Feb
3
I thought I'd post a list of some of the Twitter tools I regularly use - feel free to add your own favourite tools to the comments!
- Snipt
- If you've got a piece of code you want to tweet about then Snipt is the ideal site to use to do it. To be able to use this service you don't have to have an account - you just post code to it and it displays nicely with syntax highlighting and line numbers. It's not secure really as it means anyone can view your code so you should make sure there isn't anything sensitive you use this for. It's easy to confuse this with another service of the same name that is secure though, in this version of Snipt you can't just use your Twitter account like you can with Twitpic- you have to register separately. Once you do so you have the option to make your code snippets either public or private - so you don't have to worry too much about security.
- Twitpic
- If you've got an image to share with the world of Twitterites then Twitpic is the service to use. All you do is login using your Twitter username and it'll allow you to post an image to it and will provide a short URL to use in your tweet. Handily, this is one of the services built into the AIR application, TweetDeck.
- TweetDeck
- This is one of my favourite places to tweet from, but it's not always convenient to. My only complaint about TweetDeck is that on the Mac version if you close it, it does stay running in the dock like many other programs do - it'd be nice to be able to get it away from the desktop without having to minimize it (and making the dock bigger). However, it's a very nicely styled AIR application that has integration for Twitpic and Bit.ly. What I usually post from for convenience whilst working is TwitterFox.
- TwitterFox
- TwitterFox is a handy extension for Mozilla Firefox that creates an icon in the status bar of the browser - this makes it very quick to check out the latest tweets from the people you follow, and to post new tweets as well. It couldn't be any quicker really. It's very basic and doesn't integrate with any other service, but most the time it doesn't matter too much. It would be nice to see integration in it for Twitpic and Bit.ly one day though.
- Bit.ly
- Since you're limited to only 140 characters any one of saving characters is a plus. The Bit.ly service will allow you to create nice short URLs from longer ones leaving more space for your important messages.
- BrightKite
- If you want people to know where you are then there's also BrightKite. This allows you to "check in" and has the option of automatically tweeting an update for you. It also has the ability to store images of your current location too which is useful.
That's all I can think of for now, though one other place I tweet from is entity - which is the CMS I use for my site.
