U2 Live on YouTube

Rock giants U2 will be broadcasting tonight’s concert at the Rose Bowl in a global webcast on YouTube. You can view the concert on the official U2 channel, which will be available in 16 countries.

Tonight’s concert will be an acid test for streaming live video on YouTube. In the past, Google (who owns YouTube) has said they were not interested in live streaming because of the cost. In recent months, they have begun experimenting with live streams of an Obama press conference and the Outside Lands festival in San Francisco.

The concert begins tonight at 8:30 PM PDT. That’s pretty late for those of you on the east coast, and if you’re in Europe, prepare to wake up in the wee hours of the morning. In reality, choosing to webcast a west coast concert was a shrewd choice, as the time alone will reduce the audience a bit. I like U2, and I’ll be tuning in to see how well the stream holds up under stress. It will be interesting to see how many people are able to watch simultaneously.

Dilbert Does Twitter

Scott Adams Dilbert comic provides a wickedly satirical view of life in cubespace. Dilbert, the geeky white-collar engineer, has discovered an ulterior use for Twitter — keeping up on the boss’ whereabouts. Go Dilbert!

Of course, you wouldn’t do that, would you? What creative uses of Twitter have you discovered?

Analytics for Twitter

I admit it. I’m a sucker for analytics. I love to look at the numbers, identify trends and analyze the peaks and valleys. I’ve used Google Analytics on BigBlueBall and other sites, and before that, used my own log file analysis programs. Tracking Twitter is a slightly different matter. It’s not a web site, so how do you track follower history, post trends and other stats?

Enter TwitterCounter – a free service that will let you analyze key metrics for your Twitter account (or that of any other Twitter user, for that matter). You can also chart comparisons for up to three Twitter accounts (similar to Alexa for websites); see your friends, update history (posts per day) and more.

In addition to the basic, free service, TwitterCounter is working on a “pro” version. According to their settings page:

“We are developing a Pro account for users who want to see more stats, browse back more than 3 months, track retweets, export data in Excel and CVS format and more. The Pro account will cost $32.50 a year. Are you interested in hearing more about this when it becomes available?”

They also have a clever blog widget called TwitterRemote that you can add to your blog or website. Much like similar tools from Google, Yahoo or Facebook, TwitterRemote shows recent Twitter users who visit your blog.

It will be interesting to see if TwitterRemote is able to monetize their users by enticing enough of them to convert to pro accounts. I suspect it would be attractive to businesses using Twitter, to help them manage their social presence, but it’s an increasingly competitive space.

Meanwhile, data junkies like me have another tool to play with.

Twitter Suckers

Why do we have Twitter worms? Because there are suckers out there who willingly give away their Twitter credentials for the promise of thousands of followers. Remember, the number of followers you have is irrelevant if they don’t really care to follow you. It’s quality, not quantity that matters.

In general, always exercise caution when deciding to click a link. Sometimes it’s better to just say no.

More from Noise to Signal.

BigBlueBall Staffer Awarded Microsoft MVP

BigBlueBall staff member Doris Kenney–patndoris in the forums–has been officially recognized as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Windows Live Messenger (WLM).

The Microsoft MVP Award is an annual award that recognizes exceptional technology community leaders worldwide who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with users and Microsoft.

Rich Kaplan, VP Customer and Partner Advocacy at Microsoft said “It is with great pride we announce that Doris Kenney has been awarded as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). All of us at Microsoft recognize and appreciate Doris’s extraordinary contributions and want to take this opportunity to share our appreciation with you.

“As a recipient of this year’s Microsoft MVP award, Doris joins an exceptional group of individuals from around the world who have demonstrated a willingness to reach out, share their technical expertise with others and help individuals maximize their use of technology.”

Of course, we at BigBlueBall are especially proud of this honor, but we are not surprised. Doris has been actively involved in our forums for a long time, sharing her expertise and helping people every day.

Congratulations, Doris!

Related Links

• Doris Kenney’s MVP profile

Digsby Updates Facebook

Digsby, the multi-network IM and social media tool has been updated with tighter Facebook integration and added support for MySpace IM. This is good, but the really great news is that dotSyntax has also removed the confusion mess of crapware nags from their installer.

The new installer now gives you an option to install the ‘Digsby Toolbar’ and asks if you want to contribute unused CPU cycles to sponsored research. While all of the adware/sponsor programs used in the old Digsby installer were optional, the new installer makes opting out easier and more obvious — a real plus considering that most users don’t really read the fine print during installation.

What’s New?

MySpace users can now use Digsby to connect to their contacts using MySpace IM, without opening a browser. And yes, in spite of the fact that MySpace seems to have fallen off the face of the planet from a press standpoint, there are still 70 million users, making it over 3x bigger than Twitter.

The real meat of the changes are in Digsby’s Facebook integration. Now you can fully interact with your Facebook Newsfeed right from Digsby. You can post your status updates, comment on friend’s activity, “like” status updates and browse photos. And of course, you can use Digsby to connect with your Facebook contacts via Facebook Chat. It’s a great way to stay connected, even when you don’t have Facebook open.

Download Digsby

UPDATED: Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone

Last week, Yahoo! Messenger product manager Sarah Bacon put her foot in her mouth when she complained on the Y! Messenger blog that Apple was taking so long to approve their updated Yahoo! Messenger iPhone app. Somehow she missed the fact that the app has been resubmitted with some changes, resetting the review period. Nevermind that she’s a product manager and should know this. It’s a moot point now that the updated app has been approved and ready to download from the iTunes app store.

Yahoo! Messenger 1..2.2 for the iPhone incorporates several changes based on your feedback:

• Stay available, not idle. Now when you close the Yahoo! Messenger app, you’ll still show as “available” to your Yahoo contacts rather than “idle.”  Since you get push notifications of new chat messages, this is more logical.
• Get a better Buzz. No, not that kind of buzz. They’ve tweaked the Buzz feature with a new notification sound, the ability to turn it on or off, and added vibrating buzz notifcations.
• “Shorter and prettier” notification sound. – Apparently this was a big problem for a lot of people, based on feedback. Go figure.
• Address book integration fixed. Yeah, they broke it in the last version. Now it works properly again, so when you compose a new SMS to someone, you can access numbers in your iPhone address book, and not just your Yahoo contact list.

Resources

• Read more about the update from the Yahoo! Messenger blog
• Join the discussion in our Yahoo Support forum

Preview Yahoo! Messenger 10

Yahoo today announced availability of the Yahoo! Messenger 10 beta. What’s in the new beta? High-quality video calls, a “Y! Updates” view of your contact list that turns Messenger into a Twitter stream, new ways to sort your contacts and support for 16 different languages.

High-Quality Video Calls

They have revamped the one-to-one video calls, building it right into the chat window, improving the video quality and synchronizing the audio with the video. You can swap window positions (between your preview and the person you are viewing), display both windows side-by-side, and put the call on mute or hold.

There are some caveats. The new video call requires both parties to be running Yahoo! Messenger 10, and the changes don’t apply to one-to-many webcam broadcasting.

Y! Updates View

The new Y! Updates view of your contacts is more interesting to me, as it is a unique way of displaying your contacts, sorted in a live stream of updates that will be familiar to Facebook and Twitter users. The most recent updates will appear at the “top” of the contact list. Updates can come from Twitter, Last.fm, Yahoo! Buzz, Flickr, nearly 20 non-Yahoo web sites, and (of course) Y! Messenger status updates.

Why is this interesting? Yahoo is incorporating Twitter and co-opting the real-time update stream in way that other IMs have not quite done. Other IM programs like Digsby and Trillian Astra allow you to see updates from Twitter, but they display them as pop-up alerts, not as a view of your contacts. By turning the contact list model into a real-time stream sorted by the latest updates,  Yahoo has transformed the contact list into something more dynamic and engaging.

The features are interesting, but keep in mind that this is still beta software and there probably are bugs. If that puts you off, stick to version 9.

Resources

• Download Yahoo! Messenger 10 (Windows)
• BigBlueBall Yahoo! Support discussion

Pidgin 2.6.1 Update

Pidgin, the best multi-network instant messenger for Linux just got better. John Bailey provides all the details, which include two notable new features:

• Voice and Video - Thanks to Mike Ruprecht’s Summer of Code project last year, libpurple has been updated to support voice and video. Pidgin 2.6.1 supports this for XMPP currently, but they are working on updates for other protocols.
• Theme Support – Another Summer of Code project, this one from Justin Rodriguez, adds theme support for the buddy list, sounds and status icons.

While these features are great news for Linux users, they have not yet been implemented in the Windows version. There is a long list of updates, fixes and changes. If you’re using Pidgin, it’s worth updating.

Resources

• Pidgin web site

Tech Support Cheat Sheet

Webcomic xkcd nails it again with their Tech Support Cheat Sheet for “non computer people.” If you’ve ever been called on for your computer help, you’ll want to print this out and distribute to your family, co-workers, grandparents, and other “non techies.” It’s so true.

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