There is an article on the Beeb (BBC) about the "hyper-connected" generation . It has quotes from Biz Stone co-founder of Twitter and Jyri Engestrom, founder of Jaiku. It muses about microblogging and the multicasting of one's life 24/7. Is this state of connectivity better or worse for us? For productivity? Engestrom says, "In five years time being hyper connected will become a necessity to be an active participant in the social world".

We wouldn't go as far as to say that. People should and will have the level of connectivity that suits them.

What do you think?

Here is the full article.

Thanks to Kristen Nicole on Mashable for the sneak peak into Brabblr's private beta. She writes..

.."With this meta tool, you can add updates to all of your Twitter-like blogs. Brabblr supports Twitter, Jaiku, Frazr, Wamadu and Textln. Brabblr works in the same manner as Twitter and the rest, and gives you the option of receiving updates from your friends or recent updates from the entire community. Each update indicates where it came from, which lets me know that Brabblr should be importing updates from the other sites it connects to, but this feature seems to show that all updates are coming via Brabblr instead of their respective sites." ..

See the full article here.

Twitteriffic is one of our favorite Twitter clients and today the developers (Icon Factory) have released version 2.1. Here are the release notes:

Twitterrific v 2.1

Twitterholic has been a fun tool to see who the top 100 Twitterers are on the Twitter system. The problem has been that there isn't much else functionality to go along with it. Also there have been reports of it not being accurate. So... we decided to have a closer look at TwitDir and compare it to Twitterholic.

TwitDir is short for Twitter 'Directory'. It accesses the twitter API to enable you to search for twitter users and then get their stats. Cool. It also has a series of 'top 20' lists. Top 20 followed, top 20 updaters, top 20 favouriters and top 20 followers are all on the menu. These are all great but we wish they offered an option to choose top 50 or top 100.

We compared them directly and below are screenshots of the top ten from both Twitterholic and TwitDir. As you will see there are some discrepencies. It seems that TwitDir is the most current. It also seems that there are some missing people in the Twitterholic list. We have come across this before actually where a user of thousands of followers didn't even show up on twitterholic. For example, barackobama is #6 with 3000+ followers on TwitDir but that ID is not even listed in Twitterholic, not even in the top 100.  Huh?  Strange isn't it?  We also checked out our own twittown twitter ID on TwitDir. It was right up to date with our profile on Twitter! But on Twitterholic, we don't show up on the top 100, even though we have enough followers to make the list. Hmm, something fishy?  Maybe something broken with Twitterholic?

It looks like Twitterholic either needs to work on their process of making the list or polling the system. Maybe it needs to update the frequency it collects data and lastly, it sure would be nice if it had more features.

So for now, it looks like TwitDir is the winner for us for most things. It is right up to date, get top 20 lists and find info about any user. 

If you want or need that top 100 list of twitterers.. you are currently stuck with the outdated and potentially inaccurate Twitterholic.

If anyone has any further insight, please post in the comments!

Screenshots

Search for twittown user on TwitDir

Twitdir top 10 (of 20)

Twitterholic top 10 (of 20)

Timer is a Twitter bot that helps you set an alarm for things you need to remember.  Timer will then notify you when the time is up.  It says that is not 100% accurate but give or take a minute things will work fine.  

 "Want to give it a try? It’s easy:

1. If you’re not already a Twitter user, register for a free account.
2. Add timer as your friend.
3. Send a direct message to timer. If you’re sending a direct message via SMS/Twitterific, use the format below (if you’re using Twitter’s direct message interface, you can leave off the d timer bit. More info on direct messages can be found here.): d timer [# of minutes until reminder] [your message] Example: d timer 60 check parking meter (will remind you to drop a quarter in 60 minutes) Note: 5 minutes is the minimum amount of time that you can set. In addition, if you forget to put a time, that’s what you’ll get by default.
4. Timer will then tweet you back after the specified number of minutes has passed. Please note, though, that it is not an accurate timer; many factors, including email, SMS, and Twitter delays may slow delivery. That said, it’s usually not off by much more than a minute. Keep this in mind when you’re using timer to cook macaroni (please don’t hold us responsible for soggy noodles).

The official website is here .

Add Timer to you Twitter page here 

We have seen USA presidential candidates (Barack Obama and John Willams for example) jump on the Twitter PR bandwagon to help promote their campaigns and connect with the "Internet connected". We haven't heard much about election campaigns of other countries using Twitter. We ran across this article in the Guardian about MP Alan Johnson using Twitter to help his campaign. The article is long and also muses about twittering and microblogging.

Anyone else know of any other government campaigns in other countries that are using Twitter to keep the electorate in the know? Post them in the comments if you do!