Filed under: Social Software, Web

Flickroom is an application that lets you interact with photo-sharing site Flickr from your desktop without opening a web browser. Flickroom is based on Adobe AIR, which means you need AIR to be installed in order to run the application. But it also means that Flickroom is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

The program lets you login to your Flickr account and view photos in your own photostream or those of your contacts or groups. You can also use the search feature to find images from all Flickr users, upload your own images, save images from Flickr, add comments, notes, or share images via Twitter.

I have to say, I’m not that impressed with Flickroom’s tools for discovering photos from users that aren’t your contacts. I find the Flickr web interface much easier to navigate for that activity. But Flickroom has an attractive user interface and handy tools for keeping up to date with your contacts’ activities.

Flickroom also has a few odd features like an integrated chatroom where you can communicate with other Flickroom users. But since the program is still in beta, I suppose any chance to leave feedback for the developer and other users is a good thing.

[via MakeUseOf]

Flickroom: Desktop browser for Flickr originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Web services, Google, Social Software, Beta

According to the official Google blog, 100,000 invitations to Google’s most hotly-anticipated new service, Google Wave, are going out today. Wave is being touted as a communication tool that reimagines the way email should work. When Download Squad took a look at Wave back in May, Lee explained it this way:

Create a Wave, add people to it, toss in some gadgets, feeds, and photos, and mix with a rich text editor. You’ll see new content in near-real time as your friends add it, and you can even hit the rewind button and watch your Wave evolve from scratch.

So, who’s getting invited to use this next-generation communication tool? Well, it helps if you signed up early for an invitation and wrote the Wave team a message offering to give feedback. If you’re a developer who’s been using the developer preview of Wave, you might also get an invitation, and some are going out to paying customers of Google Apps.

In their blog post, the Google Wave folks stress that - if you do land an invitation - you’re not going to be playing with a finished product. Wave is still missing some crucial features, and bugs are going to be par for the course until the team starts using the feedback from these 100,000 new users to start identifying problems. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to directly invite friends to Wave, but you will be able to nominate them for invitations.

Do you have a Wave invitation yet? What do you think of the service so far?

Google Wave opens to 100,000 users today originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Web services, Social Software, Microblogging

Invitations to Brizzly, a new web-based Twitter client, have been flying around all over the place in the past few days, and I finally got a chance to try it out. Brizzly offers a lot that the standard Twitter website doesn’t, but it also introduces a couple of annoyances that ultimately led me to stick with Twitter.com.

On the plus side, Brizzly allows you to save drafts of tweets, a feature I wish Twitter.com would incorporate. Its threaded interface for direct messages is also nice, and looks a bit like a Google Talk window. If you DM a lot, Brizzly will definitely make it easier to follow your conversations. Brizzly also tells you when there are new tweets in your stream, so you’re not fruitlessly hitting refresh to read Twitter. Keyboard shortcuts are handy, too: The j and k keys scroll up and down, which Gmail and Google Reader users will be familiar with. On top of that, photos and videos are displayed inline, instead of making you click through.

Brizzly’s not all great, though. It’s unfortunately just not a very pretty website, and I don’t think I can look at it every day. I’m not saying we’re in Fugly Friday territory, but the design is weak, especially the prominent trending topics box. I also miss having my follower/following numbers and my friends’ icons in the sidebar, the way Twitter.com does it. Some people might find that useless, but I would say the same about trending topics. It’s all a matter of taste, so if Brizzly’s array of features fits your needs, and you don’t mind its appearance, you should definitely give it a shot.

Brizzly: full-featured web client for Twitter originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Web services, Yahoo!, Open Source, Social Software, web 2.0

Yahoo’s FireEagle project has long been a great (albeit under-used) service to let you share your location with other websites. Services such as Dopplr, Brightkite and many others can all update & read your location and use the service to display location-based data.

On the iPhone, there’s plenty of free applications that update FireEagle such as yofe, but what if you’re working on a desktop or laptop computer? That’s where Clarke comes in handy — a small, open-source utility for OS X that runs in your menu bar, it’ll figure out where you are based on the Wi-Fi networks around you.

In earlier versions of Clarke, the updates were based on Skyhook Wireless’ database — the same used by the original iPhone to triangulate your location — however the utility was recently updated for Mac OS X Snow Leopard and now uses the OS’ built-in Core Location system to figure out where you are when run on the newest big-cat.

A free download, developers can also grab the source code over at Github, and the application also lets you easily view nearby data from Flickr, Google Maps, OpenStreetMap and Yahoo Maps.

Clarke lets you update FireEagle from within OS X originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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All major search engines use some kind of TrustRank to rank your web pages. How does this affect the position of your website in the search results and how can you improve the TrustRank of your website?

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

Have you ever wished that there was a way to call out someone for posting a completely self-indulgent, arrogant, whiny, or self-important tweet? If so, you’re going to enjoy Tweeting Too Hard.

Tweeting Too Hard is a Digg-like user submitted voting site, where the submissions consist of tweets that readers consider to be intended to make the tweet’s author seem important. If that description isn’t clear enough for you, have a quick browse of Tweeting Too Hard’s All Time Top posts, and you’ll get the idea very quickly. Things that will get your tweet submitted to Tweeting Too Hard include random mentions of how rich you are, mentioning a book you wrote, being curiously obsessed with your good looks and discussing them, among numerous others.

Users’ votes for the worst-offending tweets with Back Pats. At the time of this writing, the top three Tweeting Too Hard submissions are:

1979 Back Pats: OMG i was saying how i couldn’t afford the gas to fly daddy’s jet to the riviera this summer, and this barista totally rolled her eyes at me

1761 Back Pats: fan belt light came on in the 911 so now I’m driving the Cayenne Turbo S - the backup, backup car. Trying not to think about the Tesla…

1651 Back Pats: it makes me sad, the more I have success the more people don’t like me….

While it’s certainly easy to game a system like this, the entertainment value is high no matter what.

Tweeting Too Hard has a commenting system, so you can discuss the unique charm of your favorite tweet with other users. Maybe surprisingly, the level of conversation seems fairly high at the moment, though if Tweeting Too Hard gains some serious traction and popularity, it can pretty much be expected that the comments will suffer from YouTube syndrome.

It seems like a site like this is purpose-built to catch celebrities showing their asses, and so far there’s at least one in the top 5 — can you guess who it is? How long before the All Time Top list reads like the cover of a tabloid?

Publicly ridicule arrogant jackasses with Tweeting Too Hard originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, iPhone, web 2.0, Mobile, Web, Android, Microblogging

Continue reading Location-game showdown: Gowalla vs Foursquare

Location-game showdown: Gowalla vs Foursquare originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 27 Sep 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Developer, Social Software, Microblogging

I know there are a lot of third-party apps and services built on Twitter, but I had no idea how many until I heard about Oneforty. Oneforty is a Twitter app store that currently lists a staggering 1,300+ apps. These include everything from Twitter clients to third-party services that add additional features to Twitter using the API. Oneforty is in private beta right now, but you can request an invitation to get a look at the goods.

You currently can’t buy apps from Oneforty itself, but you can click through to the iTunes App Store or the site of each individual application. Apparently, plans are in the works to sell the apps directly from the Oneforty website. The site is sorted by category and ranked by popularity, making it easier to find the apps you’re looking for. I’m not sure developers are going to be wild about Oneforty: considering the business challenges iPhone developers face because there’s a central clearinghouse for all apps, I’m sure they’re hoping Oneforty attracts some competitors.

[via TechCrunch]

Oneforty: an app store for Twitter originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Fun, Games, Social Software, Mobile

As a user of the location-based social game Foursquare, I’m not sure how I missed this one: thanks to a new round of funding, Foursquare is expanding to new cities and making some dramatic improvements to its website. One of the more obvious changes is the new domain name: foursquare.com. Previously, the service was running on playfoursquare.com. The site is now easier to navigate and much more stable.

Meanwhile, Foursquare is planning to add new cities using crowdsourced location info, rather than seeding the game with locations from a third-party database. A BlackBerry app is in the works, too, following the success of Foursquare’s very slick Android app. Some common gripes about the game are also being resolved, so expect fewer crashes, fewer duplicate locations, and less gaming of the leaderboard.

Foursquare retools its website, buys Foursquare.com originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Apple, Social Software, iPhone

For American iPhone users, today is a pretty big day. AT&T customers should now have MMS (also commonly known as picture messaging) on their iPhones. Update your carrier settings by clicking on your phone in iTunes and going to “Check for Update.” Then, to make sure MMS has been enabled for you, go to Settings -> Messages. You should see an option to turn MMS on. Now, whenever you’re sending a text message, you’ll see a camera icon you can tap to attach a photo.

Other smartphone users have mocked the iPhone’s lack of MMS, pointing out that the feature has been almost universally available for years, even on old flip phones. It’s not as if the iPhone is making a big leap forward today: it’s just catching up. This is probably less Apple’s fault than AT&T’s, though. International iPhone users have had MMS for a while now, and AT&T delayed rolling it out because the necessary infrastructure wasn’t ready. This is a big win for iPhone users, but it’s also a bitter reminder that AT&T is still their only choice of carrier in the US.

MMS finally arrives on the iPhone for AT&T customers originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Web services, Social Software, web 2.0, Web, Microblogging

Last week the folks at Tumblr hinted that some changes were coming for the platform, and the first signs of that are emerging with a huge update to how users can customise the look and feel of their Tumblogs.

For the less-technical minded there’s now support for customised fonts, and images in themes that can be edited directly within Tumblr’s Customise window and if you’re a code-minded user, then the new options for Booleans will definitely come in handy, Having built a fair few Tumblr themes myself over the last few years, there’s new options are some great additions to my favourite blogging platform.

As an aside, just last week competitor Posterous rolled out support for Tumblr’s theme syntax. If you’re using a Tumblr theme on Posterous, it might be a wise idea to check that the theme isn’t using any of these new options as they won’t work when ported to Posterous.

Tumblr rolls out even more theming options originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0, Microblogging

Twitter Trends, whether you find them useful or not, are a rich and interesting set of data to work with. The problem is that you can’t narrow it down much: trend data comes Twitter users around the world, with no way to filter by region. Trendsmap combines Twitter Trends with Google Maps to add that ability.

You can zoom in and out on the map to narrow your view of trends to the area you’re interested in. Clicking on an individual trend gives you more info, including how often people are tweeting about the trend, and additional links and media that might explain why it’s popular. Trendsmap even pulls information on each topic from the Twitter Trend explanation site What The Trend.

[via Mashable]

Trendsmap mixes Twitter Trends and Google Maps originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Productivity, Web services, Social Software

If you use Google Apps on your domain, you can share and collaborate with other users through a new service called Socialwok. It enables sharing calendars, docs, spreadsheets and presentations amongst accounts, and adding media from other sites like YouTube and SlideShare. It also offers Facebook-like activity streams, and lets you publish to Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Socialwok allows you to send email to specific feeds on your network, and share those feeds with people outside your domain as you see fit. Socialwok also promises mobile support for iPhone, Android and Blackberry, and integration with the as-yet-unreleased Google Wave. Socialwok seems designed for business, but also looks like it could be useful for any kind of collaborative project. It’s free, but the service’s business model involves selling premium accounts that will support custom apps.

Socialwok adds a social layer to Google Apps originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Social Software

As Twitter becomes more popular, it’s become increasingly difficult to stay on top of links, content and stuff you’re friends and followers are sharing. Made from the same guys behing Mixx, a Digg-style website that features user submitted content that you can vote on, Tweetmixx is designed to make it much easier to share and view Links and content found in tweets.

After logging in with your Twitter username and password, you’ll immediately be presented with a cool list of links found in your friends’ tweets. See comments on them, view hot trends and even post and share directly from Tweetmixx. You can even specify interests that will help filter stuff you’re interested in seeing.

Tweetmixx helps you see what’s hot on Twitter originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Social Software, Microblogging

It hasn’t been long since we told you about Twitter’s “Project Retweet,” the plan to introduce a standard, system-wide format for rebroadcasting other users’ Twitter postings. The new retweets seem to have already rolled out for certain power users. Although you might not see them on the web, they’re already showing up in some third-party Twitter clients. Until the new retweets are available to all users, they might look a little confusing, because they show up on the retweeter’s page, but appear to be posted by the original poster.

It’s a little weird to see posts from users you don’t follow in the streams of users you do, but it will all become clear when this format is available on the web. That’s because, instead of “RT” in the body of the post, it will be marked as a retweet in a smaller font size underneath. Space-conscious tweeters should be happy to save those two extra characters, and third-party services will no longer have to put together hacky retweet support.

One of the first users to get access to Project Retweet was Daring Fireball’s John Gruber. Visiting his page using some third-party Twitter clients should give you an idea of what the new feature looks like.

[via Gruber on Twitter]

Twitter starts rolling out new format for retweets originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Windows, Freeware, Social Software

Digsby is a social networking and instant messaging tool for Windows that has does so many different things it’s hard to describe them all. Arguably, it’s not the best at any one thing. For instance in AOL Instant Messenger it doesn’t support chat rooms, and the Twitter client is a bit simple compared to fuller featured applications like Twhirl or TweetDeck.

But you know what? That’s part of what I like about Digsby. I can use it to chat with my friends and contacts, keep up with Twitter activity, and receive notifications when new email messages come in. But it doesn’t absorb all of my attention the way fuller featured Twitter clients do. I don’t have to pay attention to every single tweet from the 150 or so people that I follow. I can just glance at the last few messages when I have a free moment and move on. If I want to see @replies or direct messages, I can easily do that without missing any.

And that’s why I’m a bit conflicted about the news that Digsby is amping up its Twitter client. The new client opens in a new window, unlike the current version which is integrated into Digsby. But that’s one of the only things that the new Digsby will have in common with other Twitter clients. Here are a few things Digsby will do differently:

• Messages will be posted in chronological order, instead of reverse chronological order
• Digsby will keep track of unread message counts
• When you open the Twitter window Digsby will pick up where you left off reading
• Users will be able to filter users and groups
• You’ll be able to reply and retweet directly from the notification pop up window
• Automatic URL shortening when you paste a URL into the message window

In other words, the new Digsby Twitter client will be designed to make it harder to miss messages, and let you treat Twitter almost like email. For Twitter junkies, it sounds awesome. For me, it sounds like information overload. I’ll give it a try and see how I like the new client, but my guess is that I’ll either start unfollowing Twitter users or I’ll give up on Digsby and go back to using Pidgin and a desktop email notifier.

You can see a picture of Digsby’s new Twitter timeline view after the break.

Continue reading Digbsy pushes out a major update to Twitter client, for better or worse

Digbsy pushes out a major update to Twitter client, for better or worse originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Video, Social Software, Mobile

12seconds.tv is extending its bite-sized video service - 12 seconds per video, as the name implies - into the mobile universe, with a nice-looking video messaging app for the iPhone. 12mail [app store link] lets you send short video messages to your contacts, which it can pull from your Facebook or Twitter accounts, if you like. Recording a new video (if you have an iPhone 3GS) and sending a saved video are both supported. You can even take a still picture and record an audio track instead of going for a full video.

If your friends have 12mail, they’ll get push notifications when they receive your messages, and they’ll be able to watch them using the iPhone’s built-in video app. If they don’t, the messages can be posted on their Facebook walls or sent privately via Twitter direct message. The 12-second time limit really works in 12mail’s favor on the iPhone, considering the limited upload speeds on 3G and EDGE. 12Mail is also free, in case you needed another reason to give it a shot.

12seconds.tv introduces 12Mail video messaging app originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Web services, Social Software

Piryx is payments for the social web, but with a host of intelligence and data mining features only available to huge companies and campaigns in the past. With roots in political fundraising, Piryx has a track record that’s somewhat impressive, having recently rolled out a site to accept donations for Rep. Joe “You Lie!” Wilson, and claiming another 150 payment taking users nationwide.

The social media element comes to play as users track their incoming payments. By using custom generated urls, users can track where, who and why their customers and contributors took action and slapped down the credit card. Was it that Twitter retweet campaign, a sympathetic blogger or just another happy customer referral? Piryx helps you track the success of the efforts within your campaign.

Piryx is launching publicly with a better payments experience than the common payment sites, but they’re looking to own much of the upstream marketing that funnels and fuels eventual payments, as well as providing backend analytics, compliance, and reporting functions which until now necessitated another piece of software and a larger commitment of effort. .

The fee structure of Piryx is higher than that of Paypal, but creating the same tracking and analytics with Paypal would cost far more in effort and time. At 4.5% for first $100k, and a sliding scale running down to 4% for intake of over $1 Million.

Of course, it’s 2009 and “there’s an app for that”. Piryx’s DEMOfall presentation includes a developer market, allowing third parties to build and market integration of Piryx with other services and tools. Currently available at launch are apps for Linked-In, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, with more to come.

Also launching with Piryx is a campaign for the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, raising money with the platform to combat homelessness and poverty in our nation’s inner-cities.

DEMOfall09 - Pyrix, social payments with deep tracking originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News, Social Software

Several news sources have started reporting on a 2007 research project by a group of MIT students who found they could accurately predict Facebook users’ sexual preferences based on the people they were friends with. The project, referred to as “Gaydar,” sampled data from 1,600 men (only 33 of whom were out as gay on Facebook) to create an algorithm that supposedly predicts whether a user is gay or not. However, the research methodology behind this unpublished study seems a bit dubious to me.

The initial test of Gaydar correctly predicted that 10 of the researchers’ friends - who weren’t “out” on Facebook - were gay. That’s a pretty decent success rate, but a tiny, tiny sample size. Only 33 gay men out 1600 total can’t possibly be reflective of the entire population. According to Wikipedia, 4% of voters in the last US election self-identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Assuming that those numbers are pretty conservative, only 2% of the people in Gaydar’s initial sample were gay. I’m not convinced it’s really time to start panicking that you could be inadvertently outed based on your Facebook friend list.

Facebook’s Gaydar: is it accurate? originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Web services, Social Software

Online dating is a somewhat static market. You have premium players Match.com and eHarmony, who seem to suggest at every commercial break that the person you’ve been looking for your whole life just signed up a few minutes ago. At the other end of the spectrum, there’s Plenty of Fish which, although vastly improved from a few years ago, is still one of the least visually pleasing and user friendly sites on the web. PoF does ridiculous volume and traffic, is free, and doesn’t do a stitch of marketing.

Enter new kid on the block, Ge.la.to. Launching today, Gelato takes online dating and mating to the social web. Incorporating your lifestream into the process of getting to know you, while paying a keen eye to keep privacy at a reasonable level.

Continue reading DEMOfall09 - Gelato is online dating meets social search

DEMOfall09 - Gelato is online dating meets social search originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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