MakeUseOf » twitter client

Why Twitter’s TweetDeck Is Worth A Second Look

Bakari Chavanu — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:31:19 +0000

In the last few months, Twitter has become my favorite social networking hangout, mainly because I find it less time consuming than Facebook and Tumblr, and I can certainly update it quicker than I can any of my typically abandoned blog sites. Most of last year I have been using YoruFukurou and a few iPhone apps as my Twitter clients, but now I’m giving the multi-platform TweetDeck a try again, and below are the reasons why.

For a long while TweetDeck was a popular Twitter client amongst power users, but when the software was acquired by Twitter back in May of last year, it got stripped of some of its features, and many users are no longer happy with it. I have experienced a few problems with the software since I started using it, but I keep it in my Dock for when I want to do some heavy Twitter reading and posting. There are no new features as far as I know added to TweetDeck since it was acquired by Twitter, but I do think the application is worth a second look.

Multiple Accounts

First off, what’s most useful to me about TweetDeck is that you can keep multiple Twitter accounts opened in your Timeline instead of having to switch accounts as you would in other Twitter clients.

Multiple Columns

If you’re a Twitter power user, you no doubt are keeping up with several different streams of posts at a time, including your favorite contacts, a few keyword searches, and of course your mentions, replies and direct messages.

TweetDeck’s multiple columns are probably what makes it stand above other Twitter clients. In addition to creating columns based on specific keyword or name searches, TweetDeck also contains a core selection of column choices to get you started. You will probably want to click and add the Mentions and Direct Messages columns, and maybe the New Followers column to keep open at all times.

What I find most cool about columns in TweetDeck is that you can set up Mentions columns for more than one account and view them all in the same interface. Again, this saves the hassle of switching accounts to view those listings.

Create Lists

You can also create separate columns for Twitter Lists, and TweetDeck makes it easier to do so. Say for example you want to make a list of your favorite websites posting on Twitter. To do so, simply select a user you want to use to create or add to a list.

When you hover your mouse over the user’s avatar, select the little gear icon, which will reveal a menu of selections. Next, select Add to Group/List. In the resulting pop-up window, you can create a new list and select to make it public or private. TweetDeck will create a separate column for your new list.

After the List column is added, you can add more users to the list by putting your cursor at the top of the column and select the edit button. From there you can add your existing contacts or do searches for others to add to your list.

Notice also that you can actually search and add names from your other social networking accounts as well.

Posting Features

TweetDeck also has a few posting features not found in other Twitter clients I’ve used. One of the best features is scheduled updates. You can write a post and then schedule a time for when you want it posted.

After you set up a time for the update, click the Send Today button and TweetDeck will send your scheduled post in the background. You can even create a column for your scheduled posts (select Core services as mentioned above.)

TweetDeck’s posting features also includes automatic long URL shortening, access to a list of your recent hashtags, and a language translator.

It also has a TweetShrink feature that when applied, attempts to shorten your wordy tweets, replacing common phrases and words with shorter representations.

The Twitter client also includes a Long Tweet feature that is supposed to allow you to use bit.ly to post 140+ character posts from within the software; however, I could couldn’t get the feature to work after several tries.

Preferences

If you plan to take full advantage of TweetDeck, you may need to take some time to explore all its Preferences choices which include changes you can make to the application’s color and font appearance, the type of notifications you receive, which image upload service you want to use, and several dozen more options.

What’s Missing

The new version of TweetDeck has received mixed ratings in the Apple Store where it can be downloaded for free.

For one, there’s hardly no keyboard shortcuts for the app, and one big shortcoming, for me anyway, is that there’s no way to quickly post from a web browser the title and URL of an article. You have to actually copy and paste both these items into TweetDeck’s update box. This is a huge turn off because probably half of my tweets consist of links to articles.

Other than these shortcomings, I’m pretty satisfied with TweetDeck. But I’m interested in what you think of it. Did you use it before like I did and stop? Have you restarted using it? Let us know.

Tweet On The Hush Hush With Covert Chirp [iPhone]

Dave LeClair — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:31:38 +0000

These days, everyone uses Twitter. It has made its way in to the very heart of our society. Every major celebrity, every athlete and almost every average person seems to have a Twitter account. Part of the reason Twitter is beloved is because of how easy it is to use. With the launch of Apples iOS 5, Twitter is more ingrained in all of us, because it is literally built right into the phone’s operating system. However, what if you are at work or school and you cannot pull up the Twitter app for fear of getting in trouble?

That is where Covert Chirp comes into play. It is designed to keep your Twitter habits on the down low and keep you from getting into trouble if you should not be tweeting. Of course, we do not condone tweeting when you should be doing other things, but if you should choose to do so, then you will certainly want to check out Covert Chirp.

Installation & Set Up

The first step is downloading the free Twitter client from the iTunes app store. Simply click here, or search for Covert Chirp directly from your device.

When you first boot up the app, it will take you through a brief tutorial that will explain the basics of how to use it. It is quick and painless, and it lets you see what each of the buttons do so you can get in, do what you need to do and get out.

After the tutorial, you will need to authorize the application to get access to your Twitter account by entering your user name and password. The app will provide you with a code and ask you to enter it for verification. Click the box on the top of the screen between “Cancel” and “Sign in” and type the numbers.

Features

Covert Chirp is designed to look like the iPhone Notepad. This way, it looks as if you are reading or taking important notes, instead of checking your Twitter feed for the latest news on Kim Kardashian.

Once you have everything authorized, the app will show some random technical stuff on the screen that certainly looks like notes, even if I have no idea what they are talking about. Click on your user name from the “Notes” screen to view your Twitter timeline.

This will bring up your friends tweets on a screen that still looks like a bunch of notes. If someone happened to look over your shoulder, there is no reason that anyone would think you are browsing Twitter. The top of the screen even says “Action Items” to further create the illusion of being some notes for work or school.

If you feel concerned that someone may still be looking, you can quickly tap the garbage can icon on the bottom of the screen to bring up that technical jargon we mentioned earlier. You can click the small “@” symbol on the bottom of the screen to reach your interactions and the envelope will bring you to your direct messages.

You can have multiple Twitter accounts on this client. Simply click “Notes” to go back to the account screen and click the “+.” You will have to repeat the process I outlined earlier to add more accounts.

Obviously, posting a new Tweet is an important part of using Twitter, and you can do that with ease. Simply click on the “+” from your timeline and you will be taken to a screen labeled “New Notes” where you can create your tweet.

Conclusion

This application does everything you would expect from a Twitter client, only it does it in stealth. Honestly, I like the look and feel of the application enough that I am using it along with the default Twitter app when I need a change of pace, even if I am not concerned with being discrete. This is an app I recommend checking out if you are looking for something different.

Are you stealth tweeting like it is going out of style? Are you morally opposed to tweeting on the down low? Let us know in the comments!

Listen To Your Own Private Twitter Station With Tweet Speaker [iOS]

Yaara Lancet — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:01:11 +0000

I have a confession to make – I don’t really use Twitter. It’s not that I don’t have an account, it’s that I can’t seem to find it in me to sit and sift through all those tweets and actually read them. Don’t get me wrong, Twitter is an important tool, but when I actually have the time to spend, I’d rather spend it in Google Reader reading my feeds.

Do you ever wish you could read your tweets no matter where you are or what you’re doing? Or maybe you’re just so addicted to Twitter that you need to get your hit even while driving or folding your laundry? If one of these is true, you should give Tweet Speaker ($1.99 for a limited time, usually $2.99) a spin. Tweet Speaker for iOS turns your Twitter timeline into your own, personal news podcast. All you have to do is choose between your whole timeline, your mentions, or any other list you have on Twitter, and enjoy the ride.

You Don’t Need A Twitter Account To Enjoy

On the off chance that you don’t actually have a Twitter account, you can still use Tweet Speaker to get some interesting news. When you launch the app, you’ll get the usual options to sign in or sign up to Twitter, but you can also Read the News.

This option gathers tweets from multiple news sources such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, BBC World and more. Simply hit play and enjoy the latest news, Twitter style.

Your Own Personal Twitter Radio

But chances are that you do have a Twitter account (or two). Tap the Sign In button and enter your credentials, and you’re ready to start. If you don’t have lists, you can choose between your timeline and your mentions.

When you choose a list, you’ll reach this beautiful interface which shows all your tweets on a radio-like timeline. For each tweet, you can reply right from the app, mark as favorite, load the whole conversation (if there is one), and re-tweet.

Now simply hit play, sit back, and enjoy your timeline. You can pause the reading at any time, and restart it from the beginning of the last tweet you listened to.

You can see that the app’s developers put some thought into it. The voice is Twitter-adjusted and knows all the abbreviations – RT turns to “re-tweet”, links are read as their respective titles, not as incomprehensible gibberish and it’s not confused by hash tags or mentions.

The user interface is really slick as well. Scroll to the right to find your newer tweets and downwards to read conversations. If you scroll all the way to the end on either side, you’ll get the option to refresh your tweets.

If you need to stop and exit the app, the last tweet you were on is automatically bookmarked, so next time you load the app and wish to continue, it knows exactly the last tweet you were listening to.

More Options

Tapping a user’s picture will give you the options to unfollow or open in Safari.

You can add multiple clients to Tweet Speaker, so if you have a long drive ahead of you, for example, simply sign into all your accounts and spend the time catching up on all the latest news, hands free and eyes free.

You can’t control the reading voice just yet, but the developers promise that more is coming soon. As it is, you can control the reading speed and what happens when you tap links inside tweets (which you shouldn’t do while driving, of course).

Tweet Speaker also integrates with Tweet Marker, so you can keep track of the tweets you listened to even if you use other clients.

Bottom Line

Tweet Speak is more than just a tweet reader, it’s actually a Tweeter client all by itself, but a very cool and well-made one. The interface is beautiful, and the reading functionality is surprisingly useful. If you’re a true Twitter fan, or trying to become one, it’s worth the $2. Tweet Speaker’s unique capabilities are sure to come in handy next time you walk to work and forget to bring music.

What do you think of Tweet Speaker and the general idea of listening to your tweets everywhere? Share in the comments!

Visualize Your Twitter Stream In Beautiful Colors With Twimbow (Beta)

Saikat Basu — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:30:30 +0000

Very obviously, the word ‘Twimbow’ is a blend of Twitter and rainbow. That itself tells you that it’s going to be all about color. Well, with Twimbow it’s not only about color but more about better managing the rush of our Twitter streams with color coded features.

Twimbow (beta) is an online Twitter client that is good for any browser that uses HTML5 and CSS3. We covered it very briefly in our Directory.

Color is one of the better ways to look at things when an overload of information starts to swamp you. With so many social apps calling for your attention, you need to quickly separate the relevant from the junk in one glance and move on to the next byte of information. Twimbow helps your eyes by color coding streams of tweets (e.g. your tweets are in blue, direct messages in orange, re-tweets are in green or purple)

But just how do you play with these colors to create a better and more engaging Twitter experience?

The Three Panels

Twimbow organizes all tweets into three panels. Personal Buzz shows all your own tweets that you have sent out. Home Buzz shows all incoming tweets from people you follow. The third right-most panel shows tweets from Twimbow as well as tweets you search for along with trending topics. You can save your searches too.

Every Kind of Tweet Gets Its Own Color

Twimbow shows all tweets with color codes. Twimbow’s nice uniqueness is that you can filter tweets by clicking on the color lines on top. Click on the colored markers that show your tweets, mentions, direct messages, retweets, and starred tweets to show or hide them in the Personal Buzz panel. You can customize this with the color of your choosing by clicking on the vertical color bar next to a tweet.

Twimbow allows you to choose a different color for your tweet updates and retweets.

Label with Color in the Home Buzz Panel

You can better organize your tweets in the Home Buzz panel by using colorful labels. Click the color palette icon and add a new label. To add a user to a label, click the small vertical line (by default it’s in gray if the user is not associated with a label) and select a label from the popup.

To show or hide tweets from a specific label, uncheck the label’s box at the top. You can quickly organize your Twitter stream by going through all the tweets and assigning them to color coded labels.

Monitor Your Favorite Lists

Click on the Select a List icon on the Home Buzz panel. The lists you created and the lists you follow will be shown. By clicking on the ‘M’ (monitor) icon, you can add this to the monitor panel. If you click the icon again, it is removed from the monitor. The monitor keeps you informed about new tweets for that list. You can add as many lists as you want to the monitor panel and setup audio alerts and notifications to inform you about new tweets.

You can also send trending topics and custom searches to the monitor panel.

Share Songs and Videos

You can quickly search, play, and share songs within Twimbow by clicking on the folder icon with a musical bar on it. You can toggle between a MP3 search and a YouTube search from the inline player that pops out. Click the magnifying glass icon to open the search bar. The search displays a list of relevant hits. Select one to play or share with a tweet.

Schedule Your Tweets

The in-built tweet scheduler lets you send out tweets at a pre-designated time. You can place tweets in the 24 hour specific time slots. You cannot fine-tune it by the minute though.

Tweeters and Their Klout

I really like the integrated feature of the Klout Score which is a metric on social influence. You can click on a user’s avatar and see how influential they are on the social network. Good Klout scores are over 50, excellent over 65 and outstanding are over 75.

Event Rich Tags

Twimbow is trying to bring Event Rich Tags to its interface. An example of it is mentioned it in their blog. It lets you identify the hashtag used for an event and when you click on it from a tweet, it brings up a tab with all the relevant information about the event and the photo stream about the event taking place.

A Few More Settings

Twimbow has a few more settings up its sleeve like a choice of dark and light themes. Going into the settings, you can also set up a few filters that help to screen out tweets with specific words.

Twimbow uses our predisposition for color in a really cool way. In the end we get a serious tool that helps us to manage the information torrent from this social network. There’s no clear-cut instructional how-to on how to use Twimbow. You just have to dive into it and get your hands dirty (with color!).

Try out Twimbow and let us know if it can displace Hootsuite and TweetDeck from the list of favored Twitter clients.

Manage Your Twitter & Identi.ca Accounts With Choqok [Linux]

Danny Stieben — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 17:31:42 +0000

For people who are really tweet-o-holics, constant access to Twitter (or Identi.ca, an open source clone of Twitter) is as much a necessity as food and water. At varying levels, this may also be true for those who are fans of Twitter but not necessarily tweet-o-holics.

One possible choice is to have Twitter up and running in the browser most of the time. While this is a feasible solution, you’ll start missing out when the browser is minimized. Also, a browser isn’t exactly lightweight on system resources. Therefore, your best bet would be to use a well-built Twitter desktop client.

About Choqok

Choqok is a slim Twitter and Identi.ca client made to integrate well with the KDE desktop environment. As far as social media clients go, Gwibber may be a more well known piece of software, but it’s best suited to run under a GNOME desktop. You’re always welcome to try Gwibber with KDE, but I’ve always preferred software native to the desktop environment you’re using. With Choqok, you can quickly and easily reach your Twitter stream at any time and get notifications that appear right on your desktop.

Installation & Getting Started

To get Choqok installed, all you need to do is search for its package with the same name in your package manager and install it along with any dependencies. Once installation is complete, you can launch Choqok from the Internet category in your menu.

Choqok will appear with a splash screen and ask you to add an account. Go ahead and click yes, then move around the options window to the Accounts section. On the left side, there should be an add button, where you can add an account to the appropriate service. Remember that Identi.ca falls under “StatusNet“. Follow it’s instructions until it says you are authenticated.

Layout

The main window of the program is kept simple and organized. At the top you have your menus (as always), along with a custom “More” menu which lets you choose from a few more options that work with Twitter, and a “Mark all as read” button. The empty box between that and your timelines is for your status updates. Anything you send here (by using the Enter key on your keyboard as there is no send button) will be sent to whatever account you have currently selected.

To send something to multiple accounts at once you can choose Quick Post from the File menu and choose which account (or all) you want to send a notice/tweet to.

Timelines

The timelines themselves are nicely organized into little tabs. You have a tab for each category Twitter offers on its site as well - Home, Replies, and Inbox (for direct messages). You can click on them and manipulate them as you wish.

Options

Choqok also has a decent amount of behavioral options, which may be important to some as it includes the ability to change the URL shortening service that it uses.

Conclusion

Choqok is a great little program that easily lets you stay in the loop when it comes to Twitter. Its ease of use and overall speed can be well-appreciated by those who use it. Choqok works well with multiple accounts, so managing multiple streams should be no problem at all. Try it out. I promise it’ll be better than your browser.

How do you feel about Twitter desktop clients? What client (both desktop and web) do you use? Let us know in the comments.

Twicca – A Fantastic Twitter Client For Android

Erez Zukerman — Fri, 20 May 2011 22:31:33 +0000

Twitter is an ideal mobile platform; constantly-changing bite-sized updates fit beautifully into the hectic modern lifestyle, and it’s no coincidence the maximum length for a tweet is 140 characters: it’s based on the maximum length of an SMS, minus 20 characters for the username, as the LA Times tells us. But when you’re on the go and you just want to post a quick update or check what’s going on, you really don’t need a client that gets in your way.

Making a good mobile client is a fine balancing act. You need to provide your users with the functionality that they need, but you can’t risk being too confusing. There’s no manual, and even if there was one, nobody would take the time to read it. The app also needs to be very snappy and responsive. The Twicca Android Twitter client rises to the challenge.

This is Twicca’s homescreen. It shows my own Twitter stream; note the ancient date for the topmost tweet — that’s a feature, not a bug: My Twicca installation is set to update manually. This conserves battery; whenever I want to get a quick fix of Twitter I can just hit the “refresh” button (bottom-right), and get a fresh bunch of tweets down the line. Also, note the work done on the buttons – just four transparent buttons, each with a very descriptive icon. The buttons are very easy to hit: you don’t have to press the icon itself. Twicca also has a light theme you can use if all of that darkness is bringing you down.

Next, let’s see what it looks like when you tweet:

The tweet screen has five buttons along the bottom. The left-most one (hash-tag button) is the only button I found confusing in the app. It was disabled for me, and I simply could not get it to work. I have no idea what my mistake was, but I’m sure you will enlighten me in the comments. Other than that button, there’s an “attach media” button that pops up the menu you see in the screenshot. There’s also a geolocation button that gets you into a map and lets you select your location (so you can shift it a bit if you want to). Last but not least, there’s a “shorten URL” button.

Now let’s go back to the homescreen and see what happens when you long-press a tweet:

As you can see, long-pressing a tweet selects it, and you can select multiple tweets. A short tap on the screen brings up this context menu:

“Set color label” is an interesting option. It lets you assign an arbitrary color to a person’s tweets. This color is then used for their username, any links they tweet out, and as a vertical bar next to their tweet. This lets you zoom in on tweets from specific people very quickly.

When you short-tap just a single tweet, you get a much more extensive menu:

The “Share this tweet” button is interesting: It pops up Android’s default “Share” action, so you could do something like “share” someone’s tweet as an SMS to one of your contacts. Weird, yet interesting. “Retweet” instantly retweets the message to all of your followers, while “Quote selected tweet” lets you add a bit of your own text and retweet a message.

Twicca also lets you create lists right from within the app.

As you might have guessed, the Twicca Android Twitter client has a daunting amount of settings. This list doesn’t even show all setting categories, and each category has oodles of options. Users are lucky the default values are quite sane, but it you’re an obsessive tweaker who likes to customize every application, you’re going to love Twicca.

The one feature I’m missing is being able to use multiple accounts; I constantly monitor/update four different Twitter accounts, and not being able use Twicca for this is a bit of a downer. Other than that, I just love Twicca.

What do you think? Does this look like a compelling client, or do you know of a better alternative? Let your voice be heard!

20+ Apps To Bring Favorite Websites To Your Mac Desktop

Nancy Messieh — Sun, 08 May 2011 22:30:36 +0000

There are certain websites you access on almost a daily basis, and you can often find yourself with dozens of tabs open, and have to check each tab in your browser to find your favorites. Due to their popularity, some websites like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube can be accessed using third party desktop applications. These applications, more often than not, are developed by avid fans of these services themselves, and so you find them hitting on all the key features that you need.

We’ve put together a list of some of the best apps available for Mac users, some of which have already been reviewed extensively on MakeUseOf, while also highlighting some new apps you may not have heard of yet.

Gmail

MailTab for Gmail gives you quick access to your primary Gmail account from the comfort of your status bar.

What’s cool about MailTab it goes much further than just being a notifier to let you know when you have new messages, or an easy way to read those new messages. You can also reply to emails, compose new emails, delete, archive, add labels, and more. You can also assign a keyboard shortcut to quickly pull up the app whenever you need to access your email.

For a more complete Gmail experience on your desktop, Sparrow is the best option available for Gmail users.

Facebook

Facebox Pro for Facebook is similar to MailTab for Gmail in that puts pretty much every Facebook feature within easy reach in your status bar. You can view friends’ profiles, update your status, check your Facebook inbox and even get on Facebook chat. One of the few things that you can’t do using Facebox Pro is upload photos to your Facebook profile.

YouTube

Tubbler is a sleek little desktop app for watching YouTube videos on your Mac. The feature list isn’t very long, but if all you’re looking for is an app to watch a playlist of YouTube videos on – Tubbler is sufficient.

The main drawback is not being able to search for videos on Tubbler itself, but rather having to search for them on YouTube, after which you can drag the URL of the YouTube video to Tubbler to add it to the queue.

If you’re looking for an app to convert YouTube videos to MP3s, the aptly named YouTube to MP3 will do just that. Copy the YouTube URL and hit Add from Clipboard in the app and the video will be automatically queued up. You can download several MP3s simultaneously as well as pause and resume downloads. Downloads are automatically placed inside your Music folder, in a folder named Downloaded by MediaHuman.

If you’re looking for a way to both watch and download YouTube videos on your Mac, the desktop app, MacTubes has you covered.
MiniTube is another solid option for Mac users who want to watch and download YouTube videos from the comfort of their desktop.

Twitter

The list of free Twitter apps for Mac users is pretty much endless. With the official Twitter App definitely winning as far as popularity is concerned, there is a whole slew of other apps that have been reviewed by MakeUseOf before including Echofon, YoruFukurou and much, much, more.

Flickr

If you’re looking for a convenient app to upload images to Flickr, Flickr Uploadr is the best option. If you want to browse Flickr on your desktop, download Flickroom. Also be sure to check out this list of 5 Mac apps that you can use with Flickr.

What Mac desktop apps do you use for your favorite websites? Let us know in the comments.

Broadcast Tweets From Your Android Phone With Tweetcaster

Ryan Dube — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:31:08 +0000

Twitter is one of those things that just seems custom made for mobile use. Firing off a quick update on a mobile phone is just as easy as sending a text message, and the short-hand IM coded message is exactly what your followers expect.

For a long time I was using the official app provided by Twitter because it’s the first one I ever installed, and for a long time, I never looked back. Since it’s been so long, I decided to take another look in the Android Market to see what new and improved Twitter apps were available. Now that I have more than one Twitter account to manage, I really needed a Twitter Android client that could deal with multiple accounts.

After sifting through the many Twitter apps available, I finally settled on one called Tweetcaster. The reason for choosing this one (aside from the four and a half star rating), is due to the clean design, ease of use, and the fact that it can easily handle multiple Twitter accounts.

Setting Up Multiple Accounts On Tweetcaster

The main reason I wanted to try this app was because the main screen made it appear as though it could handle as many Twitter accounts as you want. From the main page when you first launch the app, you can see the big plus sign next to “Add Account”. Go ahead and start adding your accounts!

Once you log into each account, you’re ready to roll. The goofy bird icon is where you can view all of the tweets for the people you’re following. I really like how fast and easy it is to switch between tweets, mentions, messages, and other areas of your profile with just a single tap of the finger. Navigating through Twitter with this app is a breeze.

While you’re viewing any of these lists, just do a long-click on any one of the tweets and a pop-up window will appear where you can go directly to that person’s profile, send them a direct message, block the user or report them for spam.

Also, you can click on the menu option for more options like navigating the list, manually refreshing, reviewing followers and followees, modifying your settings or lastly enabling a tweet filter.

A tweet filter was a valiant attempt by Handmark to help people filter out those annoying users that seem to post updates every five minutes, flooding your entire view. Unfortunately, the filter doesn’t work quite as you’d expect. For example, when I tried typing “MakeUseOf” (not that I ever would, mind you), it filtered out all but one of the day’s tweets, even those that didn’t even have that word in it. Strange.

Just like the other areas of the app, the Followers and Following page is designed for fast navigation. Flip back and forth between the two with a single tap, then long-click on a user to visit their profile or send them a message.

When you do visit someone else’s account, you can navigate through their information just as easily as your own. See their Tweets, messages they’ve sent you, lists they’re following and more. Use the menu button to follow the user (if you’re not already), add a mention, or block them.

Aside from the different things you can do with the app, the thing I like about Tweetcaster is how easy it is to customize it. You can see this just from taking a look at the settings menu. Not only that, it’s integrated with popular outside services people usually use with Twitter like bit.ly, plixi and Twitvid.

In the customize menu, you’ll see all the ways you can tweak the appearance of the app. Change from a light to a dark theme, alter colors, font sizes, and the behavior when you click on URLs, or how notifications work.

When you click on the pen icon at the top of the main page, you’ll go directly to the tweet page where you’ll probably be spending most of your time in this app. It’s also the coolest area of this app because of all the things integrated into this one page. Click on the eye icon to see current tweets in the upper part of the screen (nice if you’re responding to someone). Click the menu button and you’ll see the integrated features like adding pictures, videos and shortening URLs.

By the way, even Instapaper, an app David wrote about before that lets you save webpages to read later, is also integrated into Tweetcaster.

Of course, a pleasant surprise – because I wasn’t even expecting it – is the fact that the creators of this app were thoughtful enough to include integrating Facebook into Tweetcaster. This means that in one fell swoop, you can post to both Twitter and Facebook with just a single, quick text message. A pretty convenient tool when you’re on the go and just want to let everyone on both social networks know what’s up.

Have you ever given Tweetcaster a try? What do you think? How does it compare to other Twitter Android clients that are on the Market? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.

3 Minimalist Twitter Clients For Mac Users

Nancy Messieh — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 19:30:55 +0000

Twitter’s latest move stopping developers from creating new Twitter clients wasn’t met with much warmth, and we’re not surprised. Part of Twitter’s success was based on the fact that so many applications, clients and third party sites were able to build themselves around Twitter’s resounding success. And there is certainly no limit to the number of clients available to access the site, leaving a lot of us constantly on the look out for the perfect client.

While Twitter for Mac seems to have cornered the Mac market, there is something to be said for having options to choose from. If you’re looking for a simpler, barebones, minimalist Twitter client, there are a few options available for Mac users. Whether you’re looking for a simple, easy-to-use client like Itsy, the slightly more elaborate HelTweetica, or even the unique Ambientweet, there is no limit to the way that you can choose to access Twitter with these clients.

Itsy

Itsy stays very true to its name, with tiny buttons to access your home feed, replies, messages and a search window. When any given feed is updated, a small white dot will appear on the icon, and growl notifications to let you know when you’ve received a new message or reply.

While you can perform searches, Itsy prides itself on ignoring Twitter’s trending topics, so if you’re the kind of person who gets annoyed by them, this is the minimalist Twitter client for you.

To create a new tweet, click the little button on the right hand side of the window, the compose window will drop down allowing you to type your tweet. When you aren’t replying to tweets, or sending new updates, it disappears. While Itsy has a native url shortener, if you want to share images with your followers, you’ll have to use another client.

From your home feed you can reply to, retweet or favorite tweets. Unfortunately, the only retweet method available is the native Twitter retweet, so if you want to retweet and add your two cents, you’ll have to rely on copy and paste.

Images shared on twitter through Twitpic and Yfrog amongst others are visible in your timeline.

In addition to some of the more standard features, Itsy also adds themes to its arsenal. There aren’t too many to choose from but it’s nice to have the choice between a light or dark theme to suit your own taste.

Itsy is great to use to follow your feed and interact with the people you already follow but it does lack some basic features. You can’t access tweeps profiles. Clicking on a username redirects you to their web profile in your browser. That also means you can’t follow or unfollow users, can’t add them to your lists, or access your lists at all.

Itsy is available for Mac OS X 10.6 in the Mac App Store, and for Mac OS X 10.5 as a direct download from the developer’s website.

HelTweetica

HelTweetica is another barebones Mac Twitter client, but it has a few extra features that aren’t found in Itsy. You can access your home feed, replies, messages and favourites from the menu. In addition, you should also be able to access your lists, although in our experience, they didn’t load. When you’ve received a new reply or message, the relevant feed will be marked with a red dot.

Images from various services including Instagram and Twitpic can be viewed in-line in your home feed.

To create a new tweet, click the compose button and a new window will open in which you can add an image, shorten your URL, and geotag your tweet. When sharing images you can choose to do through a variety of services including Twitpic, YFrog and Posterous. URL Shortening can be done using is.gd, TinyUrl or Linky.

You can interact with other tweeps by replying and retweeting, as well as adding tweets to your favourites. A nice touch they’ve added is giving users the choice between using the “Old” retweet method where you can add your thoughts to a tweet, or the “New” retweet method which retweets the entire message to your timeline as is.

Another way in which HelTweetica offers more options than Itsy is the ability to view a users profile within the app. Clicking on a username will open a window with the user’s bio, location, number of friends and followers, Twitter join date and their latest tweets. From here you can also follow or unfollow users.

HelTweetica supports multiple accounts, but lacks basic growl notifications. Other features include threaded conversations, which also open in a separate window, and the ability to delete your tweets. HelTweetica requires Mac OS X 10.6, and is also available as a free iPad app.

Ambientweet

Ambientweet takes a very different approach to other Twitter clients and is not in any means meant to replace your main Twitter client. If you prefer to access Twitter using your browser, Ambientweet may serve as an interesting accompaniment. With Ambientweet you can’t really follow your timeline. Instead, the window floats on top of all other windows displaying only one tweet at a time as your feed refreshes itself. At any given time, you can glance over and see what the latest tweet in your feed is. From there you can also reply, retweet or add it to your favorites.

Ambientweet also gives you a quick and easy way to update your status without any extra bells and whistles.

Ambientweet is not without it’s glitches. If you keep a close eye on the app you might see several tweets are sometimes repeated. That said, you can control the speed at which the app refreshes, anywhere from between 1 to 600 seconds.

What is your favorite minimalist Twitter client? Let us know in the comments

How To Get Ambient Twitter Updates [Mac]

Angela Alcorn — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:31:22 +0000

You’ve probably heard of the new Twitter for Mac, which is super shiny and has amazing bells and whistles. Well, one of the great things about Twitter for Mac is the integration with Growl which integrates Twitter’s stream of information into ambient updates for you while you get on with other things. Personally, I think Twitter and Growl were meant to be together.

Sadly, if you’re not using Snow Leopard there’s no way you can use the new Apple store to get your copy of Twitter for Mac. It’s only a small upgrade from Leopard, but when you’re using Tiger it’s a bit much for just a Twitter client. So, what can you do instead? Well, you can use a mix of Twitter clients to get the best results.

You probably already have a favourite Twitter client for viewing your lists and latest updates. Stick with that for your everyday usage. We’re going to add a little trick to your set-up so that you’ll have Growl updates (or similar) as well.

Firefox & Growl

If you’re a Firefox user, you’ll be able to use Growl with Twitter by adding the FireStatus extension. Ostensibly, the FireStatus add-on is for being able to update your social networks from the status bar. But you can also use it as a handy way to get Growl updates for Twitter (and FriendFeed).

Once the add-on is installed, setup of accounts in FireStatus is straightforward. You’ll see the FireStatus icon in the status tray (bottom-right of Firefox) and can right click it to access preferences.

Ensure “Receive Updates” is checked for Twitter in your FireStatus preferences.

If you haven’t installed Growl yet, you can find it here for free. Then just ensure Growl is turned on by going to “System Preferences > Growl > Start Growl”. It should look like this when it’s running.

Growl can also be adjusted using different styles of pop-up bubble and different positioning on the screen.

This is all you need to get Growl showing you all the Tweets from your timeline, which will cover all the people you follow on Twitter.

Chrome

FireStatus isn’t available for Chrome, but there are a few similar Twitter extensions you can use. The simplest one to try is Chromed Bird.

When you set up Chromed Bird, you’ll be able to follow a given Twitter list and it will notify you using Growl-like pop-ups of any new Tweets in that list. Being able to limit the notifications to just one list is extremely useful if you follow a lot of people.

Unfortunately, you can’t adjust the pop-up positions or style for Chromed Bird as you can for Growl.

Echofon

Another similar way to achieve ambient updates with a browser extension is to try Echofon, which is covered in detail here.

Thoughts on Ambient Twitter Updates

Obviously, these Growl and Growl-like notifications are not an ideal way to ensure you’ve caught all the tweets, which is why you’d use your normal Twitter application as well, but they are a useful way to keep your ambient awareness of Twitter news up-to-date as you work on other things.

What other Twitter applications do you use? Do you prefer Growl updates or do you prefer to use Chromed Bird’s list-limiting feature? Let us know in the comments!