HelloTxt, a service that lets you update your status message across multiple services at the same time, opened up its developer platform this week.

The service, which we first covered on Mashable in 2007, is a way to update your status on multiple social sites at once: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Bebo, Friendfeed, Identi.ca and many more. This is useful for power users who network across multiple sites but don’t want to visit them individually to post status updates. The API release puts that functionality in the hands of web developers.

AddMerch is a service from Printfection that lets you turn images on your website into merchandise for your visitors to buy. This week they informed us of a neat integration they’ve launched: turning your Tumblr blog (or “Tumblelog”) into a T-shirt store.

As the video below shows, AddMerch essentially links website images to a store where visitors can add that image to t-shirts, aprons, mousepads and the like. As a seller, you set a base price for each item (with Printfection’s profit included), and add whatever commission you want on top of that.

The micro-messaging service Twitter became popular in part due to the thousands of different ways to post and view Tweets…but what are the most popular ways to share your Tweets with the world?

The Twitter analytics service TwitStat is continually running the numbers and provides us with the following, fascinating list. Unsurprisingly, most users post from the Twitter website, but the desktop app TweetDeck is a very popular way to post - more than 10% of the users surveyed were posting from it (see our TweetDeck vs Twhirl review for more info on TweetDeck).

We’re living in mobile times. Regardless of where you are in the world, you can instantly access the web in your pocket via your mobile device. Unfortunately, not all sites are optimized for an enjoyable mobile viewing experience. Enter Delivr.

Delivr, currently in private beta (we’ve got invites - see below), literally mobilizes your web content. Whether it’s a web address, Flickr photo, YouTube video, or street address, Delivr will enhance the content for mobile viewing and generate a unique URL that you can then send to friends via social sites or SMS message.

Samir Balwani is a social media marketer who helps businesses create effective web strategies. You can follow him on Twitter and get his newsletter.

As we battle a global recession, corporations are looking for new ways to sell their products and engage their consumers. Many have turned to the Internet, with Social Media in particular, to market their goods. Let’s take a look at 10 companies that have done a phenomenal job of taking advantage of social media platforms.

Different tracking services show different numbers when it comes to measuring which social network is most popular, but at least one now places Facebook with a significant lead in the US. Compete has updated its data for January, and the service now shows Facebook seeing a full 10 million more visitors each month than MySpace.

With Facebook growing another 14.9% from December to January, the site now reaches 68.5 million people each month, versus 58.5 million for MySpace. Granted, Compete is the only service we track showing such a disparity, though the gap is narrowing on other tracking services as well. Nielsen Online’s year-end numbers put Facebook’s domestic traffic within 3 million of MySpace, while comScore still has MySpace with a significant but shrinking lead.

Ever wanted to share 25 seconds of win with your Twitter followers? Sure you could use a variety of video platforms like Seesmic, 12seconds.tv, or even YouTube, but if you’re an avid Tweeter who’s not interested in creating a separate account elsewhere, then Tweetube for Mac OSX might be the video expression vehicle you’ve always wished for.

Tweetube, which originally launched 3 weeks ago primarily to make sharing YouTube videos easier, has just released a new Mac download designed to make sharing video with your Twitter friends a breeze.

The iPhone and iPod Touch have numerous applications for just about every hobby and desire, especially when it comes to sports apps. There are tools for tracking scores in baseball, hockey, football, and even fencing; playing fantasy sports games; and much more.

Need to know how the slopes are in Utah? Keeping track of your oxygen mix on a dive? There are hundreds of applications for sports, and the best news is we’ve gathered up over 100 FREE apps for your enjoyment!

What are your favorite iPhone and iPod Touch sports apps? Tell us about them in the comments.

Here’s an idea that you’ll wish you thought of first: Facebook status updates as t-shirts. Status King is a new application on Facebook that simply lets you order shirts with your favorite answer to “what are you doing right now?”

While on its own that’s a pretty clever (though easy to duplicate) idea, the Status King application also includes some features that let you have fun with status updates, even if you don’t ultimately buy a t-shirt. For example, you can vote on your favorite status updates, see the most popular of all-time, and instantly make someone else’s status update yours. Launched by a BYU student last month, the application already has a few thousand active users.

iDesktop.TV has been around for quite a while now (it was previously called YouTube Desktop), and last time we covered it, it was mainly a YouTube aggregator which added some interesting options to YouTube; video downloading and conversion to video formats other than .flv, as well as better organization and search filtering of your online video collection.

The videos themselves were skinned with a theme different than the standard, plain YouTube videos; now, iDesktop.TV has decided to expand this option and turn it into one of the most important features on the site: creating a customized, branded video player with several advanced features.

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When I saw the words “multiple inboxes” on the official Gmail blog this morning, I was happy as a baby, because I thought we were finally getting the ability to have more than one Gmail account open in the same browser (currently I’m using the Gmail Manager Firefox add-on for this purpose, but it doesn’t work perfectly).

However, the multiple inboxes options which is being gradually rolled out to users right now (I still don’t see it; why do I always get these features last, I wonder?), relates only to labels. That is, you can create a split-pane view of your Inbox with several different inboxes filtered by various labels.

The controversial cartoon character that children and some adults love is invading your iPhone. Nickelodeon, anxious to add their creative properties to the iPhone’s platform, is announcing a plan to release a variety of apps with their lead animated characters as the central focus. First up, SpongeBob and his Bikini Bottom pals.

Nickelodeon, already known for adding social features to their casual gaming sites, has partnered with companies like Mobui to bring virtual versions of their beloved cartoon series’ stars to the iPhone for the enjoyment of you and your kids.

Facebook announced this afternoon that it’s joining the OpenID Foundation – an interesting move considering that Facebook Connect, the company’s identity platform for third-party websites, has so far looked like more of a competitor to OpenID than an ally.

In a blog post, Facebook writes “We’re happy to announce today that we are formalizing our support of the OpenID Foundation by officially joining the board. It is our hope that we can take the success of Facebook Connect and work together with the community to build easy-to-use, safe, open and secure distributed identity frameworks for use across the Web.” However, the company stops short of announcing plans to either become an identity provider for OpenID, or, allowing people to use OpenID to login to Facebook.