Flixtime is a service in direct competition with Animoto for helping you easily create awesome videos from your photos. Animoto has definitely dominated in this niche, also branching out into creating greeting cards and full-length videos. There have been a few other services that have tried to take some of Animoto’s shine, but have been unable to do so. With their simple, yet powerful interface and fast rendering time, Flixtime might actually be a contender.

Adding Visuals

Flixtime videos can be up to 60-seconds long while Animoto limits free users to 30-second clips. You can include photos and video to spice things up. To have the most impact, you should include a mix of photos along with short videos. You cannot control the transitions and effects used between scenes. You can only choose which clips or photos to “highlight.” You also have the option to create a cover photo, which is just an image that will help you tell your videos apart.

To create your own video, the first step is to add a name, description, and a resolution. Choices for resolution include MP4, DivX, H264, and FLV at 640×360 and MP4 iPod at 320×240. Once you’ve got the basics in place, you’ll want to add some photos and/or videos. You can either upload these from your computer, or pick from the Media Lounge (powered by Fotolia). You can also choose to add a text slide, which opens up the possibilities for what you can use the video for. You can choose to highlight or emphasize any individual slide by opening it’s properties menu (the symbol in the top-right corner).

Adding Audio

What good is a video without background music? Upload your own music or pic from the Music Lounge (powered by AudioMicro). When I say you have a gang of music of choose from, I’m not joking. I didn’t even bother with a screenshot here because there are so many options. You can choose from 17 categories, from Hip-Hop “Bootay Bootay” music (yes, actual name of clip) to Country. Choose whatever you want, but if you want your video to be used on TV, in video games, or in theaters, you will need to purchase additional licensing from AudioMicro.

Rendering Your Video

This is the easy part. You’ve already picked all the videos and stills you want in the video. You’ve organized them, placing them in the proper order and choosing which visuals should be highlighted during the video. Where necessary, you have added text slides to clarify, caption, credit, and describe. You’ve also picked some slamming background music. All you have to do now is wait for your video to be rendered. If you have better things to do with your life, remember that Flixtime will shoot you an email when your video is done cooking.

Sharing Your Video

By integrating AddThis, Flixtime has made it simple for even the most novice user to get their video where they want it. Pick from over 225 services to shoot your video out to, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. If you still don’t see the option you need, you can always use ‘email the video to a friend’ or ‘other service of choice’ (post@posterous.com, for instance). If you’ve created this video to be used as part of a longer video, maybe as the intro for your vlog, you can just download the video to incorporate it into future projects.

Final Thoughts

I’m not sure if it’s the interface itself or the fact that I can make full 60-second videos, but Flixtime has definitely caught my eye and I plan to use it for a few projects I’m working on. They are still in beta, so it remains to be seen what types of limitations we might see on free accounts in the future and what limitations might be removed (you can currently have 60 media files and videos are limited to 10 seconds, for instance). If you’re looking to throw a video together from some random clips and photos, check out Flixtime and tell us how it goes.

Google Buzz has had the Internet buzzing since it’s launch. Despite alleged privacy issues, feature omissions, and even a lawsuit, Buzz is still gaining popularity. One major thing missing is an actual developer API. Twitter’s API is what allows 3rd party apps like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite to interface with Twitter and most other web applications have one. Despite no API Someone has still found a way to create a 3rd party application that makes Buzz a little better to use.

Tw2buzz goes through all of your current Twitter contacts to see which of them is on Buzz. It then provides you links to those profiles so that you can connect with those people on Buzz. Even though Buzz optionally auto-populates your friend’s list with your most contacted people on GTalk and GMail, these may not necessarily be the people you usually connect with on social networks.

Well, maybe, you already have some followers on twitter and want to engage them in Google Buzz too. We’re offering you the possibility to migrate your current twitter contacts, so that you can start using buzz having (virtually) all your friends there.

Getting the ball rolling is as simple as signing into your Tw2buzz account. Oauth support makes this as simple as a click. You will also need to make sure you’re logged into your Google account or the process will fail. Tw2buzz automatically starts loading profiles for you to check out. The process does take quite a while because Tw2buzz tries to make sure you’re getting quality results. Not only does it check to make sure your Twitter followers have a Google Profile, but it also does a second check to make sure they’re actually on Google Buzz.

You can interrupt the process at any time and go through the results you have received so far. Simply hit ESC on your keyboard. To start the process again, click Load More Profiles. Next to each person found, you’ll find a link that says “Connect.” This opens a popup with that user’s Google profile so that you can check them out and follow them if you like what you see.

As I stated, the fact that Buzz doesn’t really have an API makes this process slightly more annoying that it has to be. Tw2buzz promises to activate features like bulk follow once Google makes it possible via the API. Until then, it’s still a useful application for rounding out your Buzz experience. The developers of Tw2buzz are also saying they will create an FB2Buzz and FF2Buzz so that you can connect with your Facebook and FriendFeed contacts. Tw2buzz is currently in the closed beta phase so you need to request an invite.

Since you’re reading this, just use the code ‘r4hsh33n6187’ to get in. This will only work for 20 of you so act fast.

Wibiya opened to the public a little while ago, providing the opportunity for the average blogger to spruce things up and possibly increase page views. This works by providing visitors with valuable tools integrated directly into your blog, keeping them engaged with your content. In other words, it makes your blog or website stickier.

In this post, we will go over basic implementation of the Wibiya toolbar. We will also cover some of the more advanced techniques for integrating Wibiya’s new features into your blog and keeping users engaged.

First thing you need to do is install the basic toolbar. This is as simple as installing most other widgets. You just need to copy and paste the code from the Wibiya website or, where available, install a plug-in. Keep in mind that, if you go the plug-in route, there is an ID number that you need to enter in your dashboard so that Wibiya recognizes your blog.

Next step is to actually figure out which plug-ins you want available on the toolbar. For instance, on my personal blog, I have: Search, Translate, Recent Posts, Random Post, Subscribe, Share, Facebook Fan Page, and Twitter. You choose your applications by going to Edit Toolbar and choosing My Applications.

Badges

Now, here comes the slightly more advanced part. Of course, visitors that click things on your Wibiya toolbar will be able to interface with third-party services like Facebook and Twitter without ever leaving your blog. So, what about your other links and badges? Most of us have links out to Facebook and Twitter in our sidebars or About pages in the hopes that visitors will connect with us elsewhere. The issue here is that, once a visitor clicks those external links or badges, they’re probably gone for good.

This is where Wibiya Badges come into play. They provide you with simple HTML code that gives you direct access to Wibiya’s features. For instance, you could link out to your Twitter profile with simple HTML like this:

<a href=”http://twitter.com/rahsheen”>Follow on Twitter</a>

This will take people to your Twitter profile where they can view your tweets and possibly follow you. However, with Wibiya, you can use similar HTML like:

<a title=”Twitter Dashboard” class=”wbadge” AppType=”20″>Twitter Dashboard</a>

Instead of simply dumping your visitors onto the Twitter home page, this will give them a popup interface right on your website where they can tweet about your stuff, follow you, and read your tweets.

As you can see from the screenshot, the Twitter Notifier from Wibiya leverages the power of BackType to show visitors tweets relevant to the specific page they’re looking at. It also automatically fills in a shortened link to that page or post. This means that each page and post on your site can have it’s own unique conversation going on.

Currently, there are 4 types of badges: Random Post, Twitter, Facebook, and Subscribe. Each one has an Image Badge option where you can just slap it in your sidebar somewhere. If you want better control over blending these badges into your current theme, use the Link Badge code. Wherever you have links to your Twitter/Facebook/RSS, just replace the “<a …>” part with the code from Wibiya. Access your badge code by clicking Get Badges under Edit Toolbar.

Keeping visitors on your blog isn’t the solution to success in blogging, but it’s a start. You still need to have good content updated on a regular basis. You also don’t want every link on your blog pointing back to your own blog as this could eventually kill your Google juice. I think Wibiya is definitely headed in the right direction in allowing users to connect with you on your social networks without actually leaving your home blog or site.

Have you implemented Wibiya yet? What do you think? How can they make it better?

The complexity and costs associated with developing and customizing an iPhone App has just been turned upside down. The team at PointAbout launched this week a revolutionary tool called AppMakr, which enables anyone to develop and publish simple iPhone applications in minutes.

Do you have an RSS feed of compelling and noteworthy content that some of the millions of iPhone users might be interested in seeing on their phones? If you do, you too can generate an iPhone application using AppMakr in a short amount of time with a reasonable amount of money. While we’ve seen similar incarnations of mobile and even web site generation tools, AppMakr provides a powerful capability in generating a viable iPhone experience despite all of the many complexities of creating these coveted utilities. AppMakr handles everything from the application icon and splash screens to the content detail and interaction screens and it even handles the associated touch screen navigational gestures for selecting, zooming and tapping through the content.

The workflow of generating the application is a straightforward process. One can start by simply providing a Web site URL or keyword query and then wait for the result which is in the form of a sample iPhone app built with that content in less than 30 seconds. One can then customize the app further by incorporating additional feeds from social media services like Twitter, Flickr or YouTube. The next step which is optional is to modify the graphic elements to reflect your branding and style guide. This includes the ability to tweak the content icons, splash screen and application tabs. If you are interested in generating a return on your investment, AppMakr also provides the opportunity to opt into one of their two current ad network partners or to B.Y.O.A.N. to serve ads into the resulting app. The video tutorial below provides a brief visual demonstration of just how easy the process is.

Finally, as you reach the end of the generation process, AppMakr gives you two options to publishing your application to the iTunes store. The first is to continue to build and publish using AppMakr, and the second is to publish the app to the iTunes store on your own, provided you have an iPhone application developer account. This is also where the price point changes from $199 to publish with PointAbout/Appmakr as the author when the app appears in iTunes, or to be able to specify your company as the author for $499 and have overall greater control of your application; for instance, being able to test it on an iPhone and not just an emulator first ,and just as important, having the ability to charge for the app if you’d like.

The overall assessment of AppMakr is that at the $200 price point, I would give it a B-. I doubt that if I had already taken the necessary steps and made the investment to become part of the iPhone developer program that I would find much value in this solution especially not for an additional $500, but that’s just Mega.

Magpie is one of the many services out there that will pay you to tweet for them. I’ve been using it for a while now and definitely can’t complain. You probably won’t make enough to pay your mortgage, but a little gas money just for doing what you already do is worth it. In this post, we’ll take a look at the simplest way to set up Magpie. We don’t want to get bogged down in all the bells and whistles, we just want a little money on the side without doing much work.

Warning

Before we actually set this thing up, be aware that Magpie is going to use your Twitter account to tweet about stuff they feel is relevant to you and what you already talk about. By law, these tweets have to be disclosed as paid ads. Your followers will know exactly what you’re doing. If you are not confident in the fact that you should make money for your social media activity, you can stop reading here. There is no way to do this on the down low.

Getting Started

The first step is actually signing up for Magpie. They do offer an affiliate program, so if you know someone that already uses magpie, you should ask them for their referral link. Otherwise, just hit the sign up page and put in your Twitter username. Magpie will give you an estimate as to how much bling you could earn per month. Go ahead and fill in your info to create your account.

Activating Autopilot

There are a few key settings in the Dashboard that helped me actually start earning money without doing a lot of work.

• Turn off Pre-approval. I thought I wanted to approve every single tweet manually, but that was too time-consuming and slow.
• Block all per-lead and per-sale magpie tweets. These didn’t make me any cash and seem to be the spammiest looking ads.
• Make sure per view and per-click tweets are NOT blocked. These are your money-makers.
• I also chose the #spnsr disclosure to show up after the tweet. Not sure if it’s had any real effect, but I think it looks better than #ad.

Tweet/Ad Ratio

The final thing that you need to decide is just how many ads you want in your stream. Magpie lets you pick a minimum number of real tweets it should see before inserting an ad. If you’re very active, you may need to choose a higher number here. How do you figure out what to put here, though? This was another key setting that I had to tweak before seeing any results. My solution was to find out exactly how much I tweeted on average per-day and then figure out how my ads I wanted in my stream each day. Don’t worry, this requires minimal math skills. I just went to TweetStats.com, plugged in my Twitter username.

According to TweetStats, my TPD (tweets per day) is about 22.9. If I only want to see about 2 ads in my stream each day, I would set my Tweet/Ad ratio to 10 tweets / 1 ad. This doesn’t guarantee that there will be a relevant ad available every 10 tweets. If you’re more/less active, adjust accordingly based on how many ads you want your followers to see per day. Unfortunately, You can only choose 5,10,15,20,30…200 here. I would actually prefer something between 5 and 10.

Watch the Cash Roll In

Well, maybe. Your success with Magpie will definitely vary based on what you tweet about and how often you tweet. Your follower count is another obvious factor that will make the difference. If you’re not a serious Twitter user, don’t expect to make serious money via Magpie. It’s just that simple.

Has Magpie worked or not worked for you? Tell us about it!

Developing your own Google Chrome extension is surprisingly easy. You might think you need all types of development skills and coding knowledge, but it’s really no more difficult than creating or tweaking a web page. If you know HTML/CSS and are somewhat familiar with Javascript, you can have a simple extension up and running in no time. Even if you have minimal knowledge of web development, the learning curve here is nowhere near what I thought it would be.

In this post, we’re going to create a super simple extension to help you keep up with new posts on Black Web 2.0, but it can easily be modified to work for any website.

The absolute first and most important step you need to take is to install the BETA version of Chrome. As of this writing, extensions don’t work for the “stable” version of Chrome. Get Google Chrome (BETA).

Once that’s up and running, create a new directory to work from. A Chrome extension is actually a simple ZIP file with a .crx extension. The one file every extension must have is “manifest.json.” This file provides the metadata for your extension, defines it’s permissions, and any other files it needs to operate. Here is ours:

{
“name”: “Black Web 2.0″,
“version”: “1.0″,
“description”: “Black Web 2.0 for Chrome”,
“browser_action”: {
“default_icon”: “favicon.ico”,
“default_title”: “Black Web 2.0: A Different Perspective”
},
“background_page”: “background.html”,
“permissions”: [
"tabs"
]
}

Most of these are self-explanatory. The “permissions” attribute tells Chrome what features and URL’s we need access to. In this case “tabs” says we want to create new tabs in the browser. You can also see where we define “default_icon” and “default_title” which define an image to represent our extension in the toolbar and a tooltip.

Next thing we need to do is make our extension actually do some work. We create a “background.html” file in the same directory that looks like this:

<html>
<head>
<script>
// Called when the user clicks on the browser action.
chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function(tab) {
chrome.tabs.create({url: “http://blackweb20.com/”});
});
</script>
</head>
</html>

In our case, this file is very simple as all we’re doing is telling Chrome to open a new tab with a specified URL. The method “chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener” tells chrome to execute the specified function whenever our extension is clicked. The function we specify calls “chrome.tabs.create” in order to actually create the new tab and take you directly to the Black Web 2.0 homepage.

To actually get our extension running in the browser:

• Navigate to chrome://extensions
• Expand the Developer drop down and click “Load unpacked extension”
• Navigate to the directory where you put your code and click Ok
• Assuming there are no errors, you should see a new icon in your toolbar.

While you’re still tweaking your code, you can always Reload your extension for testing. There is no need to restart your entire browser every time you make a change. Once your extension has been loaded, a “Reload” link appears in chrome://extensions.

The final step is, of course, packaging up your shiny new extension for distribution. If you get your extension submitted into the extension gallery, do don’t actually have to worry about this step. Google handles it all for you. In the case where you want to distribute your extensions on your own, you’ll need to do a couple of things:

• Head back to chrome://extensions
• Click the Pack extension button
• Specify the root directory of your extension. This is the directory where you put all your files. (ignore the private key field)
• Hit Ok and you get a .crx file and a .pem file.

Absolutely do not lose your .pem file as it contains your private key. Do not share this file with anyone. You need it if you intend to provide your extension with an update feature or if you want to submit your extension to the official Google extensions gallery.

Like I said, this is a super simple example. There are many ways it could be spiced up a little and made more useful. For instance, we could grab the RSS feed and allow users to preview the latest posts with the click of a button. You could also add a badge to show how many posts are available. We could even make the button direct us to the most discussed post or most viewed post. For more information on developing your own extensions, visit Google Code.

Have you created any Chrome extensions? Have any ideas for extensions that don’t yet exist? Tell us about it.

One of the best things you can do to spice up your online content is to add visuals. It’s not as hard as you might think. Even if you’re camera shy, you can still share visuals of the things around you or related to what you’re talking about.

Photo Sharing Sites

There are quite a number of photo sharing sites that you can use as conduits to post photos through. I say through because the ultimate goal is to get these photos to show up on your favorite social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. We also want to make posting photos as easy as possible. You may not always be at your computer, so posting via mobile is a must.

Services that fit this description include DailyBooth, Pikchur, and Ourdoings. You can post to any one of these via email. From there, your posts can go out to Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and other services. In addition, each of these sites has their own social networking and discussion abilities to extend your social graph. Comments can optionally be shared to the social networks of your choice, depending on your settings.

If you mostly do Twitter, you’re probably used to seeing links to services like Twitpic, Tweetphoto, and Yfrog. These are great for Twitter power users because they’re geared specifically for Twitter. Your Twitter friends can easily login and comment using their Twitter credentials and their comments will show up in their Twitter streams with a link to your photo. This gives you the potential to go viral…at least a little bit.

Photo Ideas

The hardest part of all this is probably figuring out what to post photos of. There are only so many pictures you can post of yourself or your kids or your pets before you start to run out of ideas. Not only that, but your friends and followers will probably get bored too. Being spontaneous and catching things in the moment will help a lot here, which is why being able to post from your mobile device is a must. If you still need help, there are a couple of services you should check into.

We’ve covered Plinky earlier this year. It’s basically a site that gives you a meme of the day. Some type of question to get your creative juices flowing. Another site I’ve started to pay attention to is Tweak Today. Same type of thing as Plinky, giving you ideas for visuals to create.

It’s not all about just posting photos of you, but sharing a bit of yourself. Post what you eat, where you hang out, what you wear, where you live. Once you start keeping your options open, you might find that most of your tweets or status updates could easily be accompanied by a photo. This makes you that much more interesting to those that interact with you.

Cinch is an offering from BlogTalkRadio that let’s you easily share audio clips or full-on podcasts right from the comfort of your phone. No need for a fancy studio with expensive equipment. Forget about audio engineering. Just record from wherever you are and post. You can even share your audio recordings/podcasts directly to your other social networks.

You might ask, “What is a Cinch?” A Cinch is a funny moment documented in audio, important news you might want to spread, a photo with commentary -it’s your ideas, thoughts and experiences packaged up so you can share them.

Posting to Cinch is simple, especially if you download their free iPhone app. If you’re like me and don’t have one, you can create your audio Cinch updates in 2 easy steps:

• Set up your phone number here (you’ll need to be logged in)
• Dial 1-646-200-0000 to create your Cinch

If you actually happen to be at your computer, you can also record a Cinch directly on the website. This is a new feature launched within the last few days. As you can see from screenshot, your Cinch can also include a relevant photo and a 140-character message (sound familiar?). Keep your Cinches organized into albums for later reference.

There are many reasons why you might like Cinch. Many of us would like to do a podcast or radio show, but aren’t really ready to deal with the overhead. Cinch gives you the best of both worlds. You could just do a quick video using something like 12seconds.tv, but some people are a little camera shy or maybe just don’t have a camera. Most of us do have phones, though.

Even if you’re all about your social media and doing videos, it’s always good to present yourself and your content in multiple forms of media. This gives your audience options and can increase your reach. Check out Bill Cosby’s Cinch Page or view the public timeline to see how others are using Cinch.

About a month ago, we talked about why you should care about Twitter lists and talked about a few examples of using lists to catch breaking news. It’s all well and good to talk about lists and how great they are, but yet another to actually go about implementing them. In this post, we’ll take you step-by-step and show you exactly how to use lists in Hootsuite.

Creating a List

To create a list, you’ll need to add a column for it. If you’ve already created a list elsewhere, you would follow this same procedure to track that list in Hootsuite. Simple click Add Column button on the top-right near the search box. In the dialog that pops up, choose Twitter List. From here, you can create a new list to monitor, choose one of the lists you’ve previously created, and also pick from lists you’ve subscribed to (created by others).

Editing a List

Once you’ve got your shiny new column created for your list, you can edit the list by clicking the pencil icon on the top right corner. This simple dialog lets you add and remove people from the list. This is the only way to remove someone from a list and you obviously can’t edit a list you didn’t create. This also assumes that you know the names of people you want to add, which can be inconvenient.

List Sniping

Of course, the simple alternative is to add user’s to lists on-the-fly, something I’ve talked about before. As you watch people flow through your Home Feed or other lists/groups you follow, you can click their name to add them to a list. This way, you can filter people in realtime based on the context of their tweets. One limitation here is that you won’t be able to add them to a list you haven’t created a column for.

Combined with Hootsuite’s other advanced features, lists become a powerful tool in helping you not only keep track of the people you follow, but also in discovering new lists and people to track. More specifically:

• Control how many columns are displayed on the screen at a time using the slider on your top right.
• Use drag and drop to further control what is visible at any given time.
• Add additional tabs to give yourself more room to work with.

Still have questions? Leave them in the comments.

While Twitter is a pretty cool place for sharing stuff, it’s just about impossible to actually follow a discussion. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen two people carrying on a discussion about something interesting and was left scrambling to follow the thread of conversation. Twitter’s API does provide a way to see what a tweet was in reply to, but this does little to help you follow an ongoing discussion. Here are a few tips you can use to keep up with conversations on Twitter:

Bettween

Bettween is definitely the best solution I’ve seen for tracking conversations on Twitter. Simply provide the names of the two twitter users you want to follow and Bettween gives you a threaded view of their recent conversations. It’s easy to follow the thread from here and see when each tweet occurred. You can also see how many conversations have happened in the past and the total number of messages exchanged between the two. Once you’ve become bored with your original query, you can scroll down to Hot Conversations (currently dominated by aplusk, mrskutcher, arrington, perezhilton, craignewmark, and kirstiealley) to see what others are talking about.

Twitter Search

One of the simplest ways to follow a conversation thread on Twitter is to use Twitter Search. The hardest part here is locating the actual conversation you want. Let’s say you saw me talking to Hootsuite and wanted to see what was going on. You could search for @rahsheen and then locate the relevant tweet. Once you’ve found it, click “Show Conversation” to see the entire thread. You don’t have to find the specific tweet that started the conversation, which would be a huge pain. You just need any tweet that is part of the thread.

TwitterScope

TwitterScope is a simple bookmarklet that shows you all the tweets from a specific user, along with any mentions of that user. This lets you see what a specific Twitter user is saying, along with everything that everyone else is saying to them. TwitterScope does provide all the information you need to follow the conversation thread, but it might be overkill if you’re looking for something specific. To use it:

• Drag the bookmarklet to your toolbar
• Visit the Twitter profile of the user you want to stalk track
• Click the bookmarklet and you’ll get a popup with all the tweets

Hashtags

This method of following conversations relies on all participants in the conversation following the rules, which never really works out. For instance, many of us engaged in discussion around the recent season of The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Many users were using the #rhas2 tag, but some used #rhoa or #rhoa2. I often forgot to include the tag myself, even though I was tweeting about the episode. There are ways to make this method work reliably, but it requires the participants of the conversation to use a service like Twubs, Tinker, or Tweetgrid. When it does work, though, following the discussion around a specific topic is as easy as searching for the tag.

Many believe Twitter is a great place for discussion, but I would disagree. It’s a great place to connect with people, but once the conversation starts to go beyond a few tweets, it’s time to move it elsewhere. For the average user, it’s just too hard to keep up. This is especially true if more than 2 people are involved or if you’re not actually a participant in the conversation.

What methods do you use to follow discussions on Twitter?