A new feature launched at drop.io on July 30th, 2008 will add the ability for individual drops to have an external service subscribed as a notification system. Over the course of developing this system we noticed that Twitter doesn’t provide a method for software developers (that’s us) to store their user’s information securely in an external database. The only public method for integrating drop.io with Twitter requires us to store and to send the user name and password in plain text. This offers little to no security for that user’s uniquely identifiable information. This means that it would be possible for an unknown user on a network to monitor your session and connect that twitter user name and password directly with that drop.

At the time Twitter was struggling to stay up, and with all the top blogs whale spotting I guess this issue got put to one side. Now with the recent phishing attacks the focus has once again turned back to the security of the service with the developers and Twitter currently engaged in heated discussions, all we can do as users is watch a wait to see what happens. As you can see from above, Twitter have known about it for some time and have a solution in the pipeline which will hopefully come very soon.

On a personal note before a site makes it to TweetCrunch we always read the terms of service, check the twitter account for the company, use twitter search to find out what people think and finally look on Google, if the service doesn’t have any one of these and I have no traceability then it doesn’t make it to the site, I guess it’s what everyone else does but you should also be checking these things out yourself, Twitter search is a really useful tool to get the latest information about anything.

Another thing that you maybe want to do is create a second Twitter account for testing these new services before you are ready to make the full leap over, maybe that’s a little bit extreme but it’s a potential quick fix for your piece of mind.

Moving back over to the Phishing problems, here are some basic tips to avoid becoming the bait;

• If you have it switched on remove the auto follow feature, if you don’t follow them they cant send you dm’s a lot of the people who would have had the phishing scam will have been people that auto follow.
• Always check the user out first by reading through previous tweets, making sure that all of them don’t come from rss to twitter if it is a spammer then you can report them to Twitter.
• If you do get a direct message from someone thats on your list check it out first before clicking, and never put your passwords into anything without reading the terms of service or doing a background check.

Lets hope these issues can be sorted out soon…

The Twitter Tag Project is a virtual tag game for Twitter, a bit like the Facebook Poke, the idea is you select a twitter friend and send him a message from the defined list;

• Tag, you’re it!
• Flying Kung-fu Kick
• Super Poke
• High Five
• Spank that Ass

Your Tweet will look something like this

The idea then is for your friend to log on and pass another message onto one of his/her friends and so on….the idea being  There is also a leaderboard where you can see who the Top tagger is. The idea is a simple one and a new concept in a world of new Twitter apps that seem to be the same as the one released the previous week is a great bonus.

If you would like to try the game then go here and start tagging, the question is it a fun service or could this be annoying to your fellow tweeter?, you can follow the creator here and give him some feedback, and you can read his full post over on his blog

Quick post to let you know about twtcard which is a newish website that will let you send simple and fun cards, greetings or invitations to your Twitter buddies

Simply type in your message and your username, select one of the silly faces in the list and click create. You will then be presented with a link that you can copy into your tweet to send away.

Simply and easy to use, hopefully more features and designs to follow.

DestroyTwitter is the latest in a long line of Twitter applications built on the Adobe AIR platform. It consists of a series of canvases that are constantly updating to keep your tweets current and comes with some nice little hotkey shortcuts for people who use OSX

DestroyTwitter also features complete direct messaging functionality. Messages and tweets can be replied to with the original visible for quick and easy reference. A search function is also available to track anything that’s being talked about although not as powerfull as Tweetdeck’s searching options

• - Chinese language support
• - Retweet functionality
• - Window resizing
• - Closing the window hides DestroyTwitter, but notifications can still be seen

Here is a quick video demo of the application

DestroyTwitter Adobe AIR application review from RefreshingApps on Vimeo.

Overall a very lightweight Twitter client that doesn’t take up much screen real estate, and it’s pretty simple to navigate through the different options and screens.

Currently in public beta you can download it for yourself and see what you think

If you have asked that question of yourself a new site called Tweetwasters will find out just that for you. Simply just enter your Twitter username and it will calculate your time spent. If you are found to spend a lot of time on Twitter it could get you into the Tweetwasters hall of fame

Also if you have a wordpress blog and want to show off your Twitter addiction with your readers, you can also download the Tweetwasters plugin.

Twellow is the People finder directory for Twitter users and they have just recently released a new service called TwellowHood.

TwellowHood gives you a map that you can use to find fellow twitterers in your area. By simply clicking on the TwellowHood map, you can “drill-down” into a list of cities and towns in your area that have other Twellow users in them.

Once you’re down to this level you can then click on either the map icons or the city name in the list to go to a page listing each user found. From there you can view and choose the people you want to follow, just as you can in our category listings on Twellow. The map can also be dragged and zoomed so you can see the top-ten cities better, or to make it easier to see smaller states and Washington D.C.

Twellowhood for the moment only supports the US but they are working on making this a worldwide feature with other places on the way.

Which Twitter user rocked your world?, made you laugh? gave you inspiration? this year well to find out the Shorty Awards have been created, a new site designed by Twitterers for Twitterers to celebrate the best Twitter users of 2008.

Going to the website you have a whole bunch of categories to choose from, and you can nominate as many people for as many categories as you would like, but get voting beacuse the closing date is December 31st at midnight.

to nominate someone for a shorty award you can use the form on the website or you can send a tweet like this to: @shortyawards I nominate @someone in category #news because…

Here are the Award Rules

• You can nominate people for any category you can imagine. We’ll eliminate categories that don’t have enough nominees and add categories that become competitive.
• You can’t nominate the same person more than once for the same category.
• You can nominate yourself, but beware, you might win the #egocentric category.
• You are welcome to encourage your friends to nominate you. You can send them a link like this: http://shortyawards.com/?username=yourusername&category=humor and it will prepopulate the username and/or category.
• Only one person and one category per tweet. If you want to nominate someone in multiple categories, you have to send multiple tweets.
• Corporate and personal Twitter accounts are eligible for any category.
• We’ll perform audits to make sure people are not gaming the system or hanging chads. Contact us if you see suspicious activity.
• Nominations close at midnight, December 31st.
• Your nominations won’t be counted if your twitter account is private. You nominations must appear publicly.
• If you change your twitter username, any nominations under your old username won’t carry over.

The five people with the most nominations in each category will go on to the final voting round which are to be held January 5th to 14th and there will be an awards ceromony in New York later on in January, where the winners can deliver their 140-character acceptance speeches.

So get voting and if you have been a good little tweeter this year, you never know it could be you!

Splitweet is a new site designed with the corporate Twitter user in mind. The service will let you very quickly set-up your multiple Twitter accounts and allows you to track and reply to your brands mentions.

After you sign up for an account and put in Twitter details you will be greeted with the above screen. From here you will be able to set up brand tracking keywords and below that you can reply to you brand related tweets.

Splitweet is very easy to use and set-up and they say more features are on the way including both desktop and iPhone applications, so If you have a few accounts to manage and need to track your brand then splitweet might be worth checking out.

Tweetmas is a new site from CrowdStorm that asks one question “What would you like for Christmas?”. The site will let you share what you would like to see under the Christmas tree this year with your Twitter Buddies.

New features just added will also let you search for your Twitter friends to see what they have asked for this Christmas. You never know someone from your Twitter friends list may buy your dream gift this year. I’m hoping for an Aston Martin DBS. You can also follow @tweetmas on Twitter for latest updates etc…

Quick post to let you know about a new site called Tweetag that will allow you to browse through all of the public tweets published on Twitter in tag form. From the homepage you will be able to see the 40 most frequent topics being discussed all based around an automatic tagging system.

Clicking one of these tags will give you a detailed breakdown of links, questions and replies relating to your keyword search, which makes it really easy to find out what you are looking for and maybe find out stuff that you were not.