Twitter’s OAuth now in Public Beta!
Sick of malicious apps? Sick of typing in your Twitter passwords to third party apps and not even knowing what they are going to do with it? Welcome to OAuth, the token based authentication system, now available as a public beta for Twitter Apps! This was just announced (via Twitter, naturally) by Alex Payne, Twitter API’s lead.
An example of the authentication process is seen above, with TipJoy.
Josh;s Verdict: Simple, no password required. Now we’ll just have for other Apps to use this, to reduce abuse.
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How to: Auto Follow and DM, Track keywords on Twitter and more!
If you’re new to Twitter, you may want to read this. And even if you’re not new to Twitter, and want to automate your tasks on Twitter, read on.
I’m going to introduce Tweetlater - please don’t assume about their name and think that all they do is allow to schedule your tweets to a later time. They offer way more than that. Here’s what Tweetlater CAN do:
Send automated thank you notes to new followers, and automatically follow new followers, if you choose to do so. Optionally, select to vet (approve, ignore, block) new followers before we perform your selected automation tasks.
Grab your own personal 140-character tweet scheduling engine and RSS feed. You can schedule and publish tweets that don’t go to Twitter, they go to your personal tweet stream, which is available in RSS, XML and Javascript formats.
Josh’s Verdict: All that, and for free too! You can add and manage as many Twitter accounts as you want. Sign up Today, like I did. Tweetlater helped me automate a number of tasks which would take me way too long if I did it manually – After all, I have 10k+ followers!
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Topify: Manage your Twitter followers with email (100 Invites!)
Topify basically does 3 things with your Twitter account within your email, without even going on the Twitter website. If you’re the Power Twitter user, this is your serious power tool and time saver.Topify was created by two former TechCrunch France employees, Ouriel Ohayon (@ourielohayon) and Arik Framovitch (@arikfr).
1. First of all, they create better notification emails when some one follows you. The improved email is seen below:
The email now shows Following/Followers stats, their Display Image, Bio, On Twitter Since, Updates Count, their Website and their Latest Update, versus the original Twitter one, which only told you your new follower’s name and username (e.g. only @Joshlam and Josh Lam).
2. Awesome. I want to follow this guy who just followed me. Do you need to go all the way to twitter.com, sign-in, go to the guy’s profile page, and click follow? Well, with Topify, you don’t have to. All you need to do is to reply to the email. Simple, Easy and Smart. Now why didn’t Twitter think of this before?
3. How about Direct Messages?
I just followed this really cool guy on Twitter (I know, it’s @Joshlam) and he told me I was awesome 
Topify makes it really easy to reply to Direct Messages. Once again, all you need to do is to reply to the Direct Message notification email.Done.
So, to conclude, Topify may be simple, but has to be a great shortcut, especially if you’re a Power Twitter user.
Topify is currently in private beta. So how do you get into the action then? 
Well, as a lucky Josh’s Blog reader, you get EXCLUSIVE invites to Topify. Just click here. 100 Invites only!
If you’re on Twitter, follow @Joshlam as well for Josh’s Blog updates, exclusive Beta Invites and cool freebies!
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DMFail.com Fails, Twitter To Fix Private Messages
Say goodbye to the fun of reading private Twitter messages sent improperly and gathered on DMFail. Sometime today, Twitter says in an email, they’ll change the way private messages are sent so that you can use either [D + username + message] OR [DM + username + message].
It’s a subtle feature change, but one that will avoid embarrassment for people who’ve accidentally made their private messages public.
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TwitterSplit.com: Intro Video is the best EVER!
Not another boring Web 2.0 service. Or another Twitter tool as a fact.
But what makes TwitterSplit different is.. well.. there Introduction Video to their service!!
Watch it below:
Anyways, what is TwitterSplit? They focus on that: people clicking on your links in your tweets, but don’t follow you. This service captures those “clickers” by adding an iframe (i know, their annoying and gay) to the top part of the linked page. An example is shown below:
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Twitter Relaunches Find People
Want to see if your friends, family, or colleagues are on Twitter? Now you can through the microblogging tool’s re-launched people search, which lets you query the service by username or first/last name to find other users. The feature had been taken down earlier this year when Twitter was experiencing significant downtime issues.
In addition to helping you find people, or simply see whether or not you’re the most popular Pete, Adam, or Stan on the service, the search interface integrates Twitter’s invite tool that lets you email your friends about Twitter.
Best of all, all of these features, at press time, are loading extremely fast, lending more credibility to the notion that Twitter’s performance issues are behind it. You can check out people search from here or from the new “Find People” link that has been added to Twitter’s main navigation menu.
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Sign into Google Friend Connect with Twitter ID
Friend Connect also supports IDs from Google, Yahoo, AIM, and OpenID. For instance, I tried this on the Go2Web2.0 blog, which has implemented Friend Connect, and it gave me the option to use my Gmail or Twitter accounts (I could also use Orkut or Plaxo). I used my Twitter sign-in without a hitch. (Update: Actually, this is a little confusing, but it signs you in first using one of the four credentials above and then asks you if you want to add Twitter).
The race is on between Friend Connect, Facebook Connect, and MySpaceID to sign up the most third party sites. Adding Twitter as an issuing party is a big win for Friend Connect because sites are going to choose the sign-in system that gives their visitors the most options and broadest reach.
There is nothing stopping sites from implementing more than one sign-in system, but at some point presenting visitors with too many options becomes confusing. For instance, we use Facebook Connect, in addition to our own sign-in system. Should we add Friend Connect? Probably. MySpaceID?
It’s only been a couple weeks since these have become widely available, and already universal sign-in is anything but. Here is a list of sites that are live with Facebook Connect, and some example Friend Connect sites can be found here (if anyone has a more comprehensive list of sites live with Friend Connect, please add to comments).
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