Apple computers are known for their simplicity in design and excellence in performance. These are the two basic reasons that entice web designers and developers to use Macs as their work computer.

There are oodles of third party applications out there for web designers and web developers who use Macs. In this article, we share with you the top ten applications that web designers/developers on a Mac will find useful.

Though not all of them are exclusively for Macs, they are all build with Mac users in mind (and not haphazardly ported over for compatibility).

1. Seashore

Seashore is an open source image editor that utilizes the Mac OS X’s Cocoa Framework. It’s a full-fledged image editor that gives Photoshop a run for its money. Seashore provides a ton of features for its end-user including various textures, gradients, and anti-aliasing for its text and brush tools. Along with those great options, it also supports editing over multiple layers and alpha channels. It’s an awesome image editor for Mac users on a budget.

2. Coda

Coda can be the sole reason for switching to a Mac as a web designer; it is an extremely well-done and intuitive application that makes the web development workflow a breeze. It was designed to compartmentalize website-building processes and for team collaboration. Coda isn’t free, but at less than a hundred dollars, you get a lot bang for the buck.

3. TextMate

TextMate is an comprehensive text editor application designed exclusively for the Mac computer; it is the premier example of how text editors should function. A premium application, a MUST have for all web designers.

4. Paparazzi!

Paparazzi! is a basic tool for the Mac OS X which enables the user to take screenshots of entire web pages without any external editing. This tool relies on the Cocoa API and WebKit framework, written in C. A great tool for designers who need to capture entire web pages for design mockup presentation or as web graphics on a site they’re making.

5. Nvu

Nvu is a high-performance WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor built around Gecko (the rendering engine for Mozilla-based browsers). This application runs on Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later which makes web designing a cinch even to beginning-level web builders.

6. Think

Think is an excellent application for making you focus on the task at hand. This application creates an ‘Illumination Panel’ that replaces the Mac OS dock by creating a list of applications that you use to select the application you want to ‘Focus’ on.  This is an essential application for those that are easily distracted by other things such as Instant Messaging, Twitter, and emails.

7. Aquamacs Emacs

Aquamacs Emacs is an extended version of the original and robust Emacs text editor with an addition of the new Aqua look-and-feel making the application blend right into the Mac OS X user interface. This editor is perfect for people who work with HTML, LaTeX, C/C++, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP and much more.

8. Xee

Xee is a straightforward application for browsing your images. This app can be considered as a replacement for Preview or any other default image viewer pre-installed on the Mac OS X. It’s sleek, fast, and uses very little system resources. Loads of shortcuts and a nice streamlined user interface add to its list of features.

9. Scribus

Scribus is an open source application for creating high quality page layouts for Mac and Linux users. Scribus has an intensive feature set under its clean and impressive GUI. Some of its publishing features include: CMYK Color, Separations, ICC Color management, and flexible PDF Authoring and Editing.

10. Smultron

Smultron is a gratis text editor which can be considered as a replacement for the default text editor that comes along with the Mac. Smultron is quite versatile and easy to use. It is meant to be used on the Mac OS X Leopard 10.5. The editor can be used as a basic text to a complete HTML & Script editor.

(Via Six Revisions.)

From John Gruber’s diary of an App Store reviewer: ‘Not sure what a ‘lingam’ is, but if it means what I think it means, just thinking about it is making mine swell. Jackpot. Rejected app for inappropriate content.’ Tragicomedy ’cause it’s true: [Daring Fireball, Image via Joy of Tech]

(Via Gizmodo.)

WordPress is a great blogging platform with a potential of being an easy to use content management system. This is the third article of our four-part series, “The Comprehensive Guide for a Powerful CMS using WordPress”. We are taking a look at 40+ quality and useful WordPress Plug-ins that will turn a simple WordPress site into a blazing fast dynamic one, with easily managed content, that you and your clients will love to use.

Making Your Content Unbreakable

There is one big drawback to using WordPress as a CMS: the lack of custom content types/groups, an area where developers put restrictions on how clients insert content. This is fairly easy to do with some knowledge of custom fields, but can be a little complicated if your client is new to WordPress. Developers must create workarounds to keep the content clean, portable and relatively unbreakable.

1. More Fields Plugin

More Fields is a WordPress plugin that adds boxes to the Write/Edit page. These boxes contains input fields, so that additional (more) fields can be added to a post. For example, if you write about books, you can add a box where you can enter title and author, etc. The boxes can be placed either to the right or to the left on the Write/Edit page.

Download Plugin

2. Creating Custom Content Type with Flutter Plugin

Flutter is made precisely for CMS-making, allows you to create custom Write Panel (Posts, Pages, and Theme Options). This, basically, is a custom content type in which you can add your own fields. So, if a WordPress installation gives you two different content types (Post and Page), Flutter enables you to add more Write Panels to your likings. You can create any type of field (File Uploads, Audio, Video, Checkboxes, Dropdowns) to make as simple as possible for your client or yourself to enter content.

Download Plugin

3. Post Templates Plugin

If you find yourself writing posts and pages on a regular basis which have the same structure, then this plugin would be a great addition to your WordPress plugin arsenal. This could be very useful for clients who have no idea how to get started to write a new page or post. Written by Vincent Prat, Post Templates plugin helps you save time blogging by letting you save and recall templates for writing posts and pages.

Download Plugin

4. WP-CMS Post Control Plugin

This plugin gives you complete control over your write options. It not only allows you to hides unwanted items like custom fields, trackbacks, revisions etc… but also gives you a whole lot more control over how WordPress deals with creating content! This helps you use WordPress more like a CMS, alowing you to totally customise what your authors see and use.

Download Plugin

Managing Users and their Roles

1. User Access Manager Plugin

This plugin is useful if you need a member area or a private section at your blog or you want that other people can write at your blog but not everywhere. Features include:

• User groups
• Set seperate access for readers and editors
• Set access by user groups
• Set access by post categories
• User-defined post/page title (if no access)
• User-defined post/page text (if no access)
• Optional login form (if no access)
• User-defined comment text (if no access)

Download Plugin

2. Role Scoper Plugin

Role Scoper is a comprehensive enrichment for access control in WordPress, giving you CMS-like control of permissions. Assign reading, editing or administration roles to users or groups on a page-specific, category-specific or other content-specific basis.

Download Plugin

3. Role Manager Plugin

This Plugin allows you to define and manage multiple subscriber profiles – called Roles and their Capabilities. Also you can create new Roles and Capabilities.

Download Plugin

4. Member Access Plugin

Member Access allows a WordPress administrator to make individual posts and pages accessible only to logged-in members. Member Access allows global configuration so that all posts or pages can be viewable by everyone (the default) or only by members, and it also allows each post and page to override the global setting.

Download Plugin

Better & Smart Navigation

1. WP-PageNavi Plugin

Adds a more advanced paging navigation your WordPress blog. Example: Pages (17): [1] 2 3 4 » … Last »

Download Plugin

2. Wordpress Navigation List Plugin

The plugin gives you the ability to create unique site navigation from your pages, categories and users using a Drag ‘n Drop Interface; arrange the items within a group in any arbitrary order. Navigation groups may be composed of any combination of pages, categories, Authors, (Editors, Contributors, Subscribers), internal/external links and list dividers. This plugin has a lot of other great features, you have to check it out.

Download Plugin

3. Multi-level Navigation Plugin

Adds an SEO friendly, accessible dropdown/flyout/slider menu to your WordPress blog. The plugin generates the code necessary to create a Son of Suckerfish horizontal dropdown, vertical flyout or horizontal slider menu. The plugin produces W3C valid HTML and CSS and only requires Javascript to function for very old browsers such as IE 6. Check out the demo here. The options page allows you to choose from a range of options including:

• What content will be displayed in the menu
• Animation speed (how fast the dropdowns appear)
• Mouseover delay
• Hide delay
• Add a second menu

Download Plugin

4. Yoast Breadcrumbs Plugin

Breadcrumbs are the links, usually above the title post, that look like “Home > Articles > WordPress SEO”. They are good for two things: a) They allow your users to easily navigate your site. b) They allow search engines to determine the structure of your site more easily.

These breadcrumbs should link back to the homepage, and the category the post is in. This plugin allows you to add breadcrumbs to your theme.

5. Simple Sidebar Navigation Plugin

This plugin adds a widget into the Widgets dashboard that allows in a simple way, without writing any PHP code on your part, to create custom navigation in any sidebar pre-defined by your WP theme. Features include:

• Flat and multi-level navigation hierarchy for existing pages and custom links.
• Very flexible conditional appearance options.
• Out-of-the-box Suckerfish support.
• Option to add navigation links with custom title, url and target attribute.
• Unlimited number of navigation widgets.
• Optional setting includes blog posts into the navigation selection list (only pages are available by default).
• Support for custom drop-down menus CSS.

Download Plugin

Having a Multilingual Site

Writing multilingual content is already hard enough, so why go extra mile without making sure you already have a good plan to manage translation on your blog. Check out the plugins below that will help you have a fully featured multilingual CMS.

1. WPML Multilingual CMS Plugin

Turns WordPress sites into a fully featured multilingual content management system (CMS). WPML helps it go the extra mile. Features include: 1) Multilingual content support based on Drupal i18n architecture. 2) CMS navigation allows adding drop down menus, breadcrumbs trail and sidebar navigation (all wigetized). 3) Creates internal Sticky Links so that they never break. You can read more about the capabilities of this powerful plugin here.

Download Plugin

2. xLanguage Plugin

xLanguage is a full featured plugin allows you to blog in different language, and allows user to select which version to read. It works for blog post, page, tags, categories. The user language preferences will also select the right theme and plugins MO files.

Download Plugin

3. qTranslate Plugin

qTranslate makes creation of multilingual content as easy as working with a single language. Here are some features:

• qTranslate Services – Professional human and automated machine translation with two clicks
• One-Click-Switching between the languages – Change the language as easy as switching between Visual and HTML
• Language customizations without changing the .mo files – Use Quick-Tags instead for easy localization
• Multilingual dates out of the box – Translates dates and time for you
• Comes with a lot of languages already builtin! – English, German, Simplified Chinese and a lot of others

Download Plugin

Easily Manage Categories, Pages and Posts

1. Idealien Category Enhancements Plugin

Manage category templates as easily as you manage page templates. Select which apply through the post > categories menu using file names that make sense, not category ID numbers. Now any views of the category (or sub-categories) will render the according to the category template selected. Posts in a given category can also use a category-based template.

Download Plugin

2. pageMash > Page Management Plugin

Customise the order your pages are listed in and manage the parent structure with this simple ajax drag-and-drop administrative interface with an option to toggle the page to be hidden from output. Great tool to quickly re-arrange your page menus.

Download Plugin

3. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site. Using a customizable algorithm considering post titles, content, tags, and categories, YARPP calculates a “match score” for each pair of posts on your blog.

Download Plugin

4. Exclude Pages Plugin

This plugin adds a checkbox, “include this page in menus”, which is checked by default. If you un-check it, the page will not appear in any listings of pages (which includes, and is usually limited to, your page navigation menus).

Download Plugin

5. WP No Category Base Plugin

As the name suggests this plugin will completely remove the mandatory ‘Category Base’ from your category permalinks ( e.g. myblog.com/category/my-category/ to myblog.com/my-category/ ).

Download Plugin

SEO

Wordpress by default is pretty decent at letting search engines see what’s going on. But there are a whole bunch of plugins that can be used to make your blog rank better.

1. Google XML Sitemaps Plugin

This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.

Download Plugin

2. All in One SEO Pack Plugin

Optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines: page titles, meta tags, keywords, and descriptions. This plugin allows you to configure them for either your entire blog or on a post by post basis.

Download Plugin

3. Redirection Plugin

Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation.

Download Plugin

4. Permalinks Moved Permanently Plugin

If you just migrated your Wordpress blog from one permalink structure to another, and you don’t want to lose Pagerank or traffic that accesses your blog through the old permalinks, this is for you.

Download Plugin

5. SEO Smart Links Plugin

SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more. SEO Smart Links can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog.

Download Plugin

6. Platinum SEO Pack Plugin

This is an improvised version of the AllinOne SEO plugin. It does everything that AllinOne was doing and also some extra cool features. It takes care of pretty much everything, a bit more advanced than a basic SEO plugin but easy to use as well.

Download Plugin

Highly customizable Widgets

1. Widgets Reloaded Plugin

Widgets Reloaded replaces many of the default widgets with versions that allow much more control. Widgets come with highly customizable control panels. Each widget can also be used any number of times.

Download Plugin

2. Flexi Pages Widget Plugin

Flexi Pages Widget is a highly configurable WordPress sidebar widget to list pages and sub-pages. Can be used as an alternative to the default ‘Pages’ widget. Features include:

• Option to display sub-pages only in parent page and related pages.
• Option to select and exclude certain pages from getting displayed in the list. Alternatively, only certain pages can be displayed by using the ‘include’ option.
• Option to include a link to the home page.
• Other options include title, sort column/order, hierarchical/flat format, show date.
• Multiple instances of the widget. Unlimited number of instances of the widget can be added to the sidebar.

Download Plugin

3. SidePosts Widget Plugin

With this widget you select the category you want, and all entries with this category, will be shown on the sidebar instead the main blog. You will have then a small blog on the sidebar for those special entries. For each entry, you have the link to the post page. You can select the number to post to show and if must show only the post excerpt or the full post content (Also excerpt with thumbnails can be shown).

Download Plugin

4. Query Posts Widget Plugin

This widget has everything you’ll ever need to show posts on your site without touching code. It’s like having a WordPress developer ready to do your bidding all wrapped up in a widget. All you need is a theme that’s widgetized.

It lets you displays posts by nearly any criteria you can imagine using the query_posts() function, except you don’t need to know anything about PHP to use it. You can do all kinds of neat things: Posts by tag, Posts by category, Posts by author, Posts by time/date, Posts by custom field key and/or value, Choose any number, Show pages, Show the full post, excerpt, or even order them in a list, and much more…

Download Plugin

Must Check Plugins

1. Search Everything Plugin

Search Everything increases the ability of the default Wordpress Search, options included: Search Every Page, Search Every Tag, Search Every Category, Search non-password protected pages only, Search Every Comment, Search Every Custom Field, Exclude Posts from search, Exclude Categories from search and more.

Download Plugin

2. Subscribe2 Plugin

Subscribe2 provides a comprehensive subscription management and email notification system for WordPress blogs that sends email notifications to a list of subscribers when you publish new content to your blog. Email Notifications can be sent on a per-post basis or periodically in a Digest email.

Download Plugin

3. Exec-PHP Plugin

The Exec-PHP plugin executes PHP code in posts, pages and text widgets. Features include

• Executes PHP code in the excerpt and the content portion of your posts and pages
• Configurable execution of PHP code in text widgets (for WordPress 2.2 or higher)
• Write PHP code in familiar syntax, eg.

Download Plugin

4. WP e-Commerce Plugin

The WP e-Commerce shopping cart plugin for WordPress is an elegant easy to use fully featured shopping cart application suitable for selling your products, services, and or fees online.

Download Plugin

5. NextGEN Gallery Plugin

NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option. It can turn a regular blog into a powerful photo-blog while giving you all the tools to manage it efficiently and easily.

Download Plugin

6. Contact Form 7 Plugin

Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.

Download Plugin

7. Viper’s Video Quicktags Plugin

Tired of copying and pasting the embed HTML from sites like YouTube? Then this plugin is for you. Simply click one of the new buttons that this plugin adds to the write screen (rich editor included) and then paste the URL that the video is located at into the prompt box — easy as that. You can fully configure how the videos are displayed (width, height, colors, alignment on the page) and much more.

Download Plugin

(via Noupe)

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)

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!.)

In this tutorial, we’ll be showing you how to watch a live feed from your webcam on your iPhone or iPod touch from anywhere in the world.  Setup is pretty simple, basically just download and install a windows program and the necessary app and you’re ready to stream live.

What You’ll Need:

1. WebcamXP Pro
2. iPod touch or iPhone
3. An app called ‘I-C-Livecams‘

How to Setup your Streaming Webcam:

• The first thing you should do is download ‘i-c-livecams’ from the app store and install WebcamXP Pro on your computer. Of course, be sure your webcam is plugged in and you see your webcam’s live feed on webcamXP.
• Click the web/broadcast tab on WebcamXP to show you your IP address and the port that it’s using.

Setting it up:

1. On your iTouch/iPhone start up i-c-livecams.
2. In the private icons section select your iPod or iPhone’s name. (Ex: my ipods name is ‘Matt’s ipod’)
   
   
3. Choose ‘Add a new WebcamXP Camera’
4. Fill in your IP address and your port with the correct information from the web/broadcast tab on WebcamXP. You can name your camera anything you want, if you set a username and password on Webcam XP then also fill in the correct information.For example: Name: Living Room Host or IP address: 0.0.0.0  port: 80 Camera #: 1

   

If all of the information you provided on i-c-livecams was correct you should now be online and watching the live feed on your ipod or iphone.

• Home Automation using the iphone and X10
• How to make your own ringtones
• DIY Multi-Room Wireless Music Remote

(Via HacknMod.com – You name it. We hack it..)

The iPhone OS 3 beta 4 release is out now for developers, but you must install iTunes 8.2 (pre-release) in order to get it. Will let you know what’s new once we find out. [Apple]

(Via Gizmodo.)

Ever reading a story on your phone and want to share it with your friends on Facebook, Digg or Twitter? Many phones make this a challenge, and the effort isn’t worth it. Enter Smub.it, a sharing service that will officially announce an extremely useful service tomorrow – one I’ll probably use myself.

It’s a simple concept: when you’re viewing a web page, enter ‘smub.it/’ in front of the ‘http://’ and Smub serves up the screen below, making it super-easy to share the story right away via email, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Reddit, Delicious or Mixx. You can also bookmark the page on Smub itself.

For a quick example, click here to view this page on Smub.

It’s a straightforward idea that could prove useful. Mobile Twitter users might also want to check out HOW TO: Use Twitter on the Go.

(Via Mashable!.)

You’ve seen countless articles and e-books written about it, but do you know how to market online with Twitter? If you don’t, you’re not alone. Most marketers are still boggled when it comes to using Twitter in their promotion efforts. The main reason is because marketers don’t realize the sheer ingenuity of our favorite microblog’s 140-character limit communication. The reality is that the internet is information overload for most people. The genius of Twitter is that communication is forced into small chunks of information which most people can willingly digest. Presented with the option, people are more inclined to read a sentence or two as opposed to a long, involved blog entry or email! In this article, I will demonstrate how Twitter can not only be used by your business for marketing purposes, but also for customer service, product development, free publicity, and valuable access to experts!

Twitter for Marketing

If marketing entails everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential customers, including all communication, relationship building, and brand recognition – Twitter makes it instant.

For this reason, it is the perfect social networking platform for announcing sales, specials, and promotions. Many larger companies, such as Dell, have a Twitter account to announce sales as soon as they become available. As a small business owner, you can harness the power of Twitter this way too!

If you can get hundreds, or even thousands of people interested in your niche to follow your company’s tweets, you have a targeted list of prospects at your fingertips. Simply tweet a brief detail or two about the special, and include your link. It’s that simple!

A list of businesses on Twitter: http://www.twibs.com

As a marketer, you know that the speed at which you can get your message out to your potential clients before your competition can reach them essentially determines your success. Twitter affords marketers the advantage of communicating with thousands of new prospects at the speed of light, and allows them to see your offer in real time.

Twitter for Customer Service

Many companies are designating human resources and time exclusively to enhance their customer service via social networking. Companies can find out the challenges, questions, and troubles that their clients are facing by reading their tweets to others.

Customer service representatives or public relations liaisons can immediately resolve any problems by engaging themselves in the conversation. Customer service representatives who engage their clientele via Twitter improve their company’s transparency, and show that they not only are concerned about their customers, but they also care about their brand.

Twitter for Product Development

Twitter can be used as an instant survey tool for product development. You can simply ask the likes and dislikes of others with a simple tweet and can incorporate or improve your current products or services.

It’s catching on. In fact, software development corporation Eclipse is working on a Twitter plug-in called Twitterclipse, which will tweet announcements, findings and questions within their development team. It is faster and more convenient than email, and also avails an RSS feed for posting their development updates within the Eclipse website.

Twitter for Free Publicity and Brand Awareness

As you know, free publicity is priceless – and it can be difficult for a small business to get access to the media. Companies regularly pay millions of dollars to imprint their brand in the minds of prospective clients.

With Twitter’s personalization features you can place your brand or company logo on your Twitter page. Because of the viral nature of Twitter, traffic and publicity comes for free.

People will associate your Tweets with your company, and their trust will grow in your products and services.

Twitter Gives You Access to Important People

No other media gives you direct access to leaders in your market like the internet does. Twitter gives you personal access to leaders and mentors that you have only ever dreamt of connecting with.

—
Editor’s Note: Several Twitter related sites provide a means to identify Twitter users in your geographical area or relevant to your business:

http://mrtweet.net
http://www.twellow.com
http://justtweetit.com
http://www.twitterlocal.net
—

Simply follow them, and open up the channels of communication with your tweets! The leaders of your field impart valuable knowledge that you can apply to your online business, and can be a great source of free marketing tips.

Improve Every Aspect Of Your Business With Twitter!

Twitter is extremely simple, but this fact also adds to its versatility. You may not realize the effect of Twitter on your business when your followers are at a single digit – but just imagine the scope of your business reaching tens of thousands of followers! Many online businesses are using Twitter now… what are you waiting for?

By Abe Cherian (c) 2009

“

(Via KDI Media : Savannah, GA.)

Streamlining Your Social Web Presence in 6 Steps: “

Following the advice of social media and Web 2.0 experts, you have established your own blog and joined a number of social sites, including Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, LibraryThing, and Upcoming.org, among others. Now, the experts say you must add content to each of these accounts regularly to keep them dynamic. So, how’s this supposed to make your life easier?

Relax. With some careful planning, you can streamline the process of keeping all of your Social Web accounts fresh and engaging without breaking your back or the bank. The trick is to make your social accounts work together. Most social sites use the concept of open source to make it easy for developers to write applications that enhance the features of the site. For our purposes, we will look at applications that can help us streamline our existing presence in the Social Web.

To demonstrate what I mean about streamlining the process, I’ll start with an example. Imagine that you have the following social media tools and accounts already in place on the Social Web:

• A WordPress Blog
• A Facebook Profile
• A Facebook Page
• A MySpace Page
• A YouTube Account
• A Flickr Account
• A Twitter Account
• An Upcoming.org Account
• A GoodReads Account

Your 6 Step Plan to a Streamlined Social Web Presence

Step 1: Optimize Your Blog Feed

The very first step in streamlining your presence in the Social Web is burning your blog’s feed to Feedburner. This is a free service, and obtaining a FeedBurner account will help you to easily manage and track your feed subscriptions. Once you have burned your feed to FeedBurner, note the URL of your new feed, which will look something like this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MyBlogName .

Step 2: Feed Your Blog Now

You want to make sure that you are getting the most mileage from your blog posts. To do so, feed your blog entries into all of your social accounts that offer blog feeding applications. Remember that each social site may provide its own different way of accomplishing this.

Facebook, for example, allows you to feed your blogs into the Notes section of your Facebook page. Click Edit in the Notes box of your Facebook page and find the option that allows you to import notes from an external blog.

Feeding blog entries into MySpace is a little different. Find and add the application RSS Reader. You can access many MySpace applications by clicking More/Apps Gallery from the main menu of your MySpace homepage.

It is possible to feed your blog posts into Twitter, but blog posts are typically too long for this purpose. If you read on, I will clue you in to a better solution for streamlining your micro-blog entries.

Step 3: Maximize the Use of Your Multimedia

Maximize the exposure of your images and video clips by adding galleries and badges to your blog or Website, and by feeding your images and videos into your social networking profiles and pages.

WordPress has many plugins available for integrating Flickr images. My favorite right now is Flickr Tag, a plugin that allows you to easily place your Flickr images right into your blog posts, and create galleries.

A Flickr badge is a snippet of Flash or HTML code that you can place on the sidebar of your Website or blog that will pull in and highlight random or specific photos from your Flickr account. Find out more by going to: http://www.flickr.com/badge.gne.

Similarly, you can embed video galleries into your blog or Website by using your YouTube channels. After you’ve added videos to your YouTube channel, you can generate code for a video gallery and place this code on your Website or blog.

To feed images from Flickr into your Facebook page and MySpace profile, find the appropriate application and add it. For Facebook, I use an application called My Flickr; for MySpace, use Happy Flickr.

You can place videos on your Facebook page by implementing an application called YouTube Box, and using the application YouTube Favorites, you can display video clips on your MySpace profile.

Step 4: Integrate Other Social Tools

The way in which you proceed in step 4 depends entirely upon which social tools and Websites make up your Social Web presence. In the example I have created, we have accounts with Upcoming.org (a social event calendar) and GoodReads (a niche book sharing and author site) that have not yet been integrated. By searching the applications in Facebook and MySpace, you’ll find that Facebook offers an application that allows you to integrate your Upcoming.org events, and both Facebook and MySpace include applications that allow you to display your GoodReads books and book reviews.

Step 5: Take Advantage of Streamlining Tools

Using the social tool, Ping.fm, you can add short posts to your mini feeds on Facebook, MySpace, and your micro-blogging sites like Twitter and Jaiku. Ping.fm is a useful tool that lets you post one brief entry, or often a status update, and feed it into a number of social sites.

Step 6: Research and Repeat

The very nature of the Social Web is connecting people through social platforms and applications; therefore, when deciding whether or not to invest time and resources into a new social tool, it’s best to research the ways that tool will accommodate your existing Social Web presence. Can you feed in your blog posts? Does it allow you to import images from a photo sharing site or video clips from from your video sharing community? Have sites like Ping.fm integrated the new tool yet, or do your existing social sites offer applications to integrate the new tool?

When you do decide to integrate a new social tool or Website, do so as best you can by repeating the applicable steps presented above.

By Deltina Hay

“

(Via KDI Media : Savannah, GA.)