If you spend any amount of time on the Internet then I would probably bet you have be subjected to some form of talk about social networks.  Heck, even here on WinCustomize and JoeUser I regularly talk about the usefulness of such networks.  We have a growing group on Facebook about desktop customization, and several of us use Twitter as well.

With all these current networks, and more popping up all the time, it can be difficult to keep track of them all.  I use quite a few of these networks for both personal and work use, and I wanted to share a few tips on how I manage some of the more popular ones.

• FriendFeed is one of the hottest new sites around, and it’s generating quite a buzz.  FriendFeed lets you keep update to date with the happening of all your subscribed friends, favorite bloggers, etc.  It will pull updates from services like Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, and a bunch more.  It also allows users to comment on your postings, and see updates posted from your friends as well.   You can see my feed here.
  
• Socialthing! is another website that does a similar function, but I think it has a much cleaner interface.  Socialting! is still an invite only service, and I do have a couple of invites to give away if anyone is interested.
  
• TweetScan is for you Twitter users out there.  It lets you search Twitter, and is a good way to find people with similar interests, or people that are just talking about you.
  
• Twhirl is an application powered by Adobe AIR.  It’s a Twitter client for your desktop, but the cool thing about this is it will also post to your Pownce and Jaiku accounts as well.  It’s also available for both PC and Mac, but my personal Twitter client of choice is Witty.
  
• Alert Thingy is another new application also powered by Adobe AIR.  Instead of Twitter, this app focuses on keeping you updated of your FriendFeed feeds, and it also allows you to post messages to Twitter.

So those are a few of my top choices on how to make managing your social networks a little bit easier.  If you have any tips or tricks, I would definitely like to hear how you manage yours.

The much anticipated WordPress 2.5 was released earlier today.  This is a pretty significant update and a ton of new features were added, one of the most notable being the redesigned Dashboard.

There are just too many features for me to describe, so just check out the WP 2.5 blog post for all the information.

I updated my personal blog in less than 10 minutes without any problems.

Download: WordPress 2.5

I see that many blogs, including my own, use MyBlogLog to track visitors to their sites among other features.  One of the most notable features is the MyBlogLog widget that displays your recent visitors and other info.  I’m sure many of you have seen it on various blogs.  Well I just noticed today that they have updated the widget with a new look and new functionality. 

This was apparently updated in February, but there didn’t seem to be much talk about it, and I still see many people using the old widget so I figured some don’t even know about it.  To get your new widget just log in to your MyBlogLog account and click Widget, and configure and get your new code.

While you are at it, feel free to stop by and join my community as well.

Link: MyBlogLog