Hundreds of link shortening services are available today, but I believe some research and consideration is a must before embracing two of the more popular services. Let me explain. Bit.ly and ow.ly are two link shrinking services that are trending toward greater acceptance. A NY Times article from this summer estimated that bit.ly accounted for 46 percent of all links shortened

Bit.ly’s recent success is a derivative of Twitter’s integration with bit.ly as their default link shortening service. Unlike the hundreds of other services, bit.ly has focused on reliability and basic analytics. Tinyurl, the original link shrinker, never embraced value-added services and had some issues with reliability, which most likely explains why Twitter shifted from Tinyurl to bit.ly. Also, bit.ly has attracted several well-recognized investors to solidify their dominance in the link shrinking space. [...]

The first annual gathering of WordPress users and programmers took place Saturday, 12/5. WordCamp Orlando was held in 2 buildings on the beautiful Rollins College campus in Winter Haven. There was free WiFi but AC Power was a little difficult to come by, so more than once I had to seek out space on crowded wall outlets. Everyone agreed the $15 conference fee was well worth the information and presentations shared (plus it included a t-shirt and a good BBQ lunch), There were roughly 72-100 people attending, a list of people who had specified Twitter accounts can be viewed here.

This event was unique among WordCamps in that for the first time, all 4 WordPress developers were together in attendance and available for Q&A (could being near Disney World have had something to do with that?). It was also the first time I personally have seen GoogleWave used as a main communications means for the people attending. The photo stream for the WordCamp is on Flickr, and the Twitter hashtag was #wco. [...]

Earlier this week I built a quick tool that automatically updates a Twitter account with a daily Bible verse from ESV.org (@TodaysVerse). The English Standard Version Bible has a really nice API that allows anyone to pull passages directly from their site. Likewise, Twitter has a very popular API that allows developers to build programs and scripts that can update a status and much more.

Since I’m a fan of open source solutions, I’m sharing this PHP script as an example of updating Twitter using PHP-Twitter with the Twitter API. Enjoy. [...]

Before (or Pre) this year’s Computer Electronic Show, I was not thinking about Palm. My current Palm Centro is slow, too small, and all of the apps are really old. I had decided on waiting for a Google Android phone for the Sprint network.

Then CES happened… The new Pre looks like a character from Wall-e. Applications can be developed using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS (well that’s a great tool box – seriously – think gmail). The keyboard appears to be more accommodating and the foundation of this eggy looking device is Linux. Finally applications can be managed like a deck of cards and they maintain their state as you move from app to app. [...]

Remember the pirate port-town called Tortuga in Pirates of the Caribbean? Tortuga was out of the jurisdictions of the Royal Navy and the East India Trading Company. The place really lacked order. In Tortuga, pirates got slapped and first-mates where found in less than desirable places. Many IT professionals may think of images similar to Tortuga when they hear the phrase, “open source.” However, the results reveal that open source is not a disorderly software collaboration, so the images of Tortuga don’t apply.

Now think back again with me to Port Royal. Port Royal was the heavily-guarded British Caribbean stronghold. Most of the time, order was maintained, and only a few major problems occurred such as when Lady Elizabeth was abducted by pirates. [...]