Twitter lists are a great way to group people into various categories, filter conversations, keep up with experts within a specific field and track a topic without needing to follow all of the relevant users — and can even be used as an RSS reader replacement. Despite being such a new feature, people are already using lists as a measure of influence.
I’ve spent the last few years working with online communities and collaboration technologies, and have come to expect to be able to collaborate with people when using online social tools. As a result, I wish that Twitter lists were more collaborative. Right now, Twitter lists and accounts have a one-to-one relationship. I create a list, and I’m the only person who can edit it. I started thinking about this limitation when Rael Dornfest created his Portland Food Cart list. I’m a huge fan of the Portland food cart scene, so I decided to follow his list instead of creating yet another one. The downside was that as there were some food carts missing from his list, I needed to send @replies to Rael to get him to add them — I couldn’t just add them myself. Read the rest of this entry »
The folks at Ribbit Mobile are offering 100 invitations to WebWorkerDaily readers for the beta of their new communication service. Just sign up on the reservations page, and enter the invite code “wwd09″ in the appropriate box.
Ribbit Mobile has more features than Google Voice, and reminds me a bit of VoxOx, which I wrote about a few days ago. This service looks very promising, but, like VoxOx, it isn’t finished yet. I’ve been unable to test it fully, because it doesn’t yet support Sprint cellphones. I also can’t get my contact list to import, either from a CSV file or through Plaxo (the only options Ribbit Mobile supports). I hope to post a fuller review soon.
Try it out, and let us know how Ribbit Mobile works for you.
Nimbuzz has launched a premium calling service called NimbuzzOut that adds the ability to use the mobile messaging client to make calls to wireless and landline phones worldwide, as reported by Om over on GigaOM.
Om has been using the pre-release version of NimbuzzOut for about a month and recommends it for making cheap international calls — the call quality is good and the app is easy to use. Check out Om’s post for full details.
Have you tried NimbuzzOut? What do you think of the call quality?
Bill On Site offers the ability to manage invoices from your mobile phone. No matter where you are, as long as your phone has a web browser, you can send an invoice to your client immediately — you don’t need to have a computer at hand. Read the rest of this entry »
37signals’ Haystack promises to make finding a web designer easy, offering a simplified way to search for clients looking to hire a professional. While it’s a useful tool for someone with a web design project, it can also prove useful for web designers. Read the rest of this entry »
Internet-based communication is changing so quickly these days that there seems to be an endless stream of beta releases. Yesterday, Simon wrote about some of the latest browser betas; let’s look at a few products and services for interacting with social networks, Twitter and instant messaging.
I don’t generally like living on the bleeding edge, but some betas are very usable, and I’ve already incorporated them into my daily workflow. Others look promising, but are not stable or are lacking too many features right now. But all of the following are worth trying, and watching as they develop. We’ll review them more thoroughly as they mature. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: adium, adobe air, beta, brizzly, Email, Facebook, facebook chat, file sharing, fluid, Google Reader, imo.im, myspace, seesmic, sms, socialite, tweetdeck, tweetminer, twitter, video, voxox
As a web worker who routinely switches back and forth from Windows to Mac, I look for web conferencing services that are Mac-friendly, because we no longer work in a strictly Windows world.
Citrix’s GoToMeeting, part of the Citrix Online collaborative suite, is one such service. It also meets one of my other prime requirements — the client is easily installable by users of all levels. One thing that will spoil a web conference before it’s even started is when participants have a hard time installing the local client so they can’t join the conference. This issue can happen to even the most experienced web worker, not just the technology neophyte. Read the rest of this entry »
Much of the time, we don’t see a lot of our fellow web workers. Every once in a while, though, we have to put together an event that lets us meet in person. 
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
