Installation is just as easy as any other binary file installation. Follow the prompts, you know the routine. The EasyScreenshot interface is plain and simple and self-explanatory for the most part, as you can see:

There are a few things you need to know about this application, so this is a short tutorial to guide you through the screenshot tweeting process with EasyScreenshot. Click the Settings button to specify the folder that you want to save the screenshot in and specify other options.

Under the “Using the Image” heading, there are three options: Save To EasyScreenshot Folder, Prompt where to save and Copy Image to clipboard. Selecting the option to save to the EasyScreenshot Folder is going to give you a roundabout way to access the screenshot later on and it is really not a practical option, as you have to navigate to the folder and nobody has time for that and it is simply annoying. Rather, create a folder on your desktop and check the box next to “Prompt where to save” so you can easily find the screenshot at your leisure.

Now you can choose your TwitPic Uploading options. If you want to simply upload it to you Twitter account and tweet it later, don’t check “Tweet the screenshot” because it will instantly tweet it. To get any of it to work on you Twitter account, you need to enter your Username and Password in the field provided. After you have specified the desired settings, click the Save Settings button in the bottom pane. All you have to do is choose your screenshot and method of capture, take the screenshot and it is instantly uploaded or tweeted. That’s all there is to it!

You have shared the screenshot with your friends on Twitter now. This application is not for taking typical screenshots in the manner which you are accustomed to. It is specifically for sharing on Twitter. This comes in handy for business purposes when you need to quickly share a screenshot with an associate. They can then tweet you back and communicate whatever needs to be communicated and you can move on from there. The screenshot above was tweeted just for fun because the user thought it would be appreciated by his friends and is only an example of what you can do. Share selected areas or whole web pages with the option to include the URL and a message describing your intentions. Now go and tweet away!

Download EasyScreenshot here. The program is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Once installed it displays an always visible module at the lower right side on the Twitter website. The userscripts filtering options are displayed by default. Available are Twitters own filters plus filters for replies, links and media tweets. A click on one of the filtering options displays only those messages on the Twitter page.

Tweetfilter furthermore supports the creation of custom filters, for instance by keyword, username or hashtags. The system is very flexible and can be disabled or inverted at any time with a single mouse click.

Customizations are the second core feature that Tweetfilter offers. Here it is possible to configure a variety of settings that change Twitter features and what users see when they open their personal Twitter timeline.

This includes basic customizations like hiding advertising or invite friend suggestions but also more advanced features like automatically hiding the top bar, displaying alerts or hiding promoted content on Twitter.

A total of six tabs are available to configure Twitter features and modules like the timeline, dashboard or filters.

• filter independently all retweets (including classic RT-format), media, replies, Tweets with links from timelines with tweets
• custom filters for keywords, full-word (exact) match, username, mentions, hashtags, real name, source (via) with live updated match count
• shortened link expansion
• highlight Tweets mentioning you
• customize timeline layout, add via information, new menu options
• customize dashboard and aspects of the twitter.com layout gaining more space and remove distractions
• show friend status in Tweets (who you follow, who follows you)
• sound and message notification on new mentions and/or direct messages

Twitter users who hang out on Twitter’s homepage most of the time can use the Tweetfilter userscript to improve the site’s functionality significantly. Especially the filtering options come in handy for users who receive a significant amount of messages every day.

Tweetfilter can be installed from the official userscript website. The script is compatible with Firefox 3.6+, Chrome 10+, Opera 11+, Safari 5+ and Internet Explorer 9+.

I just stumbled upon Twit Cleaner over at David Bradley’s blog on the Internet which analyses all the people that you follow on Twitter to sort out the garbage (their terminology).

The service uses OAuth for authorization so that you do not have to give them direct access to your Twitter account login. Your account is also automatically set to follow them, and they will follow you for reporting and support reasons. It is necessary to keep following them at least until the report has been generated. It is then up to you whether you want to unfollow them.

It took a few seconds to generate the report for my Twitter account, but that is probably due to the fact that I’m following less than 20 or so Twitter users. David mentioned that he had to wait about 20 minutes before all of the 2056 Twitter users he followed were scanned.

The program generates a nice summary in the end that sorts Twitter users into groups like “potentially dodgy behavior”, “no activity in over a month”, “all talk all the time” or “not so interesting”.

Below the summary is a list of all Twitter users that have been sorted into one of the groups. You can jump directly to a certain type of users.

The users are then displayed with their profile photo and name.

A click on the photo sends that user to the unfollow queue which is then processed in a natural manner.

It definitely pays to double-check the Twitter accounts that are identified by Twit Cleaner as “potentially garbage”. Depending on the number of users that you follow, this verification step may take some time.

Twit Cleaner’s approach is quite unique, and from what I can tell, works quite well. It does not really make sense to run the service if you only have a few dozens or so Twitter users that you follow, like I do. This changes once that counts reaches hundreds or thousands of users that you follow, as it is likely that at least some of them are not providing useful contents on Twitter.

Microsoft Analytics for Twitter is such a tool. Well, it basically is an Excel 2010 spreadsheet that everyone can use to pull data from Twitter. Before you jump in joy you need to know that it requires Microsoft’s free PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel 2010, a 81 to 112 Megabyte download. I recommend to start downloading PowerPivot first, and during the download the Microsoft Analytics for Twitter installer.

The analytics Excel spreadsheet is placed on the computer desktop. All you need to do is to run it after installation of both required components.

The top offers a search form where you can enter up to five different search queries that you want analyzed.

Once you have entered the search terms, you click the search button to pull the data from Twitter. A small window is shown that displays the progress of that operation. Once that is finished, ou need to click on PowerPivot in the top menu and select Update All from the options there. This triggers a new window where some updating takes place. Close or minimize the window once that is completed.

Switch to the Data menu in Excel and select Update All. This updates the current spreadsheet with the new data set. You see an example of that display above on the screenshot.

The spreadsheet contains lots of information, from top hashtags over tweets by day or time of day to top mentions, top tweeters and the original and retweet ratio.

The information are great for comparing different topics, or for analyzing a single search term instead. This way you could see when people twitter about a certain topic, who writes about it the most and which hash tags are the most popular in the conversations.

It is worth installing the PowerPivot plugin for Excel? That depends. If you want to use the information presented for research or marketing, then probably yes, if you are curious, then probably yes as well. The information are presented in a way that makes it great for presentations for instance. I personally will use it to get a better picture of people who post messages about Ghacks on Twitter.

You can download Microsoft Analytics for Twitter from the official Microsoft Download page of the Excel spreadsheet. (via)

One thing that I like to use Twitter for is to search the site for news that have not been posted yet on the majority of Internet sites. It is also a great tool to find articles and reviews that you would not otherwise stumble upon.

The new Twitter client MetroTwit is one of the most sophisticated Twitter clients for the Windows operating system. The software concentrates on Twitter, and keeps everything else to a minimum. The developers have taken inspiration in Microsoft’s Metro design and created their application with it in mind.

The interface itself is clean and functional. What I like the most about the new client is the fact that you can add information streams to the interface easily, some even without logging in.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the streams are divided into columns in the interface. They show the name and avatar of the Twitter user as well as the message and the time of posting. Links are clickable, as are hash tags. Conversations are identified properly and displayed as well in the interface.

New information streams are added via the plus icon in the lower left corner of the screen. Users who are not logged in can only add Twitter searches, user profiles or public tweets as streams. Logged in users get friends, mentions, direct messages, favorite tweets as well as personal tweets and retweets in addition to that.

All streams are updated automatically by MetroTwit. A refresh button is available in the footer area to refresh all streams manually.

New users should click on the Settings button to open the program settings. Here they can make changes to the display, for instance by switching from a light theme to a dark theme. Alerts and sounds are configured in the settings as well. The Twitter client displays notifications on the desktop whenever new messages are added to one of the streams. It is possible to change sounds and notifications here.

The settings list updating options and Twitter API information, plus a selection of services that can be automatically used by the MetroTwit user. This ranges from selecting a url shortening service over a media service to upload images to location based services to lookup maps and addresses.

Users who want to sign in need to sign in first on Twitter and authorize the application there. A pin is displayed on Twitter which they then need to enter into the MetroTwit sign in form.

All in all, MetroTwit is one of the best Twitter clients for Windows available. Companies and organizations can use the program for instance to see mentions of their company name, their own tweets, post by followers and their own tweets all at once.

MetroTwit is currently offered as a beta version. The program needs the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 to run. Downloads are currently free and offered at the developer website.

Tweek Auto Post is a free software for Windows that offers more than the standard “post a message to Twitter” functionality. All program features are controlled from the main interface.

The Twitter username and password need to be entered in the beginning, before the program can be used. A click on the Sign In button connects to Twitter to log into the account.

Tweek Auto Post displays available Twitter messages automatically on the right part of the application window. Four different types are available for viewing, they are:

• User Timeline: Posts by the logged in user.
• Public Timeline: Posts by everyone
• Mentions Timeline: Mentions of the user on Twitter
• Friends Timeline: Posts by friends of the logged in Twitter user

The left part is reserved for standard Twitter messages that can be posted immediately, or scheduled messages that are posted at a specific time.

tweek auto post

The scheduled posts can only be scheduled in the coming 23 hours and 59 minutes, as there is no option to specify a data in the posting preferences.

This limits the scheduler considerably, even though it still can be used to write a message that needs to be posted later that day. All scheduled Twitter messages are displayed in the program interface with the option to delete them if they have not been posted already.

Tweek Auto Post is a straightforward program. The authentication might turn away users who do not want to enter their Twitter login information into the program interface. This has been handled better by programs who use the Twitter web page to authenticate a user.

The scheduler could also be improved by adding a date field to it, so that posts can be scheduled days in advanced.

Interested users can download Tweek Auto Post from the developer website.

TwInBox, which was formerly known as OutTwit, is compatible with Microsoft Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 running on Windows XP or Windows Vista with the likelihood that it will also work in Windows 7. Installation is a breeze. All that needs to be done is to run the setup (while Outlook is closed). The TwInbox add-on will automatically be displayed in the Microsoft Outlook toolbar on the next start of the email client.

The first thing a new user needs to do is to get into the options and enter the Twitter username and password to link these to the Outlook account. A new Outlook folder for Twitter messages has to be created in the same interface as well. There are other options like displaying notifications whenever a new Twitter message arrives.

The Outlook add-on allows a user to perform common Twitter tasks like updating the Twitter status, receiving new messages or replying to messages. There are also quite a few options that could be very interesting for some Twitter users including the ability to handle Twitter messages like emails with the option to archive, manage, group and search them. There are also options to track keywords, upload and post pictures and files that have been send to Outlook, automatically sort messages in sender folders or to assign custom folders and categories to new messages. There is also a graph available that is displaying Twitter usage statistics.

TwInbox (via Cybernetnews) can be downloaded directly from the developer’s homepage.

Many users felt that it was a great idea but lacked custom commands which would increase the functionality and usefulness of the software. The software developer has now released a major update of the software program which adds a plethora of new and exciting features to the application.

The program will now send a reply to the user over Twitter so that the user who initiated the command will now if it actually worked.

New commands include locking the PC, requesting the IP of the computer system, putting it on standby or hibernate, taking a screenshot of the desktop, getting the list of processes, killing processes, download a file from an url, getting a file list and files from the remote computer system.

Especially the option to download files and to get files from the local computer system are interesting new features. Users who are still missing commands can now create custom commands in the software.

Custom commands are made up of a name and linked to an executable file on the remote computer system. It would be really nice if the program would accept batch files as well as executables.

The additions to TweetMyPC increase the usefulness of the software program.

The homepage does not contain information about the criteria that are applied by the Twitter screensaver. The screensaver will display an image once it gets turned on. The major part of the screen is reserved for the image while a smaller strip on the bottom is reserved for the name of the Twitter user and the message send by that user.

Images are rotated every 30 seconds automatically. This basically means that a new image and message are displayed every 30 seconds while the Twitter screensaver is running. The screensaver requires an Internet connection to pull the data from Twitter.

The major drawback of Twitsaver is that it does not offer customizations. It is not possible to change the frequency or specify certain Twitter users that should be used exclusively.