Filed under: Windows, Freeware, Social Software, Beta

8hands is a desktop client for keeping up with your contacts on a number of social networking platforms including MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. When I first checked out an alpha version of the application over a year ago, I was impressed with the way it brought information from all of these networks together in once place. This week the 8hands team released a public beta version of the software, and while the interface is a bit prettier, I’m not sure it’s any more useful. In fact, I have to say the latest version of 8hands is actually a step backward.

8hands beta does add a few new features that are important, like the ability to reply to twitter contacts, or write on your friends’ Facebook walls directly from the 8hands client. But the program is surprisingly short on customization options. For instance, there doesn’t appear to be any way to turn off the annoying ringing sound that accompanies every status notification. That means if you have more than a few dozen contacts, odds are you’re going to be hearing a ring every few seconds.

And while tools like Digsby and Twhirl let you click a tab just to see replies or messages people have sent to you, 8hands just mushes all of the status updates from all of your friends on every network together. When I logged into 8hands for the first time in about 10 months, the program didn’t automatically download the latest updates from my social networks. Instead it told me that my most recent messages were 282 days old. I had to log out of my Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts and sign in again in order to get more recent updates.

A year ago I was excited about 8hands’ potential. But it’s taken more than 12 months for the team to move the software from alpha to beta and the application is still pretty rough around the edges.

8hands social networking client for Windows goes beta originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0

There’s so much good content on the web that even RSS power-users can feel like they’re missing something. If you’re looking for something fresh to read, you might want to give SuggestRSS a try. It analyzes your feeds and makes recommendations based on data from the hundreds of other people in its database, along with an estimate of the chance that you’ll like each suggestion.

SuggestRSS uses a tool that you may or may not be familiar with, the OPML file. Serious RSS fiends know that OPML is a list of RSS feeds you subscribe to. You can export an OPML file from most RSS readers, and that’s what SuggestRSS looks at to make recommendations. That way it’s not tied to any particular reader. As for the results, they’re reasonably useful. In my test, I got a good mix of blogs I already knew about and some I’d never heard of.

SuggestRSS knows which blogs you should be reading originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Social Software, Search, web 2.0, Web

Blog search engine Twingly has launched a new service: a Microblog search engine. Twitter recently acquired search service Summize and has integrated the search engine somewhat sloppily into its page. But Twingly Microblog Search lets you get up to results from a number of of services all at once.

The new tool lets you search for keywords on Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, and other services, including the now-defunct Pownce. Of course, Twitter is the most highly trafficked microbloging service that Twingly indexes, so the vast majority of search results still come from Twitter unless you uncheck the Twitter box.

You can also grab an embeddable Twingly widget that will show the latest search results on your blog or web site, or you can subscribe to an RSS feed or sign up for email alerts for topics.

Unlike Summize, Twingly Microblog Search doesn’t provide real-time results. There’s a delay of about five minutes, but the Twingly team promises to fix this in a future release.

Twingly launches microblog search engine originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 20 Jan 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Fun, Social Software, iPhone

No, not that kind of pee. Tweetie, a popular iPhone Twitter app, has introduced something they’re calling the App Store Popularity EnhancEr (PEE, for short.) It’s a scheme to make Tweetie more useful, while also improving its rankings in the iTunes app store. It’s also for sale for use in other people’s iPhone apps, too.

What does PEE do? It adds on a fart app and a flashlight, those ubiquitous features that each have dozens of 99-cent standalone versions in the app store.

If you have Tweetie and you want to turn on PEE, it’s in the Tweetie prefs in your Settings app under advanced. Once you open Tweetie the flashlight is right there under “More,” and the fart sounds play whenever you swipe horizontally across a row in the main tweets view.

It might be important to mention that Tweetie 1.2 also adds Instapaper integration, a landscape keyboard mode, image compression control, and an update to the UI theme.

If you’re a developer interested in adding PEE for your own app, you should know that it costs 20 bucks, but Atebits will throw in a copy of their slick OS X drawing app, Scribbles, for free. Seeing how Scribbles normally costs $20 by itself, that’s not so bad. Plus, you’ll be doing your part to make the legions of redundant 99-cent flashights and fartmakers on the app store obsolete.

It’s practically community service.

Tweetie 1.2 introduces PEE to the iPhone originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Features, Windows, Open Source, How-Tos, Social Software

Pidgin is a great multi-protocol IM client. Out of the box it provides support for 15 different protocols, including most of the important ones: MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk, ICQ, and XMPP to name a few. Two glaring omissions include Facebook IM and Twitter - both of which are built-in to Digsby by default.

Thanks to the developers of two plugins, a couple quick downloads and some simple instructions can remedy the situation with minimal effort. To top it off, the finished product only uses about 20mb of memory - under half what Digsby consumed on my machine.

If you want to see the actual screens, skip to the gallery now.

Clarification: Ping.fm does not do this. Yes, it will update multiple statuses for you via IM, but it won’t let you chat with Facebook friends or send you Twitter updates for people you follow.

Let’s start with Twitter.

If you don’t have a Gmail account, go sign up for one so you can add a gtalk buddy later on. You’ll also need to go to Twitter and follow twitter@twitter.com.

Continue reading How to add Twitter and Facebook IM support to Pidgin for Windows

How to add Twitter and Facebook IM support to Pidgin for Windows originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Features, Windows, Open Source, How-Tos, Social Software

Pidgin is a great multi-protocol IM client. Out of the box it provides support for 15 different protocols, including most of the important ones: MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk, ICQ, and XMPP to name a few. Two glaring omissions include Facebook IM and Twitter - both of which are built-in to Digsby by default.

Thanks to the developers of two plugins, a couple quick downloads and some simple instructions can remedy the situation with minimal effort. To top it off, the finished product only uses about 20mb of memory - under half what Digsby consumed on my machine.

If you want to see the actual screens, skip to the gallery now.

Let’s start with Twitter.

If you don’t have a Gmail account, go sign up for one so you can add a gtalk buddy later on. You’ll also need to go to Twitter and follow twitter@twitter.com.

Continue reading How to add Twitter and Facebook support to Pidgin for Windows

How to add Twitter and Facebook support to Pidgin for Windows originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Mozilla, Social Software, Browsers

Mozilla has released an update to Snowl, a plugin first released in August, which allows you to track RSS feeds and Twitter updates in your browser without navigating away from the web page you’re currently reading.

Version 0.2 includes an updated river view that groups messages together in a single column, and a new stream view that lets you see messages in your sidebar. To be honest, the stream view looks pretty much like sidebar you get from other Twitter Firefox addons lke Twitbin, TwitKit, or TwitterFox. But most of those plugins let you see detailed information about your Twitter messages, like which ones are replies or direct messages. Snowl doesn’t.

Still, as you could probably guess from the low version number, Snowl 0.2 is still a work in pogress. And it does have a few nice features, like the ability to send and receive Tweets from multiple Twitter accounts.

Mozilla updates Snowl social messaging plugin for Firefox originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Internet, Photo, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Blogging, Web services, Social Software, iPhone, web 2.0, Web

Friday night saw myself and our intrepid leader Victor Agreda Jr swing by the Crunchies. In amongst the swathes of free, MySpace-sponsered beer, we rubbed shoulders with many of the stars of Silicon Valley and acknowledge some of the notable services and devices of the last 12 months. Stay tuned for yet more photos from the after-party later today!

Download Squad’s Pictures from The Crunchies originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Fun, Social Software

Whopper Sacrifice is a new Facebook application from Burger King that promises to give you a free Whopper if you delete 10 friends from your Facebook profile. Simply install the application, click a friend to “sacrifice,” click the little “x” by the friend’s entry, and verify that you really want to remove the friend.

If you decide to complete the decimation by removing nine more friends, you’ll receive a coupon for a juicy Whopper (if you live in the US). You can add the app to your profile page so that your other friends can mock the people you deemed less valuable than a burger, or perhaps they will beg you to not give them a similar fate.

I’m going to justify my deletions by considering it a housecleaning of people I don’t communicate with on Facebook anymore. That should help me sleep at night.

[Via del.icio.us]

Whopper Sacrifice: ditch 10 Facebook friends, get a burger originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Fun, Social Software

Historicaltweets.com takes us on a journey through time to see Twitter posts from historical figures like Abraham Lincoln and Michael Jordan. There are categories for 1800’s, various decades of the 1900’s, and even Comically Old when the word “Twitter” would have fit nicely in iambic pentameter.

You can submit your own ideas, choose to view a random tweet, and will soon be able to buy merchandise which I’m sure will be decorated with popular historical tweets. This site has earned a distinguished spot in my feed reader so that I’m able to keep up with the tweets I missed from back in the day.

Historical Tweets: Twitter posts from way back originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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