SayTweet is a new Twitter Mashup, but bigger than just a mashup. It’s much more.
It’s an ultra-cool and entertaining way of displaying tweets, which, the creators say, was inspired by the guys at Textopoly.

It essentially, displays the tweets in speech bubbles near the Twitter users who are tagged in a particular image. It’s dynamic, i.e. the image gets updated with the your (and your friends’) latest tweets. It’s to be experienced rather than explained. You’ll get a better picture with the pics below.

daaku, sathyabhat, cruisemaniac, suksy, scorpion032

SayTweet is intended to be driven by Imagination. There’s no limits to what you can do with it. Among some simple ideas,

• Uploading a family photo and tagging each member serves to be a great way of keeping up with everyone.
• Upload that group photo of your school/college which you lovingly cherish and tag your friends. Now, you’ll never ever miss them.
• Remember, you can UPLOAD JUST ANY PICTURE. Be creative, start a twitter profile for your blog (powered by TwitterFeed), upload a pic of you hugging your computer and tag the computer with that username.

These are just some random thoughts about the cool ways in which SayTweet could be used in conjunction with Twitter. Possibilities are endless.  It seems that you’re struck with an idea. Say it loud in the comments.
(Thanks @SathyaBhat for introducing SayTweet.)

Almost all the web-serives or apps run in a BETA stage for sometime before their actual launch. But there is an even pre stage for all projects; the LABS. Every project/service live in the labs all thorugh their developement session. It’s only after rigorous testing and bug-fixing, they come out of the labs. So, it is recommended to visit the labs once in a while, so that you get to know a glimpse of potential-next-big-things.

Almost all software firms have got their own private labs; but now, we’ll take a look at three top labs:

1. Google Labs
2. Mozilla Labs
3. Live Labs

There are many promising projects in their development stages currently at the above labs. Let’s take a look at some of them.

• Google Sets
  Automatically creates sets of items from a few examples.
  I gave the inputs : Sony, Nikon, Canon and Olympus (digital camera brands) and clicked “Create a Short List” and it intelligently gave

  panasonic

  kodak

  pentax

  fuji

  samsung

  casio

  marque

  fujifilm

  sigma

  hp

Sounds cool, huh ? Go, try it out and say your opinion about it.

• Google Mars
  In collaboration with NASA researchers at Arizona State University, they’ve created some of the most detailed scientific maps of Mars ever made. You can view the maps/satellite imageries of Mars, which were earlier exclusive to NASA.

• Personas for Firefox (Mozilla)
  Personas for Firefox is a extension that adds lightweight theming to your browser. It’s an experiment in personalizing firefox without the need to download heavy themes.

• Microsoft PhotoSytnh
  You can use Photosynth to transform regular digital photos into a three-dimensional, 360-degree experience. Anybody who sees your synth is put right in your shoes, sharing in your experience, with detail, clarity and scope impossible to achieve in conventional photos or videos. The software is clever enough to guess the vantage point from where each photo was taken, then it places them in the right sequence.

  The Hindu on PhotoSynth:
  Imagine, you have just come back from a family holiday and your digital camera is full with dozens of photos you have taken, many in a single site — may be the Taj Mahal or the Charminar or Sentosa in Singapore. PhotoSynth allows you to stitch these ‘flat’ photos together to create a 360-degree, 3-D panorama of the spot.

Couple of days back, you read about Migg - the Malayalam Digg Clone. Then, I thought about writing, how to create your own new digg clone for FREE and launch it.
Let’s take a look at Pligg - open source content management system available for download at no cost. Pligg started as a simple CMS that let users submit and vote on news articles, and that’s still what we do best.

1. Once you’ve got the idea conceived, get yourslef a killer domain name and a suitable hoster (with PHP/MySQL).
2. Select the hosting plan after estimating the expected user-base.
3. Grab a copy of Pligg and install it on your server. Installation is easy, but configuration takes a bit more time as there are many functions and features to be configured/tweaked.
4. Then you can ADD CATEGORIES, modify the site structure and much more in the administration panel.
5. Search for a suitable template/theme. There are many available free of cost. These are good resources:
   • Pligg2U
   • FreePliggThemes (less number of templates)
6. That’s it. The Technical Part is over.
7. Invite your friends and have sometime, testing every part of it, making sure it’s secured.
8. Release it to public (or even in BETA) and promote as much as you can. Introduce your new digg clone to bloggers and they might review it (as I’ve done for Migg).

There are many digg clones in the web, mostly powered by Pligg. Some are language-based ones like Migg, some region-based, gender-based, category-based and some even college-based !!!

The past 7 days have been very eventful with all the so-called giants, releasing their newest products. It all started with Mozilla releasing Ubiquity, Microsoft with a revamped IE8 and Google with their browser, Google Chrome codenamed Chromium.

Over the days, blogosphere was filled with rave reviews, great discussions and many conclusions on what the future is. Much’ve been talked about all the three big-thingies, and as such, I’m not planning for yet another review of these. Just some thoughts on these; that’s all.

Google Chrome

What is Google Chrome ?
Though this has been called a Google’s browser, both by the people and the people at Google, this is not a conventional browser. Apparently, Google Chrome cannot substitute Firefox/IE/Opera/Safari, atleast at this point of time. This could rightly be called the browser for web apps. Google Chrome is similar to Prism (by Mozilla Labs) in its objective, which provides web applications as separate launch-able applications on your desktop.

• You Can Download Google Chrome HERE

Here are some articles you may find interesting about Google Chrome

• Official Google Blog Post
• Read about it at Google BlogoScoped
• Ten Questions About Google Chrome
• Don’t get hooked on this Google Chrome Hype (backs my statement that It cannot replace the other browsers nor is a X/Y/Z Killer.

While going through the official Google Blog, I was excited to know that Google followed the policy : “launch early and iterate.” This is a favourite of many, including mine. They says:

As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit “send” a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome.

Certainly, they’ve succeded in getting more coverage and crowd for the launch, that announcing the product only at the time of official launch. Excellent Marketing Tactics !!

Download Mozilla Ubiquity

Download IE8 BETA

I’ve been playing, quite a little bit with Ubiquity. I’m now learning to develop for Ubiquity. YOU TOO CAN. Just head to the Ubiquity Wikis and are the best resources on web for ubiquity.
>Author Tutorial<
>User Tutorial<

If I/YOU come up with anything interesting on Ubiquity, we’ll share it here. You can always use the comments section. It’s open for you

Finally, the active and vibrant Malayalam Blogging Community gets their digg - Migg.in. Started by Kenney Jacob, the Malayalam Digg-Clone exploits everything-possible by the mighty Unicode. The mechanism is simple and straight forward as in the case of Digg :

• Vote for the entries you like/feel value.
• Higher the votes, it gets featured on the front page; the migg frontpage !I

If you are a Malayalam blogger/blog reader, wait no more, and register at migg and start participating.