Block Out Noisy Twitter Users and Focus on the Quiet Ones with Shuush

Shuush is “a web-based Twitter reader that displays the updates of the people you follow in relation to the frequency of their tweet. It aims to amplify the people that don’t usually get heard, and scale back those with frequent updates.” It gives each user a volume level between 1 and 11 and then sizes their tweets according. In a nutshell, Shuush is a creative way to block out noisy Twitter users so that you have more time to focus on the more quiet tweeters who are often overshadowed.

Getting Started

To get started, all you have to do is click to “flick the switch.” You’ll then notice that there tweets of all different sizes in your timeline.

Timeline

As you can probably already tell, the larger sized tweets are from those users who usually get drowned out by overly chatty users. Likewise, the tweets of those users who post quite often are much smaller – some even illegible.
Also, when you scroll your mouse over the avatar picture of any user in your timeline, you’ll see their Shuush volume level. Note: You can also see your own level at the top right of the page.

Volume Level

An “11″ is the highest level you can have and it means that you’re a pretty chatty Twitter user. The closer you are to this number, the smaller your tweets will be in the timeline. A “1″ is the lowest and means that you barely tweet at all. The closer you are to this number, the larger your tweets will be in the timeline.
The volume level is calculated based on how many tweets per day a user has averaged since joining Twitter. Seeing that levels 10 and 11 are pretty much unreadable, you definitely want to strive for a level of 1-9.

Final Thoughts

Right now there isn’t anything else you can do in Shuush. Since it’s just a reader, you can’t interact with replies, DMs, or retweets.
Also, there doesn’t seem to be a way to enlarge those really small, illegible tweets. So all of those overactive tweeters suffer because you’ll miss what they’re saying, but hey at least the underdogs will get some attention now, right?

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Lazyscope – Your Twitter Stream Turned into an RSS Feed

Lazyscope is a desktop tool works kind of like a feed reader for your Twitter account. Along with reading tweets though, you can also use it to keep up with your favorite RSS feeds. It lets you import your Google Reader feeds and subscribe to other blogs as well. The one thing that some potential users may not like about Lazyscope is that it’s an Adobe AIR application, which many people are not very fond of. Regardless, it installs and runs pretty flawlessly; however, usage is another story.

Basic Usage

The first thing I noticed when signing into Lazyscope with my Twitter account, were the annoying pop-up notifications every 20 – 30 seconds. They’re pretty large and obtrusive especially if you’re on a laptop or netbook, so you may want to turn them off immediately in preferences.

However a feature that I did like off the bat was being able to subscribe to any blog that a link is posted from. Whenever you click on a tweet that has a link and it shows you the content, you’ll see a little subscribe button next to the source. You can then keep up with these blogs from within Lazyscope. You’ll see the blogs that you subscribe to in the sidebar underneath your Twitter username.
Lazyscope has a condensed and expanded view. When condensed, you can’t see the sidebar or link preview window. However, when you click on a link it changes to the expanded view. Selected tweets are outlined in green and have 4 rather large options underneath: reply, repost, retweet, favorite.

Lazyscope Preferences

You’ll find the “Preferences” link on the bottom left side of the application. There are not too many settings here (see image below), but you probably want to turn off notifications and the start on login option (which is checked by default).

Import from Google Reader or OPML

When you first sign up you’ll have the option to import your Google Reader account feeds or OPML file. If you choose not to do this now, don’t worry because you can get back here by clicking on the + (plus) sign next to “Home” in the app’s sidebar. For Google Reader you’ll need to enter your ID and password.

Honestly, I feel that Lazyscope lacks the proper functionality to be a dedicated feed reader. Though being able to repost items to Twitter with a preview (as you’ll read about more below), there are many other things missing. For instance, there is no way to mark items as read and when you read an item it remains in the stream. So you have to manually keep up with the items you’re read and haven’t read already.
I do like the ability to see recent posts from the blog you’re reading from below the content. Also, since Lazyscope doesn’t sync with your Google Reader account, you can unsubscribe from feeds in Lazyscope and it won’t affect your actual account. There are only 2 options for feed items: repost, favorite.

Attach Rich Preview

There is a new feature in Lazyscope that lets you add previews to your tweets and it’s definitely the best thing about the app. These previews can be viewed via the “New Twitter” timeline on Twitter.com (you know, via the little arrow on the right of tweets). All you have to do is click “Repost” to enter your tweet text and the tweet (or feed item) will be reposted with a preview.

If you’re wondering how this works, it’s simple. Lazyscope takes an actual snapshot of the item and then posts it to your Twitpic account. The image from Twitpic is then used as the preview within the timeline. So when it’s posted on Twitter, your followers will be able to see what the link contains via an image snapshot (see image below).

Connect With Your Browser

You may see a prompt to connect Lazyscope with your browser, but this is not what you may think it is. It’s not an extension, instead it’s a bookmarklet that you can add to your bookmarks bar to save pages to read or tweet later. Items that you save with the bookmarklet can be found under favorites in Lazyscope.

Final Thoughts

To me, Lazyscope feels clunky and there are many essential features missing. I especially miss conversation view and Twitter search. It is nice that it includes lists though and it’s great for keeping up with a few blogs, but a part from that I really don’t see it as a must-have.

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Build Stacks of Tweets and Schedule Them for Later with StackRoll

Upon first glance, you may think that StackRoll is another service that’s eligible for a hit-and-run; you know those beta services that you sign up for to try out, leave after 5 minutes, and then never think about or return again. Well, it’s definitely not that type of service. This is one that you’ll want to keep in your bookmarks for safe keeping.
StackRoll is currently in open beta and though the UI is more geared toward mobile devices (it looks great on my iPad), it’s very functional on the desktop as well. One of my favorite tools for scheduling tweets is Buffer, which I reviewed here a few months back, but StackRoll may just take its place! StackRoll is much different from Buffer because instead of adding tweets with an extension or bookmarklet, you have to manually enter them. In this way it lets you build a “stack” that you can then “roll” out to your followers at the time and interval specified by you.
Let’s take a closer look.

Create Stack

Since you can add more than one Twitter account to StackRoll, when creating a stack you’ll need to choose which account you’d like to post from. You can also enter a name for your stack or keep the default. It’s best to enter your own name here just so that you have a general idea of the type of content you have in that stack (you’ll see why later). Lastly, you’ll need to specify how many tweets you plan to have in your stack; the maximum amount you can have is 30 tweets. Also, you can always add more later if what you specify is not enough.

When you click on the “Generate Forms” button, you’ll see a number of status boxes listed on the page where you enter your tweet text. So if you chose to have 10 tweets for your stack, you’ll see 10 boxes here. There is a button at the bottom that will let you shorten your URLs all at once (though it was not working for me at the time of writing this). When you’re done, you must then click on “Create Your Stack.”

Building Stacks

I took the time to go through my Google Reader account to find links worth sharing and it took a good 30 – 45 minutes. This can actually be a huge inconvenience to those who don’t have the time or are just too lazy. On the other hand, if you take out an hour each week to do this, you can really save yourself some time for the rest of the week! Either way, there definitely needs to be a more convenient way to add tweets to your stacks – if possible.
Once you have all of your stacks together, you can choose to add more tweets (if you’re not at your maximum of 30) or go to the next step, which is scheduling. Thankfully this is less time-consuming because you don’t have to schedule each tweet individually: you simply schedule the entire stack as a whole.
To get started, first pick a date and time that you’d like to publish your stack. Then you’ll be able to choose a tweet interval (the amount of time to wait in between tweets). This ranges from 5 minutes all the way up to 1 day. If you have a stack of 30 tweets, it’s probably not smart to choose anything under an hour because you’ll end up bombarding and annoying your followers. On the other hand, if you choose something like 6 – 12 hours, you’ll have tweets for days!

View Schedule

Once you click on “Roll Your Stack” you’ll be able to see the potential publishing schedule for your tweets, complete with date and time! Depending on the interval you choose for your tweets, your stack may span over a single day or several days. I chose to do 6 hours between a stack of 15 and that gave me 4 days worth of tweets!

So this is why creating different stacks with unique names can really come in handy. You can have one stack with conversational tweets, another with links to articles and web pages within your niche, and another with quotes or words of wisdom. Each stack can then have their own schedule. Best of all, this is all free (for now anyway).

Final Thoughts

Even though adding tweets to your stacks can be time-consuming, StackRoll is a very useful tool that can help you build your following on Twitter and add more value to your timeline. It’s a known fact that users who are more active on Twitter have more followers and are considered more valuable since they are constantly sharing great content.
Be careful though, don’t think that you can just go create and schedule stacks and never visit your Twitter account again! You still should interact with your followers, retweet, and engage where you can. StackRoll is just there to assist you so that your account doesn’t sit idle for too long on days when you’re too busy and don’t have the time to tweet.
You may also want to take advantage of the free beta while you can because you never know how long it will be free. Services like this usually add paid subscriptions once they come out of beta.

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6 Blogging Tools I’m Thankful For this Thanksgiving

what I’ve been able to do over the years but I also ahve to admit that there is pretty much no way I would have been able to do much of anything without the efforts of others, especially those who make their work freely available for people like us to use.
Unless you’re able to build your site management software, code your theme from scratch and create all of the tools you use, you’re standing on the shoulders of those who lent their expertise to total strangers, often without renumeration, to make your site possible.
So as the U.S. sits down for Thanksgiving and gives thanks for the various blessings in its life, I’d like to give thanks to six tools and services that, without them, I probably wouldn’t have a blog or much of a presence on the Web at all.
They are in no particular order, but all are tools that I’ve grown to love, enjoy and depend upon over the years. Many, I have to wonder how I ever got along without.

1. WordPress

As far as content management systems go, WordPress may not be the most robust or the most flexible, but it is easy to use, runs well on smaller hosting accounts and, most importantly, is free to use.
For the vast majority of bloggers WordPress more than fits their needs and does so without a lot of hassle. Though WordPress has been expanding its feature set, including the merging WordPress and WordPress MU to enable multiple blog installations, it met pretty much all of my needs when I first started with it in 2005 and never really gave me a reason to look for an alternative.
Though Drupal and Joomla are both fine CMSes, WordPress has fit my needs and, judging from the fact it is the most popular blogging platform, it seems many others out there agree.

2. Disqus

If WordPress does have a weakness for me it has been its commenting system. Though improvements such as replies have been added to the system and plugins can greatly extend the system, the WordPress commenting system just seemed to leave a lot to be desired.
Disqus provides a simple, drop-in commenting system that automatically synchronizes with your database to ensure that you never lose a single comment posted to your site.
Not only does Disqus add a great deal of features to your sites comments, including connectivity with various social networking sites, it also connects your site and commenters with the other sites that use the service and it just flat out looks professional.
Though I’ve also used and enjoyed Intense Debate, another Automattic product, Disqus just worked better for me and is pretty much where I have settled down.

3. After the Deadline

However, another area where the Automattic product has won out is After the Deadline, the free grammar and spell-checking tool that can help save you from “your own mistakes” and other errors you make “like the plague”.
Once you configure AtD, it will scan your posts before you publish them alerting you to potential areas for improvement or correction. The process is extremely quick and, though the feedback isn’t always perfect, it can be very useful for improving your writing and making it more readable.
Best of all, After the Deadline is completely free to use. Though competitors such as Grammarly offer more features, including plagiarism checking, AtD is perfectly adequate for most users and, considering how easy and free it is, there isn’t much reason to avoid giving it a try.

4. Zite

Over the years, I must have tried a dozen services and tools for combatting information overload. Every day I am bombarded with dozens, if not hundreds, of links and trying to find out what I need to read and what I can skip is a nearly impossible task.
Zite, for me at least, has found the magic formula. Though it may not be able to tell me every story that might be of interest to me, it certainly finds and highlights the things I HAVE to know about.
My Zite page has, quite literally, become the first thing I read most mornings and the first place I turn when gathering stories for the “3 Count” column on Plagiarism Today. If something reaches number one on my Zite page, I probably need to read it.
I’m not as sure if it will work as well for others, but for me, it has been a tremendous sanity saver.

5. Remember the Milk

When I first sat down to use Remember the Milk, I didn’t get the service. My workload at that time was light and it seemed an ever-present todo list was more annoying than helpful.
However, as my workload began to grow and I found myself torn between my client work, my blogging and my personal life, I realized that things were falling through the cracks.
Suddenly, having an easy-to-use and easy-to-organize todo list became not just an asset, but a necessity. Best of all, with free integration into Gmail, it exists where I am naturally and fits in well with what I’m already doing.
I may not always have time to do everything I need, but at least I won’t be forgetting important tasks.

6. The “Hidden” Players

On nearly every Web server, there is quite literally a dozen applications and tools that, while important to make your site work, go virtually unnoticed, even by those who are using them.
For example, I use Apache, MySQL, PHP and CentOS Linux, all of which are freely-available tools largely built by volunteer contributors. Even if one could write their own CMS, they probably couldn’t write their own database server or operating system without serious help.
These are tools that most bloggers never think twice about and many don’t even know are there, but they are critical to everything we do as, without them, there would be no website at all.

Bottom Line

While it’s true that many, if not most, of these tools are run by businesses who are seeking a profit from their creations, they also chose business models that make their tools and services available to me and you at no cost.
So, for their willingness to let me and others use their products at no expense, I say thank you. I wish all of these companies the best of luck and continued success and I hope that they are able to continue providing an important service that enables people like you and me the chance to run a blog without having to open our wallets.
In the end, it is true that some of the best things in life are free. These six products are excellent examples of that.

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