Bootstrap, an online toolkit for twitter developers

 Twitter  released Bootstrap, an online toolkit for developers looking to build new web apps, or even clean up some of the code they already have.

Bootstrap is an open source set of files written in CSS (or Cascading Style Sheets, a programming language used to dictate how a website or web app looks and works) that covers some of the building blocks of most web apps, such as buttons, tables and forms, page templates, app navigation and even stylistic matters such as typography and color gradients.

The simple and small tools (at about only six kilobytes in size) released by Twitter, on the popular code sharing site GitHub, are the same basic tools used by Twitter developers for the social network's own webpages and apps, Mark Otto, a designer at Twitter, said in a blog post.

Using twitter hashtags

Twitter Hashtags have some unwritten rules. The primary one to remember: don’t overuse them. If every one of your tweets IS a hashtag, you dilute the usefulness of them by fragmenting the conversation. In addition, many people will shy away from you because it seems spammy.
Another simple tip: give your hashtag context. Most people won’t actually know what your hashtag means, so give a quick explanation in one of your tweets or, if you’re making a hashtag, make it very apparent what it’s talking about.
Finally, if you’re looking to create a hashtag, be sure that it adds value for yourself and your followers. The best way to utilize them is when you need to organize information. Conferences, major events, and even reminders (i.e. #todo) can help organize specific tweets and make life easier on you and your followers.
The Twitter Fan Wiki also has some interesting reading material on hashtags if you’re looking to further your hashtag education.

Cameroon Bans Twitter

the government of the West African state of Cameroon has banned mobile Twitter.

The opposition had planned protests against the country's longtime president, Paul Biya, last month. But those were put down by security forces. Clearly, President Biya believes he can cut off future protests by eliminating one of the tools those protesters might use.

Twitter Translation Center

Twitter launched its Twitter Translation Center on Monday in an effort to turn its users into translating volunteers who will help convert the social media company's products into new languages.
The Translation Center opens up Twitter.com; Twitter's mobile, business and help websites; and Twitter's mobile apps for Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating systems to translation that is crowd sourced by those who use the popular platform to send out messages in 140 characters or less.
Twitter is looking to add Indonesian, Portuguese, Russian and Turkish to the list of languages in which it is currently offered. The service is already available in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish and those languages will also be available to volunteers in the Translation Center in an attempt to improve already translated sites and apps.
Translators who take part in the Translation Center will be translating Twitter's products, not the messages sent out on Twitter.

Tihar Prison goes social with Facebook, Twitter

Tihar Prisons in Delhi, the largest correctional institution in South East Asia, jumps the social network bandwagon as it plans to engage the public using Facebook and Twitter in order to invite public opinion and improve transparency in its day-to-day functioning.

Its main objective is to convert its inmates into productive members of the society by providing them with useful skills, education and rules, meant to improve their self-esteem and strengthen their desire to advance in life. Items manufactured by the inmates bear the brand Tihar, which is very popular among people in Delhi.

Twitter launches ‘#BetterNow’

#BetterNow, a new Twitter endeavor designed to promote communities and their health.
The call to action on the website reads: “Be a part of something bigger than yourself and make a difference in someone else’s life. Get involved in making your community and the world #betternow.”
The project, which resides on the Hope140.org domain, is a portal and call to action. Currently #BetterNow is working with Helpline, The Trevor Project, The Gay-Straight Alliance Network, and RAINN. These four organizations work against sexual assault and homophobia, towards providing youth new opportunities, and support communities, respectively.
On the page Twitter encourages you to tweet a link to the page that includes the project’s eponymous hashtag. If you do so, this is what you will tweet:

Twitter for Mac

Twitter is to introduce an appropriately slick and simple desktop application for Mac computers. Twitter for Mac has launched today as part of the Mac App Store.

This app gives Twitter users another fast and convenient way to stay connected to what they care about the most. Tweets appear in real-time (using our streaming API), and the app auto-shortens URLs and has lots of useful keyboard shortcuts.

The app is also three times faster than its original version that was previously called Tweetie for Mac. Tweetie for Mac was a desktop client that was originally created by atebits developer Loren Brichter prior to our acquisition of atebits last April. Twitter for Mac is a new version updated by Loren and team during Twitter’s first Hack Week in October.

Download link

PostUp Buys Twitter And Facebook Application EchoFon

PostUp  has bought Twitter application Echofon, according to a press release issued today.


Echfon, which used to be called TwitterFon after its Twitter client, is used by 3 million people. The startup offers a Twitter app for the iPhone, a native Twitter clients, a Facebook app for the iPhone, and a Twitter iPad app.

Twitter Conversation Viewer

           
If you you need more context than what is readily available on Twitter.com or via any third-party application. Aaron's Twitter Viewer is a super-simple tool that will show you an entire Twitter conversation with just a couple of clicks.


First, you’ll need the ID of a Tweet in the conversation. To find that, just click on the time that a Tweet was sent, then copy the string of numbers at the end


Once you have that, you’ll want to head over to Aaron's Twitter Viewer, then paste that number into the box.


Then you'll find, after pasting the number then pressing Go is a page of conversation, neatly displayed before you.


Check out here http://twitter.theinfo.org

How to post from Twitter to Facebook

Below are few apps that allows you to do the function. Easily update your Facebook status from twitter.

Selective tweets

As the name suggest, you can post selective tweets to your Facebook update. Just install the app and connect with your twitter account. Once you've authorized your twitter account, when ever you want to post an update to facebook, just end your tweet with #fb , so that it sends the tweet to your Facebook status update.

Smart Twitter

Smart Twitter updates your Facebook status from your twitter status. However, it lets your configure which tweets get copied to Facebook. By default it doesn't copy tweets like @replies, retweets, or #hashtags, but you can change these settings.

Ftwitter app

Fwitter updates your status with your latest tweet.

Do let us know if you've tried out any other Facebook app that allows you to post tweets into Facebook status updates.

Malicious Goo.gl Links Spreading on Twitter

A large number of messages containing only the link goo.gl/R7f68 has appeared on Twitter today, redirecting the users to various malware-laden sites.

The messages are mostly coming from disposable accounts, but they also appear on some accounts that appear to be genuine, which indicates that there's a worm spreading and sending the messages from infected accounts. Furthermore, all of the messages containing the link are sent from the mobile version of Twitter

The Next Web has traced the origins of the link in the messages, which sends users to a French site (http://artcan-developpement.fr) that has apparently been hacked to forward users to sites containing various malware scripts.

While the majority of the messages currently contain an identical shortened link, have in mind that the link is very likely to change in the future. As always, do not click on any suspicious links, and always keep your computer protected with antivirus and anti-malware software.

3 Tools to Send more than 140 characters on Twitter

Below are the best 3 services that allows you to send more than 140 characters on twitter.

Tweet Compressor

Tweet Compressor makes your tweets shorter by replacing groups of two or three letters with a single character that looks the same.

TwitLonger

Twitlonger is an easy way to post long messages to Twitter without the need to write a blog post. Write what you need here and we post the link to Twitter for you

TinyPaste

Tinypaste is a simple web service that lets you to paste any text or code and then save it. Once you save it, you will get a Tiny url where you can share it directly on twitter.

UberTwitter app now available for iPhone

Twitter application, UberTwitter has finally arrived on the iPhone. The company has announced a variety of features for the iPhone app. In addition to traditional Twitter client features – such as composing and sending tweets, retweeting, direct messaging and embedded link shortening – UberTwitter allows users to read tweets faster and more easily.

As the company explains on their site, “Either by tapping the tweet in portrait mode or turning the phone to landscape mode, users will be able to view and use content from any embedded link (e.g., webpage, photo or video) instantaneously without leaving the app or opening a new page within an app.”  This is known as the UberView preview and is one of the more innovative features UberTwitter provides.

The current version is still in beta, with the 1.0 version on track for December.

Twitter Photo Search with Hashalbum

Twitter sees hundreds or thousands of Tweets published every second, and many of these are photos of things happening real-time. Hashalbum is a new website that aims to help you browse this constant stream of images in real time by allowing you to do a simple search by hashtag, returning images that are found in Tweets containing that hashtag.

Website Hashalbum

Top 10 Twitter Trends This Week

Top Twitter Trends This Week: 11/13 – 11/19

---

Rank	Topic	Top Index This Week	Intensity	Description
#1	Aung San Suu Kyi	1	3	Military authorities in Myanmar have signed an order authorizing the release of pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, according to news reports.
#2	Royal Wedding	1	3	Prince William, the second in line to the throne of the British Royal Family, announced his engagement to Kate Middleton. The wedding will be held in Spring or Summer of 2011.
#3	Boxing	1	2	Manny Pacquiao earns his 8th title via a unanimous decision after his fight against Antonio Margarito. After boxer Manny Pacquiao’s decisive victory, the sports talk turns to the only likely fighter left for him to face, the undefeated Floyd Mayweather.
#4	Eid ul-Adha	1	2	Eid Mubarak is a traditional Muslim greeting reserved for use on the festivals of Eid ul-Adha and Eid ul-Fitr. The phrase translates into English as "blessed festival," and can be paraphrased as "may you enjoy a blessed festival." Eid ul-Adha is being observed this year from November 17 to November 20.
#5	NFL	1	2	In football, top trends centered around Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick facing Washinton Redskins quarterback (and ex-Eagles QB) Donovan McNabb. The Eagles went on to win over the Redskins, 59-28.
#6	Harry Potter	1	1	Part one of the seventh film in the series, Harry Potter And the Deathly Hallows, debuted in theaters on November 19.
#7	Soccer/Football	1	1	Officials announced the first-round groups of the 2011 Copa América South American football championship. It will be held in Argentina this time. Other top mentions were Marcelo Bielsa and Manuel Preciado, coach of Real Sporting de Gijón.
#8	Tony Parker-Eva Longoria	2	1	Tony Parker of the San Antonio Spurs and his wife Eva Longoria (best known for her role on Desperate Housewives) have filed for divorce.
#9	NBA	1	1	Greg Oden of the Portland Trailblazers is, again, out for the season with a knee injury, and the Los Angeles Lakers were defeated by the Denver Nuggets.
#10	Ryan Reynolds	4	1	People Magazine has selected Ryan Reynolds as the Sexiest Man Alive.

---

Source: http://mashable.com

Twitter terminates agreement with JustSpotted

Twitter said it has terminated its relationship with JustSpotted.com, a controversial new celebrity spotting website that is slated to launch next week.

JustSpotted plans to use a combination of Twitter feeds, Facebook updates, Foursquare posts and blog updates to plot a celebrity's location anywhere around the world in near real-time. A celebrity's position is plotted on a map of the world, with information about the restaurant or other venue where they'd been spotted -- but not the actual address.

Co-founder and Chief Executive AJ Asver said the celebrity gawking website, which launches Oct. 19, is intended to indulge fans' desire to get the latest updates about the stars they love, using publicly available information volunteered by celebrities.

But JustSpotted raised alarms among privacy advocates, who say it represents a new kind of intrusion on people's lives.

"Once a celebrity might have worried about someone with a camera and a flash," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Washington-based advocacy group, Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Now they have to worry about someone with a cellphone and a Twitter account."

JustSpotted is a new service from Scoopler, a start-up that got funding from Y Combinator in 2008. It had licensed Twitter's "firehose" data feed of all public updates for its real-time search engine, Scoopler.com.

"JustSpotted.com is not the product we licensed, and we have terminated their agreement," Twitter spokesman Matt Graves said in an e-mailed statement.

The website's Asver said in an e-mail response that its relationship with Twitter relates to Scoopler and not to JustSpotted, which would continue to aggregate updates from multiple sources including Twitter.
Source: On This latimes page

7 Reasons Why Google Should Not Buy Twitter

Twitter would require an obnoxiously large amount

Twitter has a ridiculous valuation right now without really having the revenue to show for it. In order to purchase Twitter, Google would probably need to write a check for $5 Billion at the minimum. If you think about the idea of the purchase price being 10X revenue, that you mean that Twitter would need $500 Million in revenue. I don’t think anyone has heard of any revenue estimates for 2010 anywhere near that number.

Twitter has not proven to be stable

Twitter continues to be unstable over the long term. Does Google really want to deal with those problems? If Twitter could be more reliable over the long term, they would not need Google’s help. So stability is more of a catch-22.

Twitter’s revenue plans are not in line with Google’s

Twitter revenue has been in promoted trends and promoted tweets so far. This is basically just fancy advertising so it would seem to be in the same arena as Google’s revenue. However, Google’s properties make a point of the advertising not being in the content.

Twitter’s infrastructure is nothing like Google’s

Supposedly, Google likes their acquisitions to port their code to the Google infrastructure. I am not sure how much of this is true, but Twitter has been known to use Java, Ruby, Scala, and almost anything else that will work at the time.

Just because they have the cash

I have seen the reason that Google should buy Twitter because Google has enough cash to do it. That is like saying I should buy a new car because I have the cash to do it. Do I need the car? Why would I buy something, just because I have the money to do it.

Just to compete with Facebook

The other reason that seems to be popular is that Google needs to compete with Facebook somehow, so buying Twitter is the best option. How does Twitter help you fight Facebook? Twitter does not know how to fight Facebook, and even tries to avoid comparisons to Facebook.

Buying Facebook is a better idea

If you are really looking to make a big purchase, why not buy what really makes sense. Buy Facebook for $30 billion. You really do not want to compete with Facebook, but their revenue, estimated to be over $1 Billion in 2010, would be a great addition. You can leave Facebook completely alone to run their business, and just reap the long term benefits.

Author: Louis Gray

Tweetbeat -The Best of Twitter in RealTime

-Tweetbeat scans more than 90 million Twitter updates each day, using semantic technology to pick out the most interesting people discussing the most interesting topics, in real time. The Mountain View start-up bills the service as "the end of hashtags" because its users would no longer have to tag an update.

Tweetbeat is a real-time source for what people are saying about any major event.

• LiveFollow event streams to see up-to-the-minute reactions from fans, experts and celebs.
• Replay tweets from earlier events.
• Watch Firsthand commentary from key people and players at the event.
• Read Headlines about the event from top news sources.
• Get Recommendations for people to follow who share your event interests.
• Search for events happening right now.

Kosmix, which officially released its Tweetbeat product Wednesday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco.

TweetBeat Website http://tweetbeat.com/about

Tips to create better personal twitter handle

Keep it as short as possible. That way you have a handle that looks good and fits into RTs very easily and the brand association is also better when it is easier to remember . So when you have aa choice between @MyFirstandlastname and @Myname, go for the latter and chuck the former.


Avoid funny characters when possible. Try to stick to a non-complicated sequence of aplhabets , it is better to have @GeorgeB rather than @_I_am_George_B when it is available . Moreover the underscores and numbers are a clear giveaway that there are many folks with the same name and you missed the first stop of the bus


Do not over-use numbers. While it is sometimes unavoidable to use numbers in your handle , try not to go over the moon with them . What I mean is , no one is going to follow a @13_12_2010 , not in their wildest dreams , although the idea of a date is cool , in this context , it is a no-no . You will probably get very few non-bot followers with that kind of handle .


Do not add funny adjectives. I have encountered a very troubled breed of tweeps who cannot resist the temptation to add an adjective like “hot” , “cool” , “sizzling” etc to their handles . Let me assure you that with an adjective like that in your handle , that is what people think you are not and not the other way round . I have even seen blind blocking of such handles.


Be yourself and go for the gut. When you haven’t got a lot of choices and feel like your handle is limiting your brand , remember that ultimately it is what comes through from you that matters more than the handle . Try your best and when your gut says something , go for it . It might just be a matter of time when the handle you wanted becomes available and you can jump on it.

10 twitter tips

1. 140 characters can be limiting sometimes. Did you know you can shorten your URL when it is too long? Services like Bitly or Tinyurl are some tools to help this

2. Use a real picture as your avatar. It personalizes the experience and connects you to your followers.

3. Use twitter search to find people to follow or groups of people who have similar interests. Good examples of must follows include @shunmugam1234 @Chrisbrogan @SethGodin @Kakief @Burbursfriends ;D

4. Build relationships one person at a time. Retweets are one way to do this. If you see a tweet that you think might add value to your followers be sure to use this feature. Here is an example of what a Retweet might look like on Twitter: “

RT @KakieF: Advanced Screening Movie Review: “The Social Network” Based o Mark Zuckerberg and Story Behind Facebook: wp.me/ptP4G-yt “

5. Acknowledge new followers at Social Oomph. This allows you to automatically send a direct message to people who follow you. Be sure the direct message says something authentic and does not have a link in it.

6. A hashtag starts with (#) and is a way to identify a certain trend or group of people.

7. Find a good mobile phone application to tweet from your phone.

8. There are great desktop tools out there to help you manage your accounts. Tweetdeck, Hootesuite, Twhirl are some examples

9. Personalize yourself by sharing photos using twitpic, flickr, etc. In addition, use a real picture as your avatar. It personalizes the experience and connects you to your followers.

10. Listen before you tweet. In other words, observe how others are using it in different circles. It is amazing what you will learn.