The de facto standard for sending images around Twitter has always seemed to be TwitPic. It’s a great, simple service that integrates into popular clients like TweetDeck and Twhirl. I’ve always wondered if there was another service like it that serves the same purpose. Well, turns out there is – it’s called Pikchur.

Ping.fm for Images

I say that Pikchur is the Ping.fm for images because it integrates with Twitter, Tumblr, Jaiku, Facebook, FriendFeed, Identi.ca, Plurk, Rejaw, Koornk, TotSpot, Brightkite, and Flickr. If you’re a fan of blasting media across many platforms all at once, you’ll definitely want to check it out.

You Don’t Need a New Account

If you want to get going right away, you can use one of your existing accounts to log in. You can also authenticate using Facebook or Flickr accounts (Pikchur supports OAuth). However, it’s encouraged that you do sign up for a Pikchur account in the event you change your password for another platform and lose sync on your accounts. Also without a Pikchur account you won’t be able to post exclusively to Pikchur if you were wanting to use it by itself.

Geotagging, Albums, and More

One of the coolest features shown on the homepage is a dynamic picture display. You can geotag your photos when you upload them so your friends can see where they were taken. If you want to keep your geographical info or the picture itself private, there are options to do so. Once you’ve uploaded your pictures, you’ll be given the option to organize them into “Pikboxes” (albums). Again, this is purely optional but it’s nice to be able to do that since it’s such a fundamental function of image hosting.

So how do you post pictures?

Right now there are two a few ways to post images to Pikchur, through the web interface, email, or a limited number of apps. When you set up your account, Pikchur asks you to create a custom email address so you can send piks from your mobile device. I didn’t test email posting but from what I’ve heard it’s pretty slick.

On the app front, there’s a GreaseMonkey script called Pikchur Monkey that will allow you to convert Pikchur URLs into images. If you want to post directly from your browser, you can install the Pikchur Bookmarklet and post images very quickly. I strongly suggest you check out the bookmarklet at some point, it’s amazing. iPhone app Twittelator Pro also supports Pikchur. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a single desktop app that posts to Pikchur. If you know of one, leave us a comment.

After your image is posted, you can view trackbacks to it (the notices you sent with it), get links to share your Pik, a feed for your Piks, and a feed for comments on your Piks.

If you’re interested…

Check out my public profile, register your own account, or check out what other people are posting.

Tweetie announced yesterday that there is a simple way to send a URL from Safari to Tweetie when browsing on your mobile device. The bookmarklet makes use of the tweetie: protocol, which in turn tells your device to launch the Tweetie app. There are 9 steps to creating this bookmarklet and they’re all pretty simple.

When you’re browsing in Safari, just bring up the bookmarks option and tap the bookmarklet. You’ll be redirected to the Tweetie app where you’ll select an account (if multiple are present). Once you’ve done that, you’ll be greeted with a pre-shortened URL (compliments of bit.ly). Fill in the rest and away you go. This is something I use quite often with BigTweet, so it’s nice to see there’s a simple way to do it with tools I already have.

Tweetie is available from the App Store for $2.99 [iTunes link]. View more iPhone/iPod apps here.

Sharing is caring, right? Well, Scott Carter certainly thinks so. He’s created a bookmarklet that you can start using in just seconds that works with all the major browsers on the market (Firefox, IE, Safari, and Chrome). This tool, called BigTweet, allows users to post an update to Twitter about the website they’re currently viewing.

Background Info

BigTweet was launched one month ago on November 9, 2008. Carter said he’d been working on the service for around 6 months prior to launch. Instead of releasing early and refining, he refined prior to release. When asked why he chose a bookmarklet over an app, he responded:

… a bookmarklet offered me just as much control and was easier for the user to install. The BigTweet bookmarklet also works seamlessly on all major browsers including Firefox, IE, Safari, and Google Chrome.

BigTweet finds inspiration from other bookmarklets such as TwitThis and TwitThat, but offers a richer experience to the user. There’s also inspiration from FriendFeed and Magnolia Roots. When asked about the character limitations, Carter said:

While I believe that I am able to express my thoughts in 140 characters most of the time, I occasionally wanted the ability to go beyond this limit. BigTweet lets me do it.

The Good

BigTweet is very simple to use. It offers built-in URL shortening using bit.ly, the ability to send big tweets up to 240 characters (sent as two tweets), and access to many unicode characters. To use BigTweet, click the bookmark you created and enter some text. If you want to add the shortened URL, click the Add link by the bit.ly link that it provides and it’ll add it to your tweet. A new feature released this week allows you to paste highlighted text from the current page into BigTweet, just remember to highlight before you open it.

There’s nothing complex about what BigTweet does, which is fantastic because it’s not trying to do too much. This is a simple, effective way to share things you like directly from your browser. There’s no hassle with going to another site to shorten the URL, then pasting that into your client. One click, type some text, and send it. Tweeting doesn’t get any easier than this.

The Bad

Some people will say the biggest problem with BigTweet is that it’s ugly. Carter acknowledges the fact that he’s a programmer, not a designer (link to discussion). Being in a similar circumstance, I don’t find any flaw in the design he’s created. You’ll find some who will argue that look and feel is a big part of the impression people get about a tool. Either way you look at it, just be warned that BigTweet wasn’t built with beauty in mind.

In terms of glitches or flaws, I only noticed that session management is a little wonky when using Safari and not changing your cookie settings. While I don’t feel that I should have to accept all cookies just to use the service, it solves the minor issues I was having with logging in and out. In case you run into session issues in Safari, be sure to go back and follow the directions.

The Verdict

This tool is all about simplicity and shouldn’t be muddied with a ton of extra features. One thing that could be included is support for multiple accounts. Just give me a dropdown of accounts I’ve supplied credentials for and let me select one when I tweet. I could resort to logging in/out for each, but that’s kind of a pain.

If you’re in the market for a quick bookmarklet to send tweets from any web page, this is one of your best options. I plan on using this more frequently in the future in supplement to my TweetDeck addiction.

Accounts to Follow:

@scott_carter, @bigtweet

To leave feedback for Scott, you can go to BigTweet’s UserVoice page.

From the brilliant minds behind Twitter Grader (@grader) comes the latest “from-bookmarklet-to-Twitter” tool, TwitSnip.

TwitSnip is a simple tool for easily posting to Twitter. It lets you “quote” text on any web page. It does nifty things like looking up the @user for the website and linking back to the source. It shortens the URL too.

If you’ve ever wanted to share a specific quote from an article without copying/pasting and trying to figure out if the source individual is on Twitter or not (out of common courtesy), TwitSnip will do it all for you.

I ran a test with the definition of microblogging post I did last month and quoted the definition itself. I highlighted the definition text, clicked my TwitSnip bookmarklet and voila. Apparently it figured out who the author was and then scanned that against some sort of database of Twitter usernames, then enclosed my highlighted text in quotations and attributed it to my username, followed up by a shortened URL link to the original article.

Though I’m not quite sure how they are determining what username to attribute to the quoted text, this is a great time to register microblogging accounts for your business. That way even if the author himself is not on Twitter, at least your business could be easily attributed for the content.

Once everything had been captured and I was able to review and edit the tweet, I clicked “Login and Post” which allowed me to log in with an account of my choice and post the message directly to Twitter. After the note is posted you’ll get a confirmation message in the open window. Once you close that window out you’re ready for your next snip.

This tool almost reminds me of Google Reader’s annotation feature, which the exception that the quoted text is not actually highlighted on the resulting link. However, that might make for an interesting future upgrade.

Have you used TwitSnip yet to quote and post text? What do you think of it? We (and I’m sure the HubSpot team) would love to know.