×1 to 3×3 on the main page, though once you’re inside you can switch to experimental layouts like 2×5 and 1×10 to keep tabs. Pro tip: 1×10 doesn’t work so well on a smaller display. Four columns is about as much as I could squeeze out of my laptop’s 1280 horizontal pixels.

To limit the textual overload, you can choose to display only updates in a certain language and number of updates to store in each box (last 5, 10, 20, etc.).

Continue reading Tweet Grid is a no-login way to monitor multiple Twitter searches in realtime

Tweet Grid is a no-login way to monitor multiple Twitter searches in realtime originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How do you find time to create content? People ask that question like you could have a web page void of content and expect it to do well in most search engines.

Jeff Quipp had a piece last month that's been sitting on my back burner. It's about strategies for content creation. He makes the point that there are a number of types of content out there.

I'm wired wrong. I guess it's because I old and a digital immigrant. But I tend to think first …

Filed under: Social Software, Web

Micro-blogging service Twitter has seen phenomenal growth over the past year. Traffic to the site has skyrocketed. Major news organizations including CNN and NPR have started to use Twitter to offer news and information. And a few high profile people including Shaquille O’Neil and Oprah have signed up for the service.

But while Shaq has become an active member of the Twitter community, Oprah used it for a few days after talking about Twitter on her show. Her last update was posted nearly a week ago and it looks like she may have abandoned Twitter. And recent research shows that Oprah’s experience may actually be far more common than Shaq’s.

According to Nielsen Online, more than 60 percent of the people who sign up for Twitter fail to return to the site a month later. So while the number of registered Twitter users is on the rise, the number of active users is climbing at a much slower rate. As Nielsen puts it, “there simply aren’t enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point.”

Of course, Twitter is still new and it’s just starting to break into the public (non-geek) consciousness. So there’s still plenty of room for the service to grow. But new users will have to find a reason to stick around.

New research shows Twitter might not be as addictive as tobacco originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Link building is one of the hardest and one of the most important things that you have to do if you want to get high rankings on Google. As it takes so much time to get inbound links, it is very important to make sure that the links to your website contain the right keywords. Here are three things that you can do to optimize your existing Links.

Filed under: Adobe, Social Software

I’ll say right off that I’m not a big Facebook user to start with, but there’s nothing compelling in the newly-released Facebook Desktop client that is going to make me change my mind. If anything, it makes me more sure that I don’t need to be spending time on the mammoth social networking site.

The app is built on Adobe Air, making it instantly available to nearly everyone as long as they’ve got the client installed.

Once I load the application, what I end up looking at is the middle column from Facebook’s web site, and it’s horrible. Quiz after quiz that I can’t block with a Greasemonkey script and images that don’t fit properly in the non-adjustable window.

No problem, I’ll just resize the window. Wait, what? The arrows appear when I mouse over the side, but I can’t expand it. I also can’t change the typeface from Times Roman, which I wasn’t aware was still a popular choice for apps like this. Heck, there aren’t any personalization options of any kind.

It’s also a ram hog, sucking down 165Mb after just a few minutes. That’s twice as much as TweetDeck and 30Mb more than the Firefox instance I’m using to compose this post. Ouch.

If I was a frequent Facebook user, I can think of plenty of other ways I’d rather access my stream - like with Seesmic desktop, which is also mentioned in the official blog post. Maybe I’m being a bit harsh. After all, this is the first release so at least that means there’s plenty of room for improvement, right?

Take it for a spin yourself and share your experience in the comments!

[ via Facebook Blog]

Facebook desktop client brings you more clutter in less space originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Google, Social Software

On Saturday, Mashable’s Ben Parr noticed the same new iGoogle gadget I did: What’s Popular. He also asked the same question as me: did Google just roll out its own version of Digg?

While the short answer is no, it’s easy to see why people would think they did.

Have a site to share? Submit it as a “pop.” Like a post? Vote it up and you’ll see the pop count increase instantly. Plenty of other sites offer that kind of functionality so why not Google? After all, they’ve been trying it out in search results for quite some time.

There are fundamental differences, though. Google’s service can also figure out certain popular items all on its own, thanks to the massive amount of metrics big G pulls in from all over the internet. Search, Reader, Analytics, GMail, YouTube - they’re all providing Google with background data that can be used to compute popular items as well.

Continue reading Is Google trying to out-Digg Digg?

Is Google trying to out-Digg Digg? originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Video, Social Software

There are lots of services for sharing photos and music over Twitter, but sharing YouTube videos has lagged behind a bit. Sure, you could just link someone to YouTube, but it’s not the prettiest site in the world by any stretch of the imagination. Where’s TwitPic for embedded videos? A new site called YouTubeTweeter gets pretty close.

Put in your username and a YouTube link, and YouTubeTweeter generates a short url and a button to post it to Twitter. The video pops up in a nice-looking overlay on a copy of your Twitter page, so it’s obvious who’s sharing the video. It also shows you how many people have viewed your video. Closing the video takes the user to your Twitter page, which is probably better than having them land on YouTube. It’s not a perfect solution - it would be nice if it worked with embed codes from other video sites, especially - but it’s a step in the right direction.

Post YouTube videos to Twitter with YouTubeTweeter originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Social Software

When did you join Twitter? You might have noticed people tweeting recently about when they started their accounts, and wondered how to figure out how old your own Twitter account is. One way is to check out the appropriately-named When Did You Join Twitter?

There doesn’t seem to be much of a point to this, unless you’re a competitive early adopter. Even though the site doesn’t automatically post your info to Twitter, a lot of people seem to be tweeting about it anyway. I guess there are some bragging rights to be had for being on Twitter longer, but why it warrants a whole site is beyond me. A listing of the oldest accounts might be interesting to read, though. Maybe When Did You Join Twitter? should start a leaderboard.

Earn some bragging rights with When Did You Join Twitter? originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 26 Apr 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News, Social Software, web 2.0

As you may have noticed if you’ve logged into Facebook over the past month or so, the social network site held a vote to democratically decide on its new terms of service, after a widely-reported backlash against changes to the way the site deals with ownership of users’ content. Today, the results are in, and despite a low turnout, it looks like Facebook is going with the winning set of terms, the new Facebook Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

Of the roughly 600,000 users who voted, three quarters supported the new document over Facebook’s existing TOS. Part of the reason the new document was so popular is that it included input from the Facebook user community, collected via Facebook itself. That input said that users mainly care about three things: limits to Facebook’s use of their content, the option to opt-in to any changes in terms, and clear rules without legal jargon. The Principles tried to offer all three, which probably accounts for their success in the vote.

With only a small percentage of Facebook’s 200 million users weighing in, the company will try to amend the rules to make the vote official, so the new terms should be in place soon.

Facebook Terms of Service voting ends, crowdsourced terms win originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Search Engine Land had some tips not long ago for optimizing your your title when you have both singular and plural possibilities.Most SEOs will agree that the title element is your strongest on-page element, and optimizing the title is critical for rankings and traffic. However when the keyword or phrase you are targeting has both a singular and plural version, many people have a difficult time optimizing for both.Michael Gray gives some examples of how to get both plural and singular terms into one keyword …

Filed under: Productivity, Social Software

One way to figure out whether you should follow someone on Twitter is by seeing who your mutual friends. Twtrfrnd makes that very easy: just enter your username and someone else’s, and it does the rest. Soon, it will even let you log in to automatically see friends you have in common with people who have recently followed you.

Finding common friends is a good way to know whether a specific person might be worth following, but anybody can follow a lot of your friends. It’s not the most selective way of doing things. That’s why there’s also the “indicators” list. It shows you which of your friends are following someone, giving you a more accurate indicator of how interested you might be in that person’s updates.

Twtrfrnd finds mutual friends on Twitter originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Googling someone to get more information about them is a pretty common practice these days, whether you’re an employer, a journalist, or just curious. A new Firefox plugin called Identify makes the task of information-gathering easier, by displaying information and links to someone’s blogs and social profiles with just one keypress. From any page with a “rel=me” line — that’s most blogs, Twitter pages and other profiles — hitting control-i on a Mac or alt-i on a PC will show you the info.

Identify is good for finding info on others — including contact info like phone numbers and addresses, sometimes — but you can also use it to see much information you’re revealing. If you want to make sure you’re easy to find and all of your profiles are linked, give it a spin and correct as needed. Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, Flickr and LinkedIn are just some of the sites Identify searches for info.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Identify for Firefox: stalking made easy, no Google required originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Getting high quality links is crucial if you want high rankings on Google for competitive keywords. Links from old and reputable high authority sites work best. Unfortunately, it’s often not easy to get links from high authority websites.

Filed under: Macintosh, Social Software

One of the hottest Twitter clients on the iPhone just became one of the hottest Twitter clients on the desktop, with the official release of Tweetie for Mac. It’s been a trending topic on Twitter all day, and reviews are positive so far. I predicted some of the app’s features when the preview video came out a few days ago, but here’s a rundown of what it can really do:

First, it supports multiple accounts. Tweetie lets you switch easily between several Twitter accounts via the sidebar or a hotkey. Direct messages are threaded, so you can open them as conversations to see who said what, instead of having to switch between your sent and received DMs on the web. You can also use Twitter Search from within the Tweetie app, and break off searches into a separate window to keep track of them.

The best part about Tweetie is that there’s very little need to go to the Twitter web interface for anything: following and unfollowing, reading people’s streams and user info, searching and posting, and even shortening URLs with the service of your choice are all included within the app itself.

TUAW has an in-depth look at the features.

Atebits releases Tweetie 1.0 for Mac originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0, Web

ConvoTrack is a bookmarklet that reveals the conversation going on around any page. It pops up a handy sidebar that tracks comments on Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, Reddit and HackerNews, and links from other blogs. You can filter these sources to look at them one at a time, which is handy if you don’t care about most of them.

ConvoTrack goes beyond the bookmarklet, though, with a button you can put on your site so users can open ConvoTrack and see if anyone else is talking about your content. You can also send a ConvoTrack link by pasting in the URL of the target site after http://www.convotracker.com/ — like http://www.convotracker.com/http://www.downloadsquad.com/ for example. A Firefox extension is in the works, to make the service even easier to use.

Find the conversation on any page with ConvoTrack originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Macintosh, Social Software, Beta

Tweetie has taken the iPhone Twitter client market by storm, and anticipation for the desktop version has been building sometime. The developer, Atebits, is fueling the fire a little bit more with a preview video of Tweetie’s new Mac version, which is due out on Monday, April 20.

The preview shows a UI with a toolbar down the side, and chat bubble styling for the main stream. Knowing the iPhone version of Tweetie, I’m guessing we’ll see more than one style option for the desktop version. It looks like there’s support for multiple accounts, and for zooming in on a single conversation thread. The search features everyone likes in Tweetie for iPhone seem to be here, too, but the direct message page is new: it can apparently be sorted by individual contacts. There’s also a nice link-sharing feature that I’m sure a lot of people will make use of.

We’ll report more on Tweetie when we get a chance to test it out, so watch this space.

Tweetie for Mac coming soon, teaser video out now originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0, Web

Twitzap is a web interface for Twitter that works like an application. It automatically refreshes your twitter stream and any channels (basically, saved searches) you subscribe to, and keeps track of how many unread messages you have in each channel. It’s also got a lot of other neat little improvements over the standard web interface, some of which Twitter should probably look into adopting for itself.

Channels are the main perk of Twitzap, and it treats your @replies and direct messages as channels, too, combining your incoming and outgoing DMs into one neat list. You can also quickly add trending topics to your channels from right in the sidebar. Other features including chatting over Twitzap with other users who are logged in and a retweet button for each tweet, next to favorite and reply.

The overall interface of Twitzap looks a lot like regular Twitter — it even uses your Twitter background when you log in — so it should be very easy to get the hang of using. I’ll be honest: I expected to be writing an “oh god, not another Twitter client” review here, but Twitzap really does have some good ideas.

Twitzap: realtime Twitter updates, channels and more originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Fun, Text, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Office, Freeware, Social Software, Windows x64

Obviously, if your usage policy at work prohibits using Twitter, this program isn’t going to be of any help. Log files will still show what you’ve been up to. However, if you simply want a less obvious interface so that the Looky Lous around your cubicle can’t immediately tell what you’re up to, check out SpreadTweet.

It’s yet another Twitter client built on Adobe Air, but obviously there’s a bit of a twist - it camouflages your stream as a Microsoft Excel workbook. Three skins are available to ensure it blends in on your system: 2003, 2007, and OSX.

No avatars are displayed. There’s no TwitPic or URL shortening support. Everything is displayed in boring old plain text, so you’ll have to copy and paste links you want to browse.

I’d never use this as an everyday client, but I did actually find it handy for one thing: locating users that incessantly flood my stream with retweets. It’s easy to spot the RT @personwithoriginalthought in SpreadTweet’s plain text columns.

One super-duper, ultra-critical note: by downloading the software, you “absolve [the developer] of any and all responsibility” and agree to bring him cookies and beer if he goes to jail.

SpreadTweet hides your Twitter stream in a fake Excel window originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Web services, Social Software, Web

We’ve looked at some ways to find software alternatives in the past - like Openwith.Org and Wakoopa. Social site Alternative.To offers yet another way to see what apps other users recommend.

Categories for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Web-based applications are listed. On each platform page, there are tabbed listings for recent additions, most viewed, and most liked software (I’ll skip “OMG FAIL”, since you’re likely not looking for a “worse alternative” anyway). You’ll find all the usual suspects listed, like Photoshop, Nero, Word, as well as user-recommended replacements.

Found a specific user whose suggestions you find particularly useful? Click onto their profile page to view all their likes on one page. Alternative.To also taps into Twitter’s massive userbase to give you quick access to additional off-site comments about a particular app.

To cast votes or suggest software, you’ll need to log in. Fortunately, Alternative.To supports both Facebook and OpenID sign-ins so you likely won’t have to sign up for yet another account. The community is still fairly new, so some entries don’t have a lot of votes or recommendations yet, but that will change, obviously, as more users participate.

AlternativeTo offers social software recommendations originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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