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Posts Tagged ‘direct-message’

There have been many Twitter-clones that have emerged over the past few years. There’s been Koornk, and German clone Duduku. Yahoo rolled out its microblogging service, Yahoo Meme, a few months ago in Portuguese, then Spanish and finally in English a few weeks ago. It looks like there is another clone on the block—Birddi.

The microblogging site is a virtual clone of Twitter. Everything from the blue interface to the to the style of the logo to the actual “Birddi” bird is strikingly similar to Twitter. According to the site, Birddi is “a service for friends, family and coworkers to communicate and stay connected with the exchange of quick messages. People write short updates, often called ‘Berddis’ in 140 characters or less.” Like with Twitter, you can Direct Message other users, post pictures and use hashtags to mark communications. Birddi also features trending topics and search functionality. One big difference: the site features advertisements powered by Google AdSense.

According to this Argentinian news article, (here’s the translated version) Birddi was started by 19-year-old Argentinian developer Martin Lio, who saw the power of Twitter during the 2008 presidential elections and hoped to inspire this communication during Argentinian elections with a Spanish clone. In the report, Lio says he is also planning to launch a Birddi iPhone app.

The site has basically stolen all of Twitter’s lay out, branding and wording, which seems totally sketchy. This must surely infringe upon a patent or copyright.

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FriendFeed is launching version 2 of their API for beta testing today, adding a plethora of new features for developers to work with. We’ve written in the past that FriendFeed has long been in the driver’s seat for experimentation for social media and today’s announcement reinforces that thought.

With the new version of FriendFeed’s API, developers can replicate that real time stream feeling, direct message users from other apps/sites, and add file attachments. Developers can now add the never-ending stream of updates as a user interface feature, and the API supports “long polling” to be able to speed up how fast feeds show up in the stream.

The API also allows for OAuth support and simplifies an application’s response format. So a third-party application doesn’t really need to know the difference between a user and groups or how a “friend of friend” works in the interface. FriendFeed provides the HTML for representing entries so developers don’t have to construct it. Authenticated responses include a list of possible commands on every feed, entry, and comment so developers don’t have to recreate it.

FriendFeed recently made search results real-time and has a few more real-time goodies in store for the site, including, track for topics (it already has it for people and groups).

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2K’s latest baseball title, The Bigs 2 , doesn’t hit store shelves until July 7, but if you live in NYC then you can play it tonight for free. When Tonight, Wednesday, July 1st from 6 PM to 8 PM Location Hilton New York, Murray Hill Ballroom 1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019 How The BIGS 2 fans over the age of 18 (or over the age of 13 if accompanied by a parent or guardian) can sign up to participate by doing one of the following: 1) Follow our Community Manager Ronnie on Twitter and send him a direct message about your interest in coming to an event: http://www.twitter.com/Ronnie2K 2) Respond to the thread about it on our online forums: http://2ksports.com/forums/showthread.php?t=221305 3) Post a wall message on The BIGS 2 fan page letting us know you want to attend: http://www.facebook.com/BIGS2 4) E-mail us at contests@2ksports.com letting us know you are interested. 2K Sports

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Play 2K’s The BIGS 2 for free tonight in NYC

Twitter has just rolled out a small, but somewhat meaningful update to the way it sends email notifications. This includes both direct message notifications and new follower notifications. Both now carry the Twitter logo and turquoise background in each update, rather than just plain text. But more importantly, the new notifications contain a lot more information about the person sending you the message or following you.

For example, previously when someone followed you, you received a message like:

Hi, MG Siegler (parislemon).

XXXXX XXXX (xxxxx) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Check out XXXXX XXXX’s profile here:
http://twitter.com/XXXXX

You may follow XXXXX XXXXXX as well by clicking on the “follow” button.
Best,
Twitter

The only thing that was a hyperlink in all of that was the actual profile URL. Now, when a new person subscribes to you, you see what is in the image below.

As you can see, this now gives you how many followers they have, how many people they are following, and how many tweets they’ve sent. You can also see their profile picture. Previously, you would had to click through to a person’s profile on Twitter to see all of that. This certainly will save me a lot of time in checking out the people who follow me. And it actually should help me follow more people that I want to, as it’s not such a hassle to screen through new users now.

Direct messages aren’t that much different substance-wise, but they do also contain the Twitter logo now, as well as the Twitter user’s icon (pictured, below).

Update: As commenter Jeff notes below, these notifications would be even more useful if Twitter had added the “Bio” data that users include in their profiles.

[Thanks Adam]

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I’ve made no secret about my disdain for business cards. In an age where we can swap photographs and movies in a matter of seconds wirelessly, why are we still fumbling with clumsy pieces of paper that are both easy to lose and environmentally unfriendly? Today, it looks like I might be eating my words (or, as the case may be, yours).

Enter MeatCards. Two weeks ago a number of blogs caught wind of this bizarre and potentially amazing creation, bringing meat and lasers together to create the most protein-rich business cards ever. Some thought it was a hoax. But it’s very real.

I reached out to the guys behind MeatCards, and as luck would have it they were preparing for their first run of prototype cards (styled after the design from American Psycho, of course). So I sent in my information, and they printed out the prototype seen above. In the interest of preserving a shred of privacy, I’m blurred out a few digits from my phone number, Email, and our mailing address. But most of the text, like my name and the TechCrunch information in the upper right hand corner, hasn’t been touched. Obviously the laser etching isn’t quite perfect, but it mostly gets the job done. More samples below.

I haven’t receieved my MeatCards yet, and thus have been unable to taste the goods for myself. But I have been assured that they should in theory be edible, albeit with a strange laser-burnt aftertaste. That said, the guys behind MeatCards seem to be interested in finding a way to mark the cards with “Do Not Eat” to make it clear that they don’t want you to eat them - it just opens them up to too many possible legal problems and regulations. But they can’t stop you from doing it.

So when can you order one for yourself? The product is still in the testing stages, but according to its homepage they should be going on sale some time soon. Make sure to check out this awesome Flickr set to see how it’s done.

And for a more conventional business card, check out the cards Google is currently giving away.

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Arianna Huffington testified today before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet in a hearing on the “Future of Journalism.” The Senate was contemplating the future of news, particularly newspapers, and will consider what (if any) action Congress needs to take to save the industry. Those who testified include Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience at Google; lberto Ibargüen, CEO of the John S. And James L. Knight Foundation; David Simon, writer and producer of The Wire, and former Baltimore Sun employee; Steve Coll, former managing editor of The Washington Post; and James Moroney, publisher and CEO of The Dallas Morning News. You can see the transcripts of their testimonies here.

Huffington says in her testimony that traditional media has been afflicted with Attention Deficit Disorder, saying “they are far too quick to drop a story-even a good one, in their eagerness to move on to the Next Big Thing.” Online journalists, she says, have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder because “they chomp down on a story and stay with it, refusing to move off it until they’ve gotten down to the marrow.” She goes on to say that the two afflictions should be merged to produce optimal journalism.

Huffington maintains, as she has said before, that the future of journalism is based on a the link economy, search engines, online advertising, citizen journalism and foundation-supported investigative funds. She warns that if media doesn’t adopt these features, then they will have a tough time surviving.

David Simon, the creator of the popular HBO series “The Wire,” took a pot shot at bloggers, saying that they aren’t “in the trenches” like newspaper journalists so often are. He said he has never seen a blogger in a courthouse or bar with policemen (building relationships with sources), which is something that career newspaper journalists do and bloggers don’t. Whether he’d know a blogger if he saw one in a crowded courtroom is not something he addressed.

James Moroney, of the Dallas Morning News, suggests that Congress should create tax breaks for newspaper companies, relax antitrust laws so that newspapers can experiment with joint content distributions, and establish laws or regulations to prevent unpaid content distribution over the internet. These are really bad ideas.

Marissa Mayer defended Google and Google News (which was referred to as a parasite by Forbes CEO and Chairman, Jim Spanfeller) valiantly, saying that “Google News and Google search provide a valuable free service to online newspapers specifically by sending interested readers to their sites at a rate of more than 1 billion clicks per month. Newspapers use that Web traffic to increase their readership and generate additional revenue…” Google has been taking a beating lately from news organizations ranging from the A.P. to Forbes claiming that it is somehow “stealing” their ad revenues.

Can Congress save journalism? Does it even have to?

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Finding and registering an available domain name just became even easier. Now you can do it via Twitter thanks to Tweetname. Founder Philip Kaplan (aka “Pud,” the former CEO of AdBrite) argues that Tweetname makes domain purchasing much simpler than going through other domain registrars like GoDaddy, which requires you to actually go its site. In truth, it is not that complicated but Tweetname aims to make domain registering Tweet-simple. You set it up once and then it does all the work for you.

Once you log into Tweetname for the first time, the site uses OAuth to connect to your Twitter account. You fill out your credentials, including name, address, credit card info, billing info and then Tweetname automatically follows you and arranges for you to follow Tweetname.

After this is set up, you can Tweet a potential domain name via a direct message to Tweetname, and Tweetname within seconds will let you know if it is available (”Success!”) or not (”D’oh”), and will purchase and register the domain for you. Domains, which can be registered under .com .net .org .us .name .biz .info, cost $14.95. You then get an email with all the information about where you can manage the domain. Tweetname provides users a free interface where they can manage their domains, set up email addresses, set up url forwarding, and so on.

Here’s a instructional video that shows how Tweetname works:

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