Blogrollx lets you exchange links with other blogs easily

Blogrollx is a free service that helps to put bloggers together to increase substantial links within their own areas of interest. It’s honestly the most straight forward way to exchange blogroll links that I have seen so far on a larger scale. Once you sign up you only need to show what type of blog as well as what type of blogs you want to network with- niche, page rank, etc.

After registering on the site there are no fees that need to be worried about or forced link exchanges that you need to participate in. In fact all of it is voluntary. They will allow you to network with other blog writers and it is a mutual choice on if links will be exchanged or not. Once you find other bloggers in your niche you are set on starting to offer exchanges between them. It’s a great service and if you are looking for other bloggers to trade links with I suggest signing up to Blogrollx today.

Cliqset – Unleash Your Social Media

Cliqset is “A new platform designed to help make social information more accessible and less redundant. Cliqset gives developers the tools to create, manipulate and share social information.” While a few other services offer this as well I have to admit I love the way that Cliqset allows you to combine updates and personal information over multiple social networking platforms in one spot. Their way of doing so is amazingly clean and straight forward. If you have a personal or professional social identity online you need to keep on the same level across various networks this is a great way to do so. I’ve been testing out one of my online projects using this for a few days now and can only say that I’m 110% pleased with what I’m seeing.

With different friends, contacts, and followers all on different social networking services it can be a pain to keep track of it all. If you have multiple companies on these services you can imagine how quickly it starts to blur together. It really does just get difficult to keep your various accounts in synch with the latest updates and information without using automated services to report to each one. Why not than just pick one service you can go with? That is the idea that Cliqset is based upon.

If you believe you’d be interested in such a service make sure to check out Cliqset today.

TweetSum – How To Know Which Of Your Twitter Followers Are On Your Wavelength

TweetSum is a service that attempts to show how relevant your followers are when compared to the content that you tweet on. It’s main goal is to let you know which of those that follow you are worth looking into clicking that follow button on. When your networking you want to network with people in your field or fields related to yours and this is a great tool that helps you do just that!

The entire process is based on the DBI. The DBI, or the Douche Bag Index, is calculated by a few major factors- number of followers, number of friends, profile content, tweet content, and a custom algorithm that they are still working on adjusting to be just right. There is a lot to keep in mind when factoring compatibility with so few public fiends on Twitter, yet TweetSum does a great job.

Interested in getting a little help in organizing the contacts in the Twitter portion of the digital side of your life? TweetSum is the tool for you.

Tweetpkr – Allows You To Check Twitter Updates While Not At Twitter

Tweetpkr, or tweet-peek-er, let’s you “take a peek at your friends twitter updates from anywhere.” If you aren’t a user of any third party Twitter account managers and always keep it in your browser this can be helpful at keeping track of your friend’s updates WHILE browsing. It really is as simple as entering your login credentials on the site and dragging the encrypted link that is created into your bookmark bar. Anytime you click the link it will have a menu pop up in your browser that will show the latest tweets from your friends as well as add your own tweets!

Officially the following browsers are supported: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chroms, Opera, and Safari. It’s a safe bet that the majority of people out there are going to be set with whatever browser they use by default. I know there are other browsers out there but you are lying to yourself if you don’t think that covers the majority of web surfers. The following video is a demonstration on how it works and honestly that is as simple as it is to setup and use. GREAT service for anyone who uses Twitter a lot. I added it to my Firefox at work today and have absolutely no complaints!

Triond Shows Your Post In A Widget

I’ve mentioned Triond before- it’s a service that has it’s own private blogging network that you can submit to and make money off of the content that you submit. It’s an interesting concept though from what I can tell so far from a few test posts the payout isn’t really worth the time it takes to write content for it.

The widget that Triond has created is a straight forward one that you are able to embed on blog or any web pages that you happen to run. What it does is show the most recent posts that you have published anywhere on the Triond network. Each of these widgets are meant to help direct any of your readers to articles that you have published in order to push more traffic at them in order to share your traffic. While this helps you make a few extra cents an article it also allows the network to obtain more readers.

The setup for the widget is extremely straight forward- enter your Triond account, pick a color theme, and the number of articles you plan on showing off to your readers. Adding onto this the option to change the width and height for a bit more customization and fitting with your site’s theme. After this you click Get Widget, pick the software you use or the generic option and you are set. It’s a great way to attempt to drive more traffic to your specific articles. I’m still playing around with Triond but I don’t think my interest in the service will be able to last that much longer.

iList Micro Enables You To Tweet Classified Ads For Selling AND Buying

iList Micro, a new idea brought forth by the Classified Ads site iList, is targeting Twitter as it’s main source of finding what people have to sell and what people are looking to purchase. The service allows you to enter a simple set of hash tags for either option and will a) show them on the iList Micro page and b) if you follow iList on Twitter you will get direct messages on Twitter if anything matches for what you are looking to buy or sell in your area.

The company itself is focused on using classified ads by harnessing “the power of your social networks on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others to share your listing with your friends and their friends.” While this has been their goal for some time now it is only now expanding even further with the services it is offering on Twitter.

How iList Uses Twitter

The company is making it easy to interact with everyone’s favorite 146 character service- “Tweet your listing with the hashtag #ihave (ex. for selling) or #iwant (for wanted) listings. The magic iList Micro robots will automatically put all of those tweets here.” Here being the iList Micro main page where it is constantly updating with new tweets sent out by those posting ads. The great thing is thesse are not the only hashtags that you can use. They have expanded upon the system by allowing categories “#forsale, #forrent, #free, #events, #jobs, or even something like #electronics.” They also are incorporating locations and are finding ways to track relevant classifieds not directly posted on the service to be able to expand people searching to buy, sell, or rent and allow them to find what they are looking for. It’s a simple ideas and a lot of thought put into how it was developed.

Twibs – The Twitter Business Directory

Twibs was created to be the ultimate directory for finding what business have a Twitter profile. The company believes that Twitter has the power to connect customers and businesses in ways only hinted at by the advancement of blogging in our society. This being the case in order for that to work it needs to be easy for customers to find the businesses that they wish to interact with and that’s where Twibs comes into play.

Being able to communicate with someone from a company has always been a huge win for keeping consumer loyalty. Twitter has allowed for businesses to step up and speak directly with their customers in a new way and it’s one that has been for the better. Twibs is the easiest way to be able to find companies who actually are on Twitter that you would want to communicate with and honestly is a very useful service in both terms of allowing users to reach employees who are willing to speak to them on just about anything- or at least point them in the right direction. The interface Twibs uses allows you to group businesses both alphabetically as well as by number of followers. Bonus is being able to tweet companies directly from the page. Companies looking to be added to the directly go through an extremely painless process and are added rather quickly.

My ONLY complaint? They didn’t add groups to sort businesses by. As many Twitter applications are developing their own grouping system it could have been useful to see one implemented on Twibs so that you could find a list of the type of companies you may wish to be looking for. Otherwise? A+ for usefulness!

So while I have no plans or time to update a journal blog on a regular basis (I’m sure the updates from this year make that pretty clear) as I spend most of my time now working on My new blog about what I find online and my online projects, new projects in development, and BuyZombie. You’ll notice that The Shiny Swine isn’t on that list. Matt and I are trying to decide what to do with the site- as much fun as we’ve had working on it he’s not sure if he wants to keep it up. I’m taking a hiatus from daily updates on it while we figure out what to do with it so we shall see.

I suppose I should write up on anything major happening in my life on the off chance someone still reads this site. I have a huge pile of projects in the works and I’ll still do some project announcements and possibly the occasional new movie review on here as well. Mainly though you’ll be seeing updates on my projects as I don’t really have time to focus much over here right now.

If you want to get a hold of me the best bets are:
My new blog
My Twitter
My Facebook

Tweetizen.com – Discover The Tweets That Matter To You

Tweetizen is a Twitter application that allows you to filter your daily tweets by a combination of “groups” and “tags.” You have the option to either use preset groups or create your own. These groups that you create can either be privte for yoruself, private for a set group of friends, or set as public. You then are able to add specific tags or keywords to search for to even further bring forth the exact type of tweets that you want to read or have stick out. Once you have the keywords picked you can even have it just look for specific keywords. What is Twitter without being social though? Tweetizen keeps this in mind by allowing you the ability to invite anyone with a Twitter account to join any group that you create to share similar interests and ideas that are tweeted about!

Future Upgrades For Tweetizen

In the future Tweetizen has plans to make itself even more useful to the Twitter community with the ability to be embedded on both websites and blogs. Soon you’ll be able to broadcast the social groups of your choosing on any website you own with a quick code or plugin that the company will be providing you.

What we have here is another useful service that is being spawned from how open Twitter itself is and lacking core features. While on the one hand Twitter having all of this room opens up a plethora of opportunities to expand upon the base of Twitter itself. While there are a lot of toy applications there are also a lot of services like this one which actually expand upon the usage of Twitter and it’s amazing how many keep popping up.

Gawker Allows Everyone To Legally Republish Their Content

Yesterday, The Gawker Media Blog Network became compliant with the Attribution Non-Commercial CC License. So now you have the ability to use the content on these blogs on your own sites! Of course the ability to do this does come with a few conditions. I would suggest reading over The Legal Page for all of the details on how you can and cannot use the content that they provide. While there is a lot of information here that you should read over the highlights are as follows:

“Under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, Gawker Media permits anyone to do the following with certain types of GM content, in any medium:
To reproduce, remix, or otherwise alter GM site material so long as the logo is displayed and credit is given. This includes, specifically, permission:

**NOTE** this does not include the right to republish images from GM sites, for which GM may not the copyright holder, except in the context of a screenshot of the whole site.”

Now the sites that are supporting this?

• Gawker – Gossip from Manhattan and the Beltway to Hollywood and the Valley. Entertainment Media
• Gizmodo – The Gadget Guide. All Gadgets, All The Time!
• Jalopnik – Obsessed With The Cult Of Cars. If it’s got 4 wheels it’s here!
• Jezebel – Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women Without Airbrushing. If it’s fashionable (and sometimes not!) it’s here!
• Kotaku – The Gamer’s Guide – The best source for gamers online!
• Lifehacker – Tips and Software for Getting Things Done. One of the best resources on the web for life!
• Deadspin – Sports News Without Access, Favor, or Discretion. If it’s competative you know you can find out about it here!
• io9 – We Come From The Future – Science Fiction at it’s best.