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My favorite sites using the Twitter API
Mar 26th
I’ve long been a fan of Twitter, and despite the many naysayers it has become an integral part of many peoples web existence. Since Twitter shares their API with developers, it opens up a whole world of mashups and sites that take advantage of the huge network that Twitter is accumulating. This subject has been covered by people before, but I thought it would be fun to share a few of my personal favorites.
The best search tool for Twitter that I’ve found. One of my biggest annoyances about Twitter is that the Replies tab only shows responses with your username as the first word in the tweet (e.g., “@veronica talks about her cats too much”) and not responses with the username any where else (e.g., “sick of hearing about @veronica’s cats”). Tweetscan solves this by finding any instance of the word. It’s also really helpful for tracking hashtags, like #sxsw.
Takes the Tweetscan idea one step further by tracking entire conversation threads. You can see the divergent paths as the topic morphs and changes, and you can also see where comments of yours fit in with conversations already in progress. A new site on the scene, but one of the most useful.
This would be insanely helpful to me if I had a car. Alas, I do not, but I think this site kills two birds with one stone: you get instant traffic info, as well as the ability to vent your gridlocked frustrations.
Too lazy to read the news? You can read the outrage and support for the candidates here. Clicking on the individual candidates names will show you other ways to follow them online (i.e., Flickr, Facebook, MySpace) as well as their most recent tweets.
I’m not entirely sure how much of the Twitter API Ze Frank is using, but it’s gotta be worked in there somehow! When I first heard of Colorwars, I was not impressed. However, once I set aside my childhood fears of being chosen last for everything, I realized that it was a fun and interactive way to use Twitter. Not only that, Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV promised us presents if we joined veryGreenTeam.
Of course, there are many others that are fun but don’t really have much purpose other than to be entertaining: TwitterVision, TwitterPoster and Twitterholic come to mind. Tweetmeme is another one that has potential, but it almost always features non-English tweets, which makes it difficult for my monolingual brain.
Do you have any personal favorites that I missed? For a huge list of other sites and for more API info, head over to the Twitter Fan Wiki.
Podcast exposure
Mar 21st
For some reason I ended up on a plethora of podcasts this week! Here’s the rundown for your listening and viewing enjoyment:
Sunday: This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte, Steve Gillmore, John C. Dvorak and Patrick Norton. We talked about all sorts of news, including SXSW (and Twitter, natch) as well as some unfounded rumors involving Revision3. Which leads us to…
Tuesday: Tekzilla! I love guest hosting this show, mostly because it means I get to hang out with Patrick and Roger all afternoon.
Thursday: The Instance Episode #100! I was honored and delighted to be on the 100th episode of my favorite podcast. Scott and Randy had folks on air that have made appearances or recorded special pieces for the show over the last 100 episodes, so it was like a big homecoming.
Friday: I went down to CNET for an in-studio recording of Buzz Out Loud. It was nice to be back in the BOL chair, even if I let Tom run the production side of things (it’s been a while, I’d probably break it). They live stream on ustream.tv now too, so I was able to record it. Not too exciting to watch us talk, I bet, but you get to see me chug some coffee.
And on Monday and Wednesday I recorded upcoming episodes of Mahalo Daily, so it was quite a full week.
Watch your back, Scott Johnson!
Mar 5th
I received a beta invite to Bitstrips today, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to break into the web comic world. I’m kidding, of course (we’ll leave that to the people who actually have talent, like Scott) but this new social network and comic drawing site is a lot of fun to play around with. You can create characters (the customization is really good) and save and share your strips for other users. I don’t actually have any friends on there yet, but it seems as though people can also edit your comic (instant collaboration!).
I wish there were more ways to embed the comic, but maybe I just haven’t found that option yet. I’d like to be able to show all three panels at once instead of scrolling through panes. You can save a jpeg version of it, and then post that image, but that’s kind of a workaround. The site is in private beta right now, but they’ll be going live during SXSW (and also “comic blogging” the event, which should be hilarious).
Lady “TechStars” wanted!
Feb 26th
It’s a sad but true fact that there are far fewer women working in the technology industry than men. I’m not just talking about journalists and bloggers; there are significantly fewer programmers, designers, and startup founders. Last year I was on a panel in Denver, the New Media Summit, and I met a lot of people involved with a program called TechStars. It’s a mentorship-driven investment fund, which gives out seed capital to a select number of startups. Some of the founders are straight out of college, and the advice that they got from other entrepreneurs and angel investors is invaluable.
However, out of the 302 companies that applied last year, only 7 had one or more women on their team. Only one of the finalist teams had a female on board. This year, those numbers are even smaller. What gives? Yes, this is an isolated event, but the ideas I saw last year were really great, and it bums me out that more ladies aren’t taking part.
Anyhow, this is a great chance for men and women alike to learn how to build their startup, but it would be great to see more women represented! If you’ve got a great idea, there’s still 34 days left to apply.
