Recently there has been a lot of buzz about several iPhone apps that include support for Posterous. Well, Palm Pre users can now join the party with the arrival of Spaz v0.5.10. Spaz is a Twitter (also identi.ca, Laconi.ca and custom microblog platforms) client with support for photo hosting on Posterous.

You can download Spaz for free using the Pre's built-in App Catalog. At some future version point Spaz may become a paid app but will probably only cost about $2.

Spaz is an Open Source app, which I appreciate. Also, the support of other microblog services is a nice touch for those who are leery of the infamous Twitter Fail Whale.

If Spaz ever adds background polling for @mentions and DMs, I will probably switch from Tweed which is my current favorite Twitter client for the Pre.

I've been  doing some research on Web-based file storage, sharing and sync services. It's a very competitive market with many pricing models and features within services. I find Twitter to be a useful tool for tracking the comments of people who actually use these services... something which is difficult to do with Google. Google will mostly give you blog posts and press releases, which are good sources of information to begin with. However, I find that advertised features don't always match up to user experience, and for tracking user impressions, Twitter is better.

Seesmic is a Web-based client for Twitter which makes it easy to perform and save searches, track replies, or follow individual tweeple within a configurable modular page. I think it is a really handy tool, and the best part is you can use it without installing anything on your computer.

Do you have a favorite Web client for Twitter? Leave a comment below.

I'm sorry, there must be something terribly wrong with me. The widespread consternation over the DoS attack Twitter outage has me in tears... tears of helpless laughter. Facebook went all wobbly as millions of Tweeple frantically rushed to find out what was going on. I can imagine the Red Phone in the White House lighting up: "Hello? Yes, this is President Obama. What??!!! Twitter is down and Facebook is sinking?!!! Oh, shit!!! Red Alert, scramble the jets!!!"

Hopefully, Twitter will be back to normal soon before the Tweeple descend into savagery and civilization collapses. Until then, remember the advice they used to give us kids back in the good old lighthearted days of the Cold War: "Duck and Cover."

As I mentioned in a previous post, online identity is emerging as a powerful trend which is reducing the dominance of the top-level domain in the Web browsing experience. Social sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and a legion of others create a Web experience which centers around the user rather than some www.top_level_domain.com. Additionally, innovations such as OAuth and Facebook Connect allow a user to log into multiple services using the same credentials - the beginnings of a true Web identity.

Problem is, there is such a multitude of competing services, each having something unique which sets it apart from the others. Nobody has every cool feature, not even the mighty Facebook. How can you take advantage of all the cool stuff without fragmenting your identity so badly that you lose track of the pieces? No one has managed to solve that problem perfectly so far, but FriendFeed is trying. FriendFeed is a social network aggregator which allows you to plug in about 50 of the most popular social networks, then view and post to them from one interface. It's quite an ambitious project, but it works surprisingly well once you invest the time and effort it takes to set up.

However, due to the complex nature of what FriendFeed does, the setup process can be hella confusing. With so many options it is bound to be. I found out the hard way that enabling certain options can lead to double, triple, or even quadruple-posting, depending on how you have set up some of your individual social networks. For instance, I had installed the Twitter Facebook app that pushes your tweets into your Facebook Status updates. And I set up Posterous to push into Twitter and Facebook. Oops! Now I'm inadvertently link-spamming my Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Debugging such mistakes can be confusing for a newbie like me. To make it even more confusing, Friend Feed has its own Twitter push options:

Yeah, I know! Imagine if I plugged in every possible service! I'm still not entirely sure if I have it worked out properly yet, so if I link-spam you, please be patient and don't get mad. I'm working on it.

One of the coolest features of the FriendFeed Home Page is that it updates in real-time. You don't have to hit the refresh button to see what's new like you do with Twitter's or Facebook's Home Page. Another cool FriendFeed feature is that you can plug it into the Gmail Chat widget (you have to enable chat in Gmail Settiings). Once you do that, your FriendFeed updates will appear in the Gmail chatbox. You pan post your own updates in the chatbox too. If your online activities revolve around Gmail like mine do, this is a very handy option.

FriendFeed Settings:

Gmail Chatbox with FriendFeed stream: