This is not any different from Google trends which dwell into what people around you are searching. The only difference is that these are “real-time” and instead of searches it shows what people are talking about.

Local trending topics are currently available for 6 countries and 15 cities and obviously the team has picked these places based on the traffic twitter receives from these locations. More locations will be added gradually.

I personally think the topics need more filtering as multiple cities show similar trends. I noticed at least 5 cities showing very similar if not identical trends. Maybe there were 5 cities talking about the same thing but then those topics should qualify for the global trend on the country level leaving the local trends for more detailed discussions.

I am pretty certain Twitter will make tweaks to make local trending topics more local.

Following screenshots show you the current trending topics in certain cities and countries.

TwitterPeek is one of the gadgets which triggers the bitter one. TwitterPeek is World’s first mobile-sized Twitter dedicated gadget.

It does not need a special internet or Wi-Fi connection. It works on the cell phone towers and offers national coverage. The gadget lets you perform all the regular twitter specific activities you would otherwise perform on Twitter in a browser.

However there are a few things it does not let you do which makes this product less desirable among other thing. For example, you cannot have more than one Twitter accounts activated at a time, TwitterPeek does not come with a built-in browser which means all the browser related activities are not possible, etc..

I really fail to understand the gap this gadget is trying to fill or the issue it is trying to address. Twitter app is available for every smartphone and these apps do much more than what TwitterPeek offers. Even if someone who does not have a SmartPhone, with the dropping smartphone prices and service plans I think they are better off buying a smartphone than a gadget that does just one thing.

TwitterPeek sells for $99.99 with 6 months of free service after which users pay about $8 pm to use TwitterPeek or buy it for $199.99 for a lifetime free service.

A closer look at TwitterPeek

That said, I think the company has not invested much in innovating something new because I don’t see any difference between Pronto, Classic or TwitterPeek (hardware wise). So all that is different is an application otherwise everything else remains the same.

From that point of view, it’s a smart move to sell more gadgets by trying to capture the smartphone-less twitterholic audience.

The gadget is exclusively available on Amazon. Click here to buy TwitterPeek for $99.99 and here for $199.99.

@MicrosoftHelps feed has been quite active and we can already see quite a few tweets in just about 24hrs time since its launch.

Here is how Microsoft defines the new Twitter initiative, “@MicrosftHelps is the official Twitter account for Microsoft Customer Service. Our initial focus is to provide a quality experience helping you find answers to your Windows 7 questions. We are planning to expand the scope of our support over time.”

The company chose CoTweet as the platform to serve the Twitter community making CoTweet as the #1 enterprise tool on Twitter.

Such initiatives by companies like Microsoft underline the importance of communities on twitter and interacting with the existing/potential customers in real-time.

Click here to subscribe to @MicrosoftHelps

There is! People who are frantically adding a ton users to their follow list everyday do so hoping at least a few of them will follow them back. The bigger the follower count the more influential you are considered on Twitter.

This huge network of followers can help users make money in several ways. One of the conterversial ways of monetizing your network of followers is Pay per Tweet!

IZEA is one such Social marketing firm which offers Pay per Tweet solution to Twitter users. The service claims to have TV and Web celebrities onboard for marketing on Twitter.

Few of the celebrity users enrolled into this program are as follows…

• @hollymadison123 (174,963 followers)
• @kendrawilkinson (306,808 followers)
• @KimKardashian (2,112,443 followers)
• @Bethenny (66,985 followers)
• @chrispirillo (74,646 followers)

Ted Murphy, IZEA, CEO mentioned that the biggest check he wrote to a celebrity for one Tweet was of $20,000 which is beyond my imagination!

This is the kind of stuff that will attract new users to the service and force them to create their own network of followers so that they can enroll with such services to make money.

If you have tons of followers and want to make some money out of it, register at SponsoredTweets.com and setup your own pricing as shown in the following image.

You can set whatever price you want to but remember it is up to the advertiser to advertise with you. If the price is set to high without a valid reason then none of the advertiser will be interested in advertising on your network.

So be mindful when you are setting up your prices.

US government sites have witnessed a similar attack during the last month, however, holding an individual or a group responsible is not easy because of the nature of DoS of DDoS attacks.

Twitter has always had issues with scaling the service purely because of the pace it is growing with and such attacks underlines the importance to have better infrastructure for services like Twitter who are experiencing phenomenal growth.

Twitter is not the only service that is attacked, Facebook also reported slowdown of its services due to the attack but has managed to defend itself to keep its services from going down completely.

While some say “Who cares” if these services functional or not, 45 Million Twitter users worldwide are certainly waiting for it to be back in action.

So if someone is jumping of the roof or shooting fake videos to enjoy Twitter limelight, wait up! Now is not a good time.

Simply record videos and share it with your friends with a few clicks. All videos are uploaded to TwitVid.com, user can use the Twitter login info to login to the site to manage or share their uploaded videos with others.

Here is one of the videos I shot to test the application.

Following screenshot should give you an idea of what the application looks like on the iPhone and how easy it is to upload videos from iPhone to Twitter!

See that? Thats how easy it is!! Click here to download the application from App Store!

Well, twitter has become much more than that, at least to some of us and services like TwitCaps compliment the core functionality of Twitter.

TwitCaps visually shows you what’s happening on Twitter. It captures all the images that are being currently shared on Twitter and shows you real time.

These images can then be re-tweeted, shared, e-mailed, etc.. As twitter is a place for annoying people as well, TwitCaps lets you filter out images/messages from the selected Twitter users. If you don’t like images from a particular user, just add the user ID to the filter, it can’t get any simpler.

If you are not sure why are you at TwitCap or what exactly are you looking for? TwitCaps lets you search their database and tracks the trends on Twitter as well.

This is probably one of the best ways of tracking the hottest trends and get visuals from the world over.

For example a click on #IranElection quickly portrays an undeniable picture of misery and pain Iranians are going through demanding freedom!

The site offers other smart features like “Auto Refresh” which auto refreshes to show you the latest images from twitter, there is no way to set the refresh rate though!

Another feature where a user can see the “Most Popular” images which means these are the images that have been retweeted mostly.

Or if you’d like to view images only from your friends, simply select the option “Friends Cap” or simply perform a search with the Twitter ID e.g. from:<Twitter ID>

TwitCaps has a lot to offer in terms of images, Check it out now! TwitCaps.com

Twitter is one of the simplest applications I have seen in the recent past, its success and popularity underlines the importance of simplicity. If you really look at it then people want to do so much more than just knowing where you are at and what you doing! Don’t you want a click a picture and share it with your follower when you say “I just saw the prettiest chick ever!” or “The sunset has never been so beautiful” and that’s precisely why TwitPic and lot of other services like it exist..

The nature of the service is such that it has become the hub of real-time information and millions of users in any given day. According to Compete.com Twitter grew almost 400% in the last 3 months and continues to show very strong growth, thanks to main stream media for popularizing the concept among common man in US.

Information and active user base is the perfect formulae for others to build their concepts on Twitter to capitalize on both, information and the user base.  

We’ve seen twitter based apps ranging from very basic to weird and out-of-the-box concepts (Tweet-a-Watt, Botanicalls, etc..) and implementations. Twitdom has about 800 Apps and Twitdom is just one of the Twitter App directories, there are many more directories like Twitdom.

For example, here is an implementation of a concept where a washing machine sends a Tweet when its done washing..

Washing Machine Twitter Hack from Ryan Rose on Vimeo.

I’ve always believed that a business is only successful if it builds an ecosystem around it which helps others use its services to build their business and profit for it.

DELL made about $1million in revenue last year using Twitter services. Everyone who is subscribed to receive DELL’s updates would receive alerts from DELL whenever a discount comes up, users can simply click and buy the product. [link]

There are companies offering customer support on Twitter which improves their customer service considerably as their are accessible easily. Twitter is fast becoming an announcement platform for big companies who understand the improtance of information and reach in terms of users. Twitter has undoubtly become one of the fastest medium to reach the users.

I think we haven’t really seen a strong product based on Twitter yet, but it’s just a matter of time before people figure out how they can use the exponentially growing user-base to their advantage. The day that happens Twitter will again grow by multiple folds.

So put your minds at work and take advantage of Twittes success or just enjoy one of the most simplest service on the Web and yea don’t forget to follow us (@tnerd) on Twitter

TweetBook.in is a simple service which lets you download and backup all your tweets in a PDF or an XML format.

The backup optionally includes all the replies made to the account which is being backed-up. Twitter API has a limitation which restricts TweetBook.in to backup up to 6400 latest updates only.

The service is simple and straightforward; enter your twitter ID or any twitter ID for that matter.

Here is what the simple TweetBook looks like..

Just clcik on "Make me my PDF and download the PDF file with your tweets and replies.

This is what the document looks like.. it organizes the tweets according to the date and also has a time stamp next to each update.

TNerd Twitter Backup –

Though the site says "Include Replies" for some reason don’t see any replies for this account. How about you guys?

Elliott Kember is a freelance web developer who has quite a few innovative apps credited to his name. The one this article discusses is not any less in terms of out-of-the-box implementation of a simple application.

Elliott Kember has designed a twitter application disguised as Excel spreadsheet. So next time you open the twitter app even when your boss is around he won’t suspect you of wasting time on Twitter.

The application runs on Adobe AIR (click here to download) and offers three versions of Spreadsheet interfaces, 1) Office 2007, 2) Office 2003 and 3) Office OSX.

If you are not a great fan of Adobe AIR or do not want to install any of the Twitter apps, Elliott, offers a web version of the SpreadTweet application. Click here to try SpreadTweet on the Web.

For the ones interested in downloading the application, visit Elliott Kember’s site. Follow @elliottkember to keep up with his innovative ideas and apps and follow @tnerd for the latest in tech.

Resource Links:

• Adobe AIR – [link]
• SpreadTweets for Office OSX – [link]
• SpreadTweets for Office 2007 – [link]
• SpreadTweets for Office 2003 – [link]

Thanks @rsameer and @techila for sharing.