I keep registering to new services or apps almost every week. Since I first did the “Things I’ve tried” list in April, quite a number of new things have seen my type in my email address. If you’d like to see for yourself, go here:

1. Twhirl, a Twitter client based on Adobe AIR, acquired by Seesmic and being improved more regularly since then. Still suffers from Twitter’s API request restriction which makes all clients slow once you have exceeded a certain number of proliferous followees.
2. TweetDeck, just came in this weekend. Another AIR-based Twitter client that organises Tweets in columns, allowing for replies to be listed separately and offering grouping. It’s pretty much a full-screen thing, so requires more attention than Twhirl.
3. Twibble, is a mobile Twitter client. It works nicely on my SonyEricsson, again with the API restriction in place. Downside is that you can’t click on links in your timeline and read stuff on your mobile browser. But Twibble guaranteed on-the-go entertainment during the Germany-Turkey Euro 2008 semi-finals when the TV signal from Basel failed several times in all of Europe.
4. Brightkite, is a location-based social network that allows users to inform friends on the go where they are and what they are up to. It has a web-to-mobile integration with maps on the site. Currently, the mobile app does not work with carriers outside the US, so it’s pretty useless. Unless you want to send texts to the service to check in. Plazes, recently acquired by Nokia, does a better job with automated check-in and has more European/German users too. Anyway, LB SocNets are here to stay..
5. Identi.ca, is a Twitter clone with a sleek interface but less features than the original. Might become a fallback option if the fail whale keeps appearing for ever and ever.
6. Sixgroups call themselves “live community” which they indeed are. You’ll find my Sixgroup community bar on the top of this blog and I invite you to join my community. Integrating Sixgroups was a breeze (copy-paste of a bit of code) and setting up all the rest is as simple as anything. The cool thing about this is that you can build your own network of people around your personal content offering (i.e. this blog) and engage in discussion live as the Sixgroups drop-down menu offers live chat functionality – apart from the unmissable Twitter integration. Oh, and this is a German startup from Hamburg, which is always worth mentioning.
7. TypePad is the legendary hosted blog service from Six Apart (my client at Hotwire) and I’ve set up a secondary blog (German only) to play with and get aquainted with the service.
8. Plurk is a Twitter-like microblog service, I’ve written about here. Don’t use it much anymore as the critical mass is on Twitter (still).
9. Telewebber was great fun during the Euro 2008 matches. People getting together to chat live about the game. More detail here in my previous post.
10. Mento takes your bookmarks, much like del.icio.us, but with a more immediate community of friends. You can share links with just one friend if you like or publish more broadly. It’s integrated with del.icio.us, Facebook, Friendfeed, Ma.gnolia and Tumblr. Plus Twitter of course. A nice feature, building on the social factor is the “Mento Mix” that gives you a selection of links your friends have saved as a recommended reading. They have Firefox and IE plugins, too. I have a few invites, so just comment here to get one.

Up next: 2 weeks offline in Finland end of July. So 0.5, but I know I’ll love it.

I’m proud to say that one of the most brilliantly fun social web apps I’ve seen recently is just making its first steps among the German early adopter’s crowd. Telewebber, a startup based in the middle of South-German nowhere (Bretten, for those who know), brings all those digital nomads together on a platform that makes watching TV a social, entertaining experience even when you’re alone at home or in a hotel room.

On the start screen, users can choose a (real) TV channel, they’re watching and join a chat room very similar to those Web 1.2 users might be familiar with from IRC or ICQ (does anyone use these in Twittertimes anymore?). The action happens in the chat. You’ll see a list of other watchers on the right, there are Mood-o-Meters on the left to signal applause, booing or laughter, and the center screen is dominated by a very fast and very real-time chat that serves as the central hub for communicating about the happenings on TV.

Telewebber started to grab early adopters’ attention almost exclusively via Twitter shortly after Next08 in mid May (where they presented their elevator pitch) by launching Betacamper.de, a site designed as a giant campground with a tent for every beta applicant. After signing up, users could let their Twitter followers know they had joined the campers and spread the word. Literally within hours, several hundred had registered, and today, just days after letting the first users in, the number has gone up over a thousand.

Just in time for the first Euro 2008 game of the German team, they started opening doors to users in blocks of 50 to 100. A great way to test platform scalability for traffic, individual events, database robustness etc, and still build more anticipation among those still waiting on the virtual camping ground.

What makes Telewebber such a great platform is the fact that the team has put a whole lotta love into little features that make watching TV with other, dispersed friends good fun. You can take the role of the referee, showing yellow cards, claiming offsides, and initiating La-Olas (nice thing for a ref to do). Also, quotes from TV can be added into the chat live-stream, and spontaneous mini-surveys created. All this creates a lot of interaction and engagement by the viewers/chatters as every chat item can be “digged” by everyone, collecting points that go on each chatters credit. Those items that collect the most acclamations get listed in a separate section as the highlights of the show (left on screen). Plus, commercial breaks can be bridged by competing against other in guessing which ad is on just now. So there’s a bit of creative competition in Telewebber, too. Here’s a video of how live interaction looks like.

Oh, and not to forget Twitter integration from the chat where users can inform followers about their TV show of choice and get them to join the discussion. Making friends in Telewebber is even easier than in Twitter and you can even personalise the look of your own TV community by adding background images and tweaking opacity of windows.

Telewebber has everything: a great idea, love for detail, snappy technology, ease of use, fun features and above all a communication strategy at this early stage that gets a highly engaged crowd buzzing about it and enjoying themselves while watching…football, what else these days? It’s phantastic to see such a project being launched in Germany first, and guess what, internationalisation “is somewhere on the list”, said co-founder Andreas Dittes, he just wouldn’t say when. No worries, Telewebber-Team, you’re up for something special here. Good luck!