The iPhone and the iTunes AppStore have become a staple of our culture and our daily lives in a very short time. Over fifty million iPhone and iPod Touch units have been sold and users have downloaded billions of apps from the AppStore.

Do you remember when the World Wide Web was new?

In 1995 there were only 25,000 websites in the entire world. Today there are billions of web pages.As of this writing there are approximately 140,000 apps in the AppStore.

What do you think that will look like in a few years?

That’s right. Millions.

If you had the foresight to create a website years ago, would you have done it? Of course you would. It would increase your chances of having visibility and greater success with your business.

THIS is the time to build your own iPhone App.

And I’ve got the perfect solution for you…

My App Creator

My App Creator is a complete turnkey system that absolutely anyone can use to create their own iPhone app and have it placed before tens of millions of iPhone and iPod Touch owners in the Apple iTunes AppStore!

If you are an author, speaker, entertainer, musician, athlete, business or anyone else that could use a presence in the AppStore, this is the solution you have been waiting for!

Imagine being able to create your own app populated with your blog, twitter feed, audios & videos, calendar or events and more content.

Choose from one of My App Creator’s standard templates or apply your own custom design to your app.

Once complete, the App gets uploaded to the iTunes AppStore for you. You don’t even need to apply or pay for an iPhone developer account.

Custom iPhone application development can cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. But My App Creator has created a robust service with pricing so affordable that there are now no barriers to entry.

So what do you need to create your own app?

1) A news feed. Basically, this is your blog. As
long as you create content regularly, it will
work in your iPhone app.

2) A Twitter feed. There’s no reason you
shouldn’t be using it to grow your network and
enhance your brand. Imagine your app users being
able to access your most current tweets.

3) Media. This can be audio or video. If you
create these they can easily be placed into your
app!

That’s it!

If you’ve got a calendar of events, you can place those events in your app.

Do you want to change the message that displays on your main page and link it directly to a web site?

Easy! Once your app is in the AppStore, you can change your content directly from My App Creator’s web-based interface.

There are more features, but the easiest way to discover them is to visit the site and get started with your own app.

Visit My App Creator Today!

Post from: Social Media Vision

How To Build Your Own iPhone App Fast!

Chat Catcher by Shannon Whitley was one of my favorite WordPress plugins in capturing Twitter messages and beautifully displaying them as blog comments.  There was also a great support module on Drupal.

I had announced earlier this month that Chat Catcher was shutting down due to high upkeep costs and lack of funding.

May 15th 2009, I received a teaser e-mail from Shannon explaining that Chat Catcher is not shutting down and there was more exciting announcements to come soon.

This was great news indeed and I was very curious to see what else was in store. 

Earlier today I recieved a message on Twitter from Shannon.

Ocasta Labs have injected both funds and resources to extend the Chat Catcher team and to accelerate development of the service thus keeping Chat Catcher alive!!  Hooray!

I have been using BackType Connect plugin to replace Chat Catcher but for some reason due to my blog theme, I was not able to make the plugin show the beautiful avatars on Twitter but the replacement plugin still worked nonetheless which doubled my comment count because I still had Chat Catcher on while waiting for the service to shut down.

Now that Chat Catcher is up and running I am going to keep Chat Catcher and also still use BackType connect because its customizable where I can filter out the Twitter messages and keep the other messages like “Blog comments” and “Digg” scans which Chat Catcher doesn’t support.

So in essence both plugins will compliment each other for my blog and I love it!

Thank you Shannon and Good luck with the funding!

P.S – The founder of Backtype Connect - Christopher Golda, was very helpful in reaching out in providing support to me about trying to fix my avatar problem, I was impressed and greatly appreciated his help.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Chat Catcher Plugin Revives With Funding

Seesmic Desktop Launches

Twhirl was pretty much the only competition for Tweetdeck and was naturally crushed by Tweetdeck’s great organizational columns and clean interface.  Twhirl was purchased by Seesmic last year and just couldn’t find a way to catch up to Tweetdeck’s success until now, maybe…

Seesmic just launched a new third party Twitter client called Seesmic Desktop which is only in “Desktop Preview” which basically means beta or alpha stage still.  Go to Seesmics website http://desktop.seesmic.com/ and input your e-mail address to get an invite.    

Keep in mind this is a Desktop Preview, so there is many bugs and issues to be resolved still.

The main focus is having Multiple Accounts     

Seesmic has seemed to answer out Twitter prayers by providing a client that can handle multiple accounts at the same time!  I love this feature and I have been following the TweetDeck suggestion boards for a while and I am surprised TweetDeck has never implemented this highly sought out feature.

It is so simple to switch accounts and manage all your replies, main streams and even direct messages.  You can even reply in which ever account you want to display in the client.

Why have multiple accounts?

Most users have multiple accounts to fill in different niches.  For example myself, I have a business and a personal Twitter account.  I of course Tweet my business updates via my Twitter business profile and my personal tweets via my personal Twitter profile.

Now instead of logging off Tweetdeck everytime I want to Tweet in my business profile, I can seamlessly switch to either account on the fly.

The clone is missing the Facebook feature

Yes Seesmic Desktop has pretty much copied Tweetdecks main features the one feature that Seesmic did not take as of yet is the Facebook feature which TweetDeck has.  TweetDeck just recently came out with a new update just in the nick of time when Seesmic launched, coincidence?

Other Cons

Like I mentioned before, not to be too harsh on Seesmic because they are still in preview mode….below are some cons I am frustrated with

• The interface is really ugly and the fonts are not clean compared to TweetDeck.  It’s really hard to read sometimes Twitter users profiles and other messages because of this.  They really need to get a good graphic artist to kick this up a notch.
• Adding people to groups is really a pain because unlike Tweetdeck you can only add people by finding the people you want to add in your Twitter Stream Archive or using the search feature.  There is no master user list where it populates all the Twitter usernames in your follow list so that way you can just check off the ones you want to include.  This is very frustrating and I hope they fix this soon.
• Errors…Errors…Errors….I really hate when I shut down the client it does not save my groups and I get this annoying error window.

Fullfillment

Bottom line is that for users who were craving for the multiple account feature, well now you can fullfill that with Seesmic and I am pretty sure that the final released version should hopefully clear up these issues before then….

Post from: Social Media Vision

Seesmic Desktop Replaces TweetDeck For The Multiple Account Twitter Client

Power Twitter 1.0 Review

New Firefox Addon Power Twitter just released a new version 1.o that is making headlines all over the Twittersphere lately.

Narendra Rocherolle over at 83 Degrees created this Firefox Addon found here.  (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9591)

This new Addon allows Twitter users to use some strong features within Twitter to become more of a Power User for Twitter.  Most recent famous Twitter Stars that associated with Power Twitter were Techcrunch, Problogger and Twitter founder Biz seen below.

The Hype

The Features

1.  Twitter Search Improved

Power Twitter enables a better call-to-action with the new location of the Twitter’s Search feature.  Not only is the main search feature moved to the sidebar but also you can search within a Twitter user’s specific timeline if you click on their profile.  This is a great feature that makes searching for content more accessible.

2.  Tweet History 

With Power Twitter installed you can now mouse-over a user’s profile picture in your Twitter stream to showcase a Tweet History of that user.  This is really effective feature because you can now keep track better of previous Tweets from your favorite Twitter friends.  I find this extremely necessary when you have more than 300 friends to follow.  This option may not be as organized as Tweetdeck’s group feature but still does the trick in keeping up with your priority friends on Twitter so you won’t feel guilty in missing a Tweet.

3.  Facebook Status Updates

This is a cool new feature where you can see your friends on Facebook status updates.  You can’t really respond or update your own Facebook status with this new tab in your sidebar but does keep you in the loop with your Facebook updates which might be handy.

4.  Embedded Pictures and Videos

Now this feature is really handy because now your Twitter stream will show you the Videos and Pictures that are linked on Twitter now instead of seeing the shorten URLS.  You maybe familiar with this type of set-up with Facebook wall posts that show you the automatic pictures and videos embedded in the profile.

5.  URL Improvement

URL’s are now showing the URL titles instead of the shrink URL links.  This removes the masking of the shorten urls so you might get  better picture in what you are clicking to.

6. Reply Feature Improved

If you ever used Tweetdeck, you may of noticed you pick up better detailed Reply messages in the client than the web browser.  The reason behind this is due to that Tweetdeck scans for all @(your username) regardless at the beginning, middle or end.  The web browser only shows the @ replies that only begin with your username, not showcasing Retweets or other conversation elements.

7. Web Browser Tool

Finally another feature of the Power Twitter is that this is just an add-on to your current Firefox web browser.  This is not a software client you need to download and install.  Some people may not like software clients and thus is why you may want to choose Power Twitter.  Another reason why web based is a good option is because many corporate computers will not let you download any software but will let you install addons to current software like Firefox.

The Complaints

With any new up and coming Twitter Power Apps there will be complaints and cons.  Below are a couple I have found.

*Multi-Platforms

Power Twitter is only made for Firefox toolbar and is missing support for Mobile, Mac & other web browser users.  They are missing a huge opportunity here.

*Options Menu missing

Power Twitter needs to have an options menu to configure because I sometimes want certain features like the URL expansion disabled or the Video/Picture removed.  People like Twitter because its very clean and having the Videos and Pictures keep auto-populating in the Twitterstream can clutter and slow down immensely.  Also with with the URL expansions, I would like to sometimes ReTweet with the shorten url attached but when you copy in Power Twitter mode you get the title formation instead.  Very, very aggrovating.

*Software Client Option 

This is simple.  Have an option of transferring these features to a software application like Tweetdeck.  Some users hate using the browser to Tweet.

*Extremely Laggy

Last but not least, Power Twitter has very delayed load times when loading the Power Twitter features on every refresh and new page on Twitter within the browser.  This may improve in the future or may not.   As of right now this is considered a slight hassle because the load time is not huge but is noticeable.

So there you have it, the Pros & Cons of the Power Twitter Tool.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Becoming A Power Twitter User With New Firefox Addon Power Twitter

Qwitter Tool

Qwitter is a Twitter tool that e-mails you whenever someone un-follows you on Twitter.  The e-mail will tell you what your last tweet post was when the follower last followed you.

The Pros of Qwitter

Before I get into the reasons why you should not use Qwitter, let me just point at the developers over at Qwitter (Contrast I.E) are brilliantly smart and have developed other web apps like ReallyTinyUrl & Exceptional.

Below are some reason why you may want to use Qwitter…

• Qwitter is for you… if are manically obsessed with your social status and have a fear of not being popular.
• Qwitter is for you… if you are anal about measuring results even if they are useless statistics.
• Qwitter is for you…if you have been called Vane, Conceited, Big Ego and Narcissistic.
• Qwitter is for you…if you live for Drama & Negativity.
• Qwitter is for you…if you want to be dangerously self conscious on what to write about, thus preventing you from being you.

As you can see Qwitter is not for everyone….

The Cons of Qwitter

• Qwitter is not a good measuring tool.  There are many other reasons why a person may unfollow you and to always 100% assume that they stopped following after a certain tweet is a little far-fetched.

• Qwitter is not to be used as a guideline to become a better Twitter user.  You may use Qwitter to measure on what not to do in the Twitter world but I have a better solution.  Read the The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook by Tamar Weinberg.

• Are you worried about your popularity and want to gain more Twitter followers? Well take the advice from Lisa Hoffmann with her article Want more twitter followers? Fuhgetaboutit.  The art is to not focus on the past but to focus on the future.  Don’t worry so much on the formula on gaining new followers, success will come in time if you keep doing what your doing, which should be interacting.

• Negativity is a poison that spreads.  Stop surrounding yourself in negative news and focus on the positive things like being more active in replies, link recommendations and having great conversations.  Allowing yourself to be always remind of negative news will put you in a negative mood and rename your Twitter handle Negative Nancy or Debbie Downer.

The last testament to the reason on why not to utilize the Twitter tool Qwitter is from a famous poem  quote by the late Thomas Gray

IGNORANCE IS BLISS

Post from: Social Media Vision

Why You Should Drop Twitter Tool Qwitter Like A Bad Habit

http://www.digsby.com/

With all the new Social Networks and Media out there its very hard to keep up with them all and let alone keep up with your current lives.  Digsby is a great too to multitask all your options in one client.

Disby combines your E-mail, Instant Messenging and Social Networks all in one client.  They just recently added Linkedin and are in the process of adding more applications very soon.  I would love to see if Digsby can capture the essence of Tweetdeck used for Twitter.

Tweetdeck is the best client so far for Twitter because of the “grouping columns” that Twitter fails to have implemented yet and left stuck with #hashtags.

Overall Digsby has done some great changes, the major issues have always been memory resource.  This seems to be the #1 issue to be resolved in most clients and applications out there.  Check out the new build here http://blog.digsby.com/archives/category/releases

The verdict on Digsby is that it combines all your great Networks, IM’s and E-mail into one client freeing up less haggle time.  Time is money and who doesn’t want to save time? 

What do you think?

Post from: Social Media Vision

Digsby the Social Media Networking tool. Build 32.