Once upon a time, microblogging was all about simplicity. Today, even services like Posterous that started out as very simple and easy-to-use tools have begun to add more and more features . Microblogging, however, can't get much simpler than TXT.io . The service offers nothing more than a simple text interface. No more, no less. You log in with a Google account, type your message and hit "post." Sponsor For users who want to do a bit more with their text (link, underline, italicize, HTML headers, etc.), TXT.io offers support for the Textile markup language . Features? What Features? Besides this, though, TXT.io offers almost no other features. The service, for example, doesn't allow you to add images to a post and developers won't find an API to add to their tools. What TXT.io does offer, however, are RSS feeds and a mobile version of the site . TXT.io is an experiment in minimalism and won't appeal to everybody. Indeed, "elitist microblogging" is the service's tagline. Sometimes, though, simple tools like this are exactly what it takes to bring us back to the basics. Minimalist text editors like Ommwriter or WriteRoom , for example, are popular because they only focus on one thing and do it extremely well. Discuss

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TXT.IO Takes Minimalist Microblogging to the Extreme

Every now and then, we come across cool apps that allow geeks to conveniently manage their musical tastes in a way that encourages more real-world fun. Last year, we met up with Livekick's founders in New York to talk about their very thorough site for helping web geeks get out to more shows and concerts. Today, we've discovered Roadie , a much simpler app that focuses on album releases. Roadie creates an RSS feed or iCal based on a user's Last.fm favorite acts or a custom list of manually entered bands. Essentially, it allows users to keep up with album releases quickly and painlessly. Sponsor The Last.fm import is a super simple way to get users quickly into using the site's features, but we also wish they'd allow for an iTunes artist scan: The RSS feed, which we quickly popped into Google Reader, shows recent and upcoming releases: And the iCal was just as easily added to Google Calendar, for those who prefer those kinds of notifications: Users can upload other folks' Last.fm faves, as well, if gift-giving ideas are in needed. Other features that would make this app even more useful would be a Twitter OAuth to receive DMs the day before and/or the day of an album's release. And of course, we'd love to see a location-based feature that added tour dates to the mix. Roadie comes from Portuguese web and mobile dev shop Think Orange , which was founded by a couple Ruby on Rails geeks. Roadie is an experimental side project for them, and they're looking forward to creating many more projects in 2010. We're looking forward to seeing what they cook up, as well! Give Roadie a spin, and let us know what you think in the comments. Is this app useful for you? Discuss

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Get an RSS Feed or iCal of Your Favorite Bands' New Releases With Roadie

Intranets are becoming a higher priority for organizations. Intranet teams are growing in size, and the best of them are embracing new trends such as mobile accessibility and social networking. These are some of the findings from Jakob Nielsen's annual report on the top intranets for 2010. Companies that made the list this year include General Electric, Trend Micro Devices and Walmart. Nielsen is recognized as one of the world's foremost usability experts. His findings appear solid, though it is apparent that Intranet development is just on the verge of becoming a central communication environment for enterprise collaboration. Sponsor This year, Nielsen says, top companies on the list had a median size of about 6,300 employees, which continues a year-to-year trend toward smaller businesses. He attributes it to the increase in availability of small-company-friendly intranet technology. In addition, intranet teams are growing, up to 14 people, 27% higher than the average team size in 2006. This is not a big surprise. The need to develop the best possible internal communications environments now cuts across multiple platforms, ranging from the web to mobile devices. More resources are required to keep these platforms synced and accessible to the employees in the organization. Mobile Intranet Sites The best intranets had a separate mobile site for its employees. Of the companies polled, only 30% actually had a dedicated mobile site. Expect this to change in the year ahead. People are still getting to know how to use smart phones. It's still rare for companies to launch application environments for users, but at least one company did: an iPhone web app. Soon, though, users will expect to have access "anytime, anywhere," to their organization's network. Social Features The social Web is finding its way into intranets. Nielsen cites two trends: social features for employees as individuals workgroup support and other features that encourage work-related connections He cites Walmart for its discussion and profile pages and Trend Micro's TrendSpace, which includes the capability for employees to create their own content. Trend Micro goes as far as offering an elaborate system of reward points that accrue to employees when they contribute to the intranet's community features. It's noteworthy that social features are still just emerging in intranet environments, especially with the advent of enterprise collaboration services. Companies still have the chance to be recognized as innovators in this space, especially if they implement real-time update capabilities and mashup environments . Intranet Design is Maturing Overall, Nielsen comes to the conclusion that intranet design is maturing. In many respects, the Intranet has come of age. In the year ahead, intranets will change even more. Mobile usability and social networking features will continue to evolve, especially as teams begin to experiment with the wide variety of enterprise collaboration services now available. Discuss

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Top Intranets Embrace Mobile Accessibility and Social Networking

In late November, ReadWriteWeb asked the question, Wasabi beta . As of today the service will go live to the public with CEO Freddy Mini's presentation at the Le Web conference. Sponsor In addition to a number of magazine-style themes, some of the features designed for the real-time web include: Multipurpose Navigation : Users will enjoy the ability to read their feeds and insert widgets directly into the Wasabi home page Smart Reader : In addition to delivering users' RSS feeds, Netvibes Smart Reader lets users check their Twitter, Facebook, widget apps, notifications, podcast subscriptions, photos and notifications. The Real-Time RSS: As promised, Netvibes' feed delivery engine updates with full PubSubHubBub support. Publishing : In addition to being able to create more than 185,000 widgets, users can take advantage of the site's no-code push publishing and notification tools as well as free hosting. The company's premium product also allows users to monitor real-time brand conversations. Drag and Follow Widgets : Facebook, Twitter and MySpace widgets allow users to drag hashtags or usernames out of existing widgets in order to instantly create new specialized ones. To test the product visit netvibes.com . Discuss

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Netvibes Launches Ultimate News and Lifestyle Dashboard

Today Adobe released new beta versions of the company's Flash Player and AIR . The Flash Player 10.1 technology now includes HTTP streaming and hardware decoding of H.264 video. The company plans to bring the updated Flash Player to mobile devices too, starting with the Palm Pre and then completing versions for other major smartphones by the first half of 2010 (with the notable exception of the iPhone, of course). However, out of the two updates, it's Adobe AIR 2 that received the biggest overhaul. The new runtime allows developers to create entirely new types of applications that simply weren't possible using AIR 1. What sort of apps are those? Adobe's gallery of sample apps should give you some ideas of what's to come. Sponsor 1. Mass Storage Detection In Adobe AIR 2, apps can now detect when a mass storage device has been inserted into the computer. That means the app can "see" your USB flash drives, external drives, and even some digital cameras. For example, developers could build an app that recognizes when your Flip camera is plugged in and lets you automatically upload videos to YouTube. To demo this capability, Adobe has released FileTile, a sample app that does just this (minus the video uploading). FileTile recognizes external devices and lets you see the files and open them with their default application. Download Installer | Source 2. Native Process API The native process API allows developers to better integrate their AIR apps with existing code libraries or extend their apps using native code. With the new native process API, this can now be done without compromising the cross-platform capabilities of AIR which allows it to run on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Developers using this new functionality can now deploy their apps with operating-specific installers like .exe, .dmg, .rpm, and .deb instead of an .air installer file. To demonstrate the native process API, Adobe released SearchCentral, an application that taps into Mac OS X's Spotlight feature for desktop searches. It also lets you do web searches on Google and Wikipedia. Installer | Source | How to Here's a video explaining in more detail how the native API works: 3. Microphone Data Access Like it sounds, the microphone data access feature lets you acquire the sound data from a computer's microphone without the need of a server. For example, a developer could build a note-taking application that lets users record audio clips even when they're offline. To get started, a simple app called Microphone is now available which does recording and playback with variable playback speeds supported. Download Installer | Source | How to 4. Drag-and-Drop Support for Remote Files The new "file promises" feature of AIR 2 lets you drag remote files out of an AIR application. A file promise, as described by Adobe's Christian Cantrell , is "what you put on the clipboard when you want the user to be able to drag and drop files that do not yet exist, or that exist elsewhere (not locally on your machine)." It's a promise to deliver a file at some point, but not an actual file. For example, an app could generate a CSV file but only when a user tries to drag and drop the file. It could also refer to files on a remote server, like an FTP server. When a user grabs that remote file and pulls it into the AIR app, the app could then download the data. It even supports files accessible via a URL like those hosted on Google Sites. Unfortunately, this feature is Windows and Mac only. A sample app called S3E provides a graphical front-end to your Amazon S3 account to demonstrate this feature. Download Installer | Source | How to 5. Peer-to-Peer Networking Capabilities Adobe AIR 2 also adds support for new networking capabilities including UDP, secure sockets and peer-to-peer. To demonstrate the possibilities, Adobe released KeePIPE, a javascript app that lets users on the same network share files using peer-to-peer technology. It also lets VMWare users transfer files between a virtual machine and a host computer. Download Installer | Source | Read me 6. Multi-Touch Perhaps the most exciting enhancement in AIR 2 and in Flash Player 10.1 are the new multi-touch APIs. In Windows 7, AIR apps can respond to multi-touch and in both Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard, they can respond to gestures. In this video (below), Adobe's Kevin Lynch demos a multi-touch app on an HP TouchSmart computer: Obviously, Adobe is excited about this new feature, too, because they've released not one but four sample applications that demonstrate multi-touch in action: GeoTest : Lets you move images around the screen using a built-in physics engine. Download Installer | Source PhotoPhysics : A multi-touch app with a built-in physics engine. Download Installer | Source SpriteFract : A multi-touch app with a built-in physics engine that demonstrates a mouse-compatible, direct-manipulation interface. It also uses PixelBender to asynchronously process a large amount of geometry data. Download Installer | Source TouchTest : Lets you drag, scale, and rotate images on the screen. Download Installer | Source Other Features Other features in Adobe AIR 2 include the following (courtesy of Rob Christensen ): A new API lets you open documents with its default application Global error handling Enhanced printing support, including vector printing support on Mac and new APIs to query the local machine for a list of printers or print without a dialog box. WebKit in AIR 2 is now based on the version shipped with Safari 4.0.3 which includes support for JavaScript profiling, SquirrelFish Extreme JavaScript engine performs 50% faster using SunSpider tests, CSS3 Module support (2D transformations, transitions, animations, gradients, zoom and WebKit CSS selectors), styling scrollbars via CSS and Canvas enhancements. IPv6 format addresses can now be used with all APIs that accept an IP string as input. Increased maximum size of NativeWindow: AIR 2 apps can have a window size of 4095 x 4095 where before the maximum was 2880 x 2880. DNS lookup Network interface enumeration Database transaction savepoints Screen reader support in Windows IME API and IME text input enhancement Smaller runtime installer sizes More efficient CPU usage and reduced memory size Adobe AIR 2 is available for download here on Adobe Labs . You can send Adobe feedback here or participate on the user-to-user forums here . Discuss

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See Adobe AIR 2's Best New Features Demoed in 9 Sample Apps