Welcome to the Twitter Client UFC Octagon!
TweetDeck and Seesmic go head to head with huge updates to their desktop clients… and TweetDeck has a pretty sweet finishing move.
Earlier today, I got an email from Seesmic announcing their upgrade. Here are the Deets from the email,  with .:commentary:. by LizMoney:

Multi-Account Posting with Smart Account Enabling:
We’ve upgraded the user interface to select which accounts to send posts to, saving you the time and effort it takes to post to each account separately. We’ve also added an option for Smart Account Enabling. With this feature turned on, this will allow Seesmic Desktop to change accounts when messaging your friends based on whom you are replying or direct messaging to. Seesmic will not change the accounts if you do not enable Smart Account.
.:Ooh I like the Smart Account feature. If you are managing other people’s tweets, there’s no danger of mis-tweeting:.

Authenticated bit. ly Integration:
You can now use your own bit. ly account when using bit. ly as a shortener for Seesmic Desktop. By simply entering your bit. ly API key, you can now keep track of your URL clicks when sharing your links with your friends and followers.
.:Nice. This way, you can track your link stats and see how much your bit.ly link is clicked:.

New Services Panel:
Along with bit. ly, we have set a foundation for managing your accounts for sending images, and be able to set them in our new Services Panel. The Additional Integrated Account Services panel currently includes image services such as Pikchur (where you can set your own account), Posterous, TwitPic, Twitgoo & yfrog (which is currently using your twitter account).
.:Integration. Put your Tweet out on blast on other services right from inside Seesmic:.

You can also watch a demo video here

TweetDeck, the defending champion in Twitter clients comes back with a Super Combo. It’s not just upgrading, but it’s ReLaunching it’s desktop application and has the finishing move – TweetDeck for the iPhone. Available Today at 9pm PT. This is awesome…because, after using Tweetdeck, whenever I’m on mobile, I miss my groups and columns.
Here’s the deets for the iPhone App, from Mashable:

- Column based friend groups (like TweetDeck desktop)
- TweetDeck desktop syncing (make a change on the iphone and it’s reflected back on the PC)
- Facebook toolbar like status updates
- Multiple account support
- Flicking to move between columns
- Shake to refresh

**Ha-Du-Ken** That’s awesome.
ooh Tweetie, better watch your back. TweetDeck for the iPhone just challenged you to a streetfight.

So the Deets on the TweetDeck updates ReLaunch via Mashable, .:commentary:. by LizMoney:

TweetDeck will support mobile-to-desktop sync. This means whenever you make a change on TweetDeck (i.e. change friend groups or columns), it will automatically update on your iPhone and vice-versa, multiple accounts and unlimited columns.
**Shori-yuken!**

“Block and Report Spam” button: Clicking on this button will not only delete the spam message, but it will block that specific user and report them to Twitter. Simply brilliant.
.:Word! All those Britney sucking on various things accounts? Gone and reported!:.

“Reply All” feature: You can now tweet to everyone who is mentioned in a specific tweet.
.:Yes! I’ve been dying for this. Often there are more than just one person involved in a conversation that I want to reply all to:.

“TweetDeck Recommends” column: Just as it sounds, it’s a column with a list of recommended people to follow.
.:As Borat would say: Verrry nice. A great way to get genuine follwers and add value to your tweetstream :.

Deeper video playback support: Qik, 12seconds, and other video clips are fully supported in TweetDeck.
.:Just in time for that iPhone 3G S video capability:.

Auto-suggest filter: When you start typing someone’s username, it will find the person and allow you to add them to a group quickly.
.:Sweet. Group your peeps on the fly:.

Integration with YFrog for photo sharing.

RE (In reference to): A new menu feature that allows you to reference a specific user or a tweet in your own message.
.:I like this. Because you might miss an @ to you, or want to reply to someone’s tweet who is scrolling fast. It facilitates connections and conversations:.

Are you ready to rumble?! Both applications are busting out with great improvements and upgrades, not to mention throwing down on the iPhone front.
But they are not alone. PeopleBrowsr is a social media addict’s dream. Imagine TweetDeck on steroids. With ADHD. It multitasks with almost every single Social Media site out there and you can customize it like woah. It’s so feature rich, I have been using it for a few weeks and still haven’t gotten to everything that it can do.

Also,  I’m pushing beta on Mixero, which is on the other end of PeopleBrowsr, as it’s motto is “Reduce the Noise” it’s clean, great for only picking out what you want to see, when you want to see it. It will slim down your twitterstream to just what you want to see. It’s awesome for when you want to track a certain trend (I used it for tracking #E3 and #WWDC streams), or just certain groups, and it’s minimize-to-avatars when it’s not in focus is my favorite feature. Mixero’s got an iPhone app in the works too. It’s definitely one to watch. You can follow @Mixero and @Peoplebrowsr for latest news and updates on these apps. They’ll answer any of your questions too, they are super responsive.

So who will win the Twitter client Kumite? What is your favorite Twitter Client? Let me know! @LizMoney on Twitter, leave a comment, drop me an email: lizmoney.media@gmail.com

Ok, so I’m all over the internets. I am a News hound, Blog follower, Shopaholic, Social Media Junkie, and I often have a billion (ok, 10 ) tabs open in my browser at any one time. I wished, “If there was only one place I could have all my favorite internet hot spots all in one place….” And of course, there is such a wonderful place. It’s called Netvibes.com. I completely dig this site because not only does it come with a staggering array of modules to choose from to customize your personal page, but you can add just about any content or RSS feed that you want to also. It’s so super easy.

And just last week, Netvibes rolled out some major changes. Now you can have Multiple Personalized Pages. This lets users better organize their collected widgets and also give more control over accounts and decide what gets posted publicly. You can also have mulitple accounts and personalize everything.

Here’s the Deets about the features:

Multiple Personalized Pages (MPP) introduce new page publishing and management tools, leveraging Netvibes startpage technology into a rapid publishing platform for users, marketers and enterprises. MPP can be used to create infinite:
– Business Dashboards: Monitor industry, client and competitor news, alongside calendars, CRM and workplace tools.
– Topic Pages: Track favorite hobbies, sports teams, entertainment news, etc.
– People Pages: Follow friends, family and social activity feeds.
– Public Pages: Publish a small business website, online portfolio, aggregated social profile dashboards, etc. Like iWeb, but better, easier.
– Branded Microsites (for marketers): Rapidly publish user-personalizable brand, product and media portals with Netvibes Premium Universe.
– Enterprise Portals (for large companies): Deploy employee dashboards, intranets and user-personalizable websites on a global scale with Netvibes Enterprise
– Startpages: Oh yeah, you can still make startpages, too, but the point is that MPP let’s you do way more.

So what does this all mean? Lots!
With Multiple Personalized Pages, users have unlimited room to make as many personalized pages as they like, it’s way super fast to remix and add all your widget content, it’s really easy to manage multiple accounts from one dashboard, and you can organize each page as you wish. All your different interests will have it’s own home in netvibes. You can also publish as many separate pages as you want, and you can personalize everything just to your tastes: no ads, logos, forced search bars, etc. There is no limit to what you can do and present on Netvibes. From personal hobbies to enterprise solutions, Netvibes will let you aggreate all your favorite sites and you have the power to customize everything just how you like it. Give it a spin, and there’s lots more screenshots after the jump. Sign up, get your page started at www.netvibes.com, you can find my public page here: http://www.netvibes.com/lizmoney
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the World Wide Developer’s Conference! What What! And everyone is waiting for that one piece of magical news….new iPhones? Short answer yes. But there was other stuff too. Here’s what I gathered when I was watching Ryan Block and Peter Rojas of gdgt.com’s live blogging from the event:

New Macbook Pros are shipping. Unibody design with built in battery.
New batteries have over 1k recharge cycles, and the batteries should last five years.
How’s the Speed?
It’s the fastest notebook we’ve ever made, up to 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo – up to 8GB of memory.”
Starts at $1699 – Woah, crazy fast AND more affordable? Word!
And.. there’s more:
the 13-inch now has SD, FW800, and “it deserves the name: MacBook Pro. And it starts at just $1199.”

MacBook Air gets an upgrade too – now it’s got a 1.8GHz for $1499 – $300 less than before. 128GB model for $1800… that’s $700 less than before.”

Then there is the specs as to how “green” it is.

Then there is the Operating System Talk:
OS Leopard update is 90% backend tweaks for Speed. Speed. Speed.
Not just speed but it’s more compact too: upon install, you recover over 6GB of disk space – over half the footprint of the existing OS.
– is this a move towards netbooks OS status? hmmm. Liz Likes.

Safari talk:
This is interesting, they’ve done some kind of magic where if the plugin crashes, it does not crash the whole browser. Excellent. Does that mean there will be more extensions and add-ons for Safari? I like what I hear.
More Speed talk:
Even more JS speed in Safari: 50% faster in 64-bit.
Also: Full history search in Safari; Cover Flow view of the browsing history, and Quicktime is faster, and has color correct, and new streaming technology.

Super Techy Deets:
“Lots of enhancements, but there’s also powerful new technologies.” Talking about the modern Mac: “You have gigabytes of RAM, a few years ago it was expressed in megabytes! It’s GHz – used to be expressed in MHz. And a GPU with enormous raw processing power. But to take advantage of all this, you need to write software. We have a number of technologies, but I want to mention three.”
“First: 64-bit. If your app runs in 32-bit mode, it has a 4GB memory limit. In 64-bit you have 16 billion gigabytes. Unlimited. Things run up to 2x faster: for those reasons, we’ve been on a trajectory for 64-bit. SL is the final stage, all major system apps run in 64-bit mode.”
“We want to use this power for all kinds of things. So we developed OpenCL – the C stands for computing.” Hardware abstraction, auto optimization, numerical accuracy.

Exchange: “We’ve decided build Exchange into the main three communication apps: Mail, iCal, and Address Book.” Demo time again! Mail now auto-discovers corp mail servers.
More MS Digs: Bertrand: “It’s so ironic that we have Exchange support for no extra charge, while Windows PCs have it as an extra product.” Ha.

Pricing: 29$. Srsly? Srlsly. And the family pack is $49. Pricing like Woah. Available in September.

Ok, here’s the iPhone talk. They started off with the 3.0 OS update
Scott Forstall makes the presentation:

MMS, CutnPaste, Text message search, and Spotlight.
ok Spotlight is dope. Oo000oo Tethering over Bluetooth! That makes me excitey.

Safari on iphone:
Streaming live audio and video. SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark. More talk of speed speed speed.
js runs 3x faster. Auto-fill. HTM5 support (with offline db support) and audio/video tags.

Then there is lots of app talk:
Airstrip technologies is bringing patient monitoring software to the iPhone. I remember the partnership with Johnson & Johnson developing a blood glucose monitor at the prior OS 3.0 announcement in March. I figured this was a big step, of making the iPhone a legitimate medical device. I seem to be correct: Airstrip Critical Care supports virtual vitals and patient monitoring. Doctors can look at real time patient data on the iPhone even if they are away from the bedside.
I feel that this is a good step for the iPhone. However, I wonder about security of the connections. Medical records are no joke.

ScrollMotion is introduced. Their online bookstore. Books, newspapers, journals, even textbooks. Eyestrain abounds.

GPS:
TomTom. Get turn by turn directions and there is also a dope accessory kit.

TomTom car-kit accessory: windshield mount (in portrait or laptop), dock + power, louspeaker, GPS enhancer, handsfree calling, and audio output.

Music apps:
Line-6 and Planet Waves. Control sounds for your amp and guitar through the iPhone. Pretty impressive, 80 amp models included. Tuning feature, change your guitar sound on the fly. Super cool for the recording studio, however, this may be unwieldy for onstage performance. I’ll have to get my musician friends to try this out and get their feedback.

They also announced an app that is integrated with the Mobile Me service that will locate your iPhone if you leave it somewhere. And if you have lost it, it will remotely wipe all your data. If you find it again, just sync it and it’s all restored. Ploy to get Mobile Me subscriptions, perhaps? This could probably be it’s own standalone app.

When is the download date for this upgrade? Free for iPhone users, $9.99 for iPod Touchers.
June 17th.

NEW iPhone 3GS announced.
S for Super fast Speedy performance. Good thing because they’ve upped their camera to 3mp autofocus cam, and the big news – Video, with edit features, and upload to youtube, and .mac.
Voice Command over all apps, and…
Compass (what? Random. But it may be a nod to compete with Google Android’s Compass feature)
Nike+ integration for you worky outtie runny types

AND they are keeping the regular 3Gs on the market for $99 (new contract, etc etc). Well that’s pretty cool.
When can you get one? Preorder now and pick it up on June 19th. Rumor has it that you will be able to come into the store an hour early V.I.P style and pick up your new baby.

Downsides – ATT will not be supporting MMS and they are not sure about the tethering. It was definitely disclaimed at the keynote that “SOME CARRIERS” will support these features. Hmph.

But go get you some Safari 4 now, it’s available for download, and peep the Apple site for the new iPhone 3GS

iPhone 3GS pricing

Well. Amongst all the rumors swirling around the Palm Pre, this one came out of the blue. Announced today by the top exec for Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group, they will be carrying the Palm Pre! This is really good news because really, this killer phone deserves to be on a better network than Sprint.
Slated to be available in about 6 months, the Palm Pre will also be acccompanied by a new Blackberry Storm.
Oooh, Fight.

“Over the next six months or so you will see devices like Palm Pre and a second generation Storm,” on the Verizon Wireless networks Lowell McAdam said.

via Reuters

One of my little skeleton bones in my closet is that I used to play around with the decks and wax back in the day. I had always been *jealz* of the DJ arcade games in Japan, and wondered if those games would ever make it to the US in console form. Guitar Hero blazed the way, with it’s huge success on all gaming platforms and soon enough, there were ruminations of the DJ games coming to the US, I couldn’t wait to see what would cross over to the states.

There are two games that are in development and close to release: DJ Hero, of the Guitar Hero franchise, and Scratch: The Ultimate DJ. Hm…..I personally have had my bet on Scratch from jump, with Quincy Jones III backing it, how could it be anything less than dope?

So far, so right…a few weeks ago, the DJ Hero turntable prototype came out and it was, at best, super lame looking.

Bring it Scratch! Not only does Scratch boast a dope looking lefty-or-righty turntable controller, it’s from Numark. An actual mixer company. A damn fine one, I might add. (although Vestax will always have my heart) So let’s peep this ish already! Gamertagradio.com posts up the dope deets:

Numark Industries, the world’s leading manufacturer of DJ technology, and Genius, Inc., released today the first images of the videogame controller for Scratch: The Ultimate DJ for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system. SCRATCH DECK will be showcased for hands-on play at a special event in Los Angeles on June 3, during the week of the videogame industry’s most high profile trade show, the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo.

“For decades, Numark has been developing turntables, DJ mixers and digital DJ controllers. We know what professional DJs demand, and we used that knowledge to produce SCRATCH DECK,” said Adam Cohen, Director of Business Development, Numark. “It was critical that we deliver an authentic DJ experience to gamers, whether they be experienced DJs or players who have never put a needle to vinyl.”

SCRATCH DECK combines two essential elements of the DJ and hip-hop experience – a free-spinning, touch sensitive turntable with a crossfader and 5 Akai Pro MPC-style drum pads. The turntable allows players to add their own style and manipulate the songs in real time, while the MPC-style drum pads give players the opportunity to perform and customize tracks by triggering samples using the very same pads that are the cornerstone of professional hip-hop beat production. Samples can either be pre-loaded into the game using 60 unique battle records that will ship with the software, or players can record and upload their own samples using a compatible USB microphone.

In addition to the features created by Numark, SCRATCH DECK also contains standard game controls found in music rhythm games. The turntable features a realistic surface that feels remarkably similar to a vinyl record. The drum pads and the crossfader also deliver an authentic and realistic music production experience. Left-handed DJs will appreciate that SCRATCH DECK is designed for use in right or left-handed configurations.

“Being involved with Hip-Hop for so long, Numark has consistently been the standard for innovation and leadership in computer DJ controllers, their quality is second to none,” said Quincy Jones III of QD3 Entertainment. “We are very excited to partner with them to deliver the most authentic DJ experience for gamers and look forward to letting gamers and Hip Hop enthusiasts get their hands on the controller for the first time at E3.”

Scratch: The Ultimate DJ combines free-form DJ tricks with great rhythm game play similar to top-selling rhythm games. Scratch: The Ultimate DJ is set in distinctive urban environments and will feature songs from the biggest names in Hip-Hop. Scratch: The Ultimate DJ, featuring the Numark SCRATCH DECK, will be available in Fall 2009.

Shout out to my homie Godfree at Gamertagradio!

LizMoney unboxes the LG Versa for thegadget411.com. What does she think of it? Peep out the vid:

We all know how much I love me some Chris Pirillo. I dig his scene and have been a member of his geeks.pirillo.com community for quite some time now. I was very lucky to have been asked by him to do a video for his youtube channel and his community. Somethin for the girl geeks. Makeup. The Smokey Eye. So I did the video, had a blast doing it, and I hope that I was able to get some peeps to try it out.

For a great breakdown of the application, Chris included it on his blog [full story here Smokey Eyes | Chris Pirillo] and here’s an excerpt:

“Liz Money was kind enough to submit a video for me to add to our beauty tips and tricks collection. Granted, this particular video isn’t geared towards the guys. But hey! There are a heck of a lot of girl Geeks, as well! All you dudes, just chill and skip this one. Ladies – pay attention and learn how to get those sexy, smokey eyes.

Apparently you need several different fluff brushes in order to put all of this goop on! Make sure you have angled ones, and many different sizes. The particular palette she’s using has the colors already laid out for you. It tells you what color goes where on your eyes!! I guess they also are good for all skin tones, and day or night wear.

The challenging part is doing the crease… with the darkest color. Using a round brush, press it into the color again to get the right amount of pigment. It goes right where your lid creases. This creates depth, and shadowing. The trick with the smokey eyes is to blend a ton, so you don’t look stripey.

If you want to be more dramatic, you can line your lower lashline as well. You’re going to line the inside rim of your lower lashline. It sounds scary, but apparently it’s not! It looks crazy Liz – you’re right about that! But you’re right again when you say it makes your eyes pop.

So there you have it! Now when you’re wanting to look especially gorgeous for us Geeky dudes, you know what to do! Thanks again, Liz!”

Thanks for the opportunity to do this for you, homie!

Happy Earth Day. There’s lots going on, especially in Canada – Best Buy has pretty phat trade in incentives to get you to e-cycle your electronics and get new gear! These are in-store only, obviously – as it is a trade in deal. So if you are in the Canada, you get some lucky breaks.
US Best Buys have some recycling services, Energy Star rated appliances, and tech-trade in options here.

Here are the Deets for the Best Buy Canada trade-in deals:

Trade in your old tube tv and get $300 off a Panasonic 46″ 1080p plasma tv, or $50 off any 40″ or larger Sony flat panel HDTV.

Trade in your old laptop for $50 off a Toshiba laptop.

Trade in your old VCR, DVD player or portable DVD player and get $25 off Samsung 1600 Blu-Ray or Toshiba 7″ Portable DVD player.

Trade in your old camera or camcorder for these Canon incentives:
$30 off purchase under $298
$50 off purchase $299-$599
$100 off purchase over $599

Trade in your old mobile phone and get $25 off a new handset, or $25 towards accessories if you choose a free phone. Read the terms and conditions here.

Trade in your old MP3 player for $50 off a 16GB Zune.

Trade in your old remote – I know you have a million of them lying around – and get $50 off a rechargeable Harmony remote.

Trade in your old AM/FM radio and get $60 off a Sirius Sportster satellite radio receiver. LizMoney loves her some Sirius programming!

Bring in your old digital picture frame, 5″ or bigger, and get $25 off any new Samsung Digiframe. (no cracked frames are eligible for trade in though)

Bring in your home phone and get $30 off a Panasonic multi-handset cordless phone.

Deets from Best Buy here. They are running this till the 23rd.

So celebrate Earth Day – Reuse, Recycle, Re-stimulate the Economy.

In the spirit of the upcoming Earth Day, let’s peep the Motorola Renew, available from TMo.
A cute little bar phone, in green and white of course. Can’t have a “green” phone without it being colored green, can you?
The hook is that it has ecologically responsible retail packaging, includes a postage paid recycling envelope. The phone itself is made from recycled water bottles, and the plastic housing is 100% recyclable. Also, the battery life is upwards of 9hrs, so there is less charging time needed for this phone. This phone also claims to be certified carbonfree through carbonfund.org. Through this Alliance, they will be used to offset the energy to manufacture, distribute and operate the phone by investing in renewable energy sources and reforestation.

The Deets? Meh. Very basic, no camera, no headset jack, but um, it’s green and it’s cute.

image from www.phonedog.com

Motorola, eco-friendly, carbon footprint, carbonfund.org, tmobile, tmo, t-mobile, mobile, green, earth day, recycle, reuse,

There’s no escaping the meteoric rise of Twitter in the past few months, with it getting mentions on morning tv shows, celebrity gossip shows, it’s been pushed to the forefront of everyone’s internet consciousness. There was also a much-publicized Twitter Race to a Million Followers between Ashton Kutcher and CNN.

Right after the Twitter War, ev, the CEO of Twitter posted this cryptic message: “Tomorrow just became a very big day” What would it be?

Turns out, the big news is that Oprah is now on Twitter, and it’s really her. Game On. Will her “Oprah Effect” be as influential in 140 characters as it is on her show? Well, by noon of her inaugural day she had almost 1000 followers, by 4pm (CST) she had almost 100,000 followers, and only 6 benign updates (someone please get her a Reuben). And this was just the soft opening. The hook was that she was going to make her Twitter Debut live on her show.

I am curious to see what she will do with Twitter. She’s already an adopter of new media and technology, often Skyping in people onto her show. I’ve been asked if her legions of apostles are even internet savvy. I’m postive many of them are, if it’s just to go internet shopping. If she tweets out her Favorite Things? Oh Hell. Bitches will be crashing some servers to get to them. Ever watch an Oprah’s Favorite Things show? The level of screaming and cheering women rival that of The Beatles or a Barack Obama appearance. You can’t get them to shut up. If she will tweet out discount codes or free shipping to get the stuff she recommends, I fear the internets will become one huge Fail Whale. It could take this country right out of the recession. Two things power the internet, and that’s porn and women who shop online. I’ve seen instances where a discount code and secret sale is leaked onto a women’s makeup and shopping message board and they have crashed Sephora and Nordstrom’s sites getting to it. Yes, Oprah could break the internets with the right free ship code.

She could use it for good as well, I suppose, her book club recommendations and her various causes. There’s lots of Twittering for charity lately. Many of the Twitterati has been behind a lot of charitable tweeting, and I think Ashton Kutcher’s hook to get him to 1M follwers included mosquito nets in third world countries. Does she still do her book club? Twitter would be another good way to get her book recs out to her apostles and keep em reading.

So, while there is a certain undercurrent rumblings of people displeased with such a high-profile person on Twitter, I have high hopes for Oprah’s use of it. Hopefully more than just an update to who’s going to be on her show. I think she can use it for good.

She might need an internet coach and Social Media Marketer on her team, my favorite celebrity twitter-er, THE_REAL_SHAQ pwns her after she makes her inaugural post:

twitter, oprah, ashton kutcher, cnn, larry king, aplusk, shaq