[Youtube link for mobile viewers]

[youtube link for mobile visitors]

Hope that helps anyone who may have had questions about this feature. Let me know if you have any questions. This kinda thing is actually kind of fun to do, so maybe I can another quick screen-cast to help someone along.

Amazon is selling the Mac Box Set, which comes with all 3 for the price of $134.99, which is only $5 more than just buying the Leopard upgrade by itself. Now is the time to buy since Apple will be offering upgrades for $29 to Snow Leopard for users that are runing Leopard already. Users of Tiger and older OS will have to pay $129 to upgrade to Snow Leopard in the fall.

So what are you waiting for? Get it now! Also, the Mac Box Set Family Pack is only $148.95 if you’ve got more than one Mac you’re trying to upgrade.

If you’ve already got Leopard, you can also Pre Order Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard from Amazon for only $29. Not a bad deal folks.

Mac Box Set

These apps and utilities are all free with the exception of Saft.

Drop Box App: Store, Share, and Sync Your Files online

Basically, If you have a laptop, you probably have a desktop or another computer you use somewhere else as well. These applications can help you from having to haul around little jump drives.

Drop Box works by creating a folder on your computer that syncs to Drop Box online, so whatever you add to the box automatically syncs with any other computer you have added a drop box to, or you can use the online site to download a view files. You can share files in you drop box with individuals, and you get up to 2 GBs of space, with the option to add more for a fee.

Features:

• No Complicated interfaces to learn
• Runs in the background
• Syncs automatically
• Easy Sharing

NetNewsWire – The Best Feed Reader for a Mac

Hands down, the best feed reader app out there. I love this app and all my feeds when on my Mac are read through this. I plan on doing a little video demo later, but if you’re on a Mac, you definitely should check out this feed reader. It’s the best out there.

Another nice feature about this free app is it’s integration with newsgator.com. While I don’t normally read feeds at newsgator.com, with the account I have, my feeds are automatically synced so that if I check off a feed as read online, or on NetNewswire, I never to have read it again, because it will be marked as read every where I read my feeds. It even syncs with FeedDemon, which I sometimes use when I’m on my Windows computer at work. If I mark it as read at work, it will be marked as read when I come home on my Mac. Great syncing and offline support. Here are a few other features of NetNewsWire:

• UI update with new toolbar icons.
• Performance and memory enhancements including an improved Combined View which uses multiple pages to display long lists of items.
• HTML Archive feature – saves news items as HTML files on disk. These files are compatible with any web browser.
• Desktop integration – Address Book, iCal, iPhoto, Growl, Twitterrific and more.
• Great new look – improved Combined View, feed “cover art”, full-screen mode, and tabs with thumbnails and animations.
• Synchronized clippings – read your saved articles from the web or another NewsGator reader.
• Microformat detection for contacts and calendar events.
• Automatic checking for newer versions of the software.
• Automatic download of podcasts and transfer to iTunes.
• Smart lists to aggregate news from your feeds based on criteria.

NetNewsWire is also available for the iphone and ipod touch.

Quicksilver – Act Without Doing

A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.

It’s a bit hard to describe quicksilver at first, but the best way to think about it is to consider it a bit like an app launcher. It’s more than that, but that’s the gateway drug into using Quicksilver. The idea is to increase productivity and speed up the process. Download it, and try it for starting apps, then as you get the hang of it other uses will make sense and appear. You can always email me or comment with questions.

Learn more about quicksilver by visiting What is Quicksilver

Chax – An iChat enhancement

Chax is a collection of minor modifications and additions that make using Apple’s iChat more enjoyable.

Features

• Unified contact list shows all contacts from all accounts in one window
• Growl notifications for new messages and users changing status
• Automatically resize the contact list to fit the number of visible users
• Built-in log viewer
• Activity log that displays your contacts’ status changes
• Auto-accept file transfers, AV chats, and screen sharing requests
• Toggle text status visibility of users
• Always on top option for contact list, message windows and AV chats
• Set font of names, status messages, and group separators
• Option to auto-accept text chats, skipping new message notification window
• Show status changes directly in the message window
• Additional unread message notifications in the Dock
• Automatically go away when the screensaver activates
• Properly use ICQ accounts without sending text formatting in messages

Growl – System-wide Notifications

Growl lets Mac OS X applications unintrusively tell you when things happen. It’s a systemwide notification system. Many applications can take advantage of it. For example, if you use ichat with growl, whenever someone IMs you, you get a growl notification that pops up letting you know what that individual said. If you click on the growl notification, you’ll be taken directly to IM window for that individual to continue the conversation. There are many applications that support Growl.

Definitely a must have for anyone running OS X. Fore more information visit Growl’s info page.

Saft – a Safari Browser enhancer

Saft is a Safari must have, despite the cost small cost. I’ve used it so much and it’s such an integral part of Safari that I don’t even realize it until I sit on someone else’s computer and they don’t have Saft themselves. Definitely check it out. A demo is available.

Here are a few features of the many that Saft offers:

Features:

• Always open browser window in tab
• Auto hide Downloads window
• Auto save and restore opened browser windows at quitting and start
• Block animation
• Block HTML refreshing in front-most browser
• Block images and plugins
• Bookmark search
• Bookmark this group of tabs
• Consolidate browser windows
• Control-1 to 9 to popup bookmark menu or open bookmark
• Control-drag page
• Crash protection
• Customizable HTTP timeout
• Customized Google search field
• Do not allow scripts to bring tab to front
• Drag tab buttons to add the URL string to other applications
• Full-screen browsing
• Growl support

Twitterific – A Twitter Client

If you’re not on twitter, you probably won’t appreciate this app too much, but you should definitely consider checking twitter out and maybe even following me on it.

Twitterific is a twitter client made by Icon Factory (makers of many other great Mac apps) that interacts with twitter so that you can send and receive tweets, @replies, direct messages without having to have them come to your phone and while you’re sitting at your computer. Twitterific also pulls the last 100 (beta version) or so tweets that were submitted while you were logged out so that you can also catch up on any replies or tweets you may have missed. While purchasing twitterific is an option, you can download it and use it for free and just have to see a few small adverts (displayed once per hour) in your tweet stream. Very non intrusive ads for a great program.

Twitterific is also available for the ipod touch and iphone.

Features:

• Clean, concise UI with small desktop footprint
• Supports multiple Twitter accounts
• Auto refreshing at user defined intervals
• Replies and direct messages are displayed inline
• Number of unread tweets shown in the Dock
• Delete tweets from Twitter quickly and easily
• Auto show / hide when new tweets arrive
• Control over window layering and priority
• Single click access to user profile pages
• Switch between friend and public tweets easily
• Keyboard shortcuts for list navigation and more
• Control Twitterrific with AppleScript
• Audio notification for new tweets
• Hotkey to show / hide tweets

Technorati Tags:
mac apps, free utilities, free software downloads, mac utilities, must have mac apps

I thought, why not go ahead and get a headstart on the future, right? Blog comments are now hosted with Intense Debate. It’s time to start leaving many comments and help me see how this thing works. One personal favorite I like right now about Intense Debate is the check-mark box that lets you tweet your comment. Well, isn’t that a nice touch?

For the few of you that have left comments while I was hosting them with disqus, was there anything you liked or disliked about it? Did you feel more inclined to leave a comment or discouraged with the new commenting system? Feel free to add any other thoughts you have below. Also, let me know what you think about Intense Debate.

Here’s to expirimenting and the future.
Oh, btw, if you host your blog on something other than wordpress, such as blogger, tumblr, typepad, etc, both Disqus and Intense Debate work and will continue to work for those platforms, so improve your blog’s commenting system and check out either one of these two commenting systems… please (especially blogger folks and tumblr folks).

(sidenote: Due to the Automattic aquisition, Intense Debate is now in a closed beta so you’ll need to sign up for an invite code. Head on over there and sign up if interested and check out some of the features they offer. Check out my Intense Debate Profile.)

“Ever had trouble sending a track to somebody?”

If you answered no to that question, then you’ve probably never had to send a song to someone before and this post probably won’t be for you. If you happened to answer yes, well then keep reading.

Soundcloud.com is a website that seeks to ease the hassle of sharing music online. If you’re like me, you’ve tried to email a track or song to someone before and come across a few problems. Either the song file was too big for you to email, or was too big for your recipient to receive. Maybe you FTPed it to a server, but the person you sent it to couldn’t/wasn’t sure figure out how to download the file. The people at soundcloud have obviously dealt with these issues so they have created a website that makes sharing music as easy as possible. All you need to do is upload the file through their website and that’s it. No email, no FTP, no weird site where the people who have to download the file have to wait 5 minutes before it starts unless they pay to become a member. Simple.

Once you’ve uploaded your file, you can choose how you would like to share it. If you would like to make and keep the song public, that’s an option. If you would like to make it private, but share it with specific people, that is also an option. If you just want people to stream your music, that’s also an option. Would you like comments or critique? Again, an option. Commenters can also leave comments for specific sections of your song. You can even enter genre, BPMs, record labels and links to where the song can be purchased online.

When uploading you can also upload any file type you’d like. AAC, mp3, WAV, AIFF, you name it, it’s supported without a file size limit. Let me repeat that… no file size limit. Sharing music just become simple.

This is a great tool for collaboration. If you have a friend who lives across town or the U.S., upload a master audio file, keep it private of course, but share it with the individual(s) you want. They can work on their end of the song and then send you any work they’ve done. It’s a great tool to use for long distance work or even for private critiques.

Also, a nice feature provided by the site that helps make collaboration easier is the DropBox. Every user get a drop box where people can send you tracks or files for sharing. If a band has a few members and one member has worked on a particular part and would like to share it with someone else, they can add it to their DropBox by logging into the site, or by using an embedded widget on their blog or website. you can see my DropBox widget on sidebar of this blog under the Communicate! heading.

Of course, the site does have some social networking aspects as well. You can follow others and they can follow you so whenever you provide a public track they are notified from their dashboard and can come listen to your new track and leave comments. It makes for embedded community that provides critique of music. You can also embed your uploaded tracks via flash with a player that is provided.

For some more info about what you can do, check out the short SoundCloud tour.

Any musicians out there excited about the opportunities and potential this site can bring for collaboration?

Leave a comment below if you’re interested in the site. It’s currently in a private beta, but I have 5 invites available for those interested in checking out SoundCloud. Get signed up and let me know what you think.

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I left my review leaning towards bandsintown. The layout and interface was nice, plus they offered RSS feeds for band calendars. It was quick easy and simple to use, without needing to sign up for the site as well.

One thing that was up in the air was a particular feature that songkick offered called songkicker. Here’s how it works:

The Songkicker is a plug-in that works with your music player. After installation, open your music player so the Songkicker can scan your library.

We compare all your artists with our database of thousands of events.

After a few minutes, your user homepage will get a personalized concert calendar, updated whenever your bands go on tour. We list all ticket vendors, so you can buy the cheapest ticket.

Every time you play a track, it’s songkicked to us. Immediately, you can see whether the bands you’re listening to are on tour.

A great idea, but at the time, it was only Windows only, and I currently run the Mac OS. Well, songkick has since added a Mac version of their plug-in, and I’ve been using it for the last few weeks.

Well, they finally got it working on the Mac OS (actually, they did a while back, it’s just taken me a bit to actually finish and post this), and it’s very neat. The nice thing about the plug in is that you basically set it and forget it. Once you’ve installed it, it’s there working in the background and you don’t have to do anything to get it to work other than install it.

Once installed, when you visit the Songkick site, you will see a list of bands that it finds in your itunes library that are on tour, and coming to your area. With Songkick, you also have the ability to add a band or artist that you may not have in your itunes library (or if you don’t want to install the plug-in) or remove artists that you have no interest in their touring schedule (you know, like that You Want a Piece of Me by Britney Spears. What? Am I the only one who likes that song?)

I’m currently tracking 476 artists, of which 149 are on tour. Pretty neat to know. If you’re a concert goer, or hate that you always find out about shows after it happens, this site is definitely worth getting into.

For my original impression visit here:

Are You Kidding? Did I Miss Another Show? Solutions to Concert Tracking in Your Area

Songkick also provides widgets that you can post on your blog, and to the right in my sidebar, in purple you can see what they widgets look like.

Bands in Town has them as well, and I might use those for bands specifically coming to Tallahassee at a later date.

Check out songkick and let me know what you think about it.

I’ve recently got an email from songkick letting me know about a few shows that I am definitely interested in checking out in the coming months; Phantom Planet and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra might get a few of my dollars.

I love experimenting with things, so I may end up hating it and switching back or I may love it and keep it on forever, we’ll see.

The idea behind disqus(pronounced discuss) is to keep the conversation going, or as written on their site, webwide discussion.

The idea seems great. If all your comments are located in one place, then it makes it easier to keep up and track what’s going on in a site after you have left a comment. This actually happens to be one of the features I like best about blogs that are hosted on the wordpress.com. If you have a wordpress.com account, whenever you log into your account, you can click on My Comments from the dashboard and see what new comments have been posted since the last time you left yours.

The idea behind disqus to me seems to be to be able to do this with all sites across the web. It’s dirt simple to sign up/into disqus. If you’ve posted a comment before, more than likely a profile has already been created for you, all you have to do is claim it (I went ahead and imported all my previous comments into disqus btw) by clicking on your name. You can then add your website/blog if you have one (disqus works across multiple platforms such as wordpress, blogger, tumblr, MovableType and more).

According to their website, disqus will help accomplish the following:

• Provide Easy Connected Comments: Disqus is a powerful comment system that easily enhances the discussion on websites. In minutes, connect your community with those of over 25,000 other websites. Track conversations across the web, plus bridge discussions with your favorite services such as FriendFeed and Plaxo.
• Provide More Interactive Discussions: Threaded replies reveal the conversations in your comments: And now it’s easier to keep the discussion alive with email and mobile replying. Features such as ratings and video comments make comments interactive and expressive.
• Better Tools for Admins: An intuitive admin section makes it easy to moderate the discussions from one or multiple websites. Disqus is easy to customize, with widgets that lets your audience become your community. With search engine-friendlydata sync, Disqus is as safe to use as it is easy.

Also, Disqus incorporates gravatars, so if you have one, it will continue to show. In addition to that, you can leave video comments through seesmic‘s video comments (I had a plugin that allowed that previously, although nobody ever left one).

Having disqus means that a few of my plugins will no longer work. Subscribe to Comments (you won’t really need it if you do the disqus thing). Neither will UserAgent Spy, which was more for fun. This is the one that showed what browser and OS you were using when you left a comment.

So let the testing and experience begin. Check out disqus and leave a comment below telling me what you think about it.

Do you like it, hate it, don’t really care?

I’ll see how I like using it. It might stay, or it might go, but I’d love to know what you think.

disqus, blogging, commenting,

A gravatar is nothing more than a Globally Recognized Avatar. Avatars are small photo boxes that you see when people leave a comment on a blog. What a Gravatar does is allow you to have the same ‘buddy icon’ wherever you leave a comment on someone’s blog. Gravatars support is included in new versions of self-hosted WordPress blog, and for all (or almost all) wordpress.com blogs and can also be used by other platforms. As wordpress blogging becomes more popular, you might want to take a few minutes and give your comments a ‘face’ when responding to what someone has written on their blog, and a Gravatar is the easiest way to do this.

So, how do you get a Gravatar? Glad you asked, it’s really easy.

Signing up for a gravatar.com account is FREE, and all that’s required is your email address. Once you’ve signed up you can upload your avatar image and soon after you’ll start seeing it on gravatar enabled weblogs!

Make sure that you enroll with the email address that you use to leave comments on blogs so that it works. Also, you are free to register more than one email address and store more than one gravatar, so if you’d like, you can have one gravatar for one email address, and another gravatar for another email address.

A quick note regarding those who have wordpress.com blogs. You’re partially enrolled for a gravatar already. When you sign up for your gravatar, use the email address and password that you use for your wordpress.com blog to sign up/login. You’ll have the option to use the wordpress.com avatar or upload another. Enrolling in gravatar will now allow you to go to someone else’s (self-hosted) blog with gravatar support, and have your gravatar show when you leave a comment.

Head on over to gravatar.com and put a face to your words.

For feature upgrades and what-not, head on over to the wordpress.org blog for more information.

Some of the things that you might find exciting and I do as well are the ability to track edits and theme previews that allow you to view your a theme with your own content before your users can/do and the ability to toggle between the flash and classic uploader.

Fire up that upgrade plugin or upgrade the old fashioned way.

I’ve for the most part stuck to that plan, only purchasing albums here and there, but I still enjoy purchasing new music. Seeing that we’re almost halfway through the year, I thought it would be neat to see what new albums I’ve purchased since January 1st of this year.

Here’s my list.

1. Jon Foreman’s Season EPs (I’ve gotten all four of them, Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer).
   
   
2. Death Cab for Cutie’s Narrow Stairs.
   
   
3. Shelby Middleton by Shelby Middleon. (contact via myspace)
   
   
4. The Myriad’s With Arrows, With Poise.
   
   
5. Chromatology’s No Shoes Apply.
   
   
6. Daniel Renstrom’s Adore and Tremble.
   
   
7. The Bravery’s The Sun and The Moon.
   
   
8. Maida Vale’s Self Titled EP.
   
   
9. The Sarah Mac Band’s Open Fire single release.
   
   
10. Needtobreathe’s The Heat.
    
    
    

I just signed up for a new service called Grand Central. It’s been aquired by google and is currently in a beta phase (and as I’m sure you’re aware with google products, that means absolutely nothing. Everything they aquire or create is in a Beta phase forever. It’s a good way for them to excuse themselves if the service sucks or acts wonky… ok, done with that).

Quick Overview:

• You get one phone number that rings all your phones.
• You can choose which of your phones ring, even by group or caller.
• You can screen callers and ListenIn before accepting calls (great feature I used to have on a cell phone. Very handy).
• Protect your privacy by blocking annoying or uninvited callers.
• All your voicemails are stored online. You can listen to them at your convenience. Basically one Voicemail box for all your numbers.

Some other features:

• Record calls on the fly and access recordings online.
• Personalize your Voicemail or greetings by caller or group.
• Choose ringback tones for your callers.
• Let people call you from a webpage without showing your number.
• Switch phones in the middle of a call.
• Visual Voicemail for your mobile phone.

Pretty neat features, no? So, all the neat things it can do are quite pointless if I don’t use it, so that’s where you, kind reader, come in.

See the button below? Click it, give me a call and let’s test this thing out.
Put in your name, and your number and give me a buzz. Or, feel free to call me at my new Grand Central provided number, (850) 547-6494.

You should be able to sign up online, or feel free to request an invite or visit http://www.grandcentral.com/home/blogger_invite to sign up.

Now that I’ve signed up, I’m thinking I should have ‘moved’ to New York.

Here’s a quote from electronista.com:

One of the most popular social networking sites for music, Last.fm, says it is now letting users stream any music listed on the site free and legally. This is as a result of deals signed with EMI, Warner, Universal and Sony BMG, as well as “thousands” of independent labels, all of whom will receive a portion of the website’s advertising revenue for each time a track plays. Artists, meanwhile, will receive a unique share of the ad revenue, paid directly. Acts can thus earn some money and exposure without being signed to a label. For the listener, the catch is that at present, a track can only be played three times before a message promotes Last.fm’s upcoming subscription service. This will allow unlimited plays, and may also permit things such listening to tracks via the desktop client.

-emphasis mine.

Free full-length tracks are obviously great news for listeners, but also great for artists and labels, who get paid every time someone streams a song. Music on Last.fm is perpetually monetized. This is good because artists get paid based on how popular a song is with their fans, instead of a fixed amount.

We will be paying artists directly.

Last.fm – the Blog · Free the Music

We already have licenses with the various royalty collection societies, but now unsigned artists can put their music on Last.fm and be paid directly for every song played. This helps to level the playing-field—now you can make music, upload it to Last.fm and earn money for each play. If you make music, you can sign up to participate for free.

Last.fm – the Blog · Free the Music

What an awesome opportunity for artists to generate revenue without having to rely heavily on record labels for promoting and financing.

This is also great news for fans, for one major reason pointed out by techcrunch.com:

Music needs to be sampled before most people want to buy it. The current Web industry norm of the 30-second clip just won’t cut it anymore. Perhaps Last.fm will help to set a new precedent here with limited full-track streams. It might be difficult for iTunes or Amazon to abandon the 30-second preview, however, because neither one has an ongoing revenue stream from advertising or subscriptions with which to pay an ongoing royalty. At least, not yet.

Goodbye, 30-Second Song Clips. Last.fm Offers Limited Full-Track Streaming and Moves Towards Subscriptions

I certainly enjoyed last.fm before this announcement, but now I enjoy it more knowing that the artists I listen to and enjoy will be getting paid for their creative work, and who knows, maybe if I can get some stuff going, I may be able to upload a song or two here or there and enough people might like it and I could get a few pennies in the mail.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: last.fm, streaming music, free music,

1.18.08: Joining in on the fun
Several days ago, I checked out the latest youtube videos with tags “Mute Math,” and found the first “play along” bass video. I was flattered. I’d seen others on drums and keytar and whole bands, but none on bass. Goulet22 does a nice job, and actually adds some things that I don’t play in the verses, which I liked. Check it out below:

After watching this, I knew I had to make a video showing my approach to the song. I finally got around to it. (It was done very quickly. If it appears that I’m mad or bored, I’m not. I couldn’t hear very well because I had to mix the bass up loud enough over the music, which made it hard to hear the drums-my main source of groove in Mute Math.) See below:

Here is the “Control” bass part alone, broken down:

Here’s a video not concerning bass, but I get a kick out of it:

Tomorrow, we shoot the video for “Control.” Wish us well!

[Bass Lessons & Mute Math]

In order to be eligible, diamonds would have to have been purchased from any U.S. jeweler between Jan. 1, 1994, and March 31, 2006.

You’re welcome.

More info:
Luxist
KSAT

If you aren’t familiar with RSS and RSS readers, check out the articles at the links.

What does this mean for you? Well, it means you can now use newsgator’s award winning RSS readers for free, duh!? (you used to have to pay $30 or something). These free readers are available for Windows, Mac and mobile phone platforms.

For me, what this means, is that I will always have my feeds synced no matter where I go. I had been using Viigo as a Blackberry RSS reader, and it is an excellent reader with various options like email to a friend, posting on delicious, starring or saving items, feed suggestions, Feed Alerts, and even package tracking services. The only drawback for me was the fact that Viigo wouldn’t sync with my feeds elsewhere. I could pull an OPML file from Newsgator with Viigo, but if I marked something as read in Viigo, it wasn’t marked read in Netnewswire or newsgator online. Now with Newsgator, I can get my feeds, online (through newsgator.com), on my desktop (through Netnewsire) or through Newsgator Go! (on my Blackberry offline or on) and always stay in sync. I no longer have to delete information that I have already read because it is all synced together. I think that’s pretty freakin’ awesome. And a lot of It can be done without the trappings of a web browser.

If you’re not currently using an RSS reader, or if you’re ready to graduate to something more robust, you should definitely check out one of Newsgator’s now free readers for your desktop, online, and your mobile device, and keep your feeds synced wherever you go. I really don’t think you’ll regret it after you try it.

Netnewswire for Mac
FeedDemon for Windows
Newsgator Go! for mobile
Newsgator Inbox for Outlook
Newsgator Online
Other free tools

The only problem with this was that I would essentially be adding events at least 2 times on a calendar; Once online on gCal and the other time in my Blackberry. Well, I can thank google for coming through with a solution for me. Apparently they have released a new Blackberry Sync application that is integrated with my phone calendar. Very nice Google, very nice.

The guys at berryreview.com were very excited.

From Berryreview.com:

Google has just fulfilled the holiday wish of many BlackBerry users. They have just released version 0.4.2 of their NEW Google Calendar Sync application. The new application works with both regular Gmail accounts and Google Apps For Your Domain! For more info go to this link and to download OTA go to this link.

Google Releases Calendar Sync For BlackBerry!!! | BerryReview

I’m gonna give it a whirl and see how it works. Anyone else excited about something like this?

I won’t try to copy his review here, but if you haven’t tried out a desktop reader (and if you’re into RSS feeds, you really should) definitely check out NetNewsWire.

One of the features I enjoy about NewNewswire is that it has the ability to sync your feeds across multiple platforms, so no matter where you are, you won’t have to reread something you’ve already read and not necessarily have to be stuck inside of a web browser (or be online).

Shawn will also be doing a series of reviews for some of the what he thinks are the best Mac software out for use here.

Check out his review and let him know what you think about it.
It also looks like Tuaw caught wind of his review as well.

Follow the Launch with Twitter

Twitter is a service that allows you to communicate and receive quick communications and updates from friends, family or co-workers. With Twitter, you can get quick up to date communications and information about what’s going on with the Launch Community through text messages or IM programs such as AIM, gTalk, LiveJournal, or Jabber. It really shines with text messaging though.

In order to receive updates from the Launch via twitter, follow the steps below:

1. Go to https://twitter.com/signup
   choose a user name, a password and enter your email address, then click create your account.
2. Once your account has been created, click on Setting on the top right hand corner of the page then click on Phone & IM.
   From here you can enter your mobile phone # and/or preferred instant messaging system information.
3. Enter your mobile phone # and check mark the box that says “It’s okay for Twitter to send txt messages to my phone. Std. rates apply.” This will ensure that you get a text message message update from The Launch whenever one is sent. If you don’t want to receive text messages, or prefer Instant Messages, enter your information for your preferred Instant Messaging platform instead.
4. Once you click on OK, you’ll receive a code that you will want to text to the number 40404.

Once you’ve done that you’re all set up for Twitter!

All you need to do now is visit the Launch’s Twitter page at http://twitter.com/thelaunch and click on follow and make sure that notifications are on.

If you would like to follow other twitterers feel free to follow other Launch twitterers, Samuel at http://twitter.com/portorikan or Natalie at http://twitter.com/snowhite197.

Play around with your setting to learn more about twitter or find more people to follow.

—-New Information Below—-

That was the walk-through that can be found at The Launch Website but here are a few more things you can do with twitter that you might find useful:

• Once you’ve logged into your account, if you click on Find & Invite, you have the ability to see what friends you have that may already be using twitter from your online email address book. You can check your gmail, yahoo, Windows Live, and Hotmail email account address books and then follow your address book friends that twitter discovers. You also have the ability to search for anyone as well, with the search not being limited to just names, but cities, persons, places or things of interest.
• If you click on Setting along the top right, you can then click on picture and upload a photo to identify yourself on twitter.
• If you select Notices, you can turn off Notifications during certain hours (for at night, while you sleep as an example).
• If you visit explore.twitter.com, you can see a list of neat applications you can download for twitter use.
• twitter.com/downloads has apps that allow you to use twitter on your desktop while at home or work (I like twitteriffic for Mac, and twitteroo for Windows).
• There’s a facebook application that you can add by visiting here and mobile phone applications among others can be found here (I use twitterberry on my Blackberry).
• Is there a particular topic you’re interested in and want to see what other people are saying about it? Just send a twitter with track followed by the topic and anytime someone mentions it, you’ll receive a tweet of that topic. i.e., if you want to follow anytime someone mentions Tallahassee, send a twitter that says track Tallahassee. You’ll then get twitter messages that mention Tallahassee. If you ever want to stop receiving them, send a twitter that says untrack Tallahassee and you’re done.

Hopefully, that will give you a little more information regarding twitter and what you can do with it. Hope you enjoy.

If you sign up, post your twitter info so that I can follow.