lists posts

Filed under: Web services, Social Software, Microblogging

More Twitter List goodies: official list widgets!

by Jay Hathaway Nov 3rd 2009

Now that the new Lists feature has rolled out to everyone and become a big part of Twitter, the microblogging service has taken the logical next step and launched list widgets. That means you can embed a live version of your favorite Twitter list anywhere on the web. It doesn't even have to be your list, actually: if someone else has a favorite that you enjoy, you can make a widget of that, too.

Like the List-to-RSS solution I wrote about recently, list widgets allow you to follow a list without following everyone on it. Widgets also make it very easy to customize the appearance of your lists, as well as a bunch of other options. Live auto-updating is included - or you can set how often it loads new tweets - and you can also control the number of tweets that appear at once. Don't want to show avatars or hashtags? That's fine too, there are some checkboxes that will take care of it. This set of features makes widgets a great way to share your favorite Twitter content outside of Twitter.

[via TechCrunch]

Tags: list widgets, lists, ListWidgets, twitter, widgets

Filed under: Web services, Microblogging

Subscribe to Twitter's new lists as RSS feeds

by Jay Hathaway Nov 2nd 2009

If you're loving Twitter's new lists feature, but you're finding yourself a bit overwhelmed by following so many new people, there might be a better way to try out a list. One Twitter user has put together a list-to-RSS script. All you have to do is pop a list's URL into the site and drop the resulting feed URL into your reader. This way, you don't have to check the list on the web, and you don't have follow everyone on it.

Be warned, the list-to-RSS site has run into some rate-limit issues with Twitter's APIs, so you may have to check back periodically if it doesn't work for you on the first try. Meanwhile, if you're still looking for some good lists to subscribe to, may I recommend the Download Squad team list? Sebastian has also collected some great list recommendations and a step-by-step guide to using lists in an earlier Download Squad post.

Tags: lists, rss, rss feeds, RssFeeds, twitter, twitter lists, TwitterLists

Filed under: Features, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Google, Browsers, Lists

15+ great Google Chrome extensions

by Lee Mathews Nov 2nd 2009

We've already mentioned other ways to power up Google Chrome. Before extensions arrived on the developer channel, Userscripts and bookmarklets were your only options. Both are still great ways to add some kick-ass functionality to Chrome. If you're running the stable or beta builds, you may want to stick to them for now.

10 handy Userscripts for Google Chrome users
15+ handy bookmarklets for Google Chrome (and other browsers, too!)

Now, onto the extensions!

If you have a favorite that I left off, feel free to share it in the comments!
Share

Tags: add-ons, bookmarklets, browser, browsers, chrome-4, chromium, developer-channel, extensions, features, google chrome, google-chrome, GoogleChrome, lists, productivity, UserScripts, utilities

Filed under: Internet, Social Software, Microblogging

Twitter Lists finally unrolled to the masses -- get your lists here!

by Sebastian Anthony Oct 29th 2009

Though Twitter seem to be having some stability issues, at the time of writing, almost every active Twitter user should now have access to the new Lists functionality.

We covered it briefly back when the beta started, but here's a quick guide on how to make them -- and how to get the most out of them, because really... this might be exactly the change we social media addicts have all been waiting for.

It's really quite easy. In three steps:

1. Visit the Twitter homepage. If you see the Lists box (as seen at the top of this entry), then you're good to go -- if it's not there, you'll have to wait until you're included in the testing, which should be really soon now.

2. Type in the name of someone that matches the list you're creating. Why this doesn't auto-complete using some kind of funky AJAX I do not know...

3. Finally, hit that new button that you've probably not seen before, and add them to a list!

And now you're done adding the first person to your first list! What now? Well... you can either make your own list of awesome people (or boring people to avoid?) -- or you can go and use the lists that other people have made!

Here are some good Twitter Lists to get started with -- I'll try to cater for everyone:

The Twitter Team -- good for up-to-the-minute news from the developer team itself. They can be quite funny too, from time to time...
Baseball Writers -- The Huffington Post have compiled this great list of sports-tweeters. Worth following if you're into baseball!
The Huffington Post also have an Iran list, a Democratic Rep. list, a Republican Rep. list... (you can view all their lists here.)
Musicians and Labels -- This one has a comprehensive collection of every record company and music magazine, and some bands/artists too.
And of course, we have a list of Download Squad's writers too!

If you have some great, comprehensive lists, please let me know, and I'll get them added -- there doesn't seem to be a List directory or search yet!

Update -- masterful fellow DownloadSquad blogger Lee has just discovered a Twitter Lists site called Listorious. It's really rather good.

Tags: lists, microblogging, social networking, SocialNetworking, twitter

Filed under: Utilities, Features, Windows, Microsoft

A bunch of fun and productivity-boosting gadgets for Windows 7

by Sebastian Anthony Oct 29th 2009

The number of gadgets for Windows 7, both made by Microsoft and third-party developers, has skyrocketed. Only a few months ago there was little choice and almost nothing worth calling home about -- but today, you're spoilt for choice! What you have here are a bunch of the most useful (or interesting) gadgets usable with your shiny-new OS, Windows 7.

Note: If you're going to be installing third-party gadgets, you'll be faced with a confirmation dialogue before they can install:

Just hit 'Install'! With that out of the way, on with the show!

1. Weather Bug: One of the things you'll soon notice about the gadgets I'm sharing here is that they all do one specific thing, and they do it well. I hate feature-creep. If I want to know the current weather -- then show me the damn weather.

Weather Bug lets you select a nearby weather station and shows you everything you might need to know: current temperature (Celsius or Fahrenheit), forecasted high and low, wind speed, and the current cloudiness (or lack of).

There's also a link for extended website-based information, and even a webcam stream if your weather station has one!

2. UEFA Informer: Here's one for the non-Americans (do Canadians like soccer?) -- a football gadget! Keep track of every major football (soccer) league in Europe, from Italian to English to even the Champion's League.

The greatest thing about this gadget is you can even pull up the recent results and upcoming matches in a given league, or for your favourite/most hated team.

There's an option in the settings to show even more leagues, so I assume it will be be kept updated -- perhaps to show the World Cup when that finally ticks around next summer?

3. Gmail Reader: There isn't really much I can say about this one. It tells you when you receive new mail. It tells you how many unread mail you currently have. It shows you the subject and sender of your unread mail.

What more do you want?

4. TweetZ: Apparently created to do away with the annoyances inherent to Twadget, TweetZ is a full-featured Twitter tool disguised as a desktop gadget.

Unfortunately its default setting is to tweet some birdsong annoyingly every time someone twits, but it's easy to turn off. As you can see in the screenshot, links are replaced with [link], and you can mouse-over them to see where they link to -- it even expands the link-shortening services, so you can actually see where you're going!

And it doesn't seem to steal away all of your CPU cycles like Tweetdeck does...

5.Facebook Explorer: Now you can stalk your friends without constantly alt-tabbing back to your Facebook browser tab! Not only can you see pending friend requests or event invitations but you can also see if you've been poked -- life-altering, I know! All of your friend's updates are here too, with a break-out box popping-up to give you more details if you click on an update.

You can't seem to comment on or 'like' anything though -- perhaps that will come at a later date? Or maybe this gadget has been designed with the idea of improving your productivity at work...? So there is a God...

Either way, confining Facebook to a gadget would seem like a sensible thing to do. I imagine most of us know what it feels like to be sucked into the Facebook Void, sometimes never to resurface.

Some gadget niches are missing; most notably: an RSS reader! There are still relatively few gadgets compared to other computer customisations and, perhaps surprisingly, there are no decent RSS readers as a result.

The only good one seems to be Google's own gadget which only works with Google Desktop. If someone out there wants to design an RSS feed-reading gadget that can log into Google Reader... you'd be a very popular man.

The best I can offer you is a system-tray notifier called GRaiN that was featured over on Lifehacker in July. Or, if you want to subscribe to a few individual feeds, the Hermes RSS reader gadget might satisfy you.

I've also not mentioned the thousands of system-diagnostic gadgets, or the Google Search gadgets -- I figured I would try and show you some new gadgets that you might not have seen before!

Tags: addons, facebook, features, gadgets, gmail, lists, plugins, rss, sports, twitter, weather, windows 7, Windows7

Filed under: Utilities, Features, Macintosh

10 hot Growl styles to make your pop-up alerts really pop

by Jay Hathaway Oct 28th 2009

Growl provides customizable pop-up alerts for hundreds of Mac apps, making sure you never miss an important chat message or completed download. You can use Growl to set an alert for just about anything, and you can also make Growl notifications look practically any way you want. The built-in themes and the list on the official Growl Styles page don't even begin to cover all the options for gorgeous notifications, from the minimal to the very flashy.

Here are 10 lesser-known Growl styles that look a lot nicer than the defaults:

Gallery: 10 Hottest Growl Styles

Tags: growl, lists, notifications, skins, styles, themes

Filed under: Web services, Social Software, Microblogging

Twitter Lists feature hits beta, makes Twitter a lot better

by Jay Hathaway Oct 15th 2009

Twitter's new Lists feature has rolled out in beta to a large number of users, and it adds a lot to the Twitter experience without detracting too much from the site's simplicity. You can create, view and manage lists of users from the Twitter.com sidebar, and add users by going to your "following" page. Once you've got a list created, clicking on it will show you a timeline of tweets from the users you've added.

If you make a list public, you can send a link to others to share it, and they can add everyone on your list in one fell swoop. You can also see which lists you've been added to by clicking on a link located at the top of the sidebar next to your following/followers numbers. This bumps the link to your timeline, showing your total number of tweets, out of the way to a small-print link under your username. Of course, it's also possible to make private lists, in case you want to group people into categories without offending anybody.

Tags: lists, news, twitter

Filed under: News, Apple, Google, Open Source, Mobile, Lists, Android, Op-Ed

Preemptive FAIL : Five easy things Verizon isn't doing to fix Android

by Grant Robertson Oct 6th 2009

It's all over the place; Verizon is embracing Android. Google loving apologist geeks everywhere are heralding the 85 million new customers -- who are obviously ready to try Android, if only Verizon would let them -- as the beginning of a new era in mobile phone competition. The cries of panacea are all I've heard all day:

"It's going to be a floodgate of new users! "

"Death to the iPhone!"

And, as one particularly difficult to satisfy commenter on another blog wrote:

"Get over yourselves apple and make a new product."

I'll have to admit, as a current G2, and previous G1 owner, I was a little excited myself. Then I read one thing from the joint Verizon/Google press call which made me crestfallen.

"Verizon also has no plans to make any changes to the Android Market."

And with that, all my dreams of an Android controlled world ran away like so much sand through my fingers. This is an enormous mistake, Verizon. Care to know why? The Android Market is terrible. It's worse than terrible, it's horrible.

Horrible, and just a little bit dangerous.

I've got a list of five things Verizon must do to the Android Market if they're to have any hope of even modest success.

Tags: android, bad ideas, BadIdeas, FAIL, G1, G2, iphone, lists, market, verizon

Filed under: Social Software, Microblogging

Twitter starts testing Lists, makes mass following easier

by Jay Hathaway Oct 1st 2009

Twitter's been working on a lot of new features lately, from geolocation to Project Retweet, and the latest new toy to enter limited testing is Lists. Pretty soon, you'll be able to make a list of Twitter accounts so that others can follow them all with one click. We've seen some well-known Twitter users - I'm not naming any names, but it rhymes with Scobbert Roble - vehemently bash the Suggested User List that Twitter invites new accounts to follow, so an alternate way to find interesting groups of users is definitely a positive development.'

Lists is a new Twitter API that third-party apps will be able to use, so we might see some of the early attempts at Twitter groups, like WeFollow, fall by the wayside. No matter, though: a huge database of user-generated lists will offer more specific categories of people to follow, and hopefully turn into less of a popularity contest. On the other hand, Lists could make it faster for all those Twitter spambots to follow the maximum number of accounts.

Tags: API, lists, twitter

Filed under: Business, Developer, Internet, Blogging, E-mail, Web services, web 2.0, Web, Lists

Tell DLS: What are your Top 10 Web Apps?

by Nik Fletcher Sep 28th 2009

We're continuing our Tell DLS column by leaving the desktop and heading to the web. There's tonnes and tonnes of webapps out there -- however here's just 10 that I use day-in, day-out. If you're got any other favourites, be sure to leave them in the comments!

Tags: basecamp, facebook, flickr, instapaper, lists, tumblr, upcoming, web-applications, web-apps

Filed under: Social Software, BlackBerry, iPhone, web 2.0, Lists

Online tools to fight the freshman 20 - Back to School

by Dolores Parker Aug 21st 2009

Off to college and dreading the inevitable 20 pounds or so of fat that comes with drinking binges, lack of exercise, all you can eat dorm food and late night snacks? Hate the thought of not being able to wear your favorite jeans come winter break? Relax, here's a round up of good online weight management tools which might be able to help you stay on track.

1. The Daily Plate - A calorie tracking tool from LIVESTRONG.com, this site helps you track your calories and burn rate via your personal online food diary. Once you register, you can input the foods you eat and the database will automagically provide the calories. Nice interface and there's even an iPhone and iPod touch (Blackberry too) app for $2.99 if you want to track on your mobile.

Tags: b2s, back to school, BackToSchool, calorie count, Calorie counter, CalorieCount, CalorieCounter, Calories, FatSecret.com, fitday, freshman 15, freshman 20, Freshman15, Freshman20, lists, livestrong, online diet tools, OnlineDietTools, social networking diet tools, social networking weight loss, SocialNetworkingDietTools, SocialNetworkingWeightLoss, the daily plate, TheDailyPlate, traineo

Filed under: Features, Commercial, Freeware, Open Source, Lists

16 (or so) apps I'm thankful for

by Lee Mathews Nov 27th 2008

It's Thanksgiving day for those of you in the United States, time to reflect upon the things for which you're truly thankful. While I'm sure there are many more noble things to list, this is Downloadsquad, after all, and what would be more fitting than a list of programs I appreciate?

16. Cabos. I rarely use a Gnutella client any more. When there is the odd song stuck in my head that necessitates a one-off download, Cabos is what I use. It's got a clean, simple interface, and it works - and that's really all I'm after.

15. Flash Player. Damn you, Adobe. Now that v10 has taken care of some of the CPU and memory issues, it's hard to begrudge Flash. There are just way, way too many addictive little games and excellent web applications that have been built using it.

14. FastCopy. My boss also runs a DJ business, and transferring his multi-hundred gig library from drive to drive was starting to drive me insane. After stupidly giving Windows a crack at the job once, I quickly hunted down a better tool for the job. FastCopy with the buffer cranked up made (relatively) short work of the task.

13. Find and Run Robot. It's not quite a flashy as the more popular Launchy, but it's much lighter on resources and gets the job done just as well. There are also tons of great extensions for it. For those who swear by the power of the keyboard, FARR is a must have.

Tags: apps, favorite, lists

Filed under: Text, Windows, Office, Productivity, Freeware

To-Do Desklist is a simple, free GTD app with nice visuals

by Lee Mathews Nov 18th 2008

Jay recently reviewed MiniTask, an ultra- simple to-do list application built on the Adobe Air platform. If you're like me and would prefer to avoid installing yet another oversized Adobe product on your Windows PC, take a look at To-Do Desklist.

Like MiniTask, you can add an alarm to an item and hotkeys are supported for adding new tasks and showing your to-do items. Desklist also allows you to assign priority and add extended notes to tasks.

Alerts can be displayed in any corner of your screen, and they're fully skinnable. The program comes with light, dark, and sky themes built in, but you're free to set your own background color or image and change the display font. You can also tweak opacity settings for the alerts.

The full task window allows you to filter items by priority. When your list gets lengthy, it's a helpful way to make sure you're focusing on critical tasks.

I'd like to have option to hide alerts (like MiniTask) or collapse task items, but for simple lists, Desklist is still a good option. It's freeware for Windows only.

Tags: gtd, lists, tasks, todo

Filed under: Windows, Office, Productivity, Freeware

Simple text spreadsheets with List�

by Lee Mathews Oct 6th 2008

Need to put together a quick list or data table, but can't be bothered with the bloat of a full spreadsheet application?

List² is a minimalist (32kb) application that can do just that. Its uncomplicated interface allows you to quickly assign names to columns and start entering your data.

What can List² do with such a small footprint? Import and export tabbed data files, import CSV, export to HTML, and perform simple search and replace operations. Columns and rows can be moved around and inserted with ease, and List² even supports column sorting.

Though the .zip download contains a .reg file, I was able to extract only the executable itself and run it on my MSI Wind with no trouble at all. With it on my flash drive I've got a tiny, incredibly simple way to maintain lists on the go - regardless of who's computer I'm using.

I've been using Excel for jobs like this for ages, which just doesn't make any sense. List² is much lighter, and does everything I need it to do. It's freeware, Windows only.

Tags: csv, data, lists, spreadsheet

Filed under: Utilities, Social Software, web 2.0

Blist adds new document sharing features

by Jay Hathaway Jun 28th 2008

Web-based list-creation service Blist has made a couple of changes recently, and the biggest one is "less a feature and more a philosophy." Because Blist is easier to demonstrate than it is to explain, you can now try Blist without an account. You can play with all the features, browser other people's Blists and even make your own -- you just can't save it.

At the same time, they've introduced social features, similar to the ones you're familiar with from places like Digg and Google Reader. You can add contacts and share Blists with others via your contact list. Previously, you could only share via email (that feature is still available.) We love to see intelligent uses of social features like Blist's. It looks like they've added something that people will actually use, without going overboard with elaborate profiles.

[via Mashable]

Tags: blist, list, lists, sharing

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

View more Time Wasters

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Download Squad bloggers (30 days)

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