The Best Tools for Finding Free and Legal Images

stop xch

Every blogger knows they have to get permission to use any images in a post that they publish. In the early days that was a royal pain in the neck. However, times have changed and there are some fantastic tools available to help ease the pain and ultimately keep you legal and out of trouble, Here are just a few.

Creative Commons Search Engine
This is an awesome site to find many images that include permission to freely use in many forms. It searches the following sites for the following type of resources:

  • Google Web (Web)
  • Google Images (Image)
  • Flickr (Image)
  • Blip.tv (Video)
  • Jamendo (Music)
  • SpinXpress (Media)
  • Wikimedia Commons (Media)

Pay close attention to the type of search you’re doing by selecting the options to the right of the search box. They are for commercial purposes, modify, adapt or Build upon.

cc header

morguefile
Another excellent search engine is the MorgueFile which has a vast archive of free images. As with all of these search engines, you should also read the fine print to ensure that you have sufficient rights to use the image.

morgue rights

U.S. Government Photos and Images
Believe it or not, you can find a boatload of free images to use on the U.S. Government’s website. However, you still need to verify that the image gives full permission for the type of usage you plan to use. Here is the full disclaimer.

Find photos and images by topic. Some of these photos and images are in the public domain and may be used and reproduced without permission or fee. However, some photos and images may be protected by license. We strongly recommend you thoroughly read the disclaimers on each site before use.

photodropper
If your blog is running on a self-hosted WordPress platform then by far my favorite tool is the PhotoDropper plugin which makes it a breeze to find free images you can use. PhotoDropper searches not only the CreateCommons site but also Flickr’s creative commons catalog.

Not only that, it also inserts the photo into your blog post along with the image permissions along with links to the original source and photographer! You just pick from three different sizes (S, M, L) and then it does the rest of the dirty work for you.

single-photo

photo-in-post

Flickr’s Creative Commons
Yahoo’s popular Flickr photo service has an ever-growing library of CC images. Just make sure you use them the right way. They make it very easy to identify the types of rights available for each photo.

flickr cc

stock exchange
Stock.Xchng has been around a long time and just keeps getting better with time. It requires joining the service but it’s well worth it.

Once you do a search and find the image you like, look for the image permission link that comes with every image (bottom right of the image)

image permission

This is where you will find what you need to know. I’ve highlighted the three sections in Green (good to use), Yellow (good to use if the owner approves its usage) and Red (Do not use it in the manner stated)

Image License

The following is a legal agreement between You and the owners of SXC.hu ("Website"), HAAP Media Ltd. ("SXC", "We") which governs the use of non-watermarked images ("Images") downloaded from our Website. By downloading an Image You agree to be bound by the terms of this Agreement automatically, without any other conditions or declarations. If You do not agree with these terms, You are not allowed to download the Image.
All Images on the Website are copyrighted and they are the properties of SXC or its Image providers. All rights are reserved unless otherwise granted to You. Your rights to use the Image are subject to this agreement and the restrictions specified at each Image.
We hereby grant to You a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Image on the terms and conditions explained in this Agreement and on the Image preview page FREE OF CHARGE.

You may use the Image

  • In digital format on websites, multimedia presentations, broadcast film and video, cell phones.
  • In printed promotional materials, magazines, newspapers, books, brochures, flyers, CD/DVD covers, etc.
  • Along with your corporate identity on business cards, letterhead, etc.
  • To decorate your home, your office or any public place.

You may not use the Image

  • For pornographic, unlawful or other immoral purposes, for spreading hate or discrimination, or to defame or victimise other people, sociteties, cultures.
  • To endorse products and services if it depicts a person.
  • In a way that can give a bad name to SXC or the person(s) depicted on the Image.
  • As part of a trademark, service mark or logo.
  • SELLING AND REDISTRIBUTION OF THE IMAGE (INDIVIDUALLY OR ALONG WITH OTHER IMAGES) IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN! DO NOT SHARE THE IMAGE WITH OTHERS!

Always ask permission from the photographer if you want to use the Image

  • In website templates that You intend to sell or distribute.
  • For creating printed reproductions that You intend to sell.
  • On "print on demand" items such as t-shirts, postcards, mouse pads, mugs (e.g. on sites like Cafepress), or on any similar mass produced item that would contain the Image in a dominant way.

Information on rights
Since SXC does NOT require a written Model Release for each Image that has identifiable people on it, We cannot guarantee that you will be able to use the Image for any purpose You like. Also, if there is a model release for the Image, We do not represent or make warranties whatsoever as to the legality or validity of it.
Furthermore, certain Images may be subject to additional copyrights, property rights, trademarks etc. and may require the consent of a third party or the license of these rights. SXC does not represent or make any warranties that it owns or licenses any of the mentioned, nor does it grant them. It’s your sole responsibility to make sure that You have all the necessary rights, consents and licenses for the use of the Image.
You acknowledge that by your download the ownership of Image does not get transferred to You and You must not claim that it is yours. Your license is non-transferable, which means that You are not allowed to sell, rent, give, sublicense, or otherwise transfer the Image or the right to use the Image to anyone else. The work You create with the Image must be used either by yourself or by your client. You warrant that You do your best to prevent third parties from duplicating the Image.
You also agree to take the time to comment on and rate the Image you downloaded and do your best to show the work you created with the Image to the photographer. This is a simple thing and means a lot to many of our contributors who simply would like to know how their work is used.
IMPORTANT!
SXC cannot be held responsible for any copyright violations, and cannot guarantee the legality of the Images stored in its system. If you want to make sure, always contact the photographers. You use the site and the photos at your own risk!
Indemnification
You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless SXC and its officers, employees, shareholders, directors and suppliers against all claims, liability, damages, costs and expenses, including reasonable legal fees and expenses, arising out of or related to a breach of this Agreement, the use of this site and the use or the inability of use of any Image, your failure to abide by any restriction regarding the use of an Image, or any claim by a third party related to the use of an Image.
Warranty and Liability
THE WEBSITE AND THE IMAGES ARE PROVIDED "AS IS". WE OFFER NO WARRANTY, EXPLICIT OR IMPLIED, REGARDING ANY IMAGES, THE WEBSITE, THE ACCURACY OF ANY INFORMATION, OR ANY RIGHTS OR LICENSES UNDER THIS AGREEMENT INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. SXC DOES NOT REPRESENT OR WARRANT THAT THE WEBSITE OR THE IMAGES WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS OR THAT THEIR USE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE.
SXC SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU OR TO ANY OTHER PERSON OR ENTITY FOR ANY GENERAL, PUNITIVE, SPECIAL, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, OR LOST PROFITS OR ANY OTHER DAMAGES, COSTS OR LOSSES ARISING OUT OF YOUR USE OF THE WEBSITE OR THE IMAGES.

Summary

Ok, so now you should have no more excuses for breaking the law. You can find a ton of free AND LEGAL images, videos and music for whatever work you publish online and offline. Just remember to double-check the permissions.

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Mobile me

Ciao! I’m writing this from my iPhone with the official app from WordPress. It’s been around a long time but it keeps getting better all the time. You can include photos too.

I love this because it means you can always publish something to your blog whenever you want no matter where you are even if you don’t have wifi you can use 3G.

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Don’t Be a Virtual Vulture

vultureEveryone knows that plagiarism is bad and even illegal. However, some people tend to think it’s more acceptable if the stolen content comes from an online resource such as a blog or social network. It’s a disturbing attitude that continues to spread as increasing numbers are helping themselves to other people’s work. Don’t they have any shame or any shred of dignity?

I’m not referring to Blog Scrapers or Splogs which are those blatant copycat blogs that steal content from other sites. Those don’t normally last long thanks to the emergence of powerful search tools and trackbacks within blogs. The more disturbing trend is the way bloggers are copying one another and covering the same subject matter almost verbatim. Perhaps it’s because they’re using the same press releases or even worse, other blog posts about the same topic.

Look, I understand the nature of the beast when it comes to tech blogs because I’ve written a ton of posts for such entities like Mashable.com. I know that the same press releases are sent to several blogs at the same time which explains why the same service is covered by so many different blogs at the same time. However, the goal should always be to craft content that’s as original as possible. By and large, I think the more successful blogs do a great job covering things with their own voice.

So it’s not really the elite blogs that fall victim to this trap most of the time. It’s basically the small to medium sized blogs that either unintentionally replicate without permission (being ever so kind there, huh?) or intentionally copy someone else’s work. Either way, it means less original material out there in the cloud and more regurgitated content and in many cases stolen material. It’s a lose-lose-lose situation for all involved: The original blogger, the copycat blogger and most importantly of all, the reader.

ReTweet or Surrender!

This practice of passing off someone else’s words as your own doesn’t stop at blogs. The same insidious crime occurs in many other forums as well. For example, people perform micro-plagiarism all the time on micro-logging services such as Twitter, Identica, Utterli and Pownce (R.I.P). Just because the theft is accomplished in 140 characters or less does not excuse the behavior. No matter what the size, a crime is a crime.

Let me give you some examples. I’ve seen some people (some well known and admired) take tweets from others with much smaller followings and share the same exact content with their own much larger audience. It always baffles me as to why they don’t simply retweet that person and give them some credit. Sometimes a tweet a changed but the main point of the message is shared. In that case, the person that originally shared the tweet should receive a hat tip of some kind from the person sharing it with his network. Again, there’s no excuse for taking credit for it.

Obviously, most of the time the same thing will be shared online at the same time because people are reading the same news services and blogs. There’s no way to pinpoint who originally broke any kind of news or information. However, there are clear examples of those retweeting someone’s tweet without any credit. I see it happen a lot because I’m privy to many exclusive news items and I’ve seen that content shared without any hat tip to the one that originally shared.

The good news is that the new twitter search tool makes it easier than ever to find out who said what first on twitter. The same is happening with other platforms. This all means that these virtual vultures need to be careful about what they’re doing and who their ripping off. 

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First Anniversary of Blogging

I started blogging about technology and other things on 11/11/2007 so today marks the first anniversary of my blogging career or whatever you want to call it. I began with a free WordPress blog (http://thepaisano.wordpress.com) which is no longer updated because I ported over to my own self-hosted blog some seven months later around July 22, 2008 which is where we be today: http://ThePaisano.com.

Originally, believe it or not, the name of my blog was “Pai in YO Face!”. I thought it was cute and clever at the time and people seemed to like it. Here’s how the header looked along with the black theme.

paiinyoface

After awhile though I started getting a lot more visitors and more professional type people and the whole in Yo face shtick lost its luster. I tried a few different names but ultimately stayed with “American Pai” for many months up until I moved to my own self-hosted blog. Here’s how that looked for the majority of time on the free wordpress blog.

americanPai

My blog had become basically 100% technical so I stopped writing about personal subjects which bothered me. I still wanted to share those thoughts and feelings but understand that a blog should focus on a central theme and stick to it if you wanted to be successful and keep readers coming back for more. Problogger convinced me of that when he shared some personal experiences and how he used to blog about several interests but didn’t attain success until he separated his themes into their own niche blogs. So my blog became a tech blog.

Seizing the Day!
Well, on February 14, 2008 I gave myself a Valentine’s Day gift and launched my personal blog on www.Blogger.com and called it simply The Paisano. It’s no longer there because a few months later I also decided to move my personal blog to its own domain and self-hosted blog and re-launched it as “Seizing The Day” at http://SeizingTheDay.net. Here’s the original header.
seizingtheday

Humbled Pai!
Around April sometime I was asked for the first time to guest blog for someone else’s blog. It wasn’t just anyone either. It was none other than Sarah Lacy! She was the hottest news from the SXSW ‘08 conference and I was looking forward to reading her upcoming book called “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0”. She and I became acquainted on MySpace and Twitter and she was interested in a tweet I made regarding her employer, Yahoo and the horrible job I thought they were doing with Delicious (a service I loved and still do). So I was flattered and wrote my very first guest post and it was so exciting! I loved being read by a much larger audience and getting intelligent feedback in the comments, sometimes tough medicine is good for you. I went on to write several more pieces so I owe Sarah a great deal of thanks for giving a rookie such a break and so many lessons.

Around the same time I was asked to guest blog for another blog, SocialMediaMom! She asked me to write something about being a dad so I contributed a piece about my 9 year old entrepreneur son who used social media for a class project.

The MASH Unit
Ultimately, everything lead to my favorite tech blog in the world, Mashable.com in August! I wasn’t sure I was ready for such a gigantic blog but I knew it was my chance to see what I could do and I was so grateful for the opportunity. I’m still writing for Mashable where I’ve had the honor of contributing over 120 articles in only three months! While my output will continue to drop dramatically over time, I will still write an occasional feature for them. They’ve been incredibly nice to me and continue to teach me new things about professional blogging and journalism in general. I will be forever grateful to Pete Cashmore, Adam Ostrow, Sharon Feder, Mark Rizzn Hopkins and everyone else there.

My Guardian Social Angel
If I were to thank any one particular person for any success that I’ve achieved in my first full year of blogging and in social media/networking it would have to be everyone’s guardian angel, Chris Brogan. From the first time that I met him on Utterz and Twitter, he has been a gentleman and scholar and a great friend. Calling him a friend feels funny because you hear so many people do the same thing all over the web. It reminds me of Sparticus, “I’m Sparticus!” “No, I’m sparticus!” and so it goes. But the fact of the matter is that Chris Brogan truly does have that many friends all over the place. He always takes the time to share wisdom and experience and no one has taught me more about social media and social networking and blogging as he has. He’s also taught me many lessons about life and friendship as well. My favorite line he shared with me was “The Sun can warm a field of daisies or it can burn a hole through solid steel”. The lesson in that gem was a reminder for me to “Stay focused Pai!” So, every time I start to bite off more than I can chew or start procrastinating, I remember Brogan’s Daisies. Thanks my friend! By the way, I call him The Broganator because he’s a machine that cannot be stopped! P.S. I’m honored to be a contributing editor to Brogan’s new blog for dads called Dad-o-matic!

So here’s my wrap up of my first 365 days as a blogger.

ThePaisano       (161)
Seizing the Day (132)
Mashable           (120)
Dadomatic          (11)
SarahLacy             (6)
SocialMediaMom  (1)

Total Posts         431!!!!

Wow. 431 posts in 365 days. This is amazing when you consider that I continue to maintain a full-time day job in the I.T. industry and raise three children ages 9, 5 and 3 and I’ve never missed any of their practices, games or school functions and activities involving dads. I can only imagine what I could do if I were able to blog full-time!

I think everyone should stop and reflect on their anniversary and see how far they’ve come. I look forward to the next year online with all of you.

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Best Practices for Social Media Marketing from a Tech Perspective

I was tagged by Chris Brogan to contribute a post about best practices for social media marketing in response to Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation. Since I mostly blog about technology I will share my take on this question from that perspective. How does someone from a tech point of view look at social media marketing?

Pai’s best practice for social media marketing involving technology:

1. Be Honest: It sounds simple but it isn’t when it comes to social media. It can be like high school with some of the cliquish things that go on with some circles. Too many people are afraid to be totally honest about things in fear of not being liked by an A-lister (GASP!). I learned that everyone, including those rare mutants known as A-listers appreciates and respect honesty above everything else. I apply the same practice to my reviews of technology and startups.

2. Be Respectful: Always remember that behind all of this technology and all these cool tools are real live human beings. Too often we lose sight of that fact and say things that truly hurt people’s feelings. We need to remember to respect everyone’s dignity no matter how much we disagree with them or what they’ve said or done.

As far as sharing someone else’s work regarding this topic I am pleased to share an excellent post from Jackie Peters  called “Caught in the Echo Chambers”. It still has me thinking deeply about things. It’s so well-written and thought out. Take your time and read it carefully. Great stuff.

I will tag the following who I know will have great tips to share!

Tojosan who’s a master in socializing no matter what the platform online or offline. He also puts his money where he mouth is (huh?). For example, for a great cause (mail our military promotion) he offered to shave his head if they reached a certain donation level. Needless to say, his new name is TojoSANSHair (yea, I coined that one for him).

Purplecar is a writer who also loves social media and uses the tools. Everyone loves Christine and she will have some insightful secrets for sure.

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Flying Solo

“Should I host my own blog?” Sooner or later, every blogger will ask that very question. Eventually, you will want to know the pro’s and cons of hosting your own blog vs staying with a free host like blogger or WordPress.com. Is it worth the expense and all the trouble to fly solo?

I recently did the research and came to the conclusion that it was well worth the expense and effort to “wing it” myself. I’ll share everything I learned, some things the hard way! There’s a great deal of information out there but this will be a stripped down collection of what I feel is the most important information you need to know about this subject matter. Ultimately, it’ll still be your decision whether to be your own pilot or continue to let someone else fly your plane.

Let’s start with a simple comparison of the two choices. We will use WordPress.org (self hosting) and WordPress.com (free blog host) just to compare apples to apples.

Feature/Option

WordPress.com (Free) WordPress.org (Self Hosting)
Your own Domain name No (http://name.wordpress.com) Yes
Hosting cost per month Free Average is $5-$10 per month
Easy Management Yes No (lots of manual updates)
Open Plugin support NO YES
Open Theme support NO YES
Customizable html/css code NO Yes
Automatic Backups Yes No
Allows Ads No Yes

The verdict? Well, it depends on you, of course. How serious are you about blogging? What is the goal of your blog? If it’s just a personal blog and you are not that technically savvy then perhaps the free choice is the right fit for you. However, if you enjoy tinkering with this stuff anf want full and complete control of your blog then self-hosting is a no-brainer. It’s also the right choice if you want to have a professional or business blog with any hopes of monetizing it.

Preflight Checklist

  1. download wordpress software (use peazip to unzip files)
  2. Register new domain name
  3. Register new web host (WordPress approved hosts )
  4. Export all posts/comments from existing blog

Spreading Your Wings! (Here are Detailed instructions from WordPress.org )

  1. Create a database for WordPress on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it.
  2. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php.
  3. Open wp-config.php in your favorite text editor and fill in your database details.
  4. Upload your WordPress files with an FTP program such as the free Filezilla to the desired location on your web server:
    • If you want to integrate WordPress into the root of your domain (e.g. http://example.com/), move or upload all contents of the unzipped WordPress directory (but excluding the directory itself) into the root directory of your web server.
    • If you want to have your WordPress installation in its own subdirectory on your web site (e.g. http://example.com/blog/), rename the directory wordpress to the name you’d like the subdirectory to have and move or upload it to your web server. For example if you want the WordPress installation in a subdirectory called “blog”, you should rename the directory called “wordpress” to “blog” and upload it to the root directory of your web server.
  • Run the WordPress installation script by accessing wp-admin/install.php in your favorite web browser.If you installed WordPress in the root directory, you should visit: http://example.com/wp-admin/install.phpIf you installed WordPress in its own subdirectory called blog, for example, you should visit: http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php
  • Import all posts/comments into new blog
  • Upload all themes and apply the one you want to use
  • Upload all plugins and active the ones you want to use
  • Add all badges and widgets that you want to use

Postflight checklist

  1. change feedburner information
  2. change technorati information
  3. change all links to blog in profiles to new url (twitter, friendfeed, etc.)
  4. Spread the word about the change
  5. Backup database/blog (schedule regular backups as well)
  6. Optional: If you want to redirect traffic from your old wordpress.com blog to your new self-hosted wordpress.org blog then checkout this PDF from Blog-Well.com.

Free blog software

www.wordpress.org

Free unzipping utility

PeaZip

Free Automatic Blog Backup Services

blogbackuponline(50 MB of storage)
WordPress Plugin for Database backup

Free FTP Software

FileZilla

Free blog themes & templates

http://themes.wordpress.net

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/

11 free magazine style themes

WPThemesFree

Mashable’s 70 fresh & modern templates

Free blog plugins

WordPress Plugin Library

Best plugins

Word Press stats

addthis plugin for wp

FriendFeed Comments

Retaggr

Category Cloud

Search Everything

Send to Email

Sent to Printer

Subscribe to comments

Akismet

Best widgets

meebo

clustrmap

alltop badges

twitter badges

retaggr

mybloglog

disqus or Sezwho

Final Thoughts
Speaking for myself, I must admit that I wish I made the decision to fly solo a long time ago!
Despite all warnings and fears, it truly isn’t that difficult to do. Best of all, it’s tremendously more fun and rewarding. Think of it like this: Do you want to be the passenger on a commercial airliner or do you want to fly your very own plane? Do you want to fly from point to point or do you want to go where you want to go and do loop de loops? Give it a test flight and I hope to see you up in the clouds real soon!

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Utterz 2.0

Utterz 2.0 is now LIVE! The biggest change is the user interface of the home page. It is much cleaner, less cluttered and easier to use! Check it out here:

 

New Profile URL

User profile pages are also vastly improved and easier to remember. The URL is no longer this long and hideously cryptic address! Instead, it’s as simple as Pai. http://www.utterz.com/Paisano

 

 

Mobile Utterz

Using utterz on your mobile device is even better than ever! Call: 1-712-432-6666 *record, listen AND reply.

Video, pics, text:
-public: go@utterz.com
Title your last utter:
title@utterz.com

Look at all the new options available from your cell phone’s keypad! http://www.utterz.com/u/cli_doc.php

Go to m.utterz.com from your handset to browse and reply to friends’ messages

Sending a message to go@utterz.com or private@utterz.com within 10 minutes of recording matches up your photo, video, or text with the recording.

 

New Personal Email Address

Members now get their own personal email address for easier direct communication.

For example, send a message to paisano@utterz.com and it will get routed to me instantly.

Also, taking a queue from Twitter, You can now send an utter to someone’s inbox by including ‘@username’ anywhere in the text of your message!

 

Finding Friends

Adding your friends from your address book or other services such as Twitter has also become much better! Just login to your service and Utterz will show you which friends already belong to Utterz. Just click follow and you will be linked to them on Utterz. http://www.utterz.com/u/find_friends/network-twitter

 

Come check it out!

 

 

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Never Miss another Tweet

 

One of the downsides of having a large group of friends on Twitter is the difficulty in following all of the tweets directed at you. In most cases, it’s impossible to catch all of the messages that normally would interest you.

Thus, most of us are relegated to using twitter search engines such as Summize or TweetScan. While both are fine services, they are manual processes that take time that we don’t normally have.

 

Enter TweetBeep which can send you email alerts whenever someone mentions you, your blog or any other keyword you want to track. For example, whenever someone mentions your name with or without the @ sign it will be captured and a email will be sent with all of the tweets every hour or once a day (your choice). If you want to be alerted for any mention of your websites or blogs then those alerts will take place instantly because the searches are performed live on twitter. The nice thing is that this works even when people use URL shortening services.

 

Final Thoughts

Search alert tools such as TweetBeep and SM2 (covered in “What About Me“) allow us to keep tabs on everything that’s important to us on the ever expanding information super-highway (Thank you Al Gore!). It’s like having our very own private investigators combing the web for us.

These time-savers are much appreciated as we become increasingly busy. Thanks to these types of services we never have to miss anything again.

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Twhirl's Firehose Filter

firehose The new Twhirl update (0.8.2) has included a much needed new feature for everyone who has ever wanted to create groups for twitter. They now support Rooms on FriendFeed which means you can now filter your firehose of information to whatever you want according to the room you join or create.

For example, you can create a room for your favorite sports team and see only updates on that topic from the people who join that room. Likewise for any other topic such as Social Media, Stamp Collecting, or whatever the case may be. Here’s the room filter option on the bottom right of the FriendFeed client window (the pound sign #): I’ve created a room for Utterz which is selected in the following image.
rooms

The beauty is that you can quickly and easily jump from room to room without impacting your other Twhirl window which contains all of your twitter messages. Thus, the digital age’s equivalent of walking and chewing gum at the same time!

Yes, Twitter should’ve done this type of thing long ago, but that’s all right. Just be glad this is here now. We finally have a useful tool that will help us drink from that firehose without getting soaking wet!

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You've Got Milk

Thanks to an excellent Adobe Air application called Snackr, you can now view the posts on Utterz from your circle of friends on your desktop! The good news is that it works on Windows, the Mac and even Linux and best of all it’s FREE!

snackr

Here’s how easy it is to setup:

Go to Utterz and copy the URL to your circle of friends (sometimes referred to as your Herd). Tip: It will be in this format: http://www.utterz.com/~h-Paisano/v-circle/r-1/rss.php (replace Paisano with your Utterz name, of course).

Go to http://snackr.net to download and install their cool RSS ticker. If you’ve never installed Adobe Air before (used by other services such as Twhirl, Snitter, AlertThingy and many others) then you will need to install it first. Go here to install Adobe Air.

Once Snackr is installed it will ask you what you want to do. Select the manually add feeds. Then click the plus sign on the bottom leftside of your screen and paste the URL of the RSS feed for your circle of friends on Utterz.

Within seconds all of your friends’ utterz including your own will begin scrolling across your screen and look like this:
snackr_ticker

Note: You can add all kinds of other RSS feeds to Snackr as well. This was just a way to show utterz members how to add their feed to their desktop.

Want a Personal MilkShake?

By the way, you can add your own Utterz RSS feed to services like GoogleReader and FriendFeed. Just add your own RSS feed from Utterz just as you would for any other RSS feed. (On FriendFeed click the add Blog feed option) Here’s the format:
http://www.utterz.com/~h-Paisano/list.php (again, replace my name with your Utterz user name). Bada Bing, Bada Boom! You’ve Got Milk!

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