Layers: Released this week for Google Chrome (and coming soon to other browsers), Layers takes a fresh approach to social media aggregation. It operates as its own tab within the browser, with the navigation bar across the bottom and the center of the screen reserved for content selected by the user. Logging in to your Facebook and Twitter accounts will populate the navigation bar with tweets and statuses, and you can scroll across to view the latest updates from your friends. If you see something of interest, clicking on the box will allow you to like or comment (for Facebook) or reply or retweet (for Twitter). If the status or tweet has a link in it, that page will automatically open in the center of your screen. The navigation bar at the bottom will automatically minimize, so it’s as if you are viewing the page in a normal browser window. When you’re done, closing the center section will bring the navigation bar back up. The next step is adding RSS feeds, which function the same way as your social networks. Clicking on a headline will bring up the site to allow you to read the full story in context. Your Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds can be viewed individually or all in one stream.
Perhaps the most important features are the compose and share buttons on the navigation bar. Compose allows you to write a tweet or status update from scratch to send to your followers. The share buttons appear when you’re viewing a website and allow you to post a link to that site, along with your update, on the network you have chosen – for Twitter a shortened URL is automatically created.
Past Words of the Week
Thsrs, #tagdef, Check-in, MDJunction, Blekko, Healthline, Spindex, Vanilla, Twingr, Tweetbeat, Social Media Policy, infoMedMD, Health Care 3.0, Groupon, icyou, #MDchat, Quality 101, MedlinePlus, HITSphere, URL X-ray, Mashup, Blog Talk Radio, TweetedRanks, Ping.fm, Digsby, Qik, Posterous, Ning, API, Lifecasting, Crowdsourcing, Meme, Social bookmarking, Trackback, Twitter Grader, Authority, TweetBeep, Compete, Astroturfing, WEGO Health, BackTweets, PDR.net, socialmention, Twazzup, Health Exchange, Health Tweeder, DIDGET, Thoora, Google Buzz, bit.ly, E-patient, Alltop, mHealth, Augmented reality, OpenID, ROI, #hcsm, Medpedia, Almost.at, Hashtag, FollowFriday, Beta, Microblogging, Sidewiki, Meta tags
