Actsofism

I've been loving this mash-up and using it to track keywords for work or topics I'm waiting for breaking news on.

You can also use it to post to Twitter and reply right from Gmail/Google Talk.

TwitterSpy was created by Dustin Sallings and combines XMPP (the IM protocol that Google Talk/Chat uses) with Twitter's Real-time Search data. 
This lets you track query strings through your desktop or mobile IM client.

To get it set up in Google Chat (the IM feature with in GMail. This will work for Google Talk as well):

1. In Gmail, go to the chat sidebar and paste in im@twitterspy.org

2. In the popover that opens, click Invite to Chat

3. You will get another window, click Send Invites

This will generate an auto response for twitterspy and twitterspy will then become a friend that you can IM with. First thing to do is IM ‘help’ (no quotes) and you will get a list of the things you can do:

off    Disable updates.
on    Activate updates.
track    Track a topic (summize query string)
tracks    List your tracks.
untrack    Stop tracking a topic
autopost    Enable or disable autopost
follow    Follow a user
help    Get help for commands.
lang    Set your language.
leave    Leave (stop following) a user
off    Disable updates.
on    Activate updates.
post    Post a message to twitter.
search    Perform a sample search (but do not track)
track    Track a topic (summize query string)
tracks    List your tracks.
twlogin    Set your twitter username and password (use at your own risk)
twlogout    Discard your twitter credentials
untrack    Stop tracking a topic
watch_friends    Enable or disable watching friends.
whois    Find out who a particular user is.

Once you login to Twitter using the twlogin command you can you can send Tweets by preceding your message with the post command.
The post command does not count toward the 140 character limit.

What tools do you use for real-time search and tracking?