Have you been wishing you could tweet in Klingon but just aren’t fluent in Klingon? No problem. Cryptic Studios by Friend2Friend has just launched their new app that takes care of the translation for you and also provides the English translation for your friends that aren’t fluent in Klingon either.

Why would you want to tweet in Klingon? I guess for the same reason you’d want to dress up like one and go to a Trekker convention. Warp on over to Tweet in Klingon and you’ll batlh Daqawlu’taH.

Don’t ask me how I got this information because I don’t want to get anyone fired, but in their tradition of creating custom logos for special occasions Google has not only paid Twitter an amazing tribute, but they’ve also seemingly made an announcement no one was expecting. Has Google actually merged with Twitter? My contact tells me that this logo will go live tomorrow but click here to check out Google’s prerelease page and see for yourself.

Edit: The new TweetDeck (version 0.32) released on 11/30 has added support for the new Twitter RT format.

Let me start out by saying that I’m happy to see Twitter adding more functionality to their own website and I realize that the new retweet function is still in beta.

Now that I have that disclaimer out of the way, let me point out what I consider to be the most glaring flaw in the system and when I say glaring, I mean it’s a much bigger issue than the fact that we can’t add our own comments or that tweets from strangers that we aren’t even following are showing up in our streams. Those are certainly flaws, in my opinion, but this one outshines them all.

When you post a retweet (RT) using the currently accepted format of adding either “RT @hughbriss” or “via @hughbriss” on either Twitter proper, or any of the third-party apps, like TweetDeck or Seesmic, the result is the same. Your tweet (retweet) shows up in the stream of all of your followers and they can read your retweet no matter which of those applications they’re using. BUT… if you use the new Twitter retweet option, the only followers who will see it are the ones that use Twitter proper to read their tweet stream.

That, my friends, means that for most of us, a huge percentage of our followers would never see our retweets and that, is what I call a glaring flaw. The question is, was it done on purpose to draw third-party apps users back to Twitter or is it simply a case of the third-party apps just not being able to recognize the new format and requiring only a simple fix we’ll see in the next TweetDeck update?

Here is a screen shot from Twitter using a test account I set up to follow only myself for the purposes of this test. As you can see, there are three tweets and the one in the middle is a retweet.

Here is a screen shot of the same series of tweets on TweetDeck and as you can see in this image, the retweet that showed up on Twitter DOES NOT show up on TweetDeck and the same will be true on Seesmic or any other third-party app you’re using.

So, do you want all of your followers to see your retweets?  If so, there’s only one option available to you. Continue to use the standard “RT @hughbriss” format when you retweet, whether you’re using Twitter or a third-party app.

I know, amazing isn’t it? Some nut actually going to crazy extreme measures to stroke his ego, and this time,  it’s not Ashton Kutcher.

Rules: The rules are quite simple actually. All you have to do is add me (@HughBriss) to one of your Twitter lists to enter. That’s it. Just add me to one of your Twitter lists and you’ll be automatically entered to win a chance to win one million dollars

Selecting the winner: At some  time in the very distant future I will pick a name from my “Listed” list and that person will receive a chance to win a million bucks, delivered in person, by me.*

Good Luck!

Small print: Entrants must live in the U.S. and be eligible to win the Florida State Lottery and be willing to meet me at the convenience store near my house to pick up their chance to win (lottery ticket).

*Note: The chance to win a million bucks is delivered by me, not the actual million dollars.

If you have a lot of Twitter  followers and they aren’t all actual friends, chances are that you get a fair amount of auto DMs, (direct messages) many of which are nothing but spam. Most of those DMs are sent using one of two services; either Social Oomph or SocialToo.

Now before you grab your pitch forks and torches, let me clarify here that there’s nothing wrong with either of those services and they both actually offer many very handy options. For example, I find SocialOomph’s “semi auto vetting” tool indispensable. Obviously they didn’t create a way for you to send auto DMs to your followers for bad, they created them for good. Unfortunately, bad people always find ways to use good things in bad ways. So, instead of sending a simple benign message like, “Thanks for following me, I look forward to reading your tweets”, the spammers use the service to send us links to stuff we probably don’t want or need, and often, even more devious than that, they use the DMs to send phishing URLs.

Fortunately, both of those services have provided a way for us to stop all the madness. They both have options that you can use to block auto DMs so that any time someone uses their services to send one, you won’t receive it. With SocialOomph this is done through @optmeout and you’ll find the instructions here. To use SocialToo’s DM blocking option you’ll need to sign up and then select the appropriate options in their preferences.