Download Squad

Not using a desktop Twitter client? Maybe you're quite happy to use the Twitter site to post updates and monitor those you follow. Just because you do doesn't mean you don't have access to more powerful interface options than the bare minimum Twitter provides.

Grab some Userscripts, and use your browser give your Twiter / Home some handy new features! I've gathered eight of my favorites - feel free to share yours in the comments!

Troy's Twitter Script - provides several additional functions, like short URL expansion, inline media viewing, and nested replies. Also adds a search box (for those of us who can't use the real deal just yet), retweet link, and an @mentions link to see who's been talking about you.

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Plenty of swirl this week about the Suggested Users page that Twitter newcomers see after sign-up. Jason Calacanis (co-founder of Weblogs, Inc., which publishes Download Squad) made a splashy offer of $250,000 to be installed near the top of the suggested list for two years. Dave Winer refuted that ploy, and the list generally. But Winer's complaint with Twitter's list misses the mark.

Suggested Users is meant to be a starter kit for new Twitter users. It is well-meaning but misguided, and surprisingly, seems to misunderstand and misrepresent what Twitter really is. Dave Winer's complaint is that Twitter is misusing its network power by applying editorial discretion to single out a tiny handful of its users. But in my view, Twitter is exercising the same sort of newbie service that My Yahoo! and Google Reader do: give unsteady new users a toehold by recommending some content.

There is no problem in principle with Twitter lending users a helping hand as new consumers of Twitter content. The issue with Suggested Users is that it shines the discovery spotlight in the wrong direction, ignoring Twitter's rapidly manifesting future as a global information matrix.

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Microsoft isn't the only company that's busy pumping out operating system updates like there's no tomorrow. Canonical is busy putting the finishing touches on Ubuntu 9.04. The next version of the popular Linux distribution is due out in April (the 9.04 stands for April, 2009). Today the team released Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope Alpha 6.

So what's new in the latest build? There's a new version of X.Org, an updated Linux kernel, and support for the Ext3 file system. There's also a new style for notifications, and a whole slew of updated packages including the latest versions of Firefox, Pidgin, and The GIMP.

The folks at SoftPedia have put together a screenshot tour showing some of the changes. To be honest, Alpha 6 doesn't look much different from Alpha 5. But as with each release, there have been a bunch of bug fixes, and at least a few new bugs have probably been introduced as well. If you're more comfortable with stable, well-tested software, you'll probably want to wait until next month to try Jaunty Jackalope. But if you want to help test the pre-release version of Ubuntu 9.04, it's available for download today.

I don't have a good history with YouTube sites for kids. My first experience was with TotLOL, where I found the selection of videos lacking and had my wits nearly destroyed by that green gummi bear video. Today I decided I had recovered enough to brave the wilds of the kid-vid genre and check out Kideo Player.

I have to admit, it totally won me over.

Kideo Player is curated by a father of two, and his taste is videos is a lot better than the spotty results you get from community moderation. The curator has a stake in the videos he selects, because his own kids watch them. Minimizing parental annoyance seems to be a priority, too: think Sesame Street, not nightmarish gummi bear. The library of videos seems to lean heavily toward educational material: I saw sign language, Spanish lessons, and animal vids when I was watching.

Kideo Player also has a more attractive, more kid-friendly design than Totlol (the dog and cat mascots are seriously adorable), and controls that even a two-year old can use by himself. Hitting spacebar skips to the next video. That's the only thing a kid has to learn to use the site. All in all, this is exactly the video site I would have wanted if YouTube had been around when I was a little kid, and probably the site my parents would have wanted, too.

With the recent leaks of builds 7048 and 7057, some of you may have already gotten a taste of what's been tweaked as Microsoft continues working toward an official WIndows 7 release candidate. Today, the E7 blog released another list of changes - some subtle, some not so much.

Surprisingly, one of my favorite changes - being able to add the download folder to your start menu - wasn't metioned. Some noteworthy changes include:

• The parent folder's button always appears in explorer. Remember how we complained about the missing up arrow in Vista, then again in 7? It hasn't been put back, but backing up one level is now just as easy since the parent's breadcrumb always shows up.
  
  
• Invert selection is back in the Explorer edit menu. I don't use it often, but sometimes I want to select all but two or three files in a massive directory. It's much easier to pick the two I don't want and then invert, and now that's possible again.

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