Minitube is a native YouTube client. With it you can watch YouTube videos in a new way: you type a keyword, Minitube gives you an endless video stream. Minitube does not require the Flash Player.

Minitube is in its early stages. It currently has a lot of bugs and still lacks many features I planned for it. That said, it partially works. Try it, report your experience in the comments and spread the word.

(Via MacUpdate – Mac OS X.)

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(Via Ian Scott.)

One of the great things about the current web landscape is that the barrier to entry for entrepreneurs to create great new social media sites is very low. Open source, falling hardware and bandwidth costs, and social media itself (which can be used as a viral marketing vehicle), mean that enterprising developers can more easily than ever create amazing new services. That’s great for consumers because it facilitates a lot of competition that leads to the best possible products.

But it also means that most people end up using more than just a couple of social sites. We might use one site for sharing photos, another for sharing videos, and a couple more for sharing links. The content we create on those sites makes up our social media identity, and as we use more sites, it becomes increasingly difficult to share it all from one place. Yesterday, I received an email from a friend whose signature had links to no less than eight social media profiles. Thankfully, there are better ways to share your social media identity. Below are five sites that offer social media badges you can share and embed.

1. Retaggr

Retaggr is a really well put together utility that lets users create a social media profile card, which not only displays links to your other social profiles, but includes a bio, picture, and other vital information. Most impressively, though, profile cards are interactive. Retaggr profile cards have built in widgets that let you display some of your social media content – blog posts, recent photos, tweets, etc. – directly inside your card. That means that not only can the profile cards point people toward all the pieces of your social media identity, but in many cases people can actually view your social media content without having to navigate away from wherever you’ve embedded the card.

Retaggr supports a very large number of websites, is embeddable, and can generate image-based cards for email and forum signatures. The company also operates the Add Me Button, which is a utility that allows users to create a single button linking visitors to all of their social media profiles.

2. Geek Chart

Geek Chart offers a unique spin on social media identity sharing. Rather than just make it easy to display links to your various social profiles, Geek Chart puts your social media use in perspective by letting you show exactly where you are most active. The site lets you create a clickable pie chart of your social media profiles that depicts your use of each site over the past 30 days — if you haven’t used a site in 30 days, the chart will not include that profile.

Geek Chart currently supports eight services, including Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Digg. It gets bonus points for allowing users to create a chart without signing up — though you can only embed the chart if you do. Users also get a profile page with a simple lifestream. Here’s one for US President Barack Obama, for example.

3. DuckDuckGo Karma

The Karma badge from alternative search engine DuckDuckGo is easily the most simple widget on this list. Essentially, Karma only displays social media links for sites that have some sort of ranking system, such as followers, points, or friends. It requires no sign up to create and works with 15 different sites.

DuckDuckGo also offers a Profiles widget, which supports a bunch more sites, but doesn’t display any ranking information. It’s just as easy to create, but perhaps a bit less interesting.

4. DandyID

If you want a profile badge service that supports that obscure, niche social network you’re active on, then DandyID is likely for you. DandyID offers a profile management service that is perhaps most impressive for the sheer number of services it supports: over 300. Once you’ve added your services – a process made less daunting by DandyID’s clever use of the Google Social Graph API, which finds and suggests your profile links after you’ve added the first couple – the site can generate JavaScript or image-based embeds to share your social profile links more easily, and also gives each user its own profile page, similar to Retaggr.

For developers, DandyID offers an API that lets web site owners push and pull profile and identity graph information, which has led to interesting mashups like this Firefox extension, which can automatically look up social profiles for people as you browse the web.

Full disclosure: I was formerly employed by DandyID.

5. FriendFeed

Of course, being a full featured lifestreaming service and social network in its own right, FriendFeed offers a lot more than just the ability to create and embed social profile information – but they do offer that service, so they deserve a place on this list.

FriendFeed supports 58 social media services, and their embeddable ‘FriendFeed Badge’ widget lets you share links to your profiles on all of them, as well as your activity on FriendFeed (which as you can tell from the screenshot above probably isn’t as much as it should be in my case). One of the great things about FriendFeed’s widget is that you can fully customize the CSS to make it match the look and feel of wherever you plan to embed it. Rival lifestreaming service Profilatic offers a similar badge widget, as do many other lifestreaming services.

(Via Mashable!.)

One of the best things about the web and social media is how much great information is written and produced every single day. If you’re a regular reader of blogs, you probably come across great articles that you just want everyone to know about. But what’s the best way to share these posts? Luckily, there’s no shortage of ways to spread the word. Blogs, social networks, instant messenger, and mobile phones are some of the many ways to let others know about the best content on the web. Here are our 20 favorite ways to share a great blog posts.

Sharing Via Social Media:

1. Using Twitter to Tweet and Share: Perhaps the fastest and most effective way to share a great blog post is through Twitter (). Sharing or retweeting a link in Twitter can spread like wildfire. Use a URL shortener such as tinyurl or bit.ly to shorten links to fit within 140 characters.

2. Posting to Facebook: Sharing a blog post on the world’s largest social network is as simple as going to the Facebook () homepage and posting a link.

3. Digg it: Not only will you help bring that blog post one step closer to reaching the front page of the news site Digg () (which will spread it even further), but all of your Digg friends will see it as well.

4. Post on MySpace Profile: Don’t forget about the world’s second largest social network when sharing your favorite articles. Post the link to your MySpace () profile so your friends can enjoy it too.

5. Posting to LinkedIn: Some blog posts are worthy of being shared by your business network on LinkedIn (). Post a link to the Network Updates area in the homepage.

6. Stumbling on StumbleUpon Stumble the post! StumbleUpon () is a favorite network for discovering fun websites and useful information, so make sure that you give the post a thumbs up. The StumbleUpon Toolbar is the easiest way to Stumble.

7. Bookmarking to Delicious: Delicious () is great for not only sharing posts, but for helping categorize blog posts for others to find. In addition, you can import your delicious bookmarks to Facebook, FriendFeed (), and other social media websites.

8. Sharing on FriendFeed: The social media aggregator FriendFeed has a vibrant community who love to share videos, links, and pictures. Use the FriendFeed bookmarklet to quickly share a good blog post to FriendFeed.

9. Adding to Reddit: Reddit () is another great social media site for sharing and voting on articles. It’s quick and easy to submit a link

Sharing Via Blogs:

10. Reblogging Great Posts: Blogging about a great article is one of the best ways to engage with the topics being discussed. Post a link, write some commentary, and share it with all of your readers. And don’t forget to share your own blog post as well!

11. Sharing via Google Reader: Google Reader () has a great feature for sharing blog posts. If you use Google Reader as your news reader of choice, all you have to do is click the “share” button at the bottom of blog posts to share it with all of your Google () friends. You can also add notes and comment as well.

12. Posting on Tumblr or Posterous: If you want to share something via a blog, but don’t want to write a full blog post about it, there are great options for that as well, primarily Tumblr () and Posterous (). They are the quick and easy versions of full-fledged blogs, ideal for posting about pictures and blog posts.

Useful Tools for Sharing:

13. TwitThat: TwitThat is one of the quickest and easiest tools for sharing blog posts. It will post to your Twitter quickly and easily. Just add the bookmarklet to your browser toolbar and click it whenever you come across a great post.

14. Shareaholic Firefox Extension: There are a lot of great social networks where you can share a great post, but who wants to visit Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn to share a post? If you are a Firefox () user, then install Shareaholic, an extension that goes on your toolbar. It provides quick links for sharing to all of the major social networks.

15. Ping.fm: If you’re a busy person, you might not have time to share on all of these social media websites. Isn’t there an easy way to share a blog post everywhere, all at once? Ping.fm () links to all of your social networks and sends your updates to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, to any other website you wish to link to it. You can even update from your instant messenger. It’s the perfect solution for those who like to share content all over the web.

Other Ways to Share:

16. Emailing: Email has always been a good way to share articles, especially with close friends and family. Although it may not reach as many people as Twitter, it will definitely reach anyone who isn’t as deep into social media as you are.

17. Texting: Did you know you that many blogs, including Mashable (), support sharing an article via text message? Look out for the ShareThis button (three green dots connected by lines) under blog posts and select the “text” option. iPhones and mobile browsers have made it easy to read links sent by texts.

18. Changing IM Statuses: You probably have dozens, if not hundreds of IM contacts. Share great posts with all of them by changing your IM status to a great post you just read or wrote.

19. IMing a friend: If changing an IM status seems too impersonal, then just IM your friends the link. You can then have a fun chat about the blog post.

20. Talking to Friends: If you don’t have a computer handy, then don’t forget about the analog approach – call a friend or tell him or her over coffee about a great blog post you read. You can always send the link later if necessary.

(via Mashable)

And by September! At least, according to the Telegraph, who says that the company is working out the terms of a deal that will open up streaming for over 3,000 hours of American content, as well as content from Channel 4 and ITV. That the Hulu content wall will come down is obviously great news, but that ITV and 4 will finally be moving to a decent VOD solution is exciting in its own right. [Telegraph]

(Via Gizmodo.)

Twitter might not be the first place you’d think to look for video entertainment. But each day, legions of Twitter users post videos of breaking news, trending topics, wacky feline antics, and so on. All you need is a better way to discover them.

Enter Twitmatic, from a company called ffwd. The second iteration of the service, launched Tuesday morning, lets you search, browse, rate, watch, and skip videos from throughout the Twitter universe with remarkable ease.

“Users are constantly sharing video links on Twitter from a huge range of sites, and it’s a natural pool of social information from which to draw out videos,” ffwd co-founder and senior developer Greg Roberts, with whom I used to work at CNET many years ago (transparency), told Wired.com. “[But they] are constantly clicking a link, jumping through redirects, maybe opening a new tab, until landing at a page where the video hopefully plays. We think it should be easier than that, and that each tweet should be smart enough to display the relevant content inline. ”

Search is the special sauce in this new iteration of Twitmatic, which launched two months ago. When you enter a search term, Twitmatic runs it through the Twitter API, looks for links from more than 5,000 domains known to host video (Roberts says competing services lack that sort of breadth) and imports them into the system. When other people search for the same term, the system accesses those videos faster than it did the first time, and presents the newer results. Meanwhile, in the background, Twitmatic runs searches using an index of search terms, which also helps speed things up, according to Roberts.

Aside from its transformation of Twitter into a television network for popular and arcane video, our favorite thing about Twitmatic is its no-nonsense interface. We’re hard-pressed to think of ways it could involve fewer clicks.

First, enter up to three search terms (or click straight to a trending topic):

n the default interface, the top video associated with your search term appears below the original tweet. Don’t like it? Click the Next button to move on — or, if you really don’t like it, click the “Video Fail” button to help other Twitmatic users avoid the video (a really helpful feature, since some folks mislabel ads as videos on Twitter):

We prefer the expandable list view, which lets you see multiple tweets associated with your search term and view each one right there on the same page. Note that there’s no “up arrow” rating; if you like something, you retweet it:

We’ve been testing this thing for a few days now, and it has performed well, channeling Twitter’s inherent chaos into a smooth, lean-back video experience. Aside from the all-important search feature, the other main improvement in this version is a native Twitter log-in. This means you can follow users, add videos to your Twitter favorites, and reply to tweets from within Twitmatic.

(Via Wired)

Google Reader has been adding more and more social features recently, like the commenting on shared items options they added back in March. Today, they announced some updates that continue this push with several new social features.

The most social of Google Reader’s new features is a new section of Google Reader Trends called ‘Friends Trends.’ It’s designed to be a way to gauge how much you rely on the shared items of certain friends. You can quickly figure out whose shared blog posts you love most and who is just filling your RSS reader with noise.

While Friends Trends may be a fun and possibly insightful tool, Google’s new iGoogle importing feature takes the cake as the most useful. For anyone who has created a sophisticated iGoogle page with RSS and blog widgets, this is for you. Instead of having to re-subscribe to every single news source in Google Reader, you can simply import all of the feeds with a few clicks.

Google also expanded its comment feature by releasing it to all non-English users and added the ability to share notes via Google Reader’s mobile interface. In addition, they released a new video tutorial and start page for new Google Reader users.

These small changes reflect two of the biggest trends in social media today: simplicity and social graph interaction. Comments and Friends Trends are both features that help you better connect with and understand friends, while iGoogle importing and the new user start page are attempts to lower the time and energy cost of starting with Google Reader. Hopefully all of these moves indicate that Google Reader isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

(Via Mashable!.)

Josh Catone is a writer, editor, and entrepreneur from Providence, Rhode Island. He is a social media enthusiast and the founder of the web’s largest Ruby on Rails community, Rails Forum. You can follow him on Twitter.

As the web moves toward its real-time future, Twitter is clearly becoming one of the most important ways for people to share content. From celebrity gossip to customer complaints, from blog post links to breaking news, Twitter is an amazing platform for sharing short bursts of information, both meaningful and mundane. But how many words can you fit into a 140 character tweet? If you could include images, the answer would be at least a thousand, right?

Unfortunately, Twitter doesn’t have any built-in way to attach images to its 140 character posts, so we’re left turning to third-party solutions to add a little visual flair to our tweets. There are a number of good ways to share images on Twitter, though, and here are five of them.

Adium, the people’s favorite alternative to iChat, gained two shiny new releases on Monday that bring a “ridiculously long list of improvements” and obligatory bug fixes. Since the beta release is easily the more interesting of the two, we’ll start there.

Adium 1.4 beta, available from the Adium beta site, brings support for what are likely two of the most-requested features in the application’s history: Twitter and IRC. This new version also gains an updated core network engine, a new aggregate authorizations window, and a lot of changes to the way group chats work and can be customised.

For instance, a group’s tab will change colour when your name is mentioned in the room, and message styles can now be customized separately for groups and regular chat windows.

Other Adium 1.4 changes allow for contacts to be placed in multiple groups and enabling Adium’s buddy search feature (start typing while selected on the buddy list) to work in all window styles.

The full list of changes in Adium 1.4 beta is truly quite extensive, so check it out if you’re interested in the finer details.

Interestingly, Adium 1.4 beta marks a new requirement: Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The latest stable (non-beta) version of Adium, released today as well, will likely be the last for 10.4 Tiger users.

Adium 1.3.4 is a less ambitious upgrade that brings the same new core network engine as the 1.4 beta, as well as an updated Facebook chat plug-in.

Translation: If you’re a Tiger user who depends on (or merely salivates over) Adium and major new feature releases, it may finally be necessary to upgrade to 10.5 or jump on Snow Leopard later this year.

As usual, both releases are available as donationware from the Adium and Adium beta sites.

(via MacWorld)

It may seem like an impossible task to keep up with all the Twitter apps that have come to market as of late. Even though you have plenty of directories to help with the process, we noticed that it’s still difficult to ascertain which apps support multiple accounts.

As more and more people are using Twitter for personal and professional reasons, the demand for a Twitter client to match those multifaceted needs is rising. Here are several options to help you tweet now or later from different accounts on your desktop, via the Web, and while on the run. We’ve also included a few browser add-ons and business-specific clients to help you find the right application to suit your Twittering needs.

Desktop

Nambu: A great single or mutli-column app for multiple Twitter, Identi.ca, and Laconi.ca account management. Nambu also includes Twitter trends, saved searches, filters, link aggregation, and groups. Plus, if you have a Nambu account you can use tr.im to shorten URLs, and pic.im for better Twitter photo tools than Twitpic.

Seesmic Desktop: A viable threat to TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop has no limitations on the number of accounts you can manage. Plus, since it fully integrates with Facebook, and also allows for unlimited columns, it’s a fantastic way to engage with Twitter from your desktop.

Twhirl: Even though Seesmic Desktop is the replacement desktop application for Twhirl, it still continues to dominate the TwitStat Twitter client leader board (currently in the number 5 slot). Users love having multiple account support and a single column view of tweets. Also of note is cross-posting to Ping.fm, and the ability to record and follow Seesmic videos.

Tweetie for Mac: This single column gem launched with a bang, thanks the popularity of their mobile app. We’re mad about Tweetie for Mac’s sleek design, which does an amazing job at multiple account management while respecting our screen real-estate. Power users will enjoy the keyboard shortcuts, conversations, and threaded direct messages.

Twibble Desktop: Twibble allows users to manage up to 3 different Twitter accounts, and includes keyboard shortcuts, location awareness, and viewing options.

Digsby: This desktop app is probably most recognizable for its multi-client IM support, but Digsby (for Windows only) can handle your social network profiles, and manage multiple Twitter accounts.

Web

Matt: Matt, which stands for Multi Account Twitter Tweeter, is a colorful and simple Twitter app that just lets you update multiple accounts from the Web.

TwittBot: TwittBot makes it possible to not only update multiple accounts, but allow multiple people to update the same account. The service looks for @replies to repost to specified Twitter accounts, and bots can be open to anyone or closed to a select group of individuals. This is a perfect tool for Twitter accounts that aggregate tweets from a variety of sources.

Tweet3: For web-based multiple account support that’s slightly different than the rest, there’s Tweet3. The site provides you with a dashboard view for each account, where you can customize the color, integrate with Facebook, follow and unfollow Twitterers, and adjust settings. Should you tweet links, Tweet3 will track their performance in the analytics tab.

Splitweet: Designed around managing multiple Twitter accounts, Splitweet is great for viewing a stream of tweets from all your accounts, posting tweets to multiple accounts, and following brand mentions. Positioned as tool for brands, Splitweet doesn’t really deliver on that promise, and companies would be better off with CoTweet, EasyTweet, or HootSuite.

TwitIQ: TwitIQ is exactly like Twitter.com, except function-rich. So imagine your Twitter homepage including options to toggle through accounts, view a keyword tag cloud, and tab through conversations, questions, retweets, and URLs.

Twitomate: A very basic app designed just to let you queue tweets to publish on a rolling basis. But, if you’ve got multiple accounts and you just want to keep them fresh with regular updates, Twitomate is worth a look.

TweetLater: Another web service dedicated to automating the tweeting process, TweetLater includes support for unlimited Twitter accounts and bulk upload and scheduling of tweets. There are even some extra goodies thrown in for professional accounts.

Semi-Professional

CoTweet: CoTweet’s already the Twitter CRM Tool of Choice for BestBuy, JetBlue, and Ford, and that’s because it adds a business layer to Twitter account management. Yes, you can have multiple accounts, but the key with CoTweet is allowing multiple people to safely manage the same account so there’s no duplication of effort. We also love it for scheduling tweets for later, assigning tweets to coworkers, and adding notes to Twitter users.

EasyTweets: Positioned as a tool for marketers, EasyTweets is similar to a blogging platform, and comes with a minimum price tag of $24/mo if you choose to upgrade to get continuous searches, support for more than three accounts, post to multiple accounts, SMS alerts, and Google Analytics data on links. EasyTweets has a few tweet viewing options, but TweetDeck fans will especially like the Deck View (columns) of tweets.

HootSuite: A nifty web-based app for multiple accounts with multiple admins, HootSuite is also great at giving you visibility into link stats right within their dashboard view of tweets (so long as you use their ow.ly URL shortener). It’s also a convenient app for Twitter search, scheduling tweets, and posting to Ping.fm to update more than just Twitter.

Browser Add-Ons

TwtterFox: TwitterFox is a Firefox extension from the same guys that are behind the TwitterFon iPhone app. TwitterFox sits within the right hand corner of your browser and does a great job at keeping out of the way. Users can add multiple accounts in preferences and toggle through each of them in a single column view.

Adjix2TwitterLink: This bookmarklet is brought to you by URL shortening service, adjix. It’s simply for tweeting links while you browse, but since you have the option to specify which account to tweet from, and send later, it could prove extremely handy.

iPhone

Twitteriffic: The new and improved Twitteriffic 2.0 is a beauty and an extremely functional, free iPhone app that makes Twitter terrific on the iPhone and manages multiple accounts nicely. If tracking is your thing, you’ll love how Twitteriffic handles saved searches and supports advanced search queries.

Tweetie: The leader of the mobile pack, and the number 3 Twitter client overall according to TwitStat, Tweetie’s ($2.99) multiple account support is just one of the features that you’ll love about this iPhone app.

SimplyTweet: This full-featured iPhone app ($3.99) does the basics and then some. On top of managing multiple accounts, you can view trends, add notes, create saved views of friends (groups), use the Safari bookmarklet, and look up contacts while composing your tweet.

TweetStack: TweetStack ($2.99) brings your TweetDeck columns to the iPhone, and unlike TweetDeck, supports multiple accounts. Pick TweetStack if you want a customizable tab bar, groups, search, and retweets.

LaTwit: A multi-account Twitter client ($2.99) for the iPhone that supports posting to Ping.fm, the option to hide users, custom font sizes, and interchangeable tabs.

(Via Mashable!.)