ReadWriteWeb reports that Twitter has just signed an agreement with Gnip, a social data streaming service, to offer half of Twitter's total message traffic for $360,000/year. That is, if you want to analyze Twitter data, you're going to have to pay Gnip for the privilege.

With this move, Twitter is effectively outsourcing the "tweet analysis" business. The tweets sold via Gnip are not for display purposes - meaning, if you buy them, you must keep them largely to yourself and be content analyzing them and using the results. Customers like Google, who use 100 percent of Twitter's firehose for displaying instant search results, will still deal directly with Twitter.

Twitter signs Gnip to provide firehose access for $360,000/year originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 18 Nov 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

While eBay's built-in search is certainly handy, it's not very visual. StoreSlider provides a thumbnail-laden alternative. You select a category, enter a couple of keywords, choose a sorting order, and bam! tons of auctions pop up, each with a large, pretty image.

You can also select the sorting order (Best match, Ending soonest, etc. - same options as on eBay), and filter by "Buy it Now" items or items with free delivery only. The "free delivery" is a tad sketchy; the site won't let you specify where you're located, so I suspect it's free delivery in the US only.

It's basically very similar to eBay's own search, but it's more visual and perhaps a tad faster. Another bonus is that you never have to click Next to load up more results. You just keep scrolling down, and more results are automatically loaded.

All in all, it's nothing revolutionary, but if you need to quickly review what eBay has to offer in a certain category, this is one viable search option -- and it does look nice.

StoreSlider lets you quickly search through eBay originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Nov 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It used to be that when you wrote a book, you just sent your manuscript off to a bunch of publishers, and waited. Or if you were lucky, rich, or connected, maybe you had an agent who could help you and pitch the publishers for you.

Today, it no longer has to be like that. Authonomy is one website that aims to change the process -- and do it in style. HarperCollins is effectively using the site to crowdsource the selection process: lots of authors upload their works to the site (minimum 10,000 words). There's an active community of readers and reviewers that go over the texts, read, comment or "back" (support) the book.

Then, at the end of each month, the top five works from the site are reviewed by a panel of HarperCollins editors. They read at least 10,000 words of the work, and deliver feedback right on the site itself. Meaning you can read what they have to say - not just the author's text.

Feedback is frank, but very professional. For example, a work called Evil UnLtd "won" the Editor's Review award and garnered a positive review, but the HarperCollins reviewer also wrote "As a publisher I worry that the market for this would be too small to make it a viable proposal for me."

The bottom line here is that HarperCollins are using this site to mine for new talent - and other publishers can do the same. If you're serious about your writing, this could be a great way to get noticed.

Authonomy is a creative community for budding authors, backed by HarperCollins originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google sues the US government over Microsoft favoritism originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 01 Nov 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Facebook buys drop.io file sharing service, shuts it down originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 29 Oct 2010 19:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Canadian Brad Turcotte, AKA Brad Sucks, makes music. In fact, he makes open source music, and he lets people download the source files of his songs for free and remix them into all sorts of weird creations.

Given his open source musical model, it should come as no surprise to you that Brad is a nerd. And as a nerd, he scratched his own itch and created the Brad Sucks Digital Download Store.

The store is aimed mainly at selling digital goods, and it relies on existing solutions for storage and billing. That means an Amazon S3 account is recommended (but not required), and a PayPal account is required. The store generates expiring URLs for downloading your content, and it gives buyers instant access to your content once they've paid up.

One feature that's missing is a "pay as much as you want" option, a la Bandcamp. That's not a bad idea, and it's one that I hope to see Brad implementing in the future.

And while you're at Brad's site, go check out his upcoming album, Guess Who's a Mess. Not all of the tracks are ready, but you can already listen to some full-length tunes.

Brad Sucks Digital Download Store is a free, easy-to-install Web storefront originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Amazon announces Kindle book lending feature originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 19:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Switched over to Google Apps? Star in the next 'Go Google' ad campaign originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 05:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Canon to launch system that blocks banned words from being printed, scanned or faxed originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 13 Oct 2010 06:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Kapitall is one of the most impressive finance-related websites I've recently come across. The site requires registration (which is free, but you do have to opt out of their newsletter) -- but in return it provides you with an incredible amount of financial data.

The experience is very visual. You get a large canvas, which they call "the Playground." You can search for companies by their stock symbols or by their names. (For example, I didn't know that Oracle is ORCL, so I just searched by name.) Each company gets a large icon on your playground, with the company logo, their name, and their segment ("TECHNOLOGY" for Oracle). Icons can be grouped together, dragged around, and organized in any way you wish.

To dig into a single company, double-click its icon. You get a snapshot page that shows you a one-year performance graph, a company synopsis, current market cap, management details, analyst ratings, and more. You also get to see "Monthly Community Activity" for the company, which lets you determine how much Kapitall buzz there is around a given company.

You can also analyze company data in all sorts of ways. One neat tool is the Compar-O-Matic, which shows you statistics for two or more companies. You can also see statistics over time. Here's a fun fact: in October 2008, Apple's market cap was $100.7B, versus Oracle's $104.6B. Today, Apple stands at $221.2B with Oracle at $109.8B. That's pretty intense, especially when you play it back month-by-month and see how the stock behaves.

This is just scratching the surface of this massive tool, really. If you have any interest in the stock market and in cool tools to chart it and learn about it, you should definitely check out Kapitall.

Kapitall is a massive, beautiful stock market playground originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

While the TechCrunch deal is the most exciting news I've heard from AOL today, it's not the only major deal to go down: This morning AOL announced its purchase of 5min Media, a massive video syndication company.

When you go to the 5min homepage, it looks a bit like a mini-YouTube; that's not the exciting part. What's noteworthy about 5min is that they manually curate all of their content (over 200,000 categorized, tagged and rated videos), and provide technology for automatically embedding relevant videos alongside textual content. So if you've got a blog post about dogs, 5min can automatically place a pet-related video next to your content - possibly something about the exact breed of dog you mentioned.

5min specialized in educational content, and their player shows it: When you switch to full-screen, you get a Tools menu which allows you to advance the video frame-by-frame, change the brightness and even go slo-mo so you can see exactly what's happening. You can play with these features using this random video showing How to Remove the LCD from the 13" Macbook.

AOL acquires 5min Media, a video syndication company originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

There were rumors about it yesterday, but today we find out that it actually happened: AOL has purchased TechCrunch, one of the biggest blogs (and blog networks) in the technology industry. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong announced the news this morning at TechCrunch's Disrupt conference, noting that TechCrunch will become part of the AOL Technology Network that includes sites like Engadget, Switched, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, and Download Squad.

Read more about it in the press release posted on TechCrunch by Tim Armstrong himself.

TechCrunch now a sister site of Download Squad originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

There are all sorts of compelling reasons to try an alternative PDF reader, security not being the least. Adobe Reader is also quite stingy with its functionality - you can't even annotate PDFs.

Nitro PDF Reader is an alternative reader with a modern-looking interface, and it offers generous annotation options. Unlike Foxit Reader, Nitro doesn't appear to watermark your PDF when you annotate it. You can highlight sections of the document, add text, add sticky-notes, and stamp your signature (not a digital signature - just a scanned one).

If you're lucky, you may also be able to extract graphics and text from your PDF. Ironically, I was unable to extract the images from Nitro's own sample PDF (the Welcome file that comes with the reader). Another thing you should know is that it's quite a memory hog. I tried the same document with both Foxit and Nitro; Foxit clocked in at 8MB, while Nitro consumed a whopping 63MB. Again, this is for the same exact one-page document. This is even more than Acrobat Reader 9.3, which consumed 50MB for that same document.

Still, if you've got a little RAM to spare (and most of us do), I think Nitro is a worthy contender, if only for its annotation capabilities and simple interface.

Nitro PDF Reader is a powerful, free Adobe Reader alternative originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 21 Sep 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Cuil, once touted as a 'Google killer,' appears to be dead originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 19 Sep 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple to announce iPad newspaper subscription plans originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 16 Sep 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The man behind Foxconn, the largest and most powerful exporter in the world originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 10 Sep 2010 06:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I think we last covered Jajah around 2007. The very fact that it's now 2010 and the service is still going strong is a testament to its power.

The premise is simple: phone-to-phone, via the Web. You go to the Jajah site (on your computer or through your phone's Web connection), punch in the number you want to dial, and your phone starts ringing.

You pick up your phone (landline or cell), and then the other side starts ringing. They pick up, and you talk.

There are a number of key advantages here:

• Since it's phone-to-phone, I don't need a high-speed Web connection. Sometimes I'm at a coffee shop or someplace with a crappy connection that wouldn't carry Skype or Google Voice. With Jajah, it's a non-issue.
• Since it's phone-to-phone, I'm completely mobile. I can use my cell phone and just go outside; I'm not tethered to my computer.
• It works with my aging Nokia device; I don't need a newfangled iPhone to use it.
• It gives me a direct number for each of the contacts I have. I can simply dial a local number in my own country, and the contact's phone starts ringing (even if it's in the US or Taiwan).
• The rates are very competitive. I use it instead of SkypeOut quite often.
• They can bill you in more currencies than Skype can, which is good for international users.

What I like about it is that it doesn't try to replace Skype. It is its own thing, in its own niche, and it just works. It's very, very handy.

Jajah is an incredible phone-to-phone VoIP service originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Finding a nice, catchy .com domain name is not exactly an easy task these days. It can often seem like all of the good ones are taken, and you're left with something like www.my-awesome-new-project.com.

Brute Force Naming attempts to alleviate this problem by systematically filtering through a ton of options in order to see if any of them are free.

You provide it with a bunch of possible substrings for the beginning and middle of the domain name (each up to three characters long) and an assortment of possible endings (think "kr" or "ndle").

It then plays a long game of mix and match, and it eventually spits out a handful of .com domain names that are available. Some of them don't sound so horrible, either. The main problem with the output is that it all sounds a lot like baby talk. (Or at least it did with the parameters that I tried.) Names like chabaz.com, pebaz.com, and lubaz.com don't exactly evoke emotion (well, ... perhaps a little bit of pity).

I suppose it's all in the parameters. If you at least have a clear idea for an ending, you may come up with something worthy for your project. Just don't end with "baz," please.

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Brute Force Naming helps you pick a catchy domain name originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Okay, so my earlier story about how Amazon is messing with International Kindle users made a bit of a splash. Quite a few things came up in my investigations before and after the story, but the basic fact remains: Amazon will add a fixed $2.00 surcharge to most items (which may or may not be a "roaming charge") if you're an international customer, even if you're using a WiFi-only device.

But I've now discovered something interesting enough to warrant a follow-up: It turns out that if you go to Amazon's Manage My Kindle page, you can simply set your country.

I think you must specify a valid address in your destination country (I supplied a valid one in Canada), but Amazon then simply takes your word for it.

As soon as I switched my country from Israel to Canada, the extra $2.00 per book simply disappeared. I could also suddenly subscribe to the NYT. I didn't actually try to do it, but it appears to be possible. Another side-effect was that Michael Pollan's Food Rules was suddenly unavailable, whereas before I was actually able to buy the title for $7.20 (when my location was listed as "Israel").

What's interesting is that in talking to four different Amazon reps, not a single one has mentioned this option. Also, Amazon can easily verify your actual location in two different ways - IP address or billing address. Yet, for some interesting reason, they choose to let you specify the address manually, and then take your word for it.

To me, this feels like a legal work-around they've had to take due to content restrictions and distributors insisting on various deals. Could it be that this shifts the legal responsibility to the customer rather than leave it with Amazon? Maybe I'm completely off-base here, but I think such weird complications are often lawyer-induced.

Note that I still don't have the device itself, so I can't fully guarantee that this works, and for all I know, they might plug this hole tomorrow. What I can tell you is that right now it does change the pricing and availability of many Kindle items.

International Kindle users: change your country to avoid additional fees originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

For most people, "Google" has become synonymous with "search". Heck, Cambridge dictionary lists it as a verb.

But as we all know, Google can do lots more than just search. You've got Gmail, and YouTube, and Maps, and the calculator, and a whole bunch of other Web properties.

While Gmail is enormously popular, not all Google projects fare so well (cough Wave cough). Even most of the search operators for Google itself are confined to the geekier crowd.

One thing Google UK has done to make its service more accessible to the non-geeky crowd is create Things to do. There's no US version at Google.com, but the British one is lots of fun, especially for guys who don't know Google so well.

It's basically a long list of things a normal person might want to do online (no, porn is not represented ... but that doesn't mean you're not normal, don't worry). The lines are couched in informal British English, which makes it all the more amusing. Being a nerd, I knew I could personalize my YouTube channel, but I didn't know I could "glam it up".

The whole page is a JavaScript accordion: Each tip has a + sign next to it. Clicking the line (or the sign) opens up the line, and you get a short YouTube clip demonstrating the feature, or a Search box for the specific service (for example, Google Scholar).

Bottom line: This is a very nice resource for sending to clueless friends who are wondering what sort of things they could use Google for. Saves lots of explaining - and hey, you might even find something that's new for you!

Google's "Things to do" helps you show the power of Google to non-techies originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.