I’ve recently become somewhat interested in Twitter and the whole microblogging phenomenon.  So, I signed up for an account and researched a few Mac clients that would make it easy to post updates.  While there are many, many Twitter clients for Mac, here are a couple decent options worth trying:

•  Twitterific - OSX Desktop App, $14.95 from The Icon Factory
•  Twidget - Dashboard Widget, Free from Aquabox
•  TwitterPost - OSX Desktop App, Free from RAILhead Design
•  TwitBin - Firefox Plug-In, Free from infinimedia
•  TikiTwit - Cocoa App, Updates Twitter Status when iChat status changes, from TikiRobot
•  Twitterlex - Dashboard Widget, Free from Brett Taylor

Keep in mind that you will need to sign up for a free Twitter account before these clients will work for you.

When I was a kid, I remember going to my aunt’s house to play Zork on her Commodore 64.  I could play for hours and never tire.  Zork is a text-only RPG that was published by Infocom in 1980.

It has one of the most famous openings in video game history:

Zork was the first game in a trilogy and while I happened to play it on a Commodore 64, it was released on a wide range of computer systems.

I started to think about Zork yesterday, so I thought I’d see if there was anywhere online to play it.  Lo and behold, there is!  You can also download the trilogy here.

Web 2.0 is one of the hottest buzzwords in technology right now.  But what is it?  Web 2.0 was first coined in 2004 and refers to the ongoing transformation of the online world into all inclusive computing platform.  Web 2.0 refers to the second generation of the World Wide Web.  This second generation WWW offers more up-to-date web applications for users, such as social-networking, blogging and folksonomies.

Social Networking sites such as MySpace, Friendster, Classmates.com, and Facebook are becoming more popular than ever, with millions of subscribers taking part in at least one.  Social networks tie people by common interests, careers, values, religion, etc.

Blogs (web log) have taken the web by storm in recent years.  People form blogs to share their personal take on the world with friends, family or even to entertain strangers.  There are many types of blogs; news related blogs, political blogs, music blogs, technology blogs such as this one, and even corporate blogs.  Microblogging is a newer form of blogging which allows users to post short text updates.  The most popular microblogging service is Twitter.

Folksonomy is social-tagging, where users collaboratively tag specific topics of interest in order to organize content.  Tags are keywords created and entered by users or creators of content.  This tagging makes content easier to be found by people researching a specific topic. Some popular folksonomies are Digg, del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon.

These three items are just a small portion of Web 2.0.  As the internet evolves so will the technology that is available to us.   I am excited to see where the World Wide Web is going.  For now, you can see much of what is available on Web 2.0 here.

So far, the best application I’ve found for accessing music and videos from your iPod Touch or iPhone, without using iTunes, is iPod Access by Findley Designs. It includes support for both Intel and PowerPC Macs.

From iPod Access website:

“Pod Access is the leading iPod/iPhone music and video transfer application for the Mac. With iPod Access you have instant access to all the songs on your iPod and iPhone. Your songs can be be displayed and sorted in almost any fashion so you can find the songs you need right when you need them. With the new instant search feature in v4 you can find songs just as quickly as you would in iTunes. And once you have found the songs, movies and playlists that you want, iPod Access will copy them right back into iTunes or to an external drive for backup. If you need music from your iPod or iPhone back on your computer then you need iPod Access.”

I had it running and figured out in just a few minutes. Just select the songs you want to copy & press the copy button in the top of the window. You’re presented with a save window, select where you want the songs to be saved, and bam, they’re there. Screenshot below.

I’m very impressed with this little app, and for $19.99, I don’t think you can go wrong.

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher, iPod software v1.2 or higher . There is also a Win XP/Vista version of iPod Access.

I have several Evernote invitations left.  E-Mail me if you’re interested.