newbTech » Twitter http://www.newbtech.com a technology and online games freak... Thu, 23 Jun 2011 23:52:35 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 Twitter Theme Finally Updated http://www.newbtech.com/2009/05/twitter-theme-finally-updated.html http://www.newbtech.com/2009/05/twitter-theme-finally-updated.html#comments Thu, 28 May 2009 00:34:51 +0000 dee http://www.newbtech.com/2009/05/twitter-theme-finally-updated.html After procrastinating for ages, I decided to give our twitter page a bit of a make-over. Following the excellent guide by Chris Spooner (Twitter Background Design How-To and Best Practices @ Blog.SpoonGraphics), I think I’ve finally come up with a look and feel that I was happy with.

image thumb14 Twitter Theme Finally Updated  http://www.twitter.com/newbtech

Its a little on the lighter side, but I think it works for me :)

My previous attempts was a little too Web 2.0’ish… so i decided to change the colour scheme around a bit to make it look less so:

 image thumb12 Twitter Theme Finally Updated image thumb13 Twitter Theme Finally Updated

I actually wanted a darker “logobar”, but then decided against it.

Anyways, let me know what you think :) and if anyone wants any backgrounds done, I’ll looking for practice :)

]]> http://www.newbtech.com/2009/05/twitter-theme-finally-updated.html/feed 0 2 Web Based Applications To Manage Multiple Twitter Accounts http://www.newbtech.com/2009/05/2-web-based-applications-to-manage-multiple-twitter-accounts.html http://www.newbtech.com/2009/05/2-web-based-applications-to-manage-multiple-twitter-accounts.html#comments Mon, 18 May 2009 04:25:37 +0000 dee http://www.newbtech.com/?p=423 It is quite common to build up a huge list of people/accounts that you follow on Twitter. So much so, that tweets can be flying in faster than you can read them. While using tools like TweetDeck can give you better control over your tweets, ultimately it doesn’t stop the amount of scrolling you have to do to sift through all the information.

Even worse when you have a single account that subscribes to work as well as personal interests. Many people have resorted to creating multiple twitter accounts to manage their subscriptions. This is a good alternative, but then it can get painful sending a tweet across more than one account.

While I started with two accounts (one for personal and one for newbtech), I’m now favoring separating my @newbtech account further into areas of interest (such as Photoshop, Linux, collaboration, storage, etc). This way, each account can have its own followers (and follows). I needed an application that can support easy reading of these accounts as well as the ability to send a tweet out across multiple accounts…

My requirements are for a web based client rather than a downloaded/installed one simply because I tend to use these across multiple machines/operating systems…


1. HootSuite

image thumb2 2 Web Based Applications To Manage Multiple Twitter Accounts HootSuite is a web based application, that can allow you:

- Send tweets to multiple accounts at once.
- Schedule the sending of tweets so that they get sent at a later date
- Check multiple accounts at once
- Provides click stats (if you are using the ow.ly shortening service) to track how many people clicked on your provided URL’s.

Additionally, it provides a powerful multiple editor functionality. This allows you to specify another user to add tweets to your twitter account. Handy for corporate twitter accounts which may have more than one person entering in tweets.

In order to use HootSuite, you must first go to their website and register. This will be the user that will access all your twitter accounts. Once registered, you can add as many twitter accounts as you want.

HootSuite does provide for a nice and friendly wizard when going through the registration process if you need to add accounts during registration. Adding additional accounts afterwards is a simple process started by clicking “Add Twitter Profile” button on the top left of the screen.

The user interface is simple yet powerful and HootSuite has a comprehensive FAQ section to lead you through its common functions. You can quickly jump between profiles and send tweets to multiple accounts.

Lastly, it even has a “Hootlet” that sits on your browser bar and allows you to quickly tweet a site that you may wish to share with others.

2. Splitweet

 

image thumb3 2 Web Based Applications To Manage Multiple Twitter Accounts Splitweet is similar to HootSuite where its a web based interface to allow you to manage multiple twitter accounts at once. Again, similarly, you need to register at the Splitweet site to manage all your accounts.

It has a simpler interface than HootSuite with less functionality but it can allow you to tweet to multiple accounts, filter accounts as required and has a section on the home page to follow “brands” (search items).

Using color tags to visually separate the tweets, it allows you to hide or add accounts so that you can quickly go through your accounts and quickly scan your relevant subject areas.

Designed and managed by three developers, its an excellent alternative for people who like a quick tool to check all their accounts at once. Splitweet is fast and simple to use. It is very casual friendly and provides a user interface that is intuitive and easy to learn. 

In closing..

Separating your twitter account into several smaller ones is a good idea when you are following a broad range of subjects. This also gives your “followers” an option to follow only the areas they would be interested in and not having to subscribe to all your comments.

Using these applications, you can manage your tweets via a web interface instead of downloading and installing an application. There are other applications out there that will do the same things, but these are currently my applications of choice for web-based twittering.

Relevant Links:

]]> http://www.newbtech.com/2009/05/2-web-based-applications-to-manage-multiple-twitter-accounts.html/feed 0 How To Create Your Own Twitter Background http://www.newbtech.com/2009/04/how-to-create-your-own-twitter.html http://www.newbtech.com/2009/04/how-to-create-your-own-twitter.html#comments Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 dee http://newbtech.net/2009/04/how-to-create-your-own-twitter-background.html

Sites such as Twitter and Facebook make it easy for everyday people to quickly get an online presence and start networking. The newest case is Twitter where practically everybody is micro-blogging.

Your profile page is like a shop window to others viewing you and people can spend hours perfecting their profile pages. Twitter, while having a nice set of clean templates built in already, also gives you the opportunity to personalize it.

There are a number of sites that has additional pre-made templates, but the fun of personalizing is giving you the choice to design your very own.

Online Designers

http://www.freetwitterdesigner.com

image15 thumb How To Create Your Own Twitter Background One of the best flash based Twitter background designers I’ve found so far. It has a limited selection of backgrounds templates, but that shouldn’t stop you from creating your own.

Supports adding shapes, images and texts and as each item is an “object”, these can be edited further to rotate and resize. It even has image filters to allow you to blend your images into your background easily.

Once the background is created, its a simple process to save the image and upload into Twitter. I love the preview feature and the ease of creating your own professional looking Twitter backgrounds.

http://www.twitbacks.com/

image14 thumb How To Create Your Own Twitter Background Similar to FreeTwitterDesigner, Twitbacks allows you to choose from a wide range of pre-made backgrounds and apply your own personalization on them.

Twitbacks has a wizard type approach that asks you some questions to help fill out the profile area in the background. This is preferred by people who cannot work with a blank canvas.

The only gripe I had when playing with this site was the fact that you need to create an “account” where your backgrounds will be saved to.

Offline Designers

Spoon Graphics

image4 How To Create Your Own Twitter Background For the more graphically skilled in us, I would recommend Chris Spooner’s blog which has (amongst some excellent Photoshop tutorials) how to make you very own Twitter background using Adobe Photoshop.

This post also has some excellent design practices that you can follow when creating your own Twitter background.

Chris includes a PSD document that you can open in Photoshop as a starting point and offers step by step instructions on how he created his own Twitter background. As always, his tutorials are excellent and easily followed. It certainly gave me a lot of ideas on how to structure our designs so that they stand out from others.

Conclusion

I haven’t had a chance to design my Twitter page (http://www.twitter.com/newbtech) yet, but it will be on my list of things to do :) Feel free to link your twitter pages as comments so i can view your efforts!

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