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Wanted: A Better Twitter Client

Mike Masnick — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:47:09 +0000

Well over a year ago, I wrote about just how useful Twitter can be, and over time that’s only increased. I have to admit that until about a month ago, I mostly just used Twitter in the web interface. I did install Digsby as a client, but I basically just used that to notify me when new Twitter messages were showing up. But then I kept hearing about neat things (such as groups) that TweetDeck allowed, and I started playing with that. It took some getting used to, but there were definite advantages. Being able to set up groups/columns/persistent searches and laying it out in a nice format actually made Twitter that much more useful. It became, as I noted in a Tweet sort of a “personal Bloomerg” for me.

But still… Tweetdeck had limitations. While you could edit the colors (useful! white text on black background is awful for eye strain), there were limitations. Then, I noticed that Tweetdeck was dropping a bunch of messages. I’d only noticed because people would tweet something in reference to an earlier tweet… but that earlier tweet wouldn’t be there. In the past few days it’s only gotten worse. I asked for some suggestions for other apps and have now tested out both Seesmic Desktop and Destroy Twitter. Both have some nice features… and others that are quite annoying. People recommended both Tweetie and Nambu… but both are only available on Macs, so I couldn’t test them out.

Not that anyone actually reads this blog, but I thought I’d try to put together a feature list of what would make me happy on the Twitter client front (I’m leaving out the stuff that’s already pretty standard, such as URL shortener support, easy retweets, etc.). If anyone develops a client with these features, please, please, please let me know:

Customization! Let me choose colors/fonts/sizes. Tiny white text on a black background? Sorry. Unusable.
Let me manage how many columns/groups I want. When you limit what I can do, it just makes me want to look for other apps. Tweetdeck seems to limit you to 10 columns. Not sure about Seesmic. Destroy Twitter has 6 total columns (home/replies/direct messages/groups/search/saved tweets), and only displays three at a time (first three or last three). You can do multiple groups/searches, but you can only see one at a time. That gets annoying. My screen can show more, so let me see more. And making me manually switch between groups or searches? Why? Just show them all.
Also, we don’t necessarily need the full column metaphor. Why not set it up as a canvas and let me organize each option as I see fit? Then I can set it up exactly as I want. My full stream can be a full column, but I don’t get many direct messages. So maybe I only want direct messages to be a small box in the corner, and then I can put a lower volume persistent search beneath it. Let me organize how I see everything on an open canvas and I’d be much happier.
Make it easy to set up groups — which means setting up multiple ways to manage groups. Tweetdeck gives you a list of everyone you follow. That works well until you have a ton of users you follow. Seesmic only lets you add if you see people in your home timeline. That’s awful. I purposely set up groups so I make sure I can see important messages from people who don’t tweet often, but I don’t want to miss (like my mom or my wife). Destroy Twitter shows you the first 4 (alphabetical) people you follow and then offers a search box. Showing those first four users is useless and if I don’t remember the usernames, the search is useless. Why not set up a combo of all of these? Show the list. Let people add from their stream. And offer search.
Notifications: Tweetdeck and Seesmic just tell me I have new messages (and in what buckets) but don’t display the messages themselves. Destroy Twitter and Digsby at least show actual text in the notification… except both just show the latest message (Digsby lets you scroll to the “next” message if you get your mouse over the notification fast enough). I would kind of like to see all the incoming messages displayed briefly. That helps with the whole “ambient information” concept.
Facebook integration is definitely nice — props to Tweetdeck and Seesmic for doing that… but why won’t either let me clear out those messages once seen? I can clear out Twitter messages, but not Facebook messages.
Server integration. If I run the client on multiple machines, it should know what I’ve read/not read.
Better handling of read/unread messages: make it easy to mark stuff as read and clear it out…. and then if I *do* want to go back, make that easy too. Tweetdeck lets me clear out read messages, but if I shut it down and reopen… they’re back. But if I don’t shut it down and reopen, there appears to be no way to get my “cleared” messages back. If I want to see them again, I have to either shut down/reopen or go to the web interface. Maybe just do what Gmail does and have an “archived” box/column that can be opened.
Show me all my messages. Not sure if this is an API limitation or what… but if I shut down for the night and open up Tweetdeck in the morning, it only shows me a few hours worth of messages. I’d like to see everything since I last logged in. At the very least, make this a user option… (related to this: Tweetdeck, STOP dropping messages).
Memory management. Stop being a memory hog! All of you. :)

I think that’s it for now… though I may have some other thoughts later. What other features would be good?

I should note, by the way, that none of this is to disparage the work done on these apps. They’ve all made Twitter much more useful — so I’m not trying to pull a Louis CK “everything’s great and I’m still pissed off” sorta thing. I’m just finding that in making Twitter much better, they’re also exposing their limitations. All of these apps are in early versions, so I’m hopeful that they’ll all get there eventually. Hopefully this post helps someone get there faster. :)

Go Ahead And Compare Atari Desks

Mike Masnick — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:18:29 +0000

Ok, so remember that last post about the old photo of an Atari 800 on a desk from 1983? The one that I said reminded me so much of the old Atari 800 I grew up with? The one that I said that I was pretty sure my parents had walled off as a disaster area? Yeah, well, my memory was correct, and my parents are awesome. They just sent me a photo of the desk, taken today.

Here’s, again, is the photo from 1983 that Pesco’s friend sent him:

And here’s the photo taken today, April 14, 2008, of the Atari 800 I grew up with that’s still sitting in my parent’s basement:

See why I saw some similarities? Gotta love the wood paneling, right? Ok. So mine’s a bit messier… but I can blame that on 25 years of usage… right? Er… probably not. Next step will be turning on the Atari 800 and seeing if I can coax it to do something next time I’m at my parents’ place.

That Atari 800 Looks Awfully Familiar

Mike Masnick — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 08:43:29 +0000

Boingboing has a post today including a photo from one of Pesco’s friends, Jennifer Brown, of a computer desk showing an Atari 800. The photo is circa 1983:

The scary bit is that looks exactly like the setup I had with my Atari 800, which I used all through school, right up until I went away to college. The differences are really small. But we had a similar ancient TV. We had the tape player (remember when you loaded programs via cassette tape?). At one point we had two separate floppy drives (the 810s), with the two different doors (one flips, one goes up and down), just like the photo shows (though, i think we had two because one broke, so I don’t think we had them lined up next to each other). I also don’t think we had an Atari branded printer. But, even the desk and the overall setup looks kinda similar to what we had.

So I was looking at that and then started thinking… My parents pretty much declared their basement a federal disaster area after I went off to college (and yes, it’s my fault that it’s was a disaster), and have been waiting for the feds to send in a cleanup crew ever since. I know that they’ve finally been dumping out all sorts of old stuff over the past year, but if I remember correctly (and I might not) that corner of the basement has not been touched in 15 years. In other words, our Atari 800 with the similar setup and the crappy TV may STILL be sitting in my parents basement. I’m not back in NY for a couple months, but Mom & Dad, if you read this and if I’m correct that the old Atari is still sitting pretty in the basement, would you mind taking a photo and sending it to me? And, yes, I do talk to my parents regularly on the phone or via IM or email, but making the request by blog just seems like more fun. If I’m right, and the setup is still there, I’ll update the post with it once they send it.

Turns Out Lots Of Folks Listen To ‘All Things Considered’

Mike Masnick — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:26:37 +0000

Mentioned this over on Techdirt last week, but might as well mention it here as well, since all sorts of folks are emailing/texting/calling to say they heard the show. On Friday evening I got interviewed by Robert Siegel on NPR’s “All Things Considered” talking about “The Streisand Effect,” the phrase I jokingly coined a while back. It was quite a bit of fun. Siegel seemed pretty cool, making sure I was at ease before we got started. I had expected the questions mostly to be about examples of the Streisand Effect in action. Many of the questions were of that nature (though a few other examples I spoke about got left on the cutting room floor). I wasn’t expecting that last question about other phrases I’ve coined or a separate question which didn’t make the cut either about other similar phrases (not by me) that had caught on. I rambled on about Godwin’s Law for a while, but even as I was saying it I knew I hadn’t done a great job describing it, so I was pretty happy that got cut. Either way, it’s been nice to discover just how many people listen to All Things Considered — and I’m glad I didn’t make a total fool of myself (thanks, in part, to the NPR editors).

Twitter Spam Does Exist, If Only A Little Bit

Mike Masnick — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:19:29 +0000

I’ll admit that I was pretty skeptical about Twitter for a long time. I had a few false starts in trying to use it, but a couple months ago I got serious about it and have discovered that it can be useful in surprising ways. It seems that a lot of bloggers have recently been coming to the same conclusion with a bunch pointing to Howard Rheingold’s post about why Twitter is useful. Russell Beattie followed it up with a post claiming that Twitter is great because there are no spammers and no trolls. Unfortunately, that’s not quite true. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been noticing more and more messages alerting me that my Twitter feed was being “followed” by some odd name I didn’t recognize. Like I do with most followers, I’d go check out their Twitter-feed, and discover that it was mostly spamming stuff. I’d also notice that they were following thousands of people with very few following them. Even better, despite having said they were “following” me, most stopped following me immediately. They only followed me to get an alert sent to me so I would check out their spammy feed.

No, it’s not as bad as some other types of spam or trolling, and it can be avoided if people lock their feeds and have to approve followers, but it’s not quite correct to say there’s no spam. And, as Twitter gets more popular, don’t be surprised to see them come up with even more spamming and trolling methods.

The Usefulness Of Twitter

Mike Masnick — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 23:19:13 +0000

Ok, I’ll admit that I was a bit unsure of the actual usefulness of Twitter, but a couple months ago I figured I’d give it another shot, and it’s been growing on me. The first thing about it that struck me was how incredible it was to follow the Iowa caucuses via Twitter. People who were actually taking part in the caucuses were reporting in real-time on what was being said in the caucuses, and it made it clear that there was a real groundswell of support for Obama. What was most amazing was contrasting that to CNN, which reported a statistical dead heat between the three leading candidates quite late into the night, before Obama’s sizable lead emerged. Yet, watching the real-time reports via Twitter, it seemed clear that there was strong Obama support. That’s only one data point, but it was kind of neat.

Now, a second useful Twitter example. I’m not sure how long ago, but a while back I became an email acquaintance with Whitney McNamara. I’m not sure when/how it happened. I think he may have commented on Techdirt a few times with pretty intelligent thoughts, or maybe sent in some stories/feedback. Just a couple weeks ago, he started following me on Twitter, and I started following him as well. Last week, he mentioned that he was going to Mamoun’s Falafel for lunch with his Dad, which set off a wave of nostalgia for me. I love Mamoun’s. Back in high school, Yuval and I used to go visit record stores in the Village and get Mamoun’s for lunch. It was a pretty regular ritual. I do still try to go to Mamoun’s whenever I’m in Manhattan, though it’s increasingly rare that I need to be anywhere near the Village.

Yet, when I saw Whit’s Twitter about Mamoun’s, I wrote my own about my Mamoun’s obsession, noting that I was hoping to go this week, since I was in NYC. A few twitters/direct messages back and forth, and yesterday, we were sitting in Mamoun’s enjoying the best falafel sandwiches money can buy and having an interesting conversation about online communities. It worked out perfectly, as I had a hole in my schedule and no lunch plans. Here’s his version of the story as well. It’s pretty clear that this never would have happened without Twitter.

Without Twitter, I probably wouldn’t have remembered that he was in NY, thought to get together with him, known that he liked Mamoun’s (or even convinced myself to make a trip down to Mamoun’s). So, while I’m still not totally convinced that Twitter is as amazing as some make it out to be, I’m beginning to understand the areas where it has potential.

TVs With Interactive DOS Applications?

Mike Masnick — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:33:45 +0000

So my hotel room in Edinburgh is tiny, but decent enough. I realized that it was missing things I’ve come to expect in a hotel room, such as an alarm clock, but was a bit surprised to see a note saying that I could schedule a wakeup call through the television. I’m fairly used to hotels having interactive TV systems using LodgeNet, which seems to be the standard interactive TV solution, but I don’t recall them offering a wakeup/alarm offering. So, I was a bit surprised when I turned on the little TV in the corner here and discovered what appears to be interactive TV using ancient DOS applications:

For whatever it’s worth, the wake up system actually works quite well. It turns on the TV and very, very gradually turns up the volume. It has helped me gradually wake up each day without any kind of shock to the system. I’m actually now thinking that something like this would be a lot nicer at home than the standard super-annoying alarm clock I use. DOS or no DOS, it’s pretty slick.

The Secret Thinkpad Powerbutton Code To Bring Dead Laptops Back To Life

Mike Masnick — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 08:46:04 +0000

Two months ago, I got a new laptop. It’s a Lenovo Thinkpad z61t. I actually ordered a t61, but I accidentally got the z61 instead — and, I actually really like it. It’s quite similar to the t61, but a little smaller and lighter. I was worried that the smaller part would be a problem, but I’ve gotten used to it. I really like the fact that it’s much lighter than my old t42. It just makes it seem so much more usable on the go. Lugging out the t42 was always a chore.

Anyway, I was at the Office 2.0 conference today, where I was giving a little presentation on the Techdirt Insight Community, and about an hour before the presentation, I went to find a quiet place to practice the presentation… and discovered that my brand new laptop wouldn’t work. I knew something was wrong when the “sleep” light wasn’t lit. I started to get worried when I plugged in the laptop and the battery light didn’t light up. Then I noticed that even though the machine had been asleep, it was really really hot. Pushing the power button did nothing. No lights were on and nothing seemed to get them to turn on. I pulled out the battery and put it back in and that did nothing as well.

So I called up IBM support and explained the situation. The guy on the other end then let me in on the secret power button code to revive your dead Thinkpad. After assessing the situation (totally dead laptop) he warned me: “Okay, this is going to sound totally bizarre, but I want you to give this a try…” He then had me unplug the AC adapter and take out the battery. Then, you push the power button 10 times in a row at one second intervals. Next, you push and hold the power button for 30 seconds. Then you put the battery back in and push the power button… and she lives. The computer came back, good as ever.

I asked the guy what the power button pushing incantation did and he said “static discharge” so apparently there was some sort of static that caused a short or something. I tried to get the guy to explain in more detail what happened, but he said “dude, you know as much as I do… but your machine is working.”

And so it is.

So, if you happen to have a Thinkpad that suddenly drops completely dead for no reason, try the power button trick.

Forget up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. This little code is now the coolest “cheat” code I know…

You Have Got To Be Kidding Me, Windows Mobile

Mike Masnick — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 08:26:10 +0000

I’ve already written about the ridiculous hoops Microsoft’s mobile operating system has made me jump through, but things only got worse tonight. I had actually reached an uneasy truce with the software, had set it up to my liking, and just about everything was working great. I’d even gone out and tried purchasing a couple of time waster games from Handango (gotta have something to play on long flights).

There were just two small things. The first is that Windows Mobile got caught by the Daylight Savings bug, so that every time I tried to sync it with my computer, it went back to being an hour behind schedule. I looked up how to fix it, but it required upgrading the syncing software to ActiveSync 4.5 rather than 4.0. There were some horror stories about that so I figured I’d survive for a few weeks with the clock being an hour off.

The other thing was that, as a few people had suggested, it’s not all that easy to scroll through your address book to make calls — especially when driving. So I figured I’d bite the bullet and get some voice recognition software. I bought one at Handango for $6… but it wouldn’t install. Every time I tried, it would cancel itself in the middle with no explanation. Over to the manufacturer’s website, and they note that I have the wrong version of Windows Mobile, but Sprint has an easy download upgrade package. Ah, great. And it’s just a minor upgrade 5.1.170 to 5.1.195. How much could possibly go wrong (hint: foreshadowing).

Yeah, so I click the link, download the 45 meg (that should have been a warning sign) upgrade file, and give a whirl… What does it do? It resets the entire phone. Suddenly everything I had set up, all the contacts I had put in, all the software I had bought and installed… gone. And, even better… I can’t get it to sync at all. What’s the problem? Well, it needs ActiveSync 4.5 rather than 4.0 — so I need to upgrade. Another big download, another crazy install process… and it requires me to restart my computer. Go do the reboot, and then… it’s still cranky. I do get my contacts back in (phew), but that’s it. It refuses to admit that any of my old software exists. In fact, the ActiveSync is downright rude about it:

“If a program you installed is not listed, the program was not designed to be used with your mobile device.”

Well, that’s just wrong. Not only was most of the software designed to work with my mobile device IT WAS WORKING with my mobile device until you pushed me to upgrade. The software files are still listed in the ActiveSync directory on my computer, but ActiveSync itself insists they don’t exist.

This isn’t exactly making me a fan of Microsoft’s mobile efforts…

On the plus side, the new versions of these software (a) have a built in voice dialing ($6 wasted apparently) and (b) no longer requires me to sync my email (which I never wanted to do in the first place). But, I’d rather just have kept my programs working (crazy as that may sound). Hell, even just being able to reinstall them would be nice.

All These Years And Mobile OS’s Still Suck?

Mike Masnick — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:06:42 +0000

Yikes.

Okay, so a little known secret is that I’ve actually been using the same mobile phone since either 1999 or 2000. I forget exactly when I got it, but it was a long time ago. It’s a Samsung 3500, a phone that was popular back in the day before things like (gasp!) color screens, let alone fancy features like cameraphones.

It’s not quite as bad as it sounds… The day the first Danger Hiptop/T-Mobile Sidekick came out I got that, and continued to use that as a data only device, until even that seemed old and pretty beat up.

Last year, Sunnia got me a PPC 6700 through a discount at work, but I couldn’t transfer my phone number to it until today. I’ve been using that as a data device only… and while there were a few annoyances, I didn’t pay much attention since it wasn’t really “my phone.” Earlier this week, however, I switched the number over… and realized I would need to enter all the phone numbers in from the old phone. I never expected them to be transferable, but I did expect that I’d somehow be able to type them in on my computer and transfer to the phone.

No such luck… unless you’re using Microsoft Outlook, which I don’t use and don’t have on this computer. In fact, every time I now plug the PPC 6700 into my computer it complains to me that my default email client is not Outlook and tells me I need to fix that and then serves up the ever friendly “OK” button (no other choices). Thing is, it’s not okay. I don’t want to use Outlook, and yet here I’m being told I need to. (Not that they seem to care any more, but it seems like this is exactly the sort of thing that the Justice Department was looking for when claiming Microsoft leveraged its monopoly position in forcing people to use other apps…)

So, instead, I’m killing my evening typing in each of the numbers and names by hand on the little keyboard on the PPC 6700… and, again, I’m discovering some idiotic decisions made by Microsoft. If I click on the part of the contact info that is for a phone number, why can’t it recognize that I’m probably typing a number, rather than relying on me to press the “red dot” button to let it know that I’m writing a number (on the PPC, the top row of letters, QWERTY…, have the numbers as the secondary option, which only work if you press down that red button).

You would think that, over the past 8 or so years that they’ve had to perfect this stuff they would have worked out a few of these kinks already…