As our follow list grows on the Twitter network, it becomes increasingly difficult to spot the hot and not-so-hot links. Often by the time you discover the latest buzz it’s been cross-posted to death and if you’re a blogger, well you missed the boat on the story.

Here’s where AlphaTwitter.com comes to the rescue! By monitoring the Twitter stream, it keeps track of what links are being shared and re-tweeted across the channel. A lightning fast all-business interface gives you a quick top down over view of which links are being shared the most, how many people are sharing it and who!

Even if you’re not a blogger, you’ll love the little gems that AlphaTwitter will give you.

The first paragraph of their website says it all!

If you are an Outlook user, you probably have it open all the time. Now you can update your Twitter status and follow your friends without having to open any other applications. OutTwit seamlessly integrates Twitter into Outlook.

I’ve been a fan of Snitter for a while now and was really apprehensive that their could be an app that could pull me away. If it wasn’t for how well I’ve integrated Microsoft Outlook into my daily planning there would be no reason for me to switch.

OutTwit was an effortless install and so far, other then some idiosyncrasies inherent with Outlook itself it really runs great.

Your Tweets appear as messages within Outlook’s mail section and you can manage them just as you would any other message.  Now the quirky thing for me is that I’m used to dealing with Email, not messages so it is somewhat of a different beast.  My main difficulty is that I can’t seem to get a notification when a new tweet arrives, rules don’t seem to work.  But I’m inclined to think I’m simply missing something within outlook. 

THIS JUST IN 3/21/2008:  WOOT WOOT - Thank You Alex!!!

Hi Paul,

 

We have just released a new version of OutTwit, which has a “Play a sound on new tweets” feature.

http://www.techhit.com/OutTwit/

 

Thanks again for your suggestion.

Alex

TechHit LLC

Oh and I almost forgot, you get some really nifty statistics too.  My my I never realized how much I can spew sometimes! LOL

In any case, if you regularly use Outlook and Twitter this software is certainly worth a try!

http://www.techhit.com/OutTwit/

I just stumbled on this article on unclutter.com about various productivity tools that are available from various Twitter-Bots.  Below is just a few of them, but you really need to get on over to the Twitter Fan Wiki where there are hundreds all sorted out by platform and sub-application. 

It seems like each day I get more and more addicted to twitter.  It’s amazing how such a simple little application can be so useful!

• TwitterNotes- Let’s you take public (and private) fully taggable notes via twitter.
• Timer - Is a down and dirty egg-timer like application.
• Remember The Milk - Is a more sophisticated timer service should you need greater flexibility.

Are you a twitteruser?  Well if not and you believe the world is interested in your every thought, movement, idea and task then this is a must.  Run on over to Twitter and sign up for an account.

Now once you become addicted, you’ll most likely find the web interface a bit cumbersome; to keep up during your every day surfing, or maybe it’s a bit too obvious while at work. Snitter to the rescue!

Snitteris a well behaved little app that sits in your task bar until needed.  It can be configured to pop up your tweets as they come in, either silently or enunciated and you can even tweak out the color and transparency levels to your liking.

Install was painless and (when twitter itself isn’t having trouble) it just works.

Did someone go out of their way to help you? Is a web site being particularly slow and flaky? Make your feelings known with plusplusbot. You can ++ (pronounced “plusplus”) or – (”minusminus”) anything. Think brownie points (but archived forever).

Of course the first thing you need is a twitter account.  If you don’t have twitter.. oh you just don’t know the addiction your missing!!!  So be sure to check that out first.

So basically how it works you ++ things you like and — things you don’t like (via twitter) and within a few minutes plusplusbot.com is updated with a score (and you’re scored as well with the total number of ++/– you’ve given).

Hmm.. we may have the answer to electronic political voting here!

Oh and while you’re at it, be sure to add me - pfmonaco - to your follow list

Now this is just plain old too fun!  Your driving down the highway on your long commute home and you spot some joker on a motorcycle wearing speedo’s and you just have to twitter about it!  Sure you can tweet via text messaging on your cell phone, but that’s not really too safe while your driving.. but if you signup up for SpinVox, you can just speed-dial their 1-888 number and your voice will be magically transformed into text and broadcast out to the world!

Not a twitter fan?  That’s okay, SpinVox currently works with Facebook and Jaiku as well as many blogs! 

I dont’ know how long this service will be free but it’s certainly a must-try while you can toy!