We have been able to follow random tweets by geographic location on a map via Twittervision and Twittermap but other than fun, it isn't that useful in our opinion. What if you wanted to follow all tweets from the city of London, UK. Well now you can. TwitterWhere lets you input a location and a radius (1 mile away, 5 miles away etc). Once you do this, submit your selection and TwitterWhere will create an RSS feed and an XML feed that you can follow in your feed reader.

While we don't have an immediate use for this, many of you will find it handy for sure.

They also have a Adobe Apollo desktop application available too.

Here is a screenshot from their website.

Yappd wasn't on the scene long that is for sure. It was basically an exact copy of twitter, a "me too" app that no one thought would last long. With the success of twitter however, more and more companies must recognize that twitter is onto something with the microblogging concept.  Here is the note on Yappd's website:

" We want to let our members know that we have been acquired by a third party. The future of Yappd will be in the form of another website that will most likely employ the same type of technology that we have created. In preparation for that site, we are going to close down the website. November 5, 2007 will be our last day of operation in our current form. We want to thank all of our members and developers, who have created amazing applications, for all of your support. It's because of all of you that we have made Yappd a success."

Today we have been made aware that Twitbin, the twitter client for firefox (we wrote about twitbin here ), fails the most basic password security tests. The problem is that it stores your username and password in plain text in a browser cookie. This is very bad practice.

Thanks to YABFOG's post for making us aware of this.

It is recommended that you uninstall Twitbin until such time that they provide proper security for your credentials.

Thanks to Wired for this update on twittering the fires of California:

"Twitter users Nate Ritter and Viss have been busy posting rapid-fire updates of the current wildfire situation in Southern California. Both of them are on the scene in San Diego, and they are doing an excellent job of providing information and news about evacuations, meeting points and anything important that local residents would need to know. Viss is also on Flickr and he's posting photos.

Nate and Viss are using the hashtag #sandiegofire. Twitter users can enter "track sandiegofire" in SMS or IM and receive notifications whenever a tweet goes out with that tag in it.

Here's an excellent real-world example of the usefulness of Twitter's limited scope and feature set -- Reporting breaking news quickly. They're certainly filing updates more frequently than most mainstream media outlets."

The original article is here.

Update:  The LA Times is also twittering the fires here http://twitter.com/latimesfires 

Can twitter help you lose weight?  Stephanie Quilao seems to thing so and will be twittering her way back into a pair of skinny jeans (http://twitter.com/skinnyjeans ).  Are we kidding?  Nope, she has a whole blog dedicated to the task and now you can follow her on twitter.

Now, is this a "useful use of twitter" or just a way to promote her blog?  Either way, we haven't heard of it being done before and hey, maybe it will help others that follow her by getting ideas on what works and doesn't work to shed the pounds.  Or maybe it will allow others to garner the courage to go public about their goals (not just weight loss), work toward them and update their friends on progress. 

Is this twitter noise?  We don't think so, that is the beauty of twitter.  If you don't like someone's comments or content, don't follow it.  Simple as that.  

So there you go, from weight loss, personal improvement and even business goals.  Some new uses for twitter for you..

Anyone else using twitter to publicise their goals and motivate them further? 

We wanted to know just that and wanted it in an easy format to browse.  Twitterholic was the first to come out with this idea but their data seemed to be always wrong and also very buggy.  There is also Twitdir which is pretty good data wise but we didn't like having to view only 5 entries at a time. (Twitdir also provides a good twitter user search capability)

So, wanting a better solution, we built a top 150 list for you, the readers of Twittown.  It is called Twit Rank .  

You can sort by top friends, followers and updaters and for each you can see the top 150 accounts on twitter . 

We are constantly scanning the twitter public timeline and get new accounts and their data.  Right now we have a decent sampling and feel that the list is fairly accurate.  As time goes on, we will capture more IDs and the list will get better and better.  If you are not listed and your stats say you should be, just be patient, keep twittering and we will find you automatically.  

We know twitter is not about how many friends, followers or updates you have but.. It is sure fun to compare, isn't it? 

Twit Rank is available by clicking on the Twit Rank tab at the top of this page.  Have fun!