Filed under: Features, Macintosh, Social Software, Lists

I absolutely love the popular Mac multi-chat app Adium. Not only does it support a large number of messaging protocols — including Facebook Chat in the latest version — it’s insanely customizable. In Adium, you can change the look of everything from your contact list to your message style to your dock icon. There’s an extensive library of user-created styles at AdiumXtras.com, but they’re not all good.

Recently, I went on a bit of a downloading tear, rummaging through the Adium Xtra trash to discover the Adium Xtra treasure. Here, I present my findings: 8 of the slickest, most beautiful add-ons ever to grace a chat client. To check out the full range of Adium Xtras for yourself, go to adiumxtras.com.

Message Style: Cinematic

Cinematic is a smooth, dark style that fits in really well with OS X. It sports Apple’s signature “reflection” effect, and uses buddy icons to show who’s talking — no text necessary. I like an uncluttered feeling when I’m chatting, and Cinematic delivers. Match it up with a darker buddy list style and wallpaper for a really put-together desktop.

Continue reading 8 can’t-miss Adium Xtras

8 can’t-miss Adium Xtras originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Audio, Podcasting, Blogging, Social Software

Making a podcast can be a pain in the butt. Most of them are distributed via RSS or Atom, to make it as easy as possible for listeners to get new episodes. What if you want to save a bunch of audio as a podcast, but lack the technical expertise or the patience to make an RSS feed for it? Or what if you know how, but you just don’t want to bother? Well, that’s why there’s Huffduffer.

Huffduffer will stitch audio files into a podcast for you, and put them into an RSS feed automatically. You can add your own styff, or throw together some of the great “inspiration” that’s already on Huffduffer. They’ve linked some of the best free content on the internet, like TED speaks and This American Life. To make things even easier, there’s a browser bookmarklet you can save, to easily Huffduff any interesting audio you run across. I’m already thinking of Huffduffer as the Tumblr of podcasting: good concept, great ease of use, definitely worth checking out.

HuffDuffer: like the Tumblr of podcasting originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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

Blog comment company Disqus was built around one pretty simple idea: the comment systems on most blogs stink. Disqus offers advanced comment features for Blogger, TypePad, Moveable Type, WordPress and other platforms. Features like avatar support, threaded comments, and the capability to rank other users comments. The biggest difference between Disqus and the default comment systems on most blogs is that once you register with Disqus you can leave comments on any blog that uses the system without registering over again. And you can track your comment history across all of those blogs, or see comment history for other users.

But Disqus has faced a few challenges. When the service first launched, comments weren’t indexed by search engines. Or rather they were, but the search engine would find them on the Disqus web site, not yours. So while Disqus was adding value to your readers, you it could actually be taking some value away from your site in terms of search engine traffic. That issue was fixed in August and Disqus comments are now properly indexed by search engines.

Second, Disqus couldn’t handle trackbacks properly at launch. Eventually the the developers did roll out a trackback feature. But in order for trackbacks to show up on your site, anyone linking to a post had to use a special Disqus URL, not the URL of your post. Last night, Disqus rolled out a fix for WordPress, allowing Disqus to display all the trackbacks or pingbacks to your blog.

With this latest update, I can’t think of many down sides to using Disqus at this point. At least for WordPress users. But there’s the rub: WordPress 2.7 will likely have many of these same features built into the platform. No third party plugin necessary. Last month Automattic, the company that develops WordPress bought Intense Debate, a company that competes with Disqus. And if you can give readers threaded comments, commentor rankings, the ability to register once and post on many blogs without installing a third celebration plugin like Disqus, why would you? It’ll be interesting to see how Disqus works to differentiate itself from Intense Debate once WordPress 2.7 is released.

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Filed under: Social Software, iPhone, web 2.0

BrightKite was already the Cadillac of location-based social networking, but it just got even superior with the release of an iPhone app. Checking in is a breeze using the iPhone’s GPS, and the app is pumped up with new features that make it a dramatic improvement over the old web version. There’s been a buzz around Brightkite for iPhone for some time now, and it absolutely lives up to the hype.

The capability to message nearby users in an iChat-like interface is definitely a plus, and helps to make the service more social. “Place snapping” quickly attaches a name to your location, giving you a street or intersection that you can use with Brightkite’s placemark feature. You can also turn on notifications, making sure you don’t miss any messages or comments. Even superior, all of this happens within a slick, intuitive user interface that takes no time at all to learn.

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Filed under: Utilities, Features, Web services, Social Software, Search, web 2.0

Twine Overview from Twine Official on Vimeo

Almost exactly one year ago, we wrote about Twine, a social network built on the semantic web. After expanding the private beta back in March, the Twine team has spent the last eight months really working on site usability, interface and performance. Today, Twine 1.0 is officially out of beta and open to the public.

I had a chance to speak to Nova Spivack, the CEO and founder of Radar Networks– the company behind Twine — last week and he walked me through the service. I’ve to say, as someone who was intrigued by the idea of Twine before, but frustrated by its interface, the new Twine kicks ass.

Twine describes itself as an “interest network,” you could also call it a semantic web portal. I like to think of it like Delicious on crack. Like Delicious, and Stumble Upon and to a lesser extent, Digg, Twine is a way to manage and share links of interest. Unlike those services, Twine will also work to scour the web for information related to your interests and can help organize information into more useful snippets.

Continue reading Twine reaches 1.0, opens to public

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Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0

Sometimes you’re just superior off not knowing. Maybe one of those times is when someone unfollows you on the microblogging service Twitter, but now there’s a service for the morbidly curious. It’s called Qwitter, and it’ll send you an email notification whenever your account loses a follower.

Qwitter doesn’t need a password or a confirmation. Just put in your twitter name and your email address, and you’re all set. You’ll begin getting messages when people unfollow you, including the latest tweet you’d posted before they pulled the plug. It doesn’t work retroactively, so if you were hoping to figure out who’s already unfollowed you, you’ll still have to do that by hand. In case you have second thoughts about signing up for bad news, there’s an unsubscribe link in each Qwitter email.

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Filed under: Utilities, Social Software

If you’re an obsessive Twitter user, you probably notice when someone stops following you. How do you figure out who it is, though? It can be tough, especially if you’ve a lot of followers. Well, now there’s FriendOrFollow, a site that tells you who’s not following you back, and who you’re not following.

FriendOrFollow is handy for discovering new folks to follow, adding people you might have forgotten, and dropping people (if you’re the type to ditch those who don’t reciprocate.) FriendOrFollow is a lot like another service that’s been around for a whie, Twitter Karma, but it’s faster and more reliable. Since there’s been more than one attempt to implement this functionality, there must be some kind of demand for it. Perhaps one day you’ll see it built into Twitter.

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Filed under: World wide web, Utilities, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

There are a lot of advantages to using the name username for all your on the internet services. It’s easier to remember, and friends can find you more easily. If you’re someone who’s in this habit, you might want to take a look at Usernamecheck, a site that tells you which sites your favorite username is registered at.

Usernamecheck scans 60+ different networks, from 12seconds to Zooomr, and tells you if your name is taken. The sites on the list are some of the ideal, most useful places to have an account, so it might remind you of something you’ve been meaning to sign up for. Or, if you’re an Internet addict like me, it might remind you of sites you signed up for and forgot about. Either way, it’s worth a look.

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Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0

Glue is a browser add-on for people who consume movies, books and music online. It keeps track of what you’re browsing on sites like Amazon and IMDB, and lets you enter your comments about each item you’re browsing, and see what your friends thought about it. The name “Glue” makes a lot of sense, because it sticks together info from multiple sites for each product. If a friend reviewed a movie on Amazon, and you’re looking at it on Rotten Tomatoes, you’ll still be able to see their comments.

Glue also integrates with other social networking sites in interesting ways. You can link your Twitter page to Glue, and your profile will show up in the Glue Topbar when other users visit it. The Glue Topbar would be sort of annoying if it were always on, so it’s fortunate that you can click to hide or show it when you’re not on a Glue-enabled site. Even if a site doesn’t have special Glue features, though, you can still mark it as a favorite or leave a review of it.

So far, I think Glue is on the right track. The number of sites we use to keep track of the stuff we like is getting to be unmanageable, and a browser plugin is a smart way to aggregate all that information. As long as Glue doesn’t go overboard with the potential to inject advertising into the system — there’s none right now — it could catch on quickly.

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

There are plenty of ways to share music, but most of them are slow or have clunky interfaces. SoundCloud aims to be the first player in the market to catch on in a large way, by making things simple for its users. Soundcloud works like an inbox, so new songs come in from your friends (or from artists and record labels) and you can handle them all in one convenient place. You can also put a dropbox on any site (including MySpace, Facebook, and your blog) where people can click to send you a track.

I love the idea of being able to play incoming tracks selectively before downloading them, and also the idea of letting them stream as one huge playlist. Sending music looks to be just as easy. You can send to an email address or another SoundCloud account, and the result looks a heck of a lot better than MySpace Music. Also, there are no file size limits!

If you’re a musician, SoundCloud looks like a good place to post your new tracks. Each song gets its own URL and its own privacy settings, so you can decide who’s granted to listen to or download it. Create Digital Music states SoundCloud could be the Flickr of music, and after testing it out, I’m inclined to agree.

[via Create Digital Music]

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