ScreenTweet

Twitter does what it does well, and many, many people are using it. But what if you wanted to do more that write 140 characters? ScreenTweet allows you to 'post' pictures and videos to Twitter. You can use an image from your hard disk and a URL link will be created and inserted into your tweet. Or you can mail an image from your mobile using a unique PIN to your account.

It also works with videos from YouTube, Vimeo, and the like.

Twitter Analytics - is that tweeterlytics?

You use Twitter, right? And you possibly run a blog, or more, so you're obsessed with analytics. So you want to know what your Twitter usage is like, who has most significance to your tweetin' practices, who you RT and @ the most. Well, you can do all this using TweetStats. Just type in your twitter name and see what you've been up to.

Clogging via Amplify

Often people want to blog about or comment on something that they've read elsewhere on the web. Usually this requires a link to the original content early in their blog post. The problem with this is that it can take prespective reader away from your site and your interesting observations. Well the people who brought us Clickmarks (more about this in another post) have come up with what they term Clogs or clip logs. This allows you to clip a section (extract), including text, images, even videos from the original site (with full referencing back to the site) and make your observations directly below in the form of a blog post, allowing comments in the usual way.

Simply register with Amplify to maintain you Clog. You can link it in to your Twitter account, even register via it.

Site link: Amplify

Shortening (and tracking) via bit.ly

So you want to pass on a useful link. What's the best way to do it? Well if you want to pass it on via Twitter or other microblogging site you need to keep things short and most URLs ain't short.

Well there are a number of shortening sites available. The one I use is called bit.ly and this is available automatically when you put a URL into Twitter. However, I find it more useful to have an account on bit.ly itself and use that to shorten my links before passing them on in an email or microblogging them.

Why do that though? Isn't it easier to just use Twitter to shorten then automatically?

It might be easier (very slightly) in the short term, but doing it my way means that you have a record

a list of all the links you pass on, and you can reuse them,

plus clicking the "info" button gives continuing access statistics - over time periods:

and countries where accessed from:

You can also achieve some of this by copying the bit.ly shortened URL into your address filed in your browser and putting a "+" character on the end to see the stats. Okay on an ad hoc basis, but not as good for continued stats.