TweetShrink is a simple app with a single job to do: to shrink your long tweets down to 140 characters or less. As noted by it’s developers, “[the service aims to help] shave those few extra letters off a tweet…without having to actively edit [the] tweet or [change] the…basic readability.”

Finding the Easiest Way to Shrink Tweets

It’s possible you may go out to a web interface to shorten a long URL (though bookmarklets are fairly common these days), but stepping outside of the Twitter web interface or your favorite Twitter client to use an app that shortens a message to 140 characters just doesn’t seem likely. If it takes that long to do it, you might as well just edit the message yourself.

However, the TweetShrink developers were already thinking a step ahead by publishing a TweetShrink API that will allow any application to make system calls and perform the same function as the web interface. Since launching that API, TweetShrink has now been integrated in TweetDeck, one of the most popular desktop clients for Twitter, which makes shrinking long tweets very easy to do.

Though some of your tweets may end up looking like chatroom speak or a 14 year-old’s text message after shrinkage, the real goal is to prevent the user from having to edit tweets down to size. After all, tweets should flow easily from your fingertips and not require you to spend a lot of time finessing the wording. That’s part of why this stuff is called microblogging. It should be quick and painless.

You can find a real-time stream of shrunken tweets on the bottom of the TweetShrink website.

Have a Question About TweetShrink?

You can follow @tweetshrink on Twitter or hit up their Get Satisfaction page to fulfill any support questions you may have.

Engaging your followers is a simple way to add value to your Twitter account. Part of the beauty of Twitter is asking questions and getting answers. The ugly part of getting answers is compiling them. This is where twtpoll takes over and makes your life much easier. It lets you ask a question and throw in some possible responses, which will eventually turn into a poll. You can share that poll on Twitter or Facebook, and it even comes with a shortened URL and your poll title.

Head over to twtpoll and enter your username, the question, and some possible responses. When you submit the form, you’ll be given direct links to tweet it or update your Facebook status (you just have to be logged in). There’s no handing over your password or anything else shady. The only thing that’s missing is the ability to add a response on the go in case a user feels the list of responses isn’t sufficient. If you need a quick way to create a poll - with some cool Flash effects in the results - give twtpoll a try.

Please take our poll regarding your ability to microblog at work (and then view the results).

Accounts to Follow

@felipecoimbra (developer), @twtpoll

A site called Tweetwasters is out to answer that question. The basic idea is that they multiply the number of tweets you’ve made by an average of 30 seconds per tweet to count how many seconds, minutes, hours, and days you’ve spent tweeting. Sounds like one of those “want to know but don’t want to know” scenarios, doesn’t it?

Here’s how the three staffers here stack up:

It’s pretty clear the creators have a sense of humor. They’ve also got a Hall of Shame Fame listing the most prolific time wasters. Somebody tell Wayne Sutton he’s wasted almost an entire week of his life on Twitter and see what he says.

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.

It’s the time of year when users flock to online marketplaces to purchase their holiday goods. If you’re at all like me, you obsessively check your tracking numbers to see where they are and the latest skinny on their status. However, there’s already an even more obsessive tool (that’s not an insult) called TrackThis that does all that work for you.

Short of telepathy, the service could not be easier to use. Start following @trackthis; they’ll follow you back. Then, send a direct message to @trackthis with the tracking number and a description of your package.

When the status of the package is updated, you’ll receive a direct message back showing you what’s going on.

If you’ve got your SMS notifications set to alert on when you receive a DM, you’ll get that to your phone.

The only thing I can think of that would be nice to have is a link to the tracking page for that number, but UPS makes you check some boxes and whatnot that might prevent that from happening. All in all, a wonderful service to have on your side this holiday season.

Update #1 (12/11/2008): Expected delivery dates are now shown for UPS/FedEx packages

Twittercal won a Mashup of the Day award back in February by connecting your Twitter account with your Google Calendar. This connection allows you to add events to your calendar simply by sending a direct message.

The process is pretty simple. All you need is a Twitter account and a Google Calendar. Head to twittercal.com and fill in a few boxes. Once you request authorization, you’ll be forwarded over to Google where you need to grant it access. After that, you’re free to start adding events.

To add events, simply send a direct message to @gcal giving the details of the event. Google Calendar is pretty good about interpreting human language, so you can send it readable messages. Here are a few examples:

d gcal metting with paul tomorrow at 7pm

d gcal meeting with fred on monday, 25th of june at 9am

Within minutes, you should see your event added to your calendar. Be sure to check out the FAQ or leave a comment here if you have any questions.

Thanks to Lindsay Rees (@lindsayrees) for the tip on this great little app.

Accounts to Follow:

@gcal, @twittercal; @fbrunel, @yowtrip, @kaikini (developers)

Twitrratr is a StartupWeekend project that measures public opinion on Twitter. It allows you to measure general opinions on a topic by entering a keyword and cross-checking it against a list of pre-compiled adjectives. There are lists for both positive and negative adjectives; anything that doesn’t match falls in the neutral category.

The real motivation behind the project was to determine Twitter opinion of both candidates in the 2008 US Presidential Election. Since then, it’s spread to literally any keyword you can think of that has been mentioned on Twitter. More tweets on a keyword leads to greater accuracy, as always.

The Good

Twittrratr does a pretty good job of measuring positive opinion. The adjective list for positive opinions works better than the negative opinions list does. It’s also pretty interesting to quantify opinion into categories to see how people feel about something. It’s generally fairly accurate, but does suffer from some glaring issues with successfully determining opinion.

The Bad

The keyword lists that drive the entire categorization of tweets is fundamentally flawed. It’s nearly impossible to determine a person’s opinion based on keywords. For instance, when searching for mint.com, you’ll find that @Teanna said “Mint.com is pretty awesome.”. Somehow, this got lumped into the neutral category. This is just one case of many instances. Another shining example comes from @integrateit, who said:

From Bitbucket Mint vs. Quicken, and the importance of a good UI: Mint.com’s Aaron P.. http://tinyurl.com/69ydpn

This user didn’t say that Mint.com is good, he just mentions the word good in reference to a UI design.

The Verdict

I think Twitrratr is, at the very least, a good way to find out what users are saying about your brand by attempting to quantify their tweets into categories. It’s not a very mature system and could be improved using better algorithms or analyzing tweets in more depth. Even though it’s not completely accurate, it’s still a fun tool to check out every once in a while.

Update: Twitrratr has won the Mashup of the Day Award for November 13, 2008.

Ever need to send out a tweet when you’re unable to actually send it? This is where services like Twuffer come in handy. Twuffer allows users to log in with their Twitter credentials and schedule tweets to be sent as far forward as December 31, 2018. Tweets can be scheduled for any hour on any day.

Twuffer not only allows you to schedule tweets, but it also shows you what you’ve sent previously and what is in your queue. You can also adjust your time zone and date/time format to suit your preferences. There isn’t a lot of meat to Twuffer’s UI, but there doesn’t need to be. It does the job with simplicity and ease.

The primary drawback of Twuffer is that it only allows you to schedule tweets in hourly increments. More granularity in time options could make this a much more useful tool, especially for sending yourself reminders. It also currently doesn’t support recursion, which would be extremely useful. With these two features, Twuffer would be a power user’s dream.

Accounts to Follow:

@twuffer, @gradybritton

Each day it seems there are new microblogging tools popping up and it can be difficult for one person to track it all. It gets more difficult (and can even become frustrating) when there is a tool you want to use, that you know exists, but you can’t remember what it is called or where you heard about it.

We do our best to cover all of the industry happenings and tools flowing into the space with our blog posts, but now we’ve also added a microblogging tools section that takes all of those slick applications and services and groups them together according to their function.

Microblogging Tools for Every Platform

While most of the apps listed now are solely focused on Twitter, we will be expanding to the rest of the platforms out there, including Pownce, Plurk, Kwippy, etc.

See our complete list of resources at http://microblink.com/tools/

Want to Submit a Tool to be Included?

As mentioned above, we do our best to scan for everything new that churns out of this space, but the real advantage to having a community built up around microblogging is that you, our readers, can also watch and monitor the space.

If you have a tool you’d like represented on our site, submit it to tips[at]microblink.com and we’ll do our best to process it promptly.

So whether you’re looking for a new iPhone microblogging application or a service to schedule post-dated messages, we’ve got the links and information you need to find those tools.