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A Retweet Mapping Tool EmergesJanuary 2

I just stumbled upon a new tool that maps out the re-tweets occurring on Twitter. It’s called, simply, the ReTweet Mapper. (Actually, I didn’t Stumble Upon it, I found it on FriendFeed, of course.)

The ReTweet Mapper is a tool created by Dan Zarrella, who calls himself a social and viral marketing scientist. He describes his creation as a system that indexes all the “ReTweets” and maps them to each other in a visual display. Dan says the system is still pretty rough, but he gives us a good idea of what it looks like:

The tweet streams are hierarchical, collapsible structures showing how the tweets and re-tweets are related. In addition to the

What the Heck is Going On with Facebook email?December 23 2008

I just tried sending an email on the Facebook site and I got a message in red saying that it could not be sent. Thinking it must have been some kind of fluke, I exited the page and returned to my Inbox to try again.

This time the email went through, but displayed the following message:

Soon? How soon is soon?!

This, people, is exactly why social networks are not a good replacement for actual email systems.

How To Fix The New Google ReaderDecember 5 2008

As you’ve probably heard by now, Google Reader was updated yesterday with a completely new UI. After the initial shock (change is scary) and once I realized that all the features were still there (I thought they had been removed, but they were just hidden), I was able to calmly assess the changes and determine whether I really hated the new version of Reader or whether I loved it.

The truth is…well…neither, actually. I could live with it, I guess. I’m not raving about how great the new look is, though. For one thing, I spend my day in Google Reader – all day long, I’m scrolling through feeds. And while I agree that a stark white background works on a site like Google.com, a full day in the new greader is somewhat painful on the eyes. The new Reader is dang bright.

Thankfully, I was not alone in my opinion. Some enterprising Greasemonkey userscript creator named trashrockx has now saved me from the glare of the new Google Reader and even made some improvements along the way.

With their New Google

OMG! Gmail Just Got ThemesNovember 19 2008

I can’t believe how awesome this is:

 

UPDATE: THE POST IS BACK

For some reason, Google deleted the post. It read:

 

Posted by Annie Chen, Gmail engineer

Gmail fans have been building unofficial extensions to spice up their inboxes for a while, but up til now themes haven’t been an integral part of Gmail. We wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we’re launching today, there’s a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your inbox into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company. There’s even an old school ascii theme (Terminal) which was the result of a bet between two engineers — it’s not exactly practical, but it’s great for testing out your geek cred. We’ve also done a minor facelift to Gmail’s default look to make it crisper and cleaner — you might notice a few colors and pixels shifted around here and there.

As you can see from these photos taken around ou

Am I A Google Reader Over-Sharer? Are You?November 19 2008

I’ve been taking a closer look at my Google Reader feeds lately, and, as always, I’m trying to stem the tide so the signal can rise above the noise. I’ve done a little spring cleaning, which for me doesn’t mean unsubscribing – I’m always hesitant to do that – but instead, I’ve been re-categorizing.

Is that feed really a “Can’t Miss” read? Shouldn’t that blogger be on my B-List? Doesn’t this feed belong in my “Ideas” folder?

One of the things that made the most difference was the addition of a brand-new folder I’m calling “noisy tech news.” This is now the home to any feed that drives me batty with zillions of posts per day yet doesn’t really provide that much signal. Why keep these feeds you may wonder? Well, for one thing, it’s great to have them in there for searches.

I’ve also put the aggregate feeds in here for sites like CNET and other producers of mass amounts of content. It’s not to say that CNET doesn’t have signal, but when you subscribe to a bunch of their feeds, you’re likely to see duplicate items and a lot of stuff that’s not relevant to you. However, other CNET favs, like