You’ve surely noticed the rising popularity of Twitter in recent months. It’s one of those strange phenomenons that is rather difficult to explain to someone until they have actually used it themselves. For the uninitiated, Twitter can perhaps best be described as a micro-blogging tool and instant messenger service rolled into one. Casually communicate with others and answer the simple question: “What are you doing?”

Twitter, in and of itself, is already a pretty useful tool for social networking. Just like Wordpress, though, Twitter has a huge following of developers who are constantly creating new tools that expand this functionality and make your user experience that much better. Some tools are designed specifically for Twitter, whereas others can also serve other purposes.

If you’re going to use Twitter, you’ll want to know about the five tools listed below. You can thank me lank.

1. Twhirl (Desktop Client)

Twitter is akin to twitch gaming. It’s reactionary and you need to stay on top of things. Using the Twitter website will inevitably mean that you need to constantly hit “refresh” to get the latest tweets from your online friends. A suitable desktop client like Twhirl makes this process much easier for you. Twhirl works in much the same way as an instant messaging program. It can sit hidden in your taskbar and it will automatically notify you of new tweets. No more hitting refresh. Getting inspiration for speedlinking posts is easier too.

Alternatives: TwitterFox, Twitterific, Twitteroo, Ping.fm

2. WordTwit (RSS Feed Tweeter)

Twitter can serve as a massive source of traffic if used correctly. Many bloggers use Twitter as marketing tool, but it can be tedious to manually send out a tweet every time you have a new post. WordTwit is a simple Wordpress plug-in that automatically tweets to the world when you have a new article up on your blog. This way, you can be sure that the Twitter-sphere is aware of your latest work.

Alternatives: Twitter Tools, TwitterFeed, Twitter Updater

3. Is.gd (URL Shortener)

As you know, each “tweet” can only consist of 160 characters. That doesn’t leave you with very much room to provide useful links (like ones back to your own blog posts). Is.gd is a service that is able to shorten any URL into far fewer characters. Even the longest URL can be translated into something that is only 17 characters. Better still, is.gd is built into the Twhirl client described above.

Alternatives: TinyURL.com, Snurl.com, Twurl.nl

4. TwitPic (Image Tool)

Twitter is a text-based service, but so what do you do when you want to share a picture? Sure, you could host the photo on your own web space, but why do that when there is something as simple as TwitPic? Another tool that is built into Twhirl, TwitPic allows you to upload any picture from your computer and share it with the world. It’s not quite as permanent and long-lasting as a Flickr photostream, but it’s much more streamlined too.

Alternatives: Flickr.com, BrightKite.com, ImageShack.us

5. Twitter Uptime

The most frustrating thing about Twitter is that it isn’t keeping up with its own level of growth. Far too often, Twitter is down for some inexplicable reason and we are left wondering whether Twitter is still worth using. If Twitter wants us to use the service, it needs to make sure that it works all the time.

Alternatives: None (maybe Twitabit.com or TweetLater.com)

It’s time once again for a fantastic contest from Beyond the Rhetoric. In the past, I’ve given away everything from cool computer games to personalized iPod skins. For this contest, the prize has gotten a little bigger. Or perhaps it’s better to say prizes.

What Can I Win?

A big box of stuff! More specifically, the box will contain a variety of things that I collected from Computex and from the Vancouver International Game Summit. You see the prizes above. Some of the items that you can win include:

• Shuttle premium pen and diary set
• Slant Six Games t-shirt
• Crossbox USB PC-to-PC data transfer solution
• Thermaltake magnetic business card holder
• MSI ionic sports watch
• Solar charger with USB and AAA output
• Dice-shaped salt and pepper shakers
• And more!

There may be a few extras thrown in between now and the end of the contest as well

How Do I Enter?

You may recall that I mentioned the possibility of this contest when I was still in Taipei. When I did, I said that you would have to exercise a certain level of creativity in order to win.

What you see above is are a couple of photos I took during the Gigabyte party at Computex 2008. Shortly after I took the pictures, the rest of the dot com pho crew decided that it could be perfect fodder for PhotoShop. This is where you come in.

1. Edit the above party picture(s) as you see fit. (You can click on them to get higher resolution versions.) Add, remove, distort, supply captions… do whatever it takes to make for a funny picture. I wonder what John Chow could be holding.

2. Post your funny creation on your blog, linking back to this contest post and the Beyond the Rhetoric homepage. You can use whatever anchor text you want.

But I don’t have a blog!

If you don’t have a blog, you can still participate. Post your picture on Flickr and include the URLs to this post and Beyond the Rhetoric in the description. Whether you opt for the blog or Flickr route, it is probably best to send a trackback or leave a comment in this post to make sure that I know you entered.

Everyone who is reachable by standard postal services is welcome to enter the contest. Whether you live in Portugal, Singapore, or Vancouver, you are eligible.

Who Will Choose the Winner?

I will act as the final judge for this contest. Whichever entry that I think is the funniest or most creative will be the winner. That said, I am open to any (unbiased) feedback as well. As such, I may post a weekly update linking to the entries received in the previous week.

When is the Entry Deadline?

The contest runs until the end of this month. Be sure to send a trackback or leave a comment in this post before 11:59pm PST on July 31st to be eligible.

Good luck! I look forward to seeing your creations.

With a whole bunch of things on my plate on Monday, it slipped my mind to keep an eye on the top commentators list for the month of June. I usually make sure that I’m around to see who is topping the list when the clock strikes midnight, but that simply did not happen on Monday night. Thankfully, I was able to use the cache function in Google the next morning to at least grab a snapshot of what the blog looked like on June 30.

The cache was displaying Beyond the Rhetoric as of the morning of the 30th, so it was just a matter of logging into the Wordpress Dashboard and looking into any new comments that were posted on that day. It’s a good thing that I took this extra step, because it did affect how the overall rankings panned themselves out. As you can probably imagine, the list of top commentators for June 2008 contains a lot of familiar faces.

Who Are the Top Commentators for June 2008?

Sitting atop the list yet again is Jorge. He was sitting in second place for a while there, but with a huge surge on the very last day, Jorge trudged ahead to grab the number one spot with a total of 41 comments. That’s nearly twice as many as he posted in May and four times as many as April! To top it all off, Jorge still manages to find time to find amazing and funny videos.

Coming in at number two is Nick, the same guy that won the Market Leverage contest from John Chow. The RomanDock.com blogger posted 38 comments in the month of June. Who’s the man behind the blog? Nick comes forward with 8 random facts about him, just so that you can get to know him better. Did you know that he is a Rubik’s Cube pro?

Betshopboy nabs the third spot for June with 17 comments. It seems that he is a huge soccer (football) nut and was following the Euro 2008 tournament religiously. Along the way, Betshopboy posted some nice articles covering the beautiful game, including one that applauded the Spaniards. Viva La Espana!

Well, it’s not completely true that Betshopboy has third place all to himself, because Paulette also had 17 comments. I guess you could say that they tied, but because of the alphabetical arrangement of the top commentators list, it appeared that Paulette was fourth. Maybe to celebrate another appearance on a top commentators list, she should do a little dance to Hard Candy by Madonna.

Sneaking into the fifth and final spot for June 2008 was Derek Semmler. The guy with the killer commute still managed to put up 16 comments on this blog last month. If you want to know how to add an AdSense block above your first post, you’ll want to hop on over to the recent tutorial posted on Derek’s blog.

Thanks again to everyone who contributes to this blog. Without the commentators, I’d be screaming into a vacuum. Here’s to a healthy and fruitful July!

First of all, I’d like to wish a very happy Canada Day to all of my fellow Canucks. Our wonderful nation turns 141 years old today. Imagine the candles on that birthday cake!

Today, many people are going to be enjoying some great Canada Day celebrations. This might involve everything from street performers to fireworks displays, outdoor concerts to face painting for the kids (and the kid in all of us). As part of our pre-Canada Day celebrations, Susanne and I decided to kick back with a horseback riding excursion.

Continuing with my dedication to local tourism, this excursion involved a short drive to Paradise Valley, British Columbia. Paradise Valley is located about an hour and a half north of Vancouver, in between Squamish and Whistler. It is there that you will find Sea to Sky Stables.

As you may already know, the drive along the Sea to Sky Highway is already one of the most scenic in the Canada. You wind around the mountains, seeing snow-capped peaks in the distance, glistening waters on the side, and inspiring cliff faces next to you. Exiting off the highway, I continued for about another 10 minutes before arriving at Sea to Sky Stables. I was greeted by the friendly staff and filled out the appropriate waiver form. After a brief refresher lesson, we were on our way.

It was boiling hot on Sunday afternoon, so the horses weren’t as interested in picking up the pace all that much. I can’t blame them. Three hours out in the sun would leave you pretty dehydrated and tired too. A three-hour “adventure trail ride” came to just under $100 with tax (per person). They also have packages for one hour, two hours, and four hours. The video below should give you a good idea of what to expect.

[Flash/Javascript needed. Go to Beyond the Rhetoric if you can't see the video.]

I received an email from Google, informing me that the AdSense referral program is officially kaput. Unlike the major “make money online” blogs out there, I never had much luck referring people to the Google AdSense program. As you know, making use of affiliate and referral programs like this can be a great source of passive income, but it does take a little bit of work to get people to go through the application process.

Even then, it may be challenging to make that much money from the Google AdSense referral program in the first place. I didn’t follow it too closely, but I remember hearing that they revamped the program not that long ago, effectively cutting into the incomes of many online entrepreneurs. This was around the same time that they adjusted how AdSense ad units — like the one embedded in this post — were displayed and operated.

Is Google getting a little too cocky for its own good? Does it know that we rely on its services a little too much? Maybe. In any case, check out the email that I received below. If you are an AdSense publisher, you should have received the same note. It goes through some of the alternate options you may have and the steps you should now take.

Hello,

Thank you for participating in the AdSense Referrals program. We’re writing to let you know that we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August. We appreciate your patience during this transition and here are some alternative options to consider:

* Google Affiliate Network: As part of the integration of DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For further details, please visit: www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork.

* AdSense for content ads: If you have less than three AdSense for content ad units on a page, you may wish to replace the referral ad units with standard AFC ad units.

If you currently use referral ads, either to promote Google products or offerings from AdWords advertisers, AdSense Referrals code will no longer display ads beginning the last week of August. We encourage you to take the following steps before the product is retired:

* Remove the referral code from your site(s): Please take a moment to remove all referral code from your sites before the last week of August, so you can continue to effectively monetize your ad space.

* Run and save all referrals reports on your desktop: Create and save all reports related to the referrals program on your desktop, so you continue to have access to your valuable campaign information

Why is this happening?

We’re constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program. If you have any additional questions, please visit our Help Center: http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=14882

Sincerely.

The Google AdSense Team

Your thoughts?

You may already be familiar with some of the paid reviews that I write at John Chow dot Com, but reviews on that site come in at a rather pricey $500. Not everyone has an advertising budget that size. If you’re looking to get the same quality feedback from an expert reviewer, as well as a good level of exposure, then you’ll want to get in on this deal while it still lasts.

Earlier this month, I proclaimed that I would be offering half price reviews until the end of June. The regular price for a sponsored review on Beyond the Rhetoric is $70. This guarantees you 500 words and a series of screenshots/images. Reviews are available both for websites (including blogs, advertising networks, and online services) and for physical products. In effect, you can get an exceptional review for just $35.

The Sale Ends Today

To get a review for $35, you will need to respond before midnight tonight. Paypal the funds to michael -at- michaelkwan -dot- com and be sure to include brief information about what you would like to have covered in the review.

To get a sense of what you should expect, check out this review of Obzokee.com.