Maybe you've got a friend or a family member who's just popped up on your Twitter timeline for the first time. Or maybe you're the one taking their first tentative steps into the wide world of Twitter. Either way, you're probably looking for a way to explain Twitter's popularity—just what do people get out of using it? Twitter's new-user experience tries to make it easy to collect a healthy group of people to follow, showing off popular users in a variety of categories and sucking in contact lists from services like GMail. But even with that helping hand, the Twitter universe can seem awfully small to a new user, especially if you don't follow many people at the start.
Unlike most Twitter clients, Seesmic Look downplays the social and interactive aspects of the service, choosing instead to focus on the content other users post to Twitter. Experienced users aren't likely to use Seesmic Look as their primary client, but as a way to introduce people to Twitter, it's not a bad choice. The Trends tab, for example, is obviously aimed at newer users; unlike the Twitter homepage, which lists trending topics in a context-free list, Seesmic Look annotates trending topics with explanations taken from What the Trend.
The utility also looks nothing like any other Twitter client. In fact, the program bears a closer resemblance to set-top media players like Boxee or Windows Media Center—programs designed to be viewed on televisions in a semi-interactive manner. And when you turn on Seesmic Look's playback mode, which shows posts fading into the screen in reverse chronological order, it starts to feel less like a Twitter client and more like a screensaver. It's definitely not for active users who post on a regular basis, but if you like the idea of Twitter as screensaver, then it's worth taking a chance on Seesmic Look.
There is such a thing as too much choice. The Shoutcast Radio Directory, named after the server software that essentially kickstarted Internet radio, boasts more than 32,000 stations. But finding the one station you can call your own takes a lot of trial and error. Stations that supposedly play the same genre can vary wildly in artist and song selection, meaning it can be difficult to narrow down your choices reliably. And what if you happen to like a bunch of genres? Picking a station with just the right mix can be even more difficult.
By acting less like a directory of stations and more like a search engine, RadioTuna offers a bit more help in finding the right radio station than other sites. RadioTuna can search by genre like most directories, but instead of relying on the genre tags provided by a radio station, the search engine classifies stations based on their playlists. You can even see charts for individual stations showing what genres they're most likely to play at any given moment.
More interesting, however, is the artist search. Because RadioTuna keeps track of what every station plays, it can tell you what station is playing a specific artist right now—or if no stations are playing them at the moment, it can direct you to stations that play that artist on a regular basis. RadioTuna also takes care of playing the radio stream, meaning everything stays inside your web browser—no extra software required. There's even more RadioTuna could do to help listeners pinpoint future favourites—being able to search for multiple artists or genres at a time, for example—but the site is already one step ahead when it comes to finding what you want on the internet radio dial.
If you've ever turned on revisions in a word processor like Microsoft Word, you've already seen the magic of file comparison utilities. With just the flick of a switch, you can compare two versions of a document and see every change — deletions, additions and edits alike — without having to find them yourself. Editors and writers aren't the only ones who benefit from the ability to easily compare files — programmers often compare pieces of program code to track down bugs and glitches.
Word documents and pieces of program code are essentially pieces of text, so automatically finding and marking the differences between two versions is easy, but the same is not true for images. For artists or designers that keep multiple copies of a project — perhaps for archival purposes, or in order to show multiple design directions or minor tweaks in a single design — the most obvious way to differentiate between versions of a Photoshop composition is to label them using file names. But this only goes so far; some changes you just can't encapsulate in a handful of words.
ComparePSD is a handy way to compare Photoshop files like you might compare two pieces of text in other programs. Load two Photoshop files into the utility and you can see at a glance what layers the two files share in common, and what layers are different. ComparePSD can detect differences in transparency and even layer blending effects, so nearly any layer-based change will show up. The tool also shows a preview of each image, allowing you to visually inspect a file without having to open Photoshop. Juggling several revisions of a Photoshop composition will always be a bit of a chore, but ComparePSD makes it easier to find the one you want quickly.
