If you are looking to take advantage of Twitter in your business without it taking over your life, here are some great “shortcut” tools and applications to keep you in the social media game without sacrificing all of your precious time!

Tweetdeck: A desktop client that allows you to manage all of your Twitter activity without being logged on to the web.  This is very popular due to its ability to organize your followers into groups.  Tweetdeck has also recently added the ability to update your Facebook status from the interface as well chat with your Facebook friends.

Twellow: The Twitter yellow pages! Find Twitter users by category or geographic area.  This is a good way to find new and interesting people to follow.

Tweetie/Twitterberry: For those of you looking for ways to tweet on the go, I prefer Tweetie for iPhone.  I have also heard good things about Twitterberry, which is for the Blackberry.

Grouptweet: Group message broadcasting for Twitter.  This tool gives you the ability to send private tweets to only a select group of followers which you choose.  I’ve seen this used successfully for everything from web development projects and school assignments to diet and exercise accountability clubs.

Monitter: This is one of my favorite tools.  It lets you monitor Twitter for a set of keywords and see what people are saying.

Twitterfox: If you use the Firefox browser, this is a nice extension which notifies you when your friends update their status on Twitter.

Twitthis: A way for people to send Twitter messages about blog posts or websites. When you click on the TwitThis button or link, it takes the URL of the webpage and creates a shortened URL. You can then send the shortened URL and a description of the page to others on Twitter.  I love using this to quickly share the URLs of interesting articles or posts I come across while browsing the web.

Hashtags.org: Hashtags bring some order to the updates of Twitter users.  For example, a couple of years back the hashtag #sandiegofires was used in order for those interested to easily follow this topic.  Hashtags.org provides real-time tracking of all the hashtags being used on Twitter.

WhoShouldIFollow: This is a very simple tool which looks at your current friend list and recommends others to follow based on that list.  One of the Twitter questions I am asked most often is how to find more people to follow.  This makes it quick and easy to do.

TweetBeep: If you want to know when someone mentions your name, company, product or competitors you can get updates sent to you to stay on top of it all.

Twitterfeed: Allows you to quickly tweet your blog posts.  Just sign up and enter your blog feed and Twitter login information.  When you publish a blog post, it will be sent to Twitter automatically.

These are some of my top picks–there are too many tools out there to even begin to mention them all.  However, I recommend getting started with some of these and keeping an eye out for any others you think would help streamline your Twitter experience and save you time.  (You’ll never have a shortage–there are new applications arriving on the scene every day!)

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Harvesting tweets is on the rise. Researchers and marketers alike are now capturing and downloading Tweets from Twitter’s database. Privacy activists argue privacy concerns. Researchers, marketers, and Twitter users all want to know – is Twitter harvesting legal?

How and Why

Every day, users of the Twitter social media publishing platform send out millions of Tweets — short electronic messages of 140 characters or less — to their readers and followers.

Most Twitter users are not aware that it’s relatively easy for anyone with a skilled programmer to harvest and download their Tweets. All a programmer has to do is to gain access to Twitter’s Application Programming Interface (API), and then to write code that requests data from Twitter’s servers through the API. The code contains search criteria, usually in the form of key words and phrases of interest.

One prime example of why Tweets are harvested is the harvesting of Tweets by news organizations Tweets during the riots that followed the Iranian presidential election of 2009. The results provided an excellent source of real time information from a closed society as events unfolded, and afterward, a fascinating historical record of how the protesters worked together under difficult conditions.

Advertisers have also joined the Tweet harvesting process.

For example, suppose you’re going to lunch in an urban office setting, and you tweet a collection of co-workers suggesting a specific restaurant. A savvy marketer harvests your Tweet, and then emails to your smart phone a coupon for a hefty discount at another restaurant nearby. Pretty nifty for the savvy marketer, and perhaps a welcome suggestion for a discounted lunch, but is it legal?

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act

In 1968, the Wiretap Act was passed to impose rules for obtaining wiretap orders. In 1986, the Wiretap Act was amended by The Electronic Communications Privacy Act to extend coverage of the Wiretap Act to electronic communications.

Generally, the Wiretap Act as amended prohibits the intentional interception, use, or disclosure of wire and electronic communications, unless a statutory exception applies. This means that all persons (including governments) are prohibited from wiretapping phones and intercepting electronic communications over the Web, unless a statutory exception (safe harbor) applies.

How does this apply to Tweets? A specific statutory exception applies to electronic communications that are publicly accessible. This is the exact language of the statutory exception: “It shall not be unlawful … for any person… to intercept or access an electronic communication made through an electronic communication system that is configured so that such electronic communication is readily accessible to the general public”.

Readily accessible to the general public is defined by the statute as follows: “… with respect to a radio communication, that such communication is not… scrambled or encrypted”.

It would appear that any Tweet that is not designated by the Twitter user as “private” would clearly fall within the statutory exception because the Tweet is not scrambled or encrypted. So, Tweet harvesters appear to have a strong argument that they’re protected by the publicly accessible safe harbor.

The Google Litigation

Google is now involved in litigation involving its collection of WiFi data. It seems that Google’s Street View cars have engaged in the now-ended practice of collecting bits of private wireless data while cruising neighborhoods for data used in its Google Maps online service.

Although Google ceased this type of electronic data collection and stated that it was not intentional, a class action suit has been filed against Google.

Conclusion

The harvesting of Tweets that are not designated as private would appear to be protected by the publicly accessible safe harbor. It’s interesting that Google’s collection of WiFi data is very similar to Tweet harvesting. It would seem that publicly accessible safe harbor would also protect Google in this litigation, but we’ll have to wait and see how this case is resolved.

Why is accessibility important?

Broadly speaking, web sites have to cater for all tastes and needs. There are different kinds of internet users besides “normal” ones, which a site should be addressed to:

• persons with eye disabilities
• people who owe downgraded computer configurations
• people who use different internet browsers
• Statistical data revealed that there are about 20% people around the world who can be included in the above categories.

On top of that, web content should also be more available to all users regardless of the user agent they have (computer browser, mobile phone or voice browser) or of the external factors that affect the environment (too much light or noise). Another reason why site accessibility is worth considering is the rapidity of finding information in which everybody is interested.

Language is a problem that must be taken into account: users from anywhere might visit your site and might not fully understand the language of your site.

But, maybe the most important explanation of the importance of accessibility is the fact that it lowers costs and brings profit. Subsequently, why not bother finding out ways to make your site more accessible?

8 Tips to make your site more accessible

• Validate HTML documents beforehand!
  Using HTML is certainly one of the most important features which should be considered with the view to increase your site accessibility. But the matter is not as simple as it may appear: much attention is needed, taking into consideration the fact that there are different types of browsers, some older and some newer, providing different ways of validating HTML. In order to be sure about your HTML text, you could use specialized programs like: W3C HTML Validator or WDG HTML Validator enabling you to correct the possible “spelling” errors that you didn’t notice. Beware of the many programs claiming they can validate HTML
• Draw attention wisely!
  On the other hand, when you think of using HTML, do not employ it only in an aesthetic purpose; the emphasis should be laid on the structure and on the content, rather than the presentation itself. For instance, when you use bold, you should always use it in order to highlight a statement, an idea, a problem, not only for catching the eye. For strong emphasis, use EM or STRONG elements.
• ALT as a textual option
  With reference to the images, when using IMG and AREA, you should also provide ALT as an alternative; its purpose is functional, rather than descriptive. Nevertheless, should you want a decorative image, use ALT=”", which is indicative of the absence of image content.
• Do not replace text with images
  Choosing to replace text with images usually reduces web site design accessibility. By and large, text is more flexible providing users the possibility to choose font. Consequently, not doing so may result in a poor image quality on some hardware configurations.
• Color suggestions
  1.Be sure to specify all color attributes; they are sure to provide accessibility for a good website! The risks of not specifying them all involve inaccessibility on the part of the users whose browser colors might not match those specified by the author. Specifying a hexadecimal triplet in the <#rrggbb> or <#RRGGBB> forms is almost of vital importance on the grounds of the fact that older browsers might not support color names.
  2.At the same time, authors should be sensible when choosing a color for the text, meaning that it should be easy to read on the screen; in this respect, the color of the text should obviously be in contrast with that on the background.
  3.It is highly recommended that the visited and the not visited links shouldn’t be the same color, due to the users’ potential confusion.
  To find out more about this issue read our article: Choosing the Right Colors for Your Web Site
• Use relative FONT sizes
  When talking about HTML, one cannot fail to mention FONT, which is another accessibility issue with websites. FONT should rather be avoided – this is certainly a strong tip to improve site accessibility. Make sure that you let the user the possibility to change font size! Relative FONT sizes are preferable.
  Again, FONT is another aspect related to the form of the website. So, do not try only to draw attention without having reasonable content!
• Do not rely on JAVA scripts
  Some browsers do not provide support for Java scripts; therefore sometimes it would be better if you didn’t use it. Nonetheless, Java scripts are usually known as factors to increase accessibility, providing helpful hints to users. The main suggestions regarding this matter are:
  1.To ensure the Java scripts accessibility.
  2.To offer a non-Java alternative.
• Organize your Page
  ◦Ensure that you have a relevant content structure, for a better understanding.
  ◦When giving links, it is advisable that you mention the entire link lest the visitors be confused regarding its destination.
  ◦CSS might be a good idea in order to emphasize textual links; providing more visual impact on the user.
  ◦The presence of a site map, a search box or a site logo are hints indicative of an accessible website.
  ◦Testing your site on real users in advance is a good way to analyze its accessibility and to foresee to some extent future site traffic.
  The bottom line is to keep the content simple, clear and easy to scan.

Conclusion

Finally, you should bear in mind that a usable website is first of all an accessible website. Website accessibility is only a small detail in creating a web page, but it provides a strong asset in front of other sites that do not take it into account. Not to mention the fact that, speaking in terms of costs, the expenditure for this “feature” is quite low in comparison with the beneficial effects it involves.

So, the main benefits which are worth paying attention to are:

• website traffic
• ease of finding information
• rapidity of getting what you search for
• higher engine ranking
• preventing risk of legal action on the part of the people with special needs
• better server performance
• better website reach
• faster download times
• website PR increase
• avoidance of bandwidth bottlenecks

In order to take advantage of these, keep in mind:

• Validate HTML documents beforehand
• Catch the eye with ideas not with layout
• Provide ALT as a textual option
• Use contrastive colors
• Avoid images of text
• Relative fonts are better
• Offer non-Java alternative
• Keep content simple, clear and easy to scan