Jianjun's Blog

OoVoo (what’s ooVoo? Read this post.) recently sent a survey request to users asking for feedback on its functions and possible improvements. Most of the survey questions compared ooVoo to Skype, which gave me a feeling that they were committed (and in the end ready) to grab some market share from that big brother.

However, a few days later when a new version of ooVoo came into being, it only let me down. Instead of offering more useful features, it takes away some of the coolest and charges a fee if you want them back.

The standard (free) ooVoo option now only has these:

Like Facebook, one of the charming features of Twitter is its extendability. Although standard Twitter functions are kind of limited, third-party applications make up for this perfectly. Here are some of the services I used and liked:

1. If you think text tweets are too boring and would like to share your snapshots on-site occasionally, give brightkite a try. Brightkite allows you to post your current location, notes or pictures via web, SMS (if in the US) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) – as an email.You may choose to link your brightkite and Twitter accounts so each time your update on brightkite, a new tweet appears on Twitter. Brightkite has a privacy option so you can always control how detailed your location should be shown to whom. Brightkite is currently in Beta and you need to wait for an invitation to participate. If you can’t get one from their website, leave me a message here. I’ll send one to your email on an availability basis.
2. Ever wondered who’s been following when you didn’t get follower notification? Or are you feeling frustrated when someone unfollows you after you followed them back? With Twitter Karma, in just a few clicks you will find all those information plus a couple of other functions.
3. If you are one of those twitterbuds who can’t stop tweeting even during sleep, here’s a good one for you. Tweetlater sends out pre-scheduled tweets at your own local time. You may also use it as a reminder service tweeting to yourself. But this only works when you use, again, a third-party service notifying you of such tweets. Another use of Tweetlater is auto-follow your new followers. However, since Twitter spammers are on the rise, take the risk when you use this.
4. Did you know many of the most active Twitter users don’t visit Twitter website to interact with other friends? There are many Twitter ‘enhancement’ applications, one of which is Thwirl. Thwirl is an Abode Air application that sits in your system tray. Besides all standard Twitter functions, it also gives you a sound alert when @yourusername appears in the middle of someone’s tweet body. This is a great addition. Twitter by default doesn’t send the message to your ‘reply’ tab unless @yourusername comes first in a tweet. Some other nice functions:
   • re-tweeting a useful message, spreading it far and wide;
   • keyword-searching twitterland messages;
   • shortening long URLs with snurl;
   • picture-sharing via TwitPic.

There are many other great Twitter extensions. But since I didn’t have a chance to try them out, I won’t be able to cover them until I update this post later.

Nice tweeting…

Seesmic is a social discussion forum that features recorded video clip chat. In other words, you chat using video clips instead of text. This article teaches you how to add a Seesmic widget and a video comment plugin to your WordPress blog.

1. If you still don’t have a Seesmic account, go to Seesmic Website and register one for free. They are currently in Alpha and you’ll need to have an invitation code to get your account up. But don’t worry, you should get the code in 24 hours or so after giving them your email address.

2. After your account is set up, log in with your user name and password at http://seesmic.com/home and

you’ll see three links on the top-right: Home, Widgets and Log Out. Click on Widgets and follow the simple instructions to get the code to be used with your blog. This widget displays your recent Seesmic videos in a timeline and it works with both WordPress and other systems. To see a live demonstration, look at the ‘My Latest Videos’ in my sidebar!

3. Seesmic just released a WordPress plugin which enables you to post video blogs and your visitors to leave video comments regardless of whether they have a Seesmic account. At the time of writing, the plugin is only available through Seesmic. For full instructions and download, visit http://wiki.seesmic.com/Wp-plugin. To see it in action, simply leave a comment for this post.