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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Filed under: World wide web, Mozilla, Social Software, Browsers

If you’ve been waiting for a browser than natively supports location-based services, here’s your first taste. Firefox 3.1 is all set to include geolocation based on a new WC3 standard, but you can test it out now with a Firefox add-on called Geode, from Mozilla Labs. Geode lets websites request your location the same way they request to install add-ons or open blocked popups. The possibilities for this technology are immense — mobile devices are already taking advantage of it, so why not laptops?

The first services to be compatible with Geode are the social network Pownce, Yahoo!’s location-management product Fire Eagle, and a demo food finder from Mozilla. Geode gets your location via wifi, using Skyhook’s Loki technology, and you can pass it to a website as a city, a neighborhood, or an exact location. I’m looking forward to seeing the other uses developers come up with for this technology before it goes mainstream in the next version of Firefox.

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

You might think that the last thing the world needs is yet another desktop client for Twitter. And you’d probably be right. But that doesn’t make new kid on the bloc Toro any less pretty to look at.

Toro doesn’t have a ton of features when compared to the reigning champs like Twhirl and Alert Thingy. It doesn’t have a shortcut for sending direct messages and doesn’t have a tab for direct tweets. And it has exactly two options in the settings dialog (turn alerts on and off, and turn sounds for alerts on and off).

But that said, Toro is one of the most physically attractive Adobe AIR-based Twitter clients I’ve seen. Items like Recent, Public, and Replies are separate into tabs. There’s an integrated search feature. And you can view a list of your friends and followers in the Friends tab. I don’t know why most desktop Twitter clients insist on having colorful backgrounds, but there’s something about the black and white simplicity of Toro that makes it an attractive substitute.

[via RefreshingApps]

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Filed under: Internet, Social Software

StumbleUpon might be one of the most innovative social website discovery services around. But the service has always had one major stumbling block: users needed to sign up for accounts and install a browser toolbar. And some percentage of potential users are just never going to take those steps.

Now StumbleUpon has removed those restrictions by rolling out a new version of the site that works without a browser toolbar. Just visit StumbleUpon and click on any web page to begin stumbling. A JavaScript toolbar will show up in your browser window. You can find popular new web sites by hitting the stumble button, give stories a thumbs up, or rank them. If you have a StumbleUpon account you can also save pages. If not, hitting the save button will bring up an account registration screen.

It’s also easier to find web sites from the main StumbleUpon page thanks to new categories like News, Art, Computers, Music, and Technology.

You can still use the toolbar if you like. But with the new StumbleUpon, it’s no longer necessary.

[via WebWare]

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google, Social Software, Googleholic, Search, web 2.0

Welcome to Googleholic, your weekly fix of everything Google.

In this edition:

• Docs spreadsheet is getting a facelift
• More admin controls for Google Apps Gmail
• Project 10^100
• Map Maker launches in 17 more countries
• Google and perpetual beta
• Google Grab-Bag

Continue reading Googleholic for September 26, 2008

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Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web services, Social Software

After months of planning, MySpace has rolled out MySpace Music, a new advertising-supported streaming audio service backed by the four major music labels.

There are a few things that make MySpace Music worth checking out. You can stream all the songs for free. And you can add songs to a custom playlist and post that list to your MySpace profile, making it simple for people to find new music. And finally, if you find a song you like, but you want to play it on a portable device or when your computer isn’t connected to the internet, you can click the Buy button in the player to purchase the a DRM-free copy of the track from Amazon MP3.

But I’m still not particularly impressed. I was able to find MySpace pages for most of the artists I searched for. But not each song was available for purchase from Amazon. And for many artists you could find one or two albums, but not every album, and certainly not each song.

Since MySpace Music is basically a streaming audio website, it’s hard not to compare it to similar services like Last.fm or even SeeqPod. And I have to say, while the audio player is nice, and the social aspect could be useful, the music selection isn’t very impressive.

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