Very cool! I've tried the Upload to Facebook function and it works great.

Found this tip on Cult of Mac. Pretty easy and seems to work.

An awesome feature about sharing links on some Twitter clients is that they automatically shorten the link for you. Unfortunately, email clients, IM clients, and a whole lot of other services which one might use to forward links don't do the same.

You can always cut and paste the long URL into websites such as bit.ly, which will produce a short URL, but that method takes longer than I care for.

One of my favourite ways is to use a bookmarklet. It's fantastic, because it's a one-click solution. To try it out, drag any one of the links below into your browser bookmarks bar or a bookmarks folder. (Bookmarklets use Javascript, so make sure the browser has Javascript turned on.)

• Shorten with Bit.ly
• Shorten with TinyURL
• Shorten with Is.gd

But what if you're not using your own computer, such as the grotty one at school, the one at work, or an internet cafe? If you can't save browser bookmarklets, there's still a way to shorten URLs quickly, right from the browser address bar.

To shorten a long URL, simply go up to the address bar, and add either one of the following:

• Add "jm.p/" in front of the address
• Add "bit.ly/" in front of the address 

 Voila, you get taken to a page with your new shortened address. Easy peasy!

Recently I started messing around with a webcam to stream videos of the office cat on Ustream. I did it mostly to ensure the cat's auto-feeder opened up during the weekend, but surprisingly, a whole lot of people started watching the stream. And talking to him on Twitter. And voting for him so he became Singapore's Top Animal Twitterer. And then he got featured in the newspaper. o_O; I know.

So one thing led to another, and now there are two cameras (the second one is a wireless) tracking him pretty much wherever he goes in the office.

At first I switched between the two cams on Ustream, but that meant that I had to keep a constant eye on the feed, which is not a great idea, because uh... I have to work. Yeah, you know, that pesky thing that gets you paid.

I figured I needed something that would allow me to put the images from BOTH cameras in the frame, so I went a did a search for an app that had a picture-in-picture feature, and found WebCamMax.

I've been testing it out, and it's turned out to be a pretty nifty program. I got exactly what I wanted with regards to PinP. I just had to add how many PinP instances I wanted (2, but you can add up to 17) and then specify the cameras I wanted to introduce into the frame with a drop down menu, and that was pretty much it.

While PinP was the main reason I downloaded WebCamMax, I've found a whole lot of really useful features, such as the ability to overlay text, images and even doodles over the webcam image. I use the text to inform people of the next event (like a grooming session or a mealtime), and plan to superimpose a little logo when I get around to designing one. One of my favourite overlays is a clock I found under the Frames segment. Finding it was great, because Duke has some overseas viewers, and they don't always know what time it is in Singapore.

Text and images can also be animated, which I at first thought was flashy and somewhat annoying. But then I realised that you can put quite a lot of text onscreen without it taking up too much space, just by making the text scroll from one side of the screen to another in a single line.

There is a library of effects, animations and images that you can add to your webcam feed too. Once you buy the software, you get access to the huge online library which looks like it's constantly being added to. You can also mess around with changing the backgrounds and putting masks and headgear overlays over your image if you're chatting, but I think I'll leave that to the kiddies.

And webcam feeds aren't the only inputs you can add. You can playback movies off your harddrive, show your screen or put up a slideshow. That just brings up a whole lot of uses, especially for people who use video when they chat online (Skype, MSN etc.)

What I really appreciate about WebCamMax is its ease of setup and use. Its one of those applications that don't bombard you with too many features, but instead surprises you with new features when you go exploring.

My only gripe is that I wish WebCamMax would remember the layout of my webcams when I use the PinP feature. Right now, everytime I shut down the program it forgets and I have to lay it all out again. Then again, I might be missing something! I'll probably mail the WebCamMax people and see if they reply with a solution (one that wasn't too obvious, though because I'll feel quite silly if it was!)