OStatic

Unless you've been living in a cave for the past year, you know that microblogging is all the rage. Web sites like Twitter, Identi.ca, and Laconica are incredibly popular for exchanging snippets of information, chatting with others, and quickly sharing links to interesting online content. It's really a pain to jump from site to site to read your friends updates or provide your own, so here are five microblogging extensions for Firefox to help you out.

ShortenURL - Microbloggers don't want to waste precious characters on long URLs so it's customary to shorten links you display in status updates. Pasting a Web site location into URL shortening service homepage is so last week now that you can do it right from your browser's toolbar. ShortenURL makes quick work of this repetitive task by letting you crop Web addresses right from the toolbar. It supports over 100 URL shortening services already but if that's not enough, you can request more.

If you're in the market for a lightweight, open source microblogging client for the desktop, have a look at Spaz. It's a slick cross-platform app that uses Adobe Air to update your status on Twitter, Identi.ca, and Laconi.ca.

Spaz supports multiple themes, event sounds, and user-defined CSS overrides. You can delete updates you've already sent, Favorite your friends' Tweets, and send direct messages or replies to other users. Spaz keeps track of who you follow as well as who follows you, and auto-refreshes to keep you on top of all incoming direct or timeline messages.

When I began using Twitter earlier last year, I'm not sure that I was aware of its open source competitor, Identi.ca, or its relationship to Laconica.

While Twitter has had its share of knocks, from outtages to phishing attacks, I've not been personally affected. Microblogging has been more of a diversion than a tool (though this isn't always the case), Twitter is ubiquitous, and I simply used it.

I'm not sure what made me take Identi.ca for a test drive, or look further at what Laconica can offer open blogging standards and social networks as a whole. The open nature and standards have the needle spiking wildly on my geek-meter, and a lot of that spiking can be directly attributed to the way these services benefit everyone -- whether they be a tech enthusiast, or slightly less tech averse than a Luddite.