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

 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

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:

• HootSuite Home Page: http://www.hootsuite.com
• Splitweet Home Page: http://www.splitweet.com
• Newbtech’s Twitter Page: http://www.twitter.com/newbtech

It turns out that its simplicity is captivating. Sure the functionality is limited, but it was simple enough that almost anybody can use it. Start coding, then click Run, and you get instant results. I think this is the perfect tool to get somebody to be interested in programming. One of our colleagues was looking for something to get his kid started in programming, and there is no need for him to look further :)

The “Intellisense” is also pleasing to the eyes, it allows you to scroll over what you can use in your code. The site mentions that there are only 15 keywords for you to use, thus reconfirming Small Basic’s goal to keep the programming experience as simple as possible.

Anybody looking for other diagrams to try out can look here: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Tessellation.html . It will be a good exercise to think of ways on how to make your turtle draw diagrams like these out:

What I’ve shared here is just the tip of the iceberg. Small Basic is ideal for anybody wanting to get their feet wet in the world of programming. Or if you want to recall your experience in writing your first program, give Small Basic a look

We will over the next month or so come up with more detailed articles on this simple yet excellent piece of software.

Here are some links that may be useful:

• Home Page of Microsoft Small Basic
• Getting Started Guide
• Small Basic Forums
• Small Basic Blog
• Small Basic WIKI

-article prepared by Bryan Hong 19th March, 2009