• Start by login into your Gmail account on your favorite web browser.

• Look on your screen to the left for the Chat section.

• Click on the status section and click on the custom message option. Note that you have two custom message options, one for the available and one for the unavailable parts of the status section.

• Type your Twitter account URL, (example twitter.com/lwees) and hit enter.

From now on the people that you have on your messenger service of your web Gmail chat client will see the custom message with your Twitter link. This is an excellent way to broadcast you Twitter account to family and friends to route them to the place you spend the most time on.

Let me know if you liked this small tip, I’m considering doing more but only if you, my readers, approves it. Thanks for reading and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter or Facebook if you will.

The install took about 2 hours and 10 minutes, this is including the hour or so for the system to check the disk. I almost felt like skipping that step, but then if something had failed I would have asked myself is the disk was faulty or not. Anyway, I spent some time organizing my desk and when the install was done, I was ready to test some features.

Unlike many people, I didn’t start complaining about Leopard being slow even when it was, I notice that spotlight was indexing the drive so I took it easy. The first thing I did was open the system preferences pane and set up spaces, which came disabled by default. Then went into Time Machine and try to start it up, and that was when I had to take my fist major decision.

Until then I was using iBackup, because it was a simple backup utility and very inexpensive (free, except for a $10 donation I made to them in the past), I have to scrap that backup to make space for Time Machine to work. After, that Time Machine started doing its thing and about another hour later, it had finished.

Then I went to my mail application, since Google implemented Gmail imap configuration I try to set it up and suddenly my Mail app just crashed. At that point, all I did was to restart my machine and when I opened Mail app back I notice some things changed. The RSS menu was not there before and now it was, and the Gmail folder was separate from all the other ones. My guess is that those implementations are the ones causing issues, after all that is setup Mail works just fine.

Indexing was over, I went to my most feared app Adobe Photoshop Elements, to my surprise the small amount of test I did was all right. I created a blank document, save it to the desktop, applied some filters and shapes, and saved normally. Close it, open it again, and worked just fine, not any faster than with Tiger but at least it worked.

I want to mention that all I did was a regular upgrade, not archive and install or clean install. Also, there was some stuff downloading in the background and my computer asked to be restarted after it was running the first time. I had no other problems but I haven’t finish testing, I got rid of iBackup and Quicksilver. I will write more about this later, share your story or ask your questions right here on this post. I will try to keep posting regularly all my findings about Leopard features.

Lets clarify something, I understand that both devices are different, one is a phone and the other one is an iPod. One would think that they have the same applications installed, but even if they are the same they don’t behave alike. For the most part the Safari on the iPhone behaves like a mobile device, on the other hand it behaves like a regular browser on the iPod.

Whenever I surfed to Google the iPod would bring my iGoogle site the same way I see it on my computer. In the iPhone it goes directly to the mobile version of Google.com. I guess that since the iPhone could be working off the Edge network and the iPod touch not, this is a good thing since the iPhone would seem sluggish opening a full version of a website off of the Edge network.

Same thing happened with websites like Twitter.com, when I try to access them they would show up in their mobile version, even when connected to the Internet via WiFi. I’m not complaining about this, in fact I think this is a good idea. Websites load faster and that is very important if you are on the go, as for other functionality they both work the same, I haven’t notice any other differences.

The only thing I miss about the iPod touch is the icons layout, of course with the many software the iPhone has is impossible to have them layout the same. I wonder if in the future we will have the ability of changing or re-organizing the icon in the “Home” screen. Share your experiences with the community, give us your opinion on this matter. Thanks for reading.

There is a new addition to the iPod line, the iPod touch. It comes in 8 and 16 gigabytes, touch screen functionality like the iPhone. Price starts at $299 and $399 for the 16 gigs, is just like the iPhone except that it doesn’t do any phone calls nor has a camera. Visit the Apple store for more details, what I really want to talk about is my wish list. Don’t get me wrong, I love this new iPod and I’m getting one as soon as they become available. Here is what I think is missing;

• Can you download podcast on-the-go? I think not, I would like this option on a future update.
• Pausing, and forwarding songs ala iPhone. The radio remote is not compatible, not that I know, so why not including a pause/play button in the ear buds cord.
• Mail, whichever, I know you can navigate to Google and check your Gmail via Safari, but we could use the Mail application.
• iChat, I just don’t think is so hard to implement. But is not like I would use it a lot. As long as Twitter works.
• What happen to the Beatles, I don’t own any Beatles album, I would like to get like the best hits or something.

That’s it, nevertheless, I’m getting one on Sept 28. What about you, what is your wish list for the new iPod. I think is the best product ever and that is why I’m getting one as soon as they become available. Have you seen the keynote yet, I think at some point Steve mention something about developing for the iPod. I think this will be a much open platform soon. I couldn’t wait no longer and I had to create a category just for Apple products, reviews, etc. Thanks for reading.

For those of you who don’t know, a reader can be a web application that gives you whatever new content is available from those sites you follow. I specifically say, “can be” because there are software and web browser plugins that can do the same thing only that it will be managed on your computer rather than on the web. All these provided that you subscribe to your favorites website feeds, you can get the latest and greatest as it becomes available.

My first reason for using Google reader is that I’m “Googlelized,” I use many Google web applications. Here is the list, Gmail, Analytics, Adsense, Reader, Calendar, Talk, Docs and Spreadsheets, and Video. If you use Google services already then you end up on their website most of the time anyway, why not having your reader right in there too. With Google’s latest implementation of iGoogle, I have everything that I need for communicating with others on the web, wherever I go.

Google reader is a simple web application that does what it do in a great way, the many options you have to customize, add feeds, remove feeds, share them, and organize them into folders makes this application a must have. When you sign up for it, it gets tied up to your Gmail address. That’s all you need to start adding favorite feeds, let talk a little about all the options available with Google reader.

Whenever you go into the Google reader, the first page you see is the one with your feeds, which what is all about, right. There is a homepage for the reader that includes a couple of your unread feeds, a recently shared feed, and a recently starred feed. It also has a tip and tricks segment and a shortcut to the Google reader’s blog at Blogspot.

Right under the home tab you have all items, that where you sell all your news that got aggregated on the feed. Under each square of information you have options to control certain features available in the reader. The first one is Add star, which identifies your favorites news that you can later access on the Starred items tab. Then you have Share button where you can mark your news item to be shared over a feed or a widget that you can create on the Shared items tab.

You can even mail your news items to anyone you want, the next options is to mark items as read but note that this button gets marked automatically after you scroll over a news item. Finally, you can add tags to your fees to categorize them on any type of order that makes sense to you. At the top of this window you have some options that allows you to see all your feed items or just the new ones. As well as marking them all as read, this become handy when you come back from vacation. Lastly, you have the option to refresh the page, this is something that I use a lot since new items may arrive as you read old ones.

The Starred items option is self explanatory, this is where you can find all the news items you marked with a Star. The you have the Shared items which holds the items you marked as shared, at the beginning of this page you have some options to share your feed, email those shared items, or put a clip of those shared items on your website or blog. Personally, I use this feature to share links and technology related new on this website.

After all these you have the Trends icon that holds statistics about your feed catcher behavior, you can see the last 30 days of traffic, any particular time of the day, any particular day of the week. Below that you have the reading trends, which gives you information about read items, starred items, and shared items. Subscription trends are another feature that I like, I monitor if a particular feed has not been updated in a while and I immediately unsubscribe from it.

Other options allow you to search for blogs in the Browse section right by the feed addition icon, you can import your feeds from other readers that comes in OPML format. You can manage your subscriptions, unsubscribe, and add an icon on your shortcut bar to add feeds to Google reader automatically. One of the latest options is to be able to read your feeds while offline, the way this works is that once you find a hot spot you download your feeds and store them locally to read them on the go, later syncing with you online feed and marking off all that you read already.

If you are not using a feed catcher or reader I encourage you to try Google reader, is fun, fast, accurate, and is almost 99.9% up and working. If you think that I missed any details, let me know, also leave a comment if you think any particular feature was left behind. I hope that you have enjoyed this article, thanks for reading.

Not all of the people that I connected with have a Mac; therefore all of them were using different messenger programs. I went back and forth asking them what they see when I for example send emoticons and general messages, files, and links. The answer impressed me, there were no hiccups, not problems, the emoticons showed up (almost) perfectly. All communications happen in real time and I even tested features while on the phone, they all worked great.

The first feature that interested me was the ability to encrypt conversations, this not only makes them secure at the moment you are chatting but together with the option to save the conversations you can save encrypted chat sessions. You can switch the account you are using to chat with somebody if this person has a second messenger service, live. These two features alone makes of Adium the software of my choice for instant messaging, but there’s more.

You have a nice list of popular emoticons to use but I notice that depending on what messenger the other person has the emoticon that they receive may vary. One example is I sent a “kiss” and my friend received an emoticon telling a secret to the other, far off. The nice thing is that at least you have them available now, where as before there was not an option, at least that’s all I remember.

You can instantly block people from your messenger, send them a hyperlink or a link right from the chat screen. Other option for font and colors are also located on the chat screen. You can send a file, a CSV contact card, or access the transcripts right there on the screen too. The improvements are great, the software is reliable and easy to use and I recommend it. If you have any question or seem to have any problems with this software, let us know by leaving a comment on this post for the community to discuss. Thanks.