TweetDeck – Shrink those tweets!
Twitter - The microblogging website - has had something of an explosion in recent months. If you're a twitter user you may be finding it hard to cope with the number of tweets, particularly if you follow a lot of people or follow people that tweet alot.
Introducing TweetDeck
One of the popular Twitter applications is TweetDeck, an Adobe(R) AIR application that works on Windows, Mac and Linux. Cali Lewis from GeekBrief.TV has produced a short overview of the software which I suggest you view here.
Now Cali covers the main features of TweetDeck but there are some additional hints and tips:
Talk too much?
Twitter limits you to 140 characters and sometimes it's very hard to fit what you are trying to say into that small number. TweetDeck will let you know when you go over the limit by turning the Tweet box:
Sometimes, no matter how much you try, it can be impossible to get the character limit down. TweetDeck has a link to a useful service called TweetShrink. If you're over the limit why not try pressing the TweetShrink button 
and your tweet will be whisked away to the TweetShrink service and come back a little shorter.
TweetShrink replaces words and phrases with abbreviations for example You=U and Here=Hre. Hopefully it will bring your tweet within the 140 characters.
If you liked this follow me on twitter: twitter.com/jwheelhouse. Got a TweetDeck tip to share then Post it below!
Windows 7 – Initial Thoughts
I've said previously that I wanted to know how well Windows 7 performed in a domain environment - well I got hold of a Product Key and downloaded the beta as soon as the Microsoft servers recovered from the massive demand.
I have a HP Compaq 6820s that Dual boots Win XP and Win 7. I installed Win 7 in standalone mode to start off with and I found the interface difficult to grasp at first. After an hour or so the difficulties were gone and I was away (very similar to my Office 2003 - Office 2007 switch.) If you are used to using Vista then the general feel of the OS is very similar with one noticeable difference - it's much faster than vista is on the same hardware.
Several days later I decided to take the plunge and join the machine to the domain. I expected it to do exactly the same as Vista and slow down to a point that made it unusable. I was pleasantly surprised, there was a small slow down but not even as bad as the impact joining XP to a domain has on a machine and certainly nowhere near the crawl of Vista.
I've been using the machine on a domain for a couple of weeks now and have only had one BSOD which was caused by the Cisco VPN Client. I was a little disappointed that the Windows repair tool did not fix the problem which was easily rectified by the "Last known good configuration" option.
It's still early days yet but as with most things in Windows 7 - Microsoft have done a good job with the use of the system on a domain. I certainly feel that this is a way my organisation will move forward from XP.
Share your experiences with Windows 7 below.