While there are probably a good number of apps that I use on a daily basis, there are only a few dvelopement companies behind these tools that I actually have a strong admiration/nerd-crush for. One of these companies is Panic, creator of my all-time favorite FTP client and Web Development tools Transmit & Coda. On their blog they typically show-off upcoming features, status updates on various projects and just all-around random shit that they find interesting online. Trust me, while it’s definitely a company blog they’ve got a loyal following thanks to the interesting posts that pepper the typical product/marketing dev. updates. This is a prime example. They just posted a pic/feature-list on a new project that they’ve been working on that’s an easy-to-digest project status-board, or as they’ve called it “the panic board.” Primarily using AJAX this status board will give any team member privy to their internal network a one-screen update on where in the development cycles any number of projects might be in. Not only that but according to the blog it also incorporates streaming twitter updates, email announcements, the company calendar and even the local Tri-Met Bus Arrival calendar for employees who rely on the bus to get to and from work (hey, they’ve got an API, why not use it?!). The blog post then goes on to make any data nerd squeal with the admission that they’re using a 46″ Samsung LCD Video Wall Display to keep the team within eyeshot of the status board. Very cool.

Now by no means is this the first or even one of the first examples of global ‘status board’ type pages that have been setup for both internal and external use. One of my favorite examples of a public project status page is the one featured on the right in the header image, found over on the Culture Code company website. These are the guys behind the OSX & iPhone to-do application called “Things.” They’ve created a project status page in the form of an airport arrival/departure screen. What’s cool about this is as the user you’re able to see not only the status on various product updates, but also see who in the company is working on that particular issue and when they last updated the sheet.

Other notable one-page project update tools is one recently put in place by the Boulder office of ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, shown below.

It’s a quick way of seeing how far along any given project is in the office, sorting by account, due date, job-type, Creative Director or Producer assigned to the piece. It’s also got a status bar so if you’re across the room you can see at a glance whether or not something has already started (or is about to be finished). They apparently have this sucker projected on the main wall in the inner-depths of the office. Having been forced to deal with so many archiac ways of managing projects at advertising agencies, this is definitely a step in the right direction (if you’re a project manager/producer/in the traffic dept.). I’m sure the creatives will hate this visual reminder of what work they haven’t done yet….so bonus points are awarded there. What it needs though is some color, maybe even little avatars/graphics to help people find specific types of projects without having to scan the entire board…just a thought.

Here are some twitter tools/tricks that you’ll probably never see in 99% of those ‘twitter lists’ out there. When you have so many applications that do either the same thing but with a different face or don’t really do anything at all, these are some tricks/tools that will actually help you stay productive…especially if you’re a Twitter/data junkie.

TweepML
Before there was twitter lists, there was TweepML. The funny thing is I still use this more than twitter lists because you can easily import/export your lists in csv format. Essentially its simple format designed to help share lists of twitter users. Plus you can auto-follow part or all of TweepML lists directly from within the site. two thumbs up.

TwitPic JSON API
This app was released upon the world by Remy Sharp when he wanted an easier way to pull out all of his uploaded photos from TwitPic (Their API only allows you to upload to the site, not download from your account).Source is available on GitHub.

Twavatar
If you’ve ever developed a twitter app that pulls a users profile picture you’ve undoubtedly run into the problem that occurs every time that they change it, all of a sudden the link doesn’t work and the photo’s gone! Well, fret no more because Damon Cortesi (@dacort) put out an appspot hosted permalink to be able to grab anyone’s updated twitter profile picture. Very useful.

Amy Iris – An AI chat bot for twitter. This one’s a very easily adaptable AI chat bot for twitter. The possibilities are endless for adaption into your projects. Check it out, it’s really a cool framework that they give you.

Now the last one isn’t a tool but rather a Twitter trick:

Want to download ANYONE’s previous 3,200 tweets? Easy! Just fire off the following curl command replacing where it says username with the desired tweeter’s name and you’ll soon have the last 3,200 tweets of theirs all to yourself. This one is also courtesy of @dacort.

curl -O “http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/username.xml?count=100&page=[1-32]“

Brand management firm ElectricArtists just recently launched Trackingtwitter, a site that tracks media, entertainment and consumer product accounts on the microblogging site.

Trackingtwitter follows Zappos, Whole Foods, Starbucks, Jet Blue and Comcast, among others. It broadcasts the brand category (“sports,” “television,” etc.), the Twitter usernames, number of followers, most recent tweet and any personal notes they may have collected about the account.

Qwitter

This is my latest addiction. It’s a free service that sends you an email update whenever someone un-follows your twitter account. I don’t know why, but I figure they send you an email when someone starts to follow you, they might as well send one when they leave.

Tweetdeck

Pretty much this is Twitter for those of you with too many ‘groups’ or followers. It lets you break down your ‘tweets’ into separate feeds that you determine. These can be based on a specific topic, affiliation, location or any other attribute you manage to dream up. It’s also an Adobe Air desktop application that’s still in beta, so there are a few bugs from time-to-time.

Twitt(url)y

Here’s a service that tracks all the links posted on Twitter and ranks them based on the number of recent appearances. There are then many different filter options you can run on the list to narrow it down and even an export function to grab it as an RSS feed.

Twitterfeed

Twitterfeed takes any RSS feed and posts it to your twitter account. Made specifically for auto-updating your twitter account every time you post a new entry on your blog, Twitterfeed can easily be used to post new entries from in just about any RSS feed (i.e. baseball scores from espn.com).

EasyTweets

Now here’s a unique new service that’s still in beta and aimed at those trying to utilize Twitter as a marketing tool. With EasyTweets you can manage multiple Twitter accounts, schedule future tweets (i.e. special announcements), post items from your RSS feed and more. It’s still pretty new but is shaping up to be a great utility for managing your brand identity on Twitter.

#Hashtags

#Hashtags are a way to automatically add your tweet to a specific category, for instance lets say I wanted to create a single location for anyone to be able to add to and see what’s being said about NYE09 on Twitter. I would just go and create the hashtag #NYE09 and anytime that a tweet contained #NYE09, it would automatically be added to the hashtag.org website. The beauty of this service is each hashtag has its own RSS feed and usage statistics. To start using hashtags all you have to do is follow @hashtags and anything with a # in front of it will be added to that specific group.

TwitterKeys

These aren’t really a ‘must use’ but they are pretty neat. They’re icons that twitter accepts as valid characters in tweets. To use them, just copy and paste the desired icon into your message box and voila!

TwitterPatterns

A free collection of unique background patterns for twitter. Pretty cool designs to choose from created by the folks from olivemanna.

TwitterMail

Here’s a service that lets you email twitter updates to your account as well as gives you the option to have all your twitter replies emailed back to you.

Twitscoop.com

Here’s a cool new service that monitors keyword density on twitter to show us what the ‘Hot Trends’ might be, or at least what is the most popular topic. It’s updated every 20 seconds and also has a widget & RSS feed for your own personal use.

Monitter

Here’s a brand-spanking-new service that lets your monitor/track twitter for up to three separate terms in real-time. It also lets you narrow the results based on the users location. RSS feeds available as well.

TweetBurner

It’s a URL shortening service that also lets you track how many times people click on your link. Works with both Twitter and FriendFeed.

Twist

This is a cool little tool that lets you compare trends in Twitter through a variety of different graphical methods. It also has the latest “Hot Before” and “Hot Now” terms sweeping across the Twittsphere. This may look familiar because it was used a lot to show the difference in social media mentions that Barack Obama received compared to McCain in the last few weeks of the election.

TweetStats

Graph your Twitter stats including tweets per hour, tweets per month, tweet timeline and your reply statistics.

Twitter Search (formerly Summize)

Real-time searching of what’s being said on Twitter. Each search provides it’s own RSS feed along with the ability to search for specific users (i.e. @brentter). Formerly known as Summize, it was purchased by Twitter earlier this year. One more thing to note, it auto-updates with each new addition your search.

So, what do you use to manage your Twitter account? Tell me on here or by following me at @brentter on Twitter.

MyIPNeighbors.com – Find out what other domains are hosted on your IP. Perfect for seeing who else is on the same shared-hosting server that your account uses.

BustaName.com – Fast domain searching, including the ability to check a bulk list of domains to see what is available!

Popuri.us – A great tool that with one click can tell you the link popularity of any domain based on its ranking (Google Page Rank, Technorati, Alexa, etc..)

BuiltWith.com – Website and SEO analysis. Find out what technology/software a website is using, even what type of server and advertising programs it has in place!




Find out who your neighbors are! You can use the above tools for a variety of purposes, including checking up on your competition as well as making sure your webhost isn’t just a re-seller. Instead go to the source for cheaper rates!