Well today he’s revealed this next big thing to world as Square. The idea – let people quickly and easily accept physical credit card payments from their mobile phone. A small device attaches to the phone via the headset/microphone jack. The device gets the power it needs to send data to the phone from the swipe of the card, and sends the information over the microphone connection.

Even before launch Square is now valued at $40 Million with already $10 Million in Venture Capital Backing. By the looks of it, Square is a bold entry into this huge market of physical payments. “What PayPal was to eBay, Square is to the real world,” said one person close to the company.

The Big credit card companies Visa, Mastercard and American Express are already on board with Square to take credit card payments. Square has already won the attention of the blogosphere, and we will have to wait and watch to see if Square becomes the next big thing.

Enough of the talk, lets have a look at what Square looks like…

I am already quite excited at the numerous possibilities once Square is launched to the general public. Imagine Street vendors being able to accept Credit Card payments without the usual hassle of get merchant accounts, and of course the curse of Paypal fees.

At the moment from the available information Square works on the iPhone platform and Verizon Droid. I am sure Jack and team are looking to extend to the high end Nokia’s and Blackberry devices as well.

If Square takes off, it’ll be a big boost to the credit card companies IMHO. Square is in my heart the next big thing in the world of ecommerce. Paypal sit up and take note. You have a new competitor in town….

More Info at Official Website | Twitter Account

With Twitter working on its own implementation of ReTweet it is only going to more harder for us to keep track of our conversations in the coming future. Twitter has never really had any easy to manage your conversations and this is where Bettween comes into the scene. Replete with its own chat like interface it makes it a grandma’s play to follow interesting conversations on Twitter.

Like most other apps based on the Twitter API, Bettween is simple and straightforward to use. No complications and very neat way of tracking conversations I must say. And what’s more the service not only makes it easy for you to keep track of conversations, but also share them.

Each conversation comes with its own Dedicated URL à la http://bettween.com/coolkarthik88/froZENwell so it should be a breeze for you to share interesting conversations.

P.S. I love the messages that Bettween shows when it first indexes your tweets, and also the Hot Conversations feature.

Image Credit : Kris Hoet | Visit Bettween

photo credit: carrotcreative 

As Twitter continues to explode at a rate faster than any other web2.0 app that we’ve ever seen. The reason why Twitter has done so well because of the simple API that Twitter has and the number of apps that have been built on it. I thought with the growing popularity of Twitter it would be a nice idea to showcase some of the best clients for Twitter that have actually outdone Twitter itself.

Here they are in what I feel is the best order. From the worst of the best to the best of the best Twitter apps that rule the world. Read on….

Yes Twitteroo was the first Twitter client I used on my Windows Box. Its got a beautiful interface and is fun to use. The buttons and other options are easily accessible and replying to tweets is pretty easy. Overall I’d give Twitteroo a 3.5/5. Wondering why? Read the pros and cons

Pros

• A User friendly interface.
• Good features.

Cons

• A Memory Hog, eats up RAM like all the RAM is for itself.
• Windows Only.

Snitter was one of the first Twitter clients to run on Adobe AIR platform. Developed by designer genius Jonathan Snook, Snitter has one of the best UI’s I’ve come across in a Twitter client. As usual nothing out of the ordinary in terms of features, but Snitter definitely beats Twitteroo in UI and accessibility.

Pros

• Awesome Adobe AIR interface.
• Fun to use, variety of skins and skinnable via CSS as well.
• Keyboard shortcuts.

Cons

• Keyboard Shortcuts not so obvious.
• Switching streams from drop down menu is not so Web2ish..

Twitterrific is the original Twitter client for MacOSX. Its stood the test of time with all the competing clients that run on Adobe AIR. Has a super sexy UI that will instantly make you fall in love with it. Runs super fast and is the least buggy of all the clients mentioned as yet.

Pros

• Super Sexy Interface.
• Keyboard Shortcuts.

Cons

• Mac OSX Only.

While the picture I’ve uploaded here for Twhirl is the smallest yet, let me assure its no small client. A lot of people I know swear by Twhirl. With nifty features like Friendfeed integration and a sexy UI, Twhirl is your best bet if you are looking for a Twitter client. But we’re still on Number 4, so there is one more to go.

Pros

• Friendfeed Integration.
• A Clean and well laid out UI.

Cons

• Absence of Direct replies within the client
• Quite a memory hog.

And now is the time for the best of the best …

Spaz is a great-looking Twitter client, and to my eyes its the best of this bunch. I think it has the best interface, with tabs for your timeline, direct messages and replies, as well as access to your list of followers and profile information.

Pros

• Lovely gorgeous interface.
• Highly Skinnable via CSS.

Cons

• A Little Buggy.
• No Keyboard Shortcuts.

Well that completes it. All these Twitter clients make the Twitter experience completely enjoyable and addictive. Other notable mentions would be Hahlo, twitbin, Twitterfox, Digsby.

What do you think of these Twitter clients? Let us know in the comments.

photo credit: seektan 

Twitter is finally coming of age, and is demonstrating why the microblogging medium is fast catching up to be the fastest news breaker in the world. Something like 7 hours back a huge earthquake struck in China. The earthquake measured 7.8 on the richter scale and thousands have been feared to be dead. The epicenter was 50 miles from Chengdu, which has about 10.5 million residents. 

Robert Scoble a noted tech blogger and a Twitter addict first broke out the news on Twitter, even before the news could reach BBC. I was in college when I first received the alert via a text message. When I logged onto the internet the Twitterverse was completely busy with reports of the earthquake.

I won’t really go into much details as to what happened on Twitter this afternoon, but I’d like you to point you to sites that have covered this in detail.

• Online Journalism Blog has a lot more details about what happened on Twitter tonight. The Frontline blog has even more.
• Global Voices Online has links to videos and other Twitter and blog reports.
• Here’s a timeline of what first Tweets looked like.

News continues to fly in by the second, and I wonder if Twitter is slowly going mainstream. By their own admission BBC agrees that it was Robert Scoble who broke out the story first sitting thousands of miles away from China.

“Twitter comes of age as a platform which can bring faster coverage of a major news event than traditional media,”

That moment surely came a while ago, with Californian fires, more earthquakes, explosions and many other things. This is probably the first one that is gaining mainstream attention from news outlets like BBC etc…

As Twitter continues to battle its scaling problems, incidents such as this surely put Twitter in a position wherein everyone in the world can benefit from it. I know the investors behind Twitter are looking to make money from the service, but the social value derived from the service far undermines the economic value.

I think that “who’s first” is not exactly the point: “how fast, how many”, and “how open” for the spontaneous collaboration is much more interesting than who broke the story first.

We’re are going to see more of Twitter in the Twitter in the coming days. Here’s to hoping to that things go back to normal in China and may the god help the ones in need. I’m waiting for an official channel through which I can donate for relief purposes. Please let me know if you come across it.

To see the story unfold on Twitter visit Tweetscan. Do you think Twitter is slowly going mainstream and is ready to take on traditional media outlets like Reuters, BBC etc..

For more details on the earthquake visit NYTimes.

If you are a having a slow weekend, and you happen to love cool new visualizations, then I got some great news for you. Yes you heard me right, you can now visualize all your Twitter friends in a cool new fashion all thanks to TweetWheel. Basically TweetWheel visualizes you and all the connections to your friends and their friends and you and soon.

All you have to do is enter your Twitter username (no password needed) and TweetWheel will go to work digging up all of your contacts, and then probing their contact lists. Please note that this can take some time, so you will have to be prepared to wait, probably with a cup of coffee in hand.

Once you are done with the long wait, you get to see a cool picture with all kinds of links between people here and there. You can’t make out much when you look at it directly, instead hover over a particular user to see all his connections.

Well the screenshot above is the visualization that was generated for me, and for the sake of comparison here’s is Scoble’s. I’m sure you can make out the obvious differences. Maybe you could help me a bit by following me on Twitter.  

Via Twitterholics and Download Squad

Twitter really is proving to be a disruptive force in the way we think. The past two days people all over Twitter have been passing tweets about an apparent proposal by a guy on Twitter. I didn’t really feel that people would get engaged over Twitter but turns out that an engagement did indeed happen.

Who is this geeky couple you might ask! Well Max Kiesler and Emily Chang made it official in the early hours of 20th March. Max really is a lucky guy because Emily responded within a minute and the most important thing it was positive reply from Emily. Imagine the public embarrassment this would have caused for Max if Emily’s response was in the negative.

Max Kiesler’s sweet tweet at 3:13 a.m. Thursday: “To @emilychang – After fifteen years of blissful happiness I would like to ask for your hand in marriage?”

Emily Chang’s reply, a minute later: “@maxkiesler – yes, i do.”

If you are looking for geeky ways to ask someone out, Twitter may well be the solution. Luckily for Max Twitter birdies were very much alive and he didn’t have to wait for a long time. What’s more that this isn’t the first proposal that has happened on Twitter so far.

Here’s the current contender for first Twitter proposal:

The proposal: “@stefsull – ok. for the rest of the twitter-universe (and this is a first, folks) – WILL YOU MARRY ME?”

Sullivan’s reply: “@garazi – OMG – Ummmmm… I guess in front of the whole twitter-verse I’ll say — I’d be happy to spend the rest of my geek life with you.”

Looks like people have had a 100% success rate on Twitter so far. Twitter is now really making inroads into our personal lives. How long do you think it will be till we see the next Twitter proposal? I can already imagine Twitter going down the next valentines

Photo: Flickr/ocbeeja | Via Wired

If you are a Mac user and a Twitter Addict, then I am sure you have heard about Twitterrific, everyone’s favorite Twitter client on the Mac. Icon Factory the developers of Twitterrific have added support for Mac OS X Leopard in its latest version. If you are wondering what I am talking about then here what Icon Factory says about Twitterrific :

Twitterrific is a fun application that lets you both read and publish posts or "tweets" to the Twitter community website. The application’s user interface is clean, concise and designed to take up a minimum of real estate on your Mac’s desktop.

What’s more is the addition of new features like :

• Clean, concise UI with small desktop footprint
• Supports multiple Twitter accounts
• Auto refreshing at user defined intervals
• Replies and direct messages are displayed inline
• Number of unread tweets shown in the Dock
• Delete tweets from Twitter quickly and easily
• Auto show / hide when new tweets arrive
• Control over window layering and priority
• Single click access to user profile pages
• Switch between friend and public tweets easily
• Keyboard shortcuts for list navigation and more
• Control Twitterrific with AppleScript
• Audio notification for new tweets
• Hotkey to show / hide tweets

I have to say, I’m impressed by the latest version of Twitterrific so far, for those of you who can’t wait to try it, head over to the Icon Factory website and download it right away. Here is a screenshot that shows Twitterrific in action on Leopard !

Download Twitterrific for Mac OSX (Free)

According to Jaiku:

“Exciting news: Google has bought Jaiku today.

What does that mean? First and foremost, we’re of course continuing to support our existing users. So fear not: your Jaiku phone, the Web site, IM, SMS, and API will continue to work normally.

That said, new user sign-ups have been limited for the time being. The idea here is to enable our team to get right to work with Google’s engineers on delivering a new, better service to you as quickly as we can instead of spending our efforts on optimizing the current back-end. Existing users will still be able to invite their friends, and those who are not yet on Jaiku can send us a request for an invitation to join.”

Why did Google acquire Jaiku?

Activity streams and mobile presence are important areas where we believe Google can add a lot of value for users. Jaiku’s technology and talented team are a great addition to Google’s current application and mobile teams.

Reads the post from the Jaiku Blog. I would like to see Google work well with the Jaiku team to make it more popular. One thing that I would like to see Google do is take Jaiku places, so that we can update our status pretty much from anywhere in the world. Congrats to the Jaiku team, for doing an amazing job, and all the very best to Google. I hope Jaiku doesn’t face death similar to the ones we have already seen in Dodgeball, Urchin etc..

Via the Google Blog

Well here they are :

• The Twitter Updater

The Twitter Updater automatically sends a Twitter status update to your Twitter account when you create, publish, or edit your WordPress post. You can specify the text for the updates, and also have the option to turn the auto update on/off for the different post actions in the admin panel.

• Twitter Sharts

‘Shart’ your twitter status anywhere within your wordpress blog posts or pages!

• Twitter Tools

The most popular plugin to integrate twitter completely within your blog. It features a lot of advanced features like archiving of tweets, creating daily digests, updating twitter and lots more. This is the most comprehensive plugin you can have to integrate twitter with your wordpress blog.


• SimpleTwitter

SimpleTwitter is a plug-in for WordPress which enables WordPress blog owners to easily add Twitter messages to their templates.

• Twitter Feed

Post new posts from your blog automatically from your blog to twitter. this is a nice and effective way to share your blog posts with your friends.

• Twitter Badge

The Official Twitter badges that you can display on just about any site not just wordpress blogs. You can choose from a variety of colors and display it on your blog.

• Twitter WordPress Sidebar Widget

A more customized version of the Official Twitter badges that allows to choose the number of updates, match the theme that you are using, and a host of other options for customization.

• TwitThis

TwitThis is an easy way for people to send Twitter messages about your blog post or website. When visitors to your website click on the TwitThis button or link, it takes the URL of the webpage and creates a shorter URL using TinyURL. Then visitors can send this shortened URL and a description of the web page to all of their friends on Twitter.

• Twitt-Twoo

Twitt-Twoo is a simple little plugin that will allow you to update your Twitter status right from your blog’s sidebar. AJAX takes cares of the hard work, and means that your page doens’t even have to reload, allowing for quick and easy status updates.

• RSS to Twitter

A Simple and effective way to publish your blog posts as twitter updates. Not really drag drop and use but it really is simple to use.

Hope these addons will help you to integrate Twitter and your blog better. If you know of any other addon that I can add to this list, then please let me know in the comments.