World of Twitter

One of the great things about Twitter is the community that comes with it. Not just the community in terms of the people you follow, and who follow you, but also the network of people working to make Twitter more useful, or just more interesting.

Much of this is because of the API Twitter has released, making it dead easy for hackers to build stuff around the service. There is also a community run wiki gathering resources together, as well as a Google Group mailing list.

So what are some of the projects that are built around Twitter? Try these for size:

Have you got any favourites?

Mozilla Messaging

TechCrunch announces the launch of a new Mozilla (the guys behind open source projects like FireFox, to name one) site called Mozillla Messaging. This site aims to ‘fix’ internet communications, firstly by driving the development of the new version of Thunderbird, a desktop email client that replaces things like Outlook Express on Windows machines and Mail on the Mac.

Thunderbird has never really taken off like Firefox, largely, I would imagine, because people just don’t use desktop email clients much, unless it is a heavyweight like Outlook or (bleugh) Lotus Notes at work, so there isn’t much to replace. Indeed, the success of Firefox in making web based email applications even more usable, like Gmail and the new Yahoo! Mail, has reduced the possible market for Thunderbird.

Still, giving the email app. a bigger online presence, out of the shadow of Firefox, is probably a good idea. Mozilla Messaging hasn’t completed replaced the former Thunderbird online places though – you can still get it from the Mozilla.com site.

It’s not just about Thunderbird though. In a blog post, the new CEO of Mozilla Messaging David Ascher says:

It is worthwhile considering what the right user experience could be for someone using multiple email addresses, multiple instant messaging systems, IRC, reading and writing on blogs, using VoIP, SMS, and the like. What parts of those interactions make sense to integrate, and where? I don’t believe that stuffing all of those communication models inside of one application is the right answer. But the walled gardens that we’re faced with today aren’t the right answer either. There is room for innovation and progress here, and we need to facilitate it.

There has been plenty of writing recently about email actually being the hub that links all of our social networks, rather than being replaced by them. However, I’m not convinced that a desktop application is the answer. Indeed, I would imagine that you can pretty much manage all your online social networks through Gmail in FireFox now.

DavePress WP Plugin-orama

WordPress is the best, we all know this. As well as the amazing free themes that are available, there are also tonnes of plugins which make your blog do interesting and cool stuff that it can’t do out of the box.

The other great thing about WP plugins is that they are so easy to install – just FTP the files into the right spot on your server, then hit the ‘activate’ link in the plugin screen of the admin panel. Even I rarely get this wrong, it’s so simple!

Here’s a list of the plugins I use here. Anybody got any suggestions for stuff I really ought to be using?

1. Akismet

Akismet is spam blocking par excellence. There isn’t anything to touch it, in my opinion.

2. Google Analytics

Make setting your blog up on Google analytics a breeze with this plugin. All you have to do is supply it with your Analytics code and it places it in the best spot on your blog for you.

3. Democracy

A cool way of putting little polls into your sidebar, and even on individual pages. You can also create an archives page of past polls too!

4. Feedburner Feedsmith

Pipes all your RSS traffic to FeedBurner. This means you can use FB’s feed tracking stats, which isn’t currently available with other WordPress stats systems.

5. All in one SEO pack

Gives your site and everyone of your posts accurate meta-data, from tags and categories. Watch your blog shoot up in the rankings once this plugin starts to work its magic.

6. Subscribe to comments

Mega useful for both you and your readers, this lets folk get email updates when people respond to their comments on your blog. You can also examine the stats, see who is subscribed to what and who is subscribed to the most posts.

7. MyBlogLog

More of a sidebar widget than a proper plugin, this enables you to display who the recent visitors were to your site with an avatar. Nice to see who’s reading your blog.

8. Easytube

WordPress isn’t great at handling embed code, even in HTML view editing. This plugin takes the pain out of posting YouTube videos.

9. Google XML sitemaps

Creates a sitemap for your blog that meets the Google standards, making it more search engine friendly.

10. Sphere

Allows you to present a link next to your posts which readers can click to find content on similar lines elsewhere. I haven’t yet added this to my new template on DavePress, but keep your eyes peeled…

11. Twitter tools

This is a cool plugin that does a number of things: posts to Twitter when you publish a new blog post; add your latest tweets to your sidebar, post tweets from your admin panel; and post a daily log of your tweets. You can turn on different bits of functionality as you please. Great stuff.

12. Slideshare

See EasyTube, this does the same for Slideshare embeds.

13. WordPress.com stats

My favouritest plugin ever. I am addicted to this. It gives the same stats as WordPress.com users get: how many visits you get, which posts are most popular, what people are searching on Google to find you, which links people are using to get away from your blog.

14. ShareThis

Another great one, this provides a handy javascript pop up thing allowing people to bookmark your posts on a number of services, like Digg, Reddit and del.icio.us to name just three. Like Sphere, I haven’t worked this into my template yet, but will be here soon!

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