Famous Personalities / Celebraties on Twitter

Twitter has become very famous among the personalities, especially among the film celebraties. You find Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Gandhi and not to forget Priyanka Chopra, Mallika Sherawat, Rakhi Sawant et al... Here are few Twitter accounts which I was able to find out. Not sure how many are verified. You can directly follow my list on Twitter - Films and Sports.

Abhishek Bachchan
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
Ajay Devgan
Akshay Kumar (verified)
Amrita Arora
Amrita Rao
Amitabh Bachchan
Anand Mahindra
Anupam Kher
Anushka Sharma
Arbaaz Khan
Arjun Rampal
A R Rehman
Arshad Warsi
Asin Thottumukal
Ayesha Takia
Barack Obama (verified)
Barkha Dutt (news channel, verified)
Bill Gates (verified)
Boman Irani
Celina Jaitly
Chetan Bhagat (author)
Chris Gayle (cricket)
Dalai Lama (verified)
Deepika Padukone
Dino Morea
Farhan Akhtar
Geoffrey Boycott (cricket)
Genelia D’souza
Gul Panag (verified)
Hritik Roshan
Imran Khan
Jiah Khan
Jugal Hansraj
Karan Johar (verified)
Konkona Sensharma
Kris Gopalakrishnan
Lara Dutta
Lalit Modi (cricket, verified)
Madhavan
Madhur Bhandarkar
Mahesh Bhatt
Mahesh Bhupathi (Tennis)
Mahendra Singh Dhoni (cricket)
Mallika Sherawat (verified)
Mandira Bedi
Meera Sanyal (politics)
Meghna Gulzar
Mohammed Kaif (cricket)
Narendra Modi (politics - protected account)
Neha Dhupia
Neil Nitin Mukesh
Oprah Winfrey (verified)
Pragyan Ojha (cricket)
Prannoy Roy (NDTV)
Priety Zinta
Pritish Nandy
Priyanka Chopra (verified)
Radhika Roy (news channel)
Rajat Kapoor
Rahul Gandhi (politics - protected account)
Rahul Khanna
Rajnikanth
Rajdeep Sardesai (news channel)
Rakhi Sawant
Ram Gopal Verma
Ranbir Kapoor
R P Singh (cricket)
Riteish Deshmukh
Sachin Tendulkar (cricket - verified)
Sajid Khan
Salman Khan
Sameera Reddy
Sania Mirza (tennis)
Shahrukh Khan
Shammi Kapoor
Shane Warne (cricket)
Shashi Tharoor (politics)
Shatrughan Sinha
Shekar Kapoor
Shilpa Shetty
Shreya Ghoshal
Shruti Hassan
Siddharth
Sona Sinha
Sonam Kapoor
Sonu Nigam
Sussanne Roshan Khan
Sushmita Sen
Trisha
Uday Chopra
Vijay Mallya
Vivek Oberoi (verified)
Yuvraj Singh (cricket)
Zaheer Khan (cricket)

Let me know if you have more. You can add them as comments here.

For Twitter ids of Telugu film stars click here.

The A to Z of Sachin Tendulkar

Seven Social Media Trends for 2010

We have seen what difference Social Media has done to the online world in 2009. The users have increased enormously on Facebook, Twitter… More and more people are using it. Organizations have also moved over to this channel to provide customer service or just to create brand awareness here as well. So, what 2010 has for us in Social Media –

1. Social Media will be more filtered: People do not like unnecessary updates to be seen in Facebook or Twitter. They want to read updates which they are interested in. People would now like to connect with only like-minded people. They just do want to increase their social network – they will now choose in which niche network they want to be a part of. This will give rise to increase in “exclusive” social networks concentrating on niche areas where like-minded people can ignite more in discussions.
2. More Organizations will join this wagon: More corporate and organizations will try to use this medium to provide customer service. This is the most economical way to solve the customers’ issues and it is also quick. Even the customers will feel it is comfortable to reach through this channel. Wells Fargo, Best Buy’s are already using Twitter help out their customers to answer their queries.
3. Organizations will look out for numbers: Organizations will try to leverage this medium and at the same time they would like to know as to whom all are talking about their brand and products on other social channels. They would be keen to analyze the plus and minus feedbacks. They may also want to know about the presence of their competitors here and how they are leveraging this platform. More tools and filters will come into play to help the organizations in getting these stats and analysis.
4. Social Media on Mobile: Organizations will have polices on using networking sites by employees and may even block most of the sites within the office network. Employees will be forced to use mobile phones to help them with the social media. This will increase the usage of mobiles with good apps to help them in satisfying them with the social media addiction.
5. Social Business: More games and apps will be focused on generating revenues. The apps will try to create competition with friends. FourSquare, Rummble will try to concentrate more into this business.
6. Usage of Emails will come down: Social media helps in distributing and sharing of content with large audience much easily than emails. People will try to use less and less of emails and more of social sites. Read more about this - Email Vs Social Networking Sites
7. Leveraging Offline meets with Online Connections: People will tend to meet offline with the like-minded people whom they met online. Networking groups will lead to such meet-ups. More and more websites and people will come-up to have such meet-ups.

Let me know if you anticipate more or do you defer with my thoughts. I would like to hear from you.

Related read: Top 10 Probable Trends in 2010 for Online World

10 Tools for Website & Page Load Speed Tests

Google is trying to help webmasters to build efficient websites which can load faster. Also, Google's new algorithm addition can also check at the time taken by the web page to load. So, it is always a best practice to test the loding of the website. There are lot many tools available and here are the best ones which I like -

1. Google's extension for Firefox - Page Speed
2. Google Webmaster Tools
3. Pingdom Tools
4. WebpageTest.org
5. Website Optimization Speed Test Tool
6. WGET
7. Uptrends Page Load Test Tool
8. Submit Plus
9. Link Vendor Speed Tester
10. Self SEO website speed checker - check and compare speed for different domains at a time

More details are available here.

Facebook crosses 350 Million Users, Eliminates Regional Networks

Facebook is rolling out changes that it proposed in July 2009. As per the communication sent by the founder Mark Zuckerberg to Facebook users, some of the regional networks have become so big as they have millions of members. And member’s privacy makes no sense here. So, Facebook is planning to update the current privacy model by eliminating the regional networks. The members will be prompted again to update the settings.

Facebook is also including more granular control for the privacy settings. Now, your information, contact details, photos… can be shared with your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

Mark says, “The plan we've come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone. We're adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload”.

I also want to add that Facebook has added 50 million users in 2 1/2 months. That’s actually a bit slower than the amount of time it took for them to get from 250 to 300 million users, though still a fast pace.

Google Caffeine Now Live On One Google Data Center

Search Engine Roundtable in the blog post has mentioned that Matt Cutts confirmed that Caffeine is live 50% of the time on 209.85.225.103.

There were many threads across many blogs and forums about the major changes happening yesterday to Google search results. DigitalPoint Forums, Google Webmaster Help and WebmasterWorld discussed about this changes in the search results.

Matt Cutts was kind enough to update all stating that the change or update the webmasters are looking is only from one data center 209.85.225.103 which is hitting Caffeine update 50% of the time. So, Caffeine is live only at one data center and not all and that too you will get the results with Caffeine results only for half of the time. But, Matt did not disclose if we can get the results with the new update 100% of the time from a single IP.

Update from Matt Cutts: “So 209.85.225.103 does hit the Caffeine data center more often than other IP addresses, but it's always been the plan that Caffeine would roll out at one data center (no more data centers will get Caffeine until at least January”.

So, folks to see the search results with Caffeine update, I guess we need to wait till the vacations are over.

Happy Vacation!!

Top 10 Probable Trends in 2010 for Online World

Here is my early guess work of the trends that can be expected in the online and internet world during the year 2010. All may not be true and damn sure to happen… but, we can just expect it. So, here are the predictions:

1. Social Media may replace email to a certain extent: Social media may reduce the usage of communication through emails. Facebook, Twitter… are providing access to your friends and like-minded people much easier and faster than email. The usage of email communication can reduce a lot among friends and personal communication. More about this has been discussed in my earlier post Email Vs Social Networking Sites.
2. Facebook you friend: People will not be searching for personal details of their friends on Google first. They will try to find it on social sites like Facebook, Twitter… So, the new verb will be Facebook your friend and try to find his/her personal details. “Hey Bob, can I have your phone number?” “Dude, Facebook me and you will get it”. Yes, this is the way it goes. Social search will be important in the coming year.
3. Branchless Banking: The trend of online shops is matured. Now, banks will not boast of the number of branches they have and the footprints they have all over the country or the world. Online banking will be the trend. They will assure of high security and will stick to the regulations and will have customers who will operate their accounts only online. You do not need to have to go to the bank at all.
4. mCommerce: eCommerce is on internet. mCommerce is through mobile phones. Mobile phones are being used for money transfers and bill payments. They have been hardly used for retail payments. The trend will be that users will use only their mobile phone to make payments instead of entering their credit card number in it. This may work for downloads, apps or other upgrades.
5. Draw money from POS machines: You just need not use your card at POS machines to pay for your purchases. You can as well as the retailer to give you cash after swiping the card. For this you do not have to go to the ATM machine again to draw the money. I am sure if this comes, then there will be certain strings attached to it by the bank.
6. Outsourcing will lead to Crowd Sourcing: Business will try focusing on crowd sourcing as it is an open call to a group of like-minded people and they expect to get better ideas. Business will look out to develop new technology or would like the community to test it out. This is already being used by Google and will extend to other business as well. Not only this, political parties will try to use this for canvassing; Ad agencies will find this very lucrative. This will be the best way to collect donations from the masses as well.
7. Social Media Analysis and Stats: Organizations will jump in this social media to keep the brand buzz alive here as well. But, they will also like to get the analysis and stats for the same. The same way as we have for the website. Agency will provide these services and more tools like radian6, buzzgain, Filtrbox will come up to help the organizations to get more filtered and useful data to help them analyze and plan the strategy.
8. Video driven communities: We have seen YouTube. Now, we will have communities driven by the videos which will lead to conversations. Momversation, sponsored by Target, is driving conversation and community around the issues of moms.
9. Leveraging Offline meets with Online Connections: People will tend to meet offline with the like-minded people whom they met online. Networking groups will lead to such meet-ups. More and more websites and people will come-up to have such meet-ups. Businesses will also have to plan a strategy as to how to leverage offline to online connection. Something needs to be done to get it reversed.
10. Semantic Web: This buzz was earlier as well and will continue in 2010. It will offer a wide range of possibilities to build more applications with deadly features, which can enable users to use it.

Email Vs Social Networking Sites

I remember a decade ago, I was frequently visiting the internet café near my home to check emails and reply to them. Also, I used instant messengers to find like-minded friends or chat with friends. Now, the days have changed. Many folks, especially the teenagers use internet not to send and receive emails, but to log on to sites like Twitter and Facebook to know what their friends are doing and post a tweet or write something on their wall.

Earlier, I used to keep my calendar update to remind me of the birthdays of my friends. I used to send them a e-greeting or send an email wishing them. Now, I use Orkut or Facebook directly and wish them. I do not have to wait for the calendar to remind me. The networking site will remind me of their birthdays.

Earlier, to be in touch with my college class mates, alumnus or ex-colleagues, we used to have a group in Yahoo or Google. And we used to exchange emails. Now, I do not have to. I have these sites and they are in my network always, and I can access it where ever I am moving.

Will all this is phasing out the life of emails?

If the social sites are being used for personal use and friends, then yes. Friends are using less of emails and more of social sites to contact. They feel this media very comfortable as they can blast out one tweet to many. This media provides them the instant information. This media not only provides posting of messages but, at the same time allows them to chat, share photos and videos without using another website or app. This one social platform does it all. So why will they go and upload the video or photos somewhere and provide the link in the email after selecting the friends’ email addresses from the address book?

But, how far this social media communication will be successful for within the corporate if they stop using emails? Will the corporate allow such communication in their organizations to build healthy network among the employees? Yes, organizations need to open up. Organizations can build the networking sites accessible only to the employees and they will have all the stuff here. Zappos is extensively using the Twitter now. Organizations can use such media on intranet for better knowledge sharing and transparency among the levels. One-to-one communication can also be provided in the platform to maintain confidential communication. You will not need, a sharing folder to exchange files, need not need to use the intercom to contact the other person, do not have to check calendar to see if your boss is free, you do not have to switch windows or install other apps to communicate… A separate interface for customer communication can be provided. Customers can also log in to see the status and the discussion happening about their project. Customers can chip in-time to update the developers or the folks working on the project.

Yes, a day may come when email will be extinct.

Google launches new social search function

Google Social Search is an experimental feature that helps you find relevant public web content (like blogs, tweets, status updates, reviews, relevant articles from your subscribed RSS through Google Reader and any relevant content linked from your friends’ Google profile) from people in your social circle. Your social circle means your Gmail contacts and contacts from social sites listed in your Google profile. For example, search for ‘adventure sports’, and Google Social Search will provide the reviews by your friends and other contacts in the search results.

You can join the Social Search Experiment here. Once you have joined, Google may bring up results from your friends and other contacts. These special results appear at the bottom of the search results page, in a section labeled "Results from people in your social circle".



Now, to improve the search result quality we need to have quality social circle who are engaged in submitting public web content by way of blog posts, tweets and reviews. If your social circle is weak, you may not get the right search results. So, increase your social circle with people who blog and tweet very often about the things you are interested in or want to search. Ha… does it sound simple?

But, read it on Search Engine Land that, Google Social Search went down for a while. Google has confirmed this is a temporary issue and that a fix will be in place in a day or two.

Domain Names to be Non-English Soon

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) — the non-profit group that oversees domain names — is holding a meeting this week in Seoul. Domain names are the monikers behind every website, e-mail address and Twitter post, such as ".com" and other suffixes.

One of the key issues to be taken up by ICANN's board at this week's gathering is whether to allow for the first time entire internet addresses to be in scripts that are not based on Latin letters.

That could potentially open up the web to more people around the world as addresses could be in characters as diverse as Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Hindi and Cyrillic — in which Russian is written.

"This is the biggest change technically to the internet since it was invented 40 years ago," Mr Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of the ICANN board, told reporters, calling it a "fantastically complicated technical feature."

He said he expects the board to grant approval on Friday, the conference's final day.
The internet's roots are traced to experiments at a US university in 1969 but it wasn't until the early 1990s that its use began expanding beyond academia and research institutions to the public.

Source: Deccan Chronicle

Engineering College Aims To Donate INR 10 Million for Kurnool Flood Relief

G. Pulla Reddy Engineering College, Kurnool, AP in India is the college where I completed my engineering. This is the college which broomed not only me but may such people to build their career. I owe the college, my teachers and staff a lot - because of them I am at this point of career.

Last month the town, Kurnool was submerged in water. The college alongwith the ex-students is co-ordinating to collect donations and extend the help to the needy in Kurnool and the near by towns and villages. The college aims to donate ten million rupees towards the relief for the flood victims of Kurnool and adjacent towns. The college popularly known as GPREC among the students and alumnae has launched a new website www.savekurnool.org to coordinate the donations.

More than 300 people died in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and North Karnataka after the worst floods in years. Livestock and crops have been lost as well as numerous homes destroyed, leaving more than 200,000 people homeless and vulnerable to hunger and disease.
The move to have a website for the cause is to generate funds from the former students of the college who are residing outside India. This will help the NRIs to extend their bit for the cause.

The G. Pulla Reddy Trust has already donated one million hundred thousand rupees and the college management and staff have coordinated and donated five hundred eighty six thousands rupees towards the cause.

I request each one of you to extend their bit for this project to help the society. It is the time to give back to the society.

At Last Twitter is Making Money

Google and Microsoft are in talks with Twitter separately to strike a deal to include the tweets in the search results in real-time. Both the search engine rivals are engaged in separate talks with Twitter according to a report from Wall Street Journal’s website, AllThingsD. It also reports that numbers of scenarios are being discussed to compensate Twitter for its huge and potentially valuable trove of real-time and content-sharing information, generated from the data stream of billions of tweets from its 54 million monthly users.

"This could be a way for Twitter to make some money, and maybe more than just a little money. It finally means a business model for Twitter, or at least the beginnings of one. And, of course, it means real revenue, which is very important. Not just in licensing revenue from Google or Microsoft, but also in potentially getting a piece of the action on an ongoing basis. So there could be considerable upside here for Twitter," said Dan Olds, an Analyst with The Gabriel Consulting.
This is good for the search giants and Twitter. For us we get the search results as a mix of web results and personal messaging. But…

• will this not spam Twitter with all the tweets of the folks who want their website on the top of the search results?
• how well these tweets can will be segregated as natural or real tweet to a spam one?
• what will be the criteria or filter used to get the tweet included in the search results?
• how can retweets be managed in the search results? Will they also appear?

The bottom line is if the deal (or deals) is (or are) through then Twitter will have a business plan.

Related post: What Can Be The Search Algorithm for Twitter Search?

Inside Adwords: Stay Connected With Google Industry Team on Twitter

Apart from Google on Twitter, the Google’s Industry teams too are on Twitter. Now, follow the industry you are interested in to get regular updates (through the Tweets) related to the industry – latest trends, additional info, special insights, news updates…

To follow, please click the industry of your interest: Auto, Media and Entertainment, Financial Services, Retail, Tech, and Travel

And on top of that Google has about 56 accounts in Twitter. It is good to see the way Google is leveraging Twitter to reach out to its customers. Does this indicate something? I am just trying to read between the lines to know if Google is taking Twitter more seriously.

Related post: Google Signs Up on Twitter

Courier Companies Opt For Digital Signatures

Do not get surprised, if next time you are asked by a courier company to sign on a digital scanner. Courier companies are now opting for digital signatures to deliver important consignments like credit cards or a passport. The customer needs to sign on a digtal scanner which is carried by the delivery personnel. Once the receiver of the consignment signs on the scanner using the stylus, the data is automatically updated on the company's central server. A photograph may also be taken by the persoannel for added security to know to whom the consignment was actually delivered.

Nice to see the move which is in sync with the latest technology. Banks like HDFC, ABN Amro, Citibank... are already using digital signatures for sending account and other statements through e-mails. This not only saves paper and cost but, helps them to deliver the documents to the right person.

If you look at the statements that come from these banks, at the bottom right corner of the document will be a signature with a thumb impression. That’s a digital signature which adds authenticity to e-document received for the customer to establish trust with the sender. If anybody changes the signature or successfully tampers with it, the signature will change indicating wrong doings. “For messages sent through an insecure channel, a properly implemented digital signature gives the receiver reason to believe the message was sent by the claimed sender. Digital signatures are equivalent to traditional handwritten signatures in many respects; properly implemented digital signatures are more difficult to forge than the handwritten type,’’ said B Robert Raja, CMD, Odyssey Technologies, which focuses on information security software.

But, can anything be done to avoid phishing? I guess we need to be careful to identify such emails and report the same.

Source: Times Of India

Effective Twitter Backgrounds: Examples and Current Practices

Your profile page is on Twitter is not just to showcase your profile but can also provide an opportunity to showcase your visual brand and possibly communicate additional information that can last longer than a tweet. Know how you can customize your profile page by changing background image, text and link colors. It’s as simple as changing the skin, but ability to change background image has allowed designers to create really unique profile pages.

Smashing Magazines is one of the blog I follow. Not only the blog but I also follow them on Twitter @smashingmag. This particular is post is really awesome and provides good examples and ideas to make the look and feel of your Twitter page. I bet you will really love it. Check it out here.

Google's Project 10 to The 100th

Google’s Project 10^100 (pronounced as Project 10 to the 100th) is a call of ideas to change the world by helping as many as people as possible. About 150,000 ideas were submitted by people and Google selected 16 top ideas under different categories. Now, we folks need to vote for them before October 8, 2009. And Google is commenting $10 million to implement these projects and their goal is to help as many people as possible. Which ones should Google make real? Cast your vote, and help Google change the world.

"We received over 150,000 ideas from users which far surpassed our expectations," said Jamie Wood, a Google spokesman. "We've never managed a project like this and it's taken much more time than we imagined to judge and sort through the ideas." Wood promised that "within a month" Google would announce the next phase of the competition. That will likely involve the release of 100 proposals for the public to vote on and choose 20 finalists, from which a Google board will choose the five lucky winners.

Categories:

• Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
• Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
• Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
• Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
• Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
• Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
• Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
• Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don't fit into any category at all.

Criteria that is considered:

• Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
• Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
• Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
• Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
• Longevity: How long will the idea's impact last?

And, I am sure you would like to know the TOP 16 ideas and here they are -

1. Community: Create real-time natural crisis tracking system
2. Community: Make government more transparent
3. Opportunity: Help social entrepreneurs drive change
4. Education: Provide quality education to African students
5. Shelter: Create more efficient landmine removal programs
6. Energy: Drive innovation in public transport
7. Everything Else: Build real-time, user-reported news service
8. Education: Make educational content available online for free
9. Education: Encourage positive media depictions of engineers and scientists
10. Opportunity: Build better banking tools for everyone
11. Environment: Work toward socially conscious tax policies
12. Community: Collect and organize the world's urban data
13. Community: Create genocide monitoring and alert system
14. Education: Enhance science and engineering education
15. Health: Promote health monitoring and data analysis
16. Community: Create real-world issue reporting system

Why this project?

Never in history have so many people had so much information, so many tools at their disposal, so many ways of making good ideas come to life. Yet at the same time, so many people, of all walks of life, could use so much help, in both little ways and big.

In the midst of this, new studies are reinforcing the simple wisdom that beyond a certain very basic level of material wealth, the only thing that increases individual happiness over time is helping other people.

Thanks Google.

Also friends, please take out sometime to vote on the projects. Voting ends on October 8, 2009.

How to Sign Out of Your Gmail Account Remotely

If you do not remember if you have sign out of your Gmail account from a public terminal or you have a doubt that somebody is also accessing your account else where then, here is a very simple way to sign out of all your Gmail sessions by checking the IP addresses which are unknown to you. This video from cnet demonstrates how.

How to measure Offline Sales Which Triggered Online?

One of my friends asked me how to measure conversions where a buyer does a research online and finally end-up buying the product offline at a retail store nearby. This is a very tricky issue which most of the etailers are finding it difficult to measure. I think there is no accurate method to measure such conversions.

Here are few tactics that can give rough figures and analysis can be done to frame the objectives and strategies for future campaigns when you know the numbers of offline and online purchases.

1. Give an option to order online and pick-up offline.
2. Provide a 'store locator page near you', beside the product details or price. If the prospect buyer clicks it then you can roughly measure this.
3. In continuation to #2 provide a feature to send the offline store address to be sent to the prospect via SMS or email.
4. If a visitor spends more time on the website and leaves without purchase - usually interested buyers spend more time on the site. We can assume that such visitors are prospects and can be contacted through email for further queries (if he/she is logged in).
5. Have promo code on the website which can be used for online purchase or offline at particular stores.
6. If sales at offline store(s) spike during the time you have an online campaign for the product, then you can make the assumption.

This way you will know how many buyers are moving out of online purchase to a retail store and thus, can help you in framing the strategies. Let me know if I have missed anything.

Related post: Google Analytics To Track Telephone and Live Chat Leads

New Update in Google Webmaster Tools: Submit URL Parameters to Ignore

I think this is definitely a good initiative by Google, allowing the webmasters to let the Googlebot know which URL parameters to ignore while crawling or indexing the site web pages.

1. Log in to your Google Webmaster tools account
2. Click on the ‘Site Configuration’ link on the left and then on ‘Settings’
3. At the bottom you will find ‘Parameter Handling’ to adjust the parameter settings.

Dynamic parameters (for example, session IDs, source, or language) in your URLs can result in many different URLs all pointing to essentially the same content. For example: http://www.example.com/product?pid=123 might point to the same content as http://www.example.com/product. You can specify whether you want Google to ignore up to 15 specific parameters in your URL.

Also, Google lists the parameters they have identified in the URLs of your site and suggests if the parameters are vague for them. You can confirm your choice to ignore or not to ignore. You can also add parameters that Googlebot was unable to identify and list them.

The reasons why I find this useful are:

1. This will really help Google in identifying the duplicate content pages and help them in proper indexing with fewer duplicate URLs.
2. This can result in more efficient crawling of Googlebot.
3. Googlebot can crawl more pages and index them, as the crawler efficiency is increased.
4. This can reduce the PageRank dilution as external website may be linking to various versions of your URLs and this will help Google understand that all these pages are same. Thus, providing the proper PageRank credit to the page.
5. Simple way to indicate the parameters to ignore or consider, instead of using the canonical option.

Yahoo Site Explorer has a similar feature and Bing is yet to include this. If you want to opt this method then you will be ignoring Bing and other search engines which do have the parameter suggestion option.

Related posts: Duplicate Content Issues and Probable Solutions

Aggregator Tools to Update Your Status on Multiple Social Networking Sites

My first question and probably for most of the readers – Is it right to use a tool or aggregator to update your status on most of the social networking sites without really logging in and updating it individually?

Yes, it really saves time of logging into each of the site say Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Xing or LinkedIn. But, one should also note that these networking sites attract different sets of audience and with varied interest. Moreover, social networking is more of conversations between like-minded people and should only be used for sharing of knowledge and discussions. It should not be leveraged as sales pitch and use automated tools to update the status. One needs to be very personal in participation on such networking sites.

Lastly, is it necessary to be on all the networking sites? It is better to use two or three good ones where you feel is the best community for you and build network, share knowledge and keep the engagement as lively as possible. You will be benefited by this in the long run. One has to realize the real value of social networking sites.

Short-cuts may not work always. But, still if you are interested then here are few good tools which can be looked at.

Ping.fm: Allows you to post on Facebook, Wordpress, LinkedIn and Twitter
HelloTxt: Update status on Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and more. It takes status updates from web, mobile, sms, email.. to more than 45 social networking sites.
GlueNow: Enables you to post content across the social networking sites using web or mobile phone.
Posterous: Is a blogging platform that allows you to post to multiple social networking sites except for Ning, Viadeo and Xing.
Flock: A Firefox plug-in and enables you to aggregate most of the networking sites.
Postling: Can be used for blog posts and simultaneously update the status in social networking sites. They have a 30-day free trial.
Digsby: Manage various IM, Email and social networking sites. You can update Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn status from Digsby directly.
Yoono: Is free software that allows you to connect and share with all your social networks and IM services in one place.

But, still the bottom line is use social networking sites carefully, thoughtfully and strategically. Definitely, no one likes to read the same status message on your profile when they visit Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. All are different and so should your status messages.


Also, please take time to answer the poll question on LinkedIn.

Related post:

• More Than 100 Free Twitter Tools for You
• 5 Important Approaches for Social Networking for Companies
• Update your Facebook Status from Twitter

TiE-ISB Connect 2009 on Oct. 22nd and 23rd at Hyderabad

India’s most exciting annual networking event for entrepreneurs and investors, the TiE-ISB Connect '09 will be held on October 22nd and 23rd, 2009 at Hotel Marriott Hyderabad. TiE-ISB Connect enables interaction of aspiring entrepreneurs, early-stage ventures, and growth-stage ventures with potential investors, successful entrepreneurs and mentors.

The conference will focus on bringing together first-time entrepreneurs and seasoned entrepreneurs with investment community and explore the opportunities and challenges in the current economic times, while exploring specifically into highly relevant areas of starting a new venture and raising funds through the seed to the growth stage of the company.

TiE-ISB Connect 2009 is also bringing in a new feature of “Company Showcase”, a unique opportunity for young and exciting companies to set-up stalls and showcase their products / services to the niche audience participating in the conference. Companies participating will have the advantage of discussing and receiving quality feedback from fellow entrepreneurs, venture investors and business leaders.

Another important workshop is JumpStart. If you are thinking of starting something on your own after several years of professional experience then this is the session not to be missed. JumpStart your Enterprise – is a workshop for experienced professionals and starting entrepreneurs. The workshop will provide with a practical toolkit to start and grow business in these early days. It also address the real issues that bother entrepreneurs about:

• How to write a Business Plan?
• How to get support from the ecosystem: incubators and mentors?
• How to work with partners?
• How to work on a shoestring marketing budget?

Click here to register yourself for the event.

Channel [V] Uses Twitter to Promote Re-launch Of Website

After Advani it is Channel [V].

Channel [V] used this novel way to announce and promote its new website on Twitter. The deal was – Members can opt to replace their profile picture to Channel [V] logo. And the logo is displayed on the registered member’s profile on Twitter for 50% of the time. Rest of the 50% the member’s picture is shown.

What do the members get in return? If members stay registered for 5days continuously, then they will be given a neat Channel [V] T-shirt (again branding). If they continue having the logo as their profile pic, they may be lucky to win an iPod.

The good thinking which Channel [V] has done is it did not hijack the profile pic completely. No one likes their pic to be hijacked completely. This helped many people to participate.

What still makes me think is why have they not used MySpace for this? They would have got more participation and target audience. Twitter and Facebook need to get smarter to cash on such things. They need to build good apps and features to build such brand communities and promotion which can attract advertisers. Cheers!!

Source: Medianama

Obama’s Advise to School Students on Using Facebook

Obama recently advised a group of school students that they need to be very careful about what they post in Facebook and other social networking sites. Stupid posts on such sites can haunt you back later. Many organizations are using LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to know more about their prospective employee. Not only Facebook, a video posted on YouTube can ruin as it can be pulled up sometime later. Who knows, you may need to pay for the words which came out from you on these sites much-much earlier in your life.

Obama, himself was a victim for couple of times to the YouTube age, when some off-the-mark remarks came up on YouTube and blogs.

One young person asked the president whom he would choose to dine with if he could make only one such selection. "Gandhi," Obama replied. "He's somebody I find a lot of inspiration in. He inspired Dr. (Martin Luther) King" with his message of non-violence. "He ended up doing so much and changed the world just by the power of his ethics," Obama said of the inspirational leader Mahatma Gandhi.

Obama also says: "At the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents and the best schools in the world, and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities."

Source: Huffingtonpost

Duplicate Content Issues and Probable Solutions

Photo credit: http://www.personalbaby.com/

I am sure many of the webmasters have this duplicate content issue and the Big G still does not has a clear-cut solution of solving this issue. Mat Cutts in his blog/videos did address this issue but, I do not think it completely solves the issue of giving the ranking credit to the actual owner of the article. How does Google know who the actual owner is?

Knowingly or unknowingly over the web duplicate content is developed and the SERPs are hijacked. So, let us know what leads to or is considered as duplicate content by Google or any other search engine.

1. Treating mywebsite.com and www.mywebsite.com as different website. The simple solution for this is to use 301 re-direct for mywebsite.com to www.mywebsite.com.


2. You want to have specific regional websites catering to different geographical areas. You have business.com and you also want to have business.co.uk, business.ca and so on. And you use the same content on all these domains. Matt Cutts says, it is not a big concern and webmasters need not worry about it. Do you have the answer for this?


3. Issues with subdomains having the same content as the main domain. If at all you want to use subdomains then, it is better to use 301 re-directs.


4. Dealers or affiliates taking the content from the website of main seller or the manufacturer to market and promote the products. These are honest people who want to sell the products and are caught as dupes as they usually copy the product description from the main website and have it on their own website. Sometimes the SERPs are also hijacked in such cases. If you want to get traffic from the search engines then, use your own content. Google always and will love “original” content.


5. If you have an affiliate program then the program usually generate affiliate links similar to www.yourwebsite.com?affid=007. Search engine will consider this as a separate page to www.yourwebsite.com. Your affiliates will use the affid parameter links, so that they get the credit of sales/clicks their website generates. The only way to avoid this is ask your affiliates to use rel=”nofollow”. But, this can be a dumb idea of losing the link credit. But, this affiliate link can hijack your main site rankings.


6. If your site is getting few pages dynamically with duplicate content like
   http://www.example.com/products.php?trackid=123
   http://www.example.com/products.php?reportid=123
   http://www.example.com/products.php?sessionid=123
   http://www.example.com/products.php?favouriteid=123
   http://www.example.com/products.php?print=yes&trackid=123
   Specifying a link tag in the section of your page content (as seen below) will indicate to the search engine robot that the URL is present and that it should be represented as the preferred canonical URL designated as: link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/products.php” using proper html open and close tags. Please note that the tag will be treated similarly to the 301 re-direct.

Please note that this is just tip of the ice berg and still there are more such innocent duplicate content issues which are difficult to identify and resolve. So, always be careful you do not make such mistakes.

If the Ramayan were on Facebook

In my earlier post, I did mention that Sreedharan is trying to re-tell Mahabharata on Twitter. Now, here is an imagination of Ramayana on Facebook. Kokonad. If the Ramayan were to have an status update like Facebook, how would it be like! He has used the appropriate icons and apps to come up with this.

Read If the Ramayan were on Facebook

The Ramayana: A Modern Retelling of the Great Indian Epic

Woof – When Twitter’s 140 Characters Aren’t Enough

Sometimes we find it bit tough to limit our tweets in 140 characters. Moreover, if I have to provide the reference to a link, I need to use a url shortening service. But, here you have Woofer which says you to be eloquent, use adverbs and DEA (don’t ever abbreviate). Can I say it as an anti-twitter “macro” blogging platform?

So Woof as opposed to Tweet.

The Woofer website looks similar to Twitter except that they limit the woof (yes, not tweet) to 1400 characters. And to mention it – that’s mandatory. It does not take anything less than 1400 characters.

The Twitter logo is replaced with the Woofer one and which indicates, you don’t have to tweet but “woof”.

The Twitter style search box simply re-directs to Google.

On clicking “Is this Twitter?” link on the top right will lead a giant letters “NO”.

But the bottom-line and the most important thing to know about the Woofer page is that it is mainly an interactive advertisement for Shuffeltime, suggesting that the website is simply a marketing stunt for Join the Company’s main website.

Google Reader Goodies

Here are the three Google Reader Goodies (or gadgets) I like to use. They are very easy and simple and save a lot of your time while reading the different posts or subscriptions. RSS Readers was itself a great tool to save time. Now, you have these gadgets to make it very simple and thus saving more time.

1. Reading Comments From Everywhere: gCreations (not from Google) is a very cool and free Firefox extension that allows you to read comments from all over the web to your posts, directly in Google Reader. For each post in your feed, it gets comments from Blogger, FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook, Digg and more.

1. Send To Feature: Now send and share the posts directly from your Reader to Facebook, Twitter, Blog…more using the Send To feature in Google Reader. Just click on the Settings tab on the top-right corner and enable the services you want to use.



2. Google Reader on Google Desktop: Using this gadget, you can track your feeds and subscriptions directly from the desktop. The Google Reader gadget is designed to be familiar for existing Reader users, yet compact like our other Desktop gadgets. You need install Google Desktop gadget first and then you can download this gadget.

Do let me know if you know more Google Reader gadgets which can be added here. Please put them as comments below.

Basic Initial Compatibility Tests Before You Launch a Website

So, you have a new website and really do not know any HTML coding. And you are not sure the website delivered to you is up without any errors or bugs. Here are few basic initial compatibility tests which you can do, before the launch. These are just the basic ones.

1. Browser Compatibility: Check the website in different browsers. You do not need to install all the browsers. BrowserShots is an online tool where, you have to provide your website address / web page address and the tool gives the screenshot of the page as seen in different browsers. You can check the website for different versions of IE, Firefox, Opera, SeaMonkey and Chrome as well. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue in BrowserShots. A number of distributed computers will open the website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server on BrowserShots.
2. Different Resolutions Compatibility: ViewLikeUS is an online tool which lets you view the way your website seems to look in different resolutions. Just submit the url and check how the page looks in different resolutions from 800 x 600 to 1280 x 800 and still more.
3. HTML Validation: Use W3C Validator to check the HTML conformance to the W3C standards.

These are just the basic compatibility tests for the website to use best practice HTML coding.

Facebook Going Lite on Twitter

According to TechCrunch, many social networkers who have been asked to try out Facebook Lite saying - Surprise, it is more Twitter-like.

The message sent out to beta testers reads, "You have been selected as a beta tester for Facebook Lite! We are building a faster, simpler version of Facebook that we call Facebook Lite. It's not finished yet and we have plenty of kinks to work out, but we would love to get your feedback on what we have built so far."

Check out Facebook Lite now at http://lite.facebook.com.

It has already purchased FriendFeed and according to some sources, Facebook earlier tried to buy Twitter for $500mn last year. And now, it has come up with Lite. What is next?

The Onion: Google's Opt-out Policy

For those who do not want Google to enter or know their personal details, your every thought, your every move, your every click and choice - there is a good news. Now, you can opt-out and Google will move you to a remote village and for those who opt-out are guranteed an enviroment free of Google products


Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village

Caffeine Update: Google Asks Webmasters to Test the Next-Gen Search Infrastructure

Today in Google Webmaster Central blog, Google confirmed that for the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: next-generation architecture for Google's web search.

This process will help Google search with indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits "under the hood" of Google's search engine, which means that most users won't notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so to get the feedback from web developers they are collecting the feedback.

The web developer preview of Google’s new infrastructure is available at - http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ . To provide feedback on the current search results and new one can be provided through the link at the bottom of the search results page that says “Dissatisfied? Help us to improve.”

I am yet to identify significant changes in the rankings but, few other experts did notice the changes as

1. This change has effected to rankings related to keywords used in social media
2. This will affect the long-tail keywords
3. Keyword suggestion is popping bit faster
4. Not indexing as many web pages as the normal one
5. Providing the search results faster – may be the load is too less on Caffeine
6. May impact SEO rankings and/or traffic
7. May impact PPC search strategy
8. Link structures will not be the only one to decide the ranking
9. Indexing of social media, news sites and micro-blogging sites as immediate as possible
10. Improving of accuracy of results

Do comment on this if you have noticed something important about this.

Mahabharata retold Tweet by Tweet

Chindu Sreedharan, a lecturer from UK is retelling the Mahabharata on Twitter (http://twitter.com/epicretold), hoping to get the attention and interest of the users. Just imagine the task he has on his hands now. He wants to re-tell the great epic in 140 characters every day, step-by-step? He needs to be creative and efficient to have the interest lured to the tweets.

In 1980s the epic on the television managed to empty the city streets, forced changes in power cuts and railway timings. Even the actors of the serial got elected as members of the parliament. Will Sreedharan be able to create such a situation of narrating the epic tweet by tweet? I do agree the epic itself is written so well that there is dramatic tension every minute.

The strategy that Sreedharan is using here is his narration of this epic as per the point of view of Bheema. Yes, this interested me as well to know how this epic was viewed Bheema and will let us understand his thoughts too.

Now, I can imagine… Hum Log, Buniyaad too on this media. And not to forget “Twitter Mey Sholay”…hmm reality shows?

Source: Reuters

Mahabharat 16 DVD Set

Choreographing the Google News Experience for 2034

Krishna Bharath, the principal scientist at Google Inc., talks about the future trends of how people would like to get news during an interview with TOI.

His envisage about the news after 25 years is, the news delivered will be more personalized which will match the individual’s lifestyle and interests. He also adds that the consumption of such news will be across various devices – laptop, palmtops, mobile phones and more… So, the news will be tailored made for each individual and you will get to read what you really want.

Secondly, news presentation will be more complicated and inter-linked. Readers will like to go deep into the article and would like to know more and gather as much knowledge as required. Moreover, the reader would like to comment and provide opinion on the same. He sees this as a challenge to deliver this functionality.

The third trend he says is public access. In future, the reader will have direct access to government documents, facts and figures and perhaps interact with people at the heart of the news.

News will not be just text. Multimedia and video will dominate here too. Multi-lingual channels can also be anticipated.

Customization is what Google will be looking at now. News has to be customized as per the person’s choices. What is on page 4 for one person will be page 1 for another. When you want to keep the interest of the reader on to the subject, customization and automation of news selection comes into play.

So, the questions which are to be answered are:

• How to give the reader what he/she wants?
• How to give the reader something else in future which he/she will be interested in?
• How to provide good content which drills deep into the area and makes it a rich experience with related information and links?
• How to provide interactivity and sharing of such subject with like-minded people?

Do you think for the media, this is a challenge to choreograph the news experience for the reader?

Source: TOI

Google Holiday Logos

I saw the Google logo depicted for the solar eclipse and want to say that it was an amazing logo. The logo was really depicting the real sense of eclipse and keeping the corporate brand identity of Google.

So, this inspired me to know more about the person behind these designs. And I got this on googling it. He is a 23 year old Korean kid, Dennis Hwang. He started it as a contractor and is now designing all holiday logos for Google. The best part of the interview is his answer the question for his challenging letter of manipulation. He says he relys on the doodles he used to make when he was kid and uses them and he finds it easy to manipulate the ‘o’ and the ‘l’. He finds the first ‘G’ to be the most difficult to deal with.

Few of the holiday logos I like

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss - Valentine’s Day - Veteran’s Day -
But... I like all of them.

Read Dennis’s complete interview and additioanl details here.

And look at the comprehensive list of Google holiday logos here.

Control the Site Links Now Through Google Webmaster

Google announced today in its Webmaster Central blog about a new update named “Summer Sunshine”. The main highlight was you can edit the site links using your webmaster account.

1. You can block the other links from the site links apart from the home page. Site links are generated automatically by Google, but now you can suggest which links you do not want to list in site links.
   
2. The Google site selector now lists all verified sites and allows you to search as you type.

3. It also provides a clear distinction between verified and non-verified sites.

These improvements are really cool. Mostly the #1 and it really helps a webmaster to restrict any links which should not be there.

More Than 100 Free Twitter Tools For You

A list of more than 100 Twitter tools which can be used for an easy tweeting around and keep you updated of the tweets. I have been spending lot of time to keep it updated. You may find some dead links, errors or typos which are unintentional. Please check the tools for credibility before using them. Also let me know if I have missed anything so that the same can be added or updated here.
1. Alex King Twitter Tool – Takes your tweets and posts them to your Wordpress blog
2. BiggerTwitter – Allows you to post longer messages, but uses a link in the tweet
3. BigTweet – Add it as a favorite and IE and send a tweet from any webpage. You can send the url or use the in-built url shortening service
4. Blackbird – It is a Twitter client for Blackberry smart phones
5. Blogo – A blog editor which also helps in search in Twitter. It also updates the status whenever you post a new article
6. CheckYesOrNo – Frame Yes/No poll questions and share it with your friends on Twitter to answer the question
7. Cullect – Helps you find and share. It is a collaborative feed reader that can be used for various accounts. You just need to sign in with your credentials say – your blog, Friendfeed or Twitter
8. Feedalizr – A desktop application that allows to share photos/videos, interact with Facebook and Twitter friends and be updated with the status messages of friends
9. FeedTwit - Get your Twitter @replies as text messages and read your RSS feeds as direct messages in your Twitter account.
10. Flotzam – A desktop application to share photos, tweets, Diggs, pokes and feeds
11. Foodfeed – Share your eating habits. Just point your tweets @having and share with other like minders
12. FreeTweets – Collection of good Twitter backgrounds
13. FriendorFollow – Know who you are following and know those folks that are not following you and vice versa
14. FuelFrog – Keep a log of your fuel and mileage. Compare your mileage with others in your area, or with the same car
15. Green Tweets - Uses semantic language analysis to identify tweets pertaining to green and environmental topics from the public Twitter stream
16. gTwitter – Is a Linux client for reading and posting to Twitter.com web service
17. iTweet – iPhone interface for Twitter
18. Jargong – Is a client application for most of the social networking, instant messaging and feeds. You can also update the tweets from this application
19. jTwitter – A mobile tool to enter updates through your mobile phone
20. KipFolio Widget – Twitter widget for KipFolio
21. LoudTwitter – Helps you to transfer your tweets directly to your blog
22. MoniTwitter – Receive updates of website via Twitter
23. PingTwitter – Add new posts of your blog as status update in Twitter
24. PocketTweets – A web-based Twitter client for Apple iPhone
25. Pwytter – Python Twitter client which can support Asian characters
26. Quotably – Nice tool. Follow the Tweets of a particular account in threaded style
27. SayTweet – Dynamic mashup to have your own pic as a badge with your status update
28. Shareaholic – Firefox plugin to share the webpage via Twitter
29. SnapTweet – Share Flickr photos on Twitter too
30. Spaz – A Twitter client for Palm Pre, Windows, Mac and Linux
31. Snitter – A desktop Twitter client built on Adobe AIR
32. StrawPoll – Tool to create polls in 140 characters
33. TeleTwitter – Open source Twitter client for Windows
34. Terraminds – Search tool to search for users and tweets
35. TopNewsTrends – Combines Google trends data with Twitter search
36. TrackThis – Track your UPS, FedEx, DHL, USPS via Twitter or Facebook
37. TreoTwit – Check and update your Twitter right from your Treo
38. Triqqr – A windows tool to submit tweets and to view profiles
39. Twappi – Provides the Twitter mood
40. Tw-autocomplete – Simple add-on for Firefox that adds auto-complete support for @-messages and DMs
41. TweetBar – Use Twitter to Firebox browser
42. TweetBurner – An url shortening service, which also provides the clicks and referrals details
43. TweetCloud – Know what is buzzing around in the twitter world
44. Tweetdeck - Adobe Air desktop application enables you to split the main feed into group specific columns allowing a broader overview of tweets
45. Tweeter – A java desktop client for Twitter
46. Tweetfeed – As name suggests. Helps in customizing the tweets online so that you can track the ones which are important to you
47. Tweetlater – Sends automated DMs to your followers
48. TweetMyPC – to connect your PC remotely to lock or shutdown, using a mobile device or another internet connected PC just by sending a tweet
49. Tweetr – A cross platform tool to submits tweets
50. TweetScan – Search tool. Search as per keyword or user name
51. TweetWhatYouEat – A food diary online and track your weight. (Hey… should help in burning your calories as well)
52. TweetWhatYouSpend – Cash tracking made simple through Twitter. Built cash journal and export to excel or csv
53. Twellow – A directory of Twitter users
54. TwerpScan – Keep an eye on growing list of friends and followers
55. Twessenger – Updates Live Messenger status as per the latest tweet
56. Twhirl – A desktop client connects you to multiple accounts – Twitter, FriendFeed, seismic and Iaconi.ca
57. Twidget – A dashboard widget that allows to update status
58. Twidroid – Twitter client for android mobile phones
59. Twiggit – Is an automated service that lets your friends on Twitter know what articles you Digg
60. Twinja – A desktop Twitter client (AIR) application that provides all the features of Twitter
61. Twinfluence - a simple tool using the Twitter API to to measure the combined influence of twitterers and their followers, with a few social network statistics thrown in as bonus
62. Twinkle – Location-aware network for iPhone and iTouch
63. Twippera – Opera browser plug-in that can update and view tweets
64. Twit4Live – Sets Live Messenger status as latest tweet
65. Twitbar – Post tweets from the GNOME deskbar
66. TwitBin – Firefox browser add-on to send and view tweets
67. TwitBox – Desktop client to view and submit tweets, supports multiple accounts
68. TwitDir – Allows user to search for users by name, location, or username
69. Twitgit – Submit and view tweets using the dashboard
70. Twitkit – A Twitter sidebar for Firefox. It has a 6-section interface, using tabs to separate content
71. Twitpic – Lets you share photos on Twitter
72. Twitr – Claims to be the #1 Twitter directory
73. Twitscoop – Twitter interface to send tweets, find friends, search and follow what is buzzing around in the twitter world. You can also save searches for future reference
74. TwitSeeker – search engine to find Twitter users as per their tweets and not as per their profile
75. Twitter100 – This app creates a collage of all your friends you are following, so that you do not miss tweets of your special friends you are following
76. Twitter For Busy People – Same as Twitter100. But, if you are following too many friends then this is better
77. Twitt(url)y – A tool to track the URLs people are talking about on Twitter
78. Twittelator – Complete iPhone Twitter client
79. TweetAhead – Schedule tweets to be posted ahead of time with a simple dashboard widget
80. Twitter CLI – A windows tool to post tweets using the command line
81. Twitter for Vim – A Linux tool to publish tweets right within Vim
82. Twitter.el – A Linux tool to publish tweets while in Emacs
83. Twitter100 – Use it to view 100 tweets at a time
84. TwitterBar – Post to Twitter from you Firefox address bar
85. TwitterBerry –Twitter for various BlackBerry devices
86. TwitterBuzz – Find out what URLs are being most linked to on Twitter
87. TwitterCard - Create a 125(w) x 125(h) pixel banner ad to put on your blog or website and display the current status
88. Twit.el – A linux tool that allows publishing of tweets in Emacs
89. twitterfeed.com – A tool which uses the latest blog feed as tweet
90. TwitterFox – Firefox extension that can publish and view tweets
91. Twittergrader – Provides you a grade based on the power of your Twitter profile
92. Twitterholic – Shows the top users and accounts on Twitter
93. Twitterless - Notifies you when somebody stops following you and lets you know who it is and the follower history is graphed out over time
94. Twitterlex – Mac OS X dashboard widget that shows the last 30 tweets which refreshes periodically
95. Twitterlicious – Update Twitter status, check replies and direct messages
96. TwitterLinkr – Collects the links posted trough Twitter
97. Twitterlocal - A tool to filter tweets based upon users’ location. It also provides the searches in RSS or XML file
98. Twittermaps – A mashup technology that allows Twitter users find each other using Google maps
99. Twitteroo – A windows tool to update and view the status
100. Twitter.PollDaddy.com - Create Polldaddy polls and post them directly to your Twitter stream
101. TwitterPost – A Mac client that submits tweets, shows your current iTunes track in your feed and more
102. Twitterrific – Mobile and desktop tool to post and view tweets
103. Twittersearch – Search Twitter and tweets using keywords
104. Twitter SPY - Displays the Twitter public timeline
105. TwitterSync for Yahoo – Syncs Twitter status with Yahoo Messenger status
106. Twittertise - Allows you to schedule your tweets in advance and track the clicks on URLs you tweet
107. Twittervision – See where in the world people are submitting tweets from in real-time
108. TwitterYM – Updates the Yahoo Messenger status taking the latest tweet
109. TwitThis – Allows your website/blog visitors easily share a page or post via Twitter
110. TwittyTunes – A FoxyTunes (Firefox extension) add-on that posts what you are currently listening to
111. Twitux – A Twitter client for the GNOME desktop
112. Twitwall - When it’s too long to tweet, but too short to blog, just TwitWall it! TwitWall is the easy-to-use, quick-to-blast-out blog companion for Twitter
113. Twitxr – Share pictures from your mobile phone. Automatically publish them on social networks and photosharing sites
114. Twonvert – Easily converts your tweets into SMS shorthand language and allows you to say more with the 140 characters
115. Twonvo – Threads your tweets
116. Twuzzer – Twitter / GoogleMaps mashup.
117. Useqwitter – e-mails when a twitter stops following you after a certain post
118. What’s Up? – Gadget that allows you to see latest tweets from your friends
119. WildSets –Twitter app for mobile phones
120. yammer – A similar mico-blogging software to Twitter. Can be used by enterprise companies and can be used as an intranet solution
121. Yoono – Receive alerts, update your status or message your friends in your browser sidebar. No need to switch from one site to another or from your browser to a desktop app. Also integrates other services: Facebook, flickr, friendfeed, major IM services
122. ZenTwitter – A GUI frontend for Twitter using zenity and curl

I thank Shannon. Most of the list is from his page. All credit goes to Shannon.