vowe's choice: Twitteriffic
by Volker Weber
I tried a few programs, but Twitterrific came out on top. I love how it goes away into the menu area when not needed. It supports Growl so I can view new tweets if I like to. Finally, it's very easy to reply to other people's tweets. Recommended.
Comments
And it's got the requisite cute icon too - the Twitterific bird and the Adium duck make a lovely couple ;-)
Paying 15 bucks just to waste your time? Hm. I don't get it.
@Moritz it’s $15 if you don’t want the ads. Otherwise, it’s free.
Wasting time? Well, with all these kinds of tools, you get out of them what you put into them.
I don't get the whole Web 2.0 hype. What's wrong with plain HTML? No JScript, no Ajax, no bullshit bingo, no paying 15 bucks for a stupid news reader (or whatever it claims to be)...
The "good ol' days"...
COBOL, punch cards. Those were the days.
Those were the "ol' days", not necessarily the good ones ;-)
Right.
COBOL? Punch cards? You were lucky.
We used to have a PDP-8 which booted from punch tape.
I say booted. That was the tertiary bootstrap. The primary was a bank of switches on the front which had to be set up before powering on so that the machine knew it even had a punch tape reader from which it could boot.
Now those were the really good old days.
Crikey, have I stumbled into an online meeting (Web 1.0 style I hope) of Luddites Anonymous? ;o)
I have some EMIDEC 1100 punch-card programming manuals in my loft somewhere, must see if I can dig them out…
Das hier passt gut dazu: das ganze Web 2.0, oder zumindest die sog. Kommunikationsplattformen, ist nix weiter als belangloses Geschwafel (mit allem nötigen Respekt vor dem Hausherrn hier): es geht nicht um Informationen (wie in besagter guten, alten Zeit), sondern nur noch darum sich oder zumindest ein Bild von sich darzustellen.
Anstatt Wissen verfügbar zu machen und damit der Menschheit einen Gefallen zu tun, wird etwas kund getan was bestenfalls peripher interessiert. Das wiederum hat ein wenig Ähnlichkeit mit den Tagen, als "das Internet" einem größeren Publikum zugänglich gemacht wurde: an allen Ecken und Enden kamen Seiten im Stile von "Ich bin Detlef Dummbeutel, esse gern Spaghetti und mein Hund heißt Mäxchen und was die Welt schon immer nicht wissen wollte" zutage, natürlich mit dem üblichen animierten "Under construction" GIF.
Nun, heute ist es ein wenig augenfreundlicher, der Inhalt ist nach wie vor der selbe. In 15 Jahren wurde also mit viel Hype und viel Technik kaschiert, dass die Menschheit sich nicht einen Deut weiter entwickelt hat. Glückwunsch ;-)
Die Menschheit hat seit Jahrtausenden eine Kommunikation entwickelt, die nicht nur aus Wissensvermittlung besteht. Es ist wirklich äußerst interessant, wenn man beispielsweise das unterschiedliche Verhalten von Männern und Frauen betrachtet. Während Frauen viel mehr "schnattern", sind manche Männer viel wortkarger. Dafür sieht man mehr prügelnde Männer als prügelnde Frauen.
Twitter ist für das scheinbare belanglose Geschnatter. Flüchtig, aber nicht völlig nutzlos.
When I first learned about Twitter (listening to TWIT - This Week In Tech) I thought exactly the same as some of the readers above. What a waste of time! Hearing/reading about twitter again and again made me take a closer look. And guess what: I still have a hard time explaining to others (not to mention "convincing" them) what the benefits of using it are but I wouldn't want to live without it. Once you follow a bunch of people you care about/you are interested in it all starts making sense (as Volker wrote in one of his posts). I guess this whole twitter phenomenon falls into the category SMS once fell into: What is it good for? - and years later tons of people are using it on a daily basis. If you are a sceptic, try twitter(ing) for two weeks. You'll see it makes all the difference. In case you don't like/need it after two weeks, just move on to other exciting stuff on the Web. From my point of view I think it's fair to say: Twitter is here to stay. It's like public SMS on the web. Follow me if you like: twitter.com/mdierker
Once you follow a bunch of people you care about/you are interested in
I guess that is the point:
You need to have people you care about.
They have to play ball.
I have friends I very much care about and who have not even grasped the idea of presence and instant messaging. And then they send email asking if I am currently available. I guess that comes with age.
Ralf, more seriously, there is a lot of “useless” stuff on Twitter, but that doesn’t mean the tool itself isn’t useful. It’s easy to skim over stuff you’re not interested in, and find the odd gem. It’s just another pleasant way to foster “community” as far as I’m concerned, and doesn’t have to take up too much time. Like email, newsfeeds, and all the rest, you can shut off your tweets, or just read them when you have the time or inclination—they’re not intrusive.
For me Twitter is perfect for your "peripheral vision".
Any tweets I receive pop up a small and unobtrusive preview in the bottom left of my screen, if I'm focused on what I'm doing I don't even notice them. On the other hand, if I'm on the phone, thinking, IMing etc then they sink in, and very often alert me to info I wouldn't have been told about by any other source. News, web links, important folks in the community, useful podcasts etc.
As Ben says, once you'd tried it, you won't want to turn it off again...
Just in case anyone was confused by my apparent nostalgia for simpler times, I was joking, you know. Don't count me in the anti-Twitter crowd.
Chris, I wasn’t tilting at you, I enjoyed the joke!
Re Twitter / SMS, there are certainly similarities—e.g. the message length—but the SMS charging model is somewhat more annoying :o)
Getting back to Twitterific...
I love this client and even paid the $15 to get rid of the adverts and support it's development.
The ONLY thing I don;t like is when it starts up it reshows all the @replies I received and direct messages I received. Even if they are a few weeks old. I wish there was a way to stop that from happening.
Did you see any advantage disadvantage of Twitterific vs. Twhirl?
I have them running side by side, and here are my thoughts:
- Both let you easily (meaning an icon on the person's tweet) send replies, but Twirl also allows you to send direct and favourite a tweet without the extra click required in Twitterific to bring up Show actions menu.
- Right click also works in Twirl and not in Twitterific. (bring up an actions menu).
- Twirl has a really nice filter option.
- I like the menu at the bottom of Twirl that allows me see Timeline, Replies, Archive, Favorites, directs, Friends, Followers, Lookup, or Search.
They both seem to do the job well, but I think I'm going with Twirl (when not using TwitNotes!). I'll use them both for a few more days and decide.
