How I Use Posterous

After kicking the idea around for a while, I finally decided to sign up and give Posterous a try. For those of you who are not familiar with Posterous, it’s a simple blogging platform that allows you to post anything to the Web using e-mail. Simply send an e-mail to post@posterous.com including content such as text, documents, photos, videos, music, or audio and Posterous will take care of the rest.

The reason I decided to use Posterous is because it bridges the gap between Twitter and my WordPress blog. There’s a lot going in the space between Twitter and a full length blog so I felt it was necessary to have space where I can post content that exceeds the 140 character limit and falls short of my formal WordPress content.

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TwitPic Implements OAuth and Gets a New Look

TwitPic, the largest photo sharing service on Twitter, posted a tweet to their Twitter account tonight announcing that they had just implemented OAuth as the new login method for their site. If you’re not familiar with the OAuth protocol, how it works, or how it affects you as a user, here is the short version.

OAuth is an open protocol that allows a user to share content stored on one site with another site without having to fork over the login credentials. In other words, you no longer have to provide TwitPic with your username and password to login to their site. Instead, you will need to click the “Sign in with Twitter” button located in the top right corner, when prompted enter your username and password on Twitter.com, and then click the “Allow” button to grant access to TwitPic. This allows TwitPic to connect to your Twitter account so it can access your data, but at no time will TwitPic receive your username and password. To learn more about OAuth visit their Web site here.

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Who Will Twitter Acquire Next, TwitPic?

Twitter was quite busy today making a huge splash in mobile. Early this morning Twitter announced that the hotly anticipated Twitter for BlackBerry app was available for download. This was great news for BlackBerry users, but Twitter didn’t stop there with the good news. Twitter made their way back to the podium tonight to announce they have just agreed to acquire Atebits, the company responsible for developing the popular Tweetie iPhone app and Mac desktop client. According to Twitter CEO Evan Williams, Tweetie will be renamed “Twitter for iPhone” and will be available free of charge in the iTunes AppStore in the coming weeks.

While Twitter has been working closely with RIM over the last year to deliver the official Twitter for BlackBerry app, the move to acquire Atebis comes as a surprise and only two days after Twitter investor and Union Square Ventures principal, Fred Wilson, made a controversial blog post. In short, Wilson stated that he would like to see less apps that fill holes in the Twitter platform and more killer apps emerge in areas such as social gaming, verticals, enterprise, discovery, and analytics. Wilson’s blog post raised concerns among third-party developers because some felt that Twitter would now become their biggest competitor in mobile and desktop application development. Shortly after Wilson posted, he felt it was necessary to respond to an article written by Silicon Alley Insider that summarized his blog post. Wilson wanted to clarify a few things he had written in his post so in a response to the article he said, “that post was my work, not Twitter’s work. While I am on the board of Twitter, I don’t work there and I don’t speak for them.” It’s pure speculation at this point whether or not Twitter was aware of Wilson’s post prior to its release, but after the acquisition of Atebits it sure seems like Fred Wilson knows the game plan at Twitter.

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