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2007 was the first year I used Twitter extensively. I started off heavy, lost interest then picked it back up in the middle of the year thanks to programs like Twitterrific and Twitterberry. Now thanks to Damon Cortesi, who hacked up a quick and dirt script, you can see a visualization of my Twitter activity for 2007 above.

Feel free to add me on Twitter - http://twitter.com/the8thsign

So Google gobbled up Finish microblogger Jaiku today. I’m a user of Twitter but I do have a Jaiku account and actually like what Jaiku is doing. They offer more of a Twitter+LIfestream experience that Im interested in but just like Pownce, all my friends are on Twitter so thats where I am. One of the more interesting features that Jaiku does is Jaiku Mobile, which offer integration into your cell phone. Only Nokia phones are supported at this time but here is an excert right from Jaiku about what Jaiku Mobile is:

Jaiku Mobile works like the phone’s regular phone book, and enhances the standard contact list with presence information. It displays the buddy icon, availability, latest Jaiku message, and location for you and your Jaiku contacts in your contact list. It enables you to

* Browse and post Jaikus
* Add comments
* Share your availability based on your ring profile (green light = ringing, yellow light = vibrate, red light = silent)
* Share your location (neighborhood, city, country) based on cellular network towers
* Share your calendar events (if you don’t want to share your calendar, Jaiku only displays your status as “busy” when an event is active)
* Share who you’re with based on nearby Bluetooth devices

Imagine that you pull up a contact on your iPhone and it shows the person is at work based on the cell tower they are on. But it also shows that their last update says “Lunch” so you know you can call. Or it reads their calendar and marks them as busy because they’re in a meeting. That’s epic. There has been a lot of take about a gPhone from Google and I can only wish something like this makes it into there. Even better would be Google and Apple getting together to make this work on the iPhone.

I’m going to wait and see what Google has in-store for Jaiku just like everyone else but if you are on Jaiku and would like to add me, my username is the8thsign. If you a Mac user, check out the Twitterific-esque client Juhu.

Still having trouble finding a Nintendo Wii 6 months after launch? Me too but the guys over at UNEASYsilence are giving away a Wii Sports-less Wii for free. What’s the catch you ask? Well for starters you need to be lucky as the winner will be picked at random and second all you need to do is spread the word about the contest. Blog about it, bookmark it on del.icio.us, digg it, twitter it, tumblr about it, they don’t care. After you you link to the giveaway, just post the link as a comment and just wait. I entered the last giveaway they won but walked away empty handled but who knows about this time.

The guys over at the Icon Factory released a great new Twitter client for Mac OS X. I’ve been using Twidget and TwitterPost but this is going to replace both of them.

Features:

• Clean, concise UI with small desktop footprint
• Auto refreshing at user defined intervals
• Highlights new tweets since last refresh
• Auto show / hide when new tweets arrive
• Single click access to user profile pages
• Switch between friend and public tweets easily
• Keyboard shortcuts for list navigation and more
• Menubar app that doesn’t take up Dock space
• Audio notification for new tweets

The interface is slick. The program sits in your menubar and pops up when there is a new tweet. The window has a small footprint, can be expanded to see more tweets and is semi-transparent so its not intrusive. You can even set the window to disappear after a set time so you don’t have to worry about closing it each time.

[Download]

What are you doing? Probably the first question most us ask anyone when we talk to them. Enter Twitter.

Twitter is a web service that allows you type in what your doing at that exact moment and have it uploaded into an RSS like feed. You can see what your friends are doing and they can see what your doing. You get get friend notifications by either the web, have an IM sent, or SMS their cell.

You can send you updates via web, IM and SMS or if you like, you can use a standalone app like TwitterPost or a Dashboard Widget like Twidget. I prefer a combination of IM and the dashboard widget. One problem I have getting Twitter to work on my Blackberry Pearl. AIM uses SMS messages so I don’t want to use that. GTalk would be an option as I have it installed but Twitter only allows one IM protocol to be active at one time. I’m just waiting for a mobile Twitter site or a Java app. They even have a Wordpress Plugin that will post when making blog entries. i got pretty tired of it after a day or so tho. It was buggy and didn’t work well with ecto so I uninstalled it.

I found Twitter while trying to get my Lifestream working (which it still isn’t and cant seem to figure out why) and now al ot of people are starting to use it including Nick Starr, Thomas Hawk, Robert Scoble and Kristin Pishdadi.

Please feel free to add me, I’m at http://twitter.com/jadedhalo, and I’ll add you back.