Applications in June

There are some things I have to say about the websites Hahlo and Twitstat Mobile. I tried both applications early June and both are two-way and difficult to send direct messages with. Direct messages can however be viewed. When I reply to a tweet with Hahlo, the particular tweet does not show what tweet I just replied to. In the timeline all @replies which have been written in another program have a button to show the tweet being replied to. Another annoying thing is that every few hours I have to login again. This application was built for a mobile device. Through their menu it is possible to sent a direct message to another user or even yourself.

Twitstat Mobile was built for a mobile phone too. The timeline shows multiple functions; muting users, showing a conversation between users, showing pictures from TwitPic and MobyPicture, add to favorites, retweet, and reply. There is a whole menu with settings and saved searches. This could be interesting on a mobile phone to use. The function to actually mute users you follow is similar to Twalala. The dialogue function in Twitstat Mobile does not show the conversation between users like Twalala does.

Since I last wrote about Twalala they have developed a new feature; in every @reply there is a new button in the lower right corner of the tweet with ‘Re:’ on it and when selected this shows the conversation between users. Another new feature is the link to the original tweet in a reply made with Twalala, they did not have this feature when I first used it. I tested this before and on June 20th again.

Recommended Applications

Although there are a lot of Twitter applications out there Twitter has a list of favorite applications and warns for other applications, for they could be spam. This Twitterpage links to a list of applications on the Twitter Fan Wiki that I used to write about for my thesis chapter about applications. I wonder why Twitter would have favorite applications and links to a site that any user can modify? Are there two kind of applications, safe and unsafe? Do unsafe applications cause severe spam? Only one application is connected to Twitter, it is called Widget and can be connected to Myspace, Facebook, Typepad or Blogger. So this is more an extension of Twitter than just another application to tweet with.

I have had my share of external Twitter applications lately and I am still thinking about categories for them. I am curious if there are any malicious applications and I would like to test them, although not with my regular Twitter account! A better solution would be looking for stories about these applications. But maybe they have already been banned or blocked from the Twitter API. I should create a list of applications that I already used, the platform they function on and if they are one-way or two-way applications. And There are still some applications I want to use, although this is not necessary for my thesis.

Twalala versus Twitter

Regularly I check which applications my friends on Twitter use to post their tweets with. One friend I follow uses an application with the funny name Twalala and I thought I give it a try. It is web-based so I can use it on any computer and I do not depend on a certain operating system. Another great advantage of this application is that I can block certain words that drive me crazy or are annoying. I can also mute tweeple who tweet to much but who I do not want to stop following on Twitter. Some words I can add to a list of exceptions so tweets which contain these words I can still see although I have muted the users who wrote these tweets.

I tested this on one user, I muted her and then added a word she used to the list of exceptions and the particular tweet with this word showed up in the timeline and had been coloured orange. My @replies are coloured orange too in the timeline and they are also being collected on a seperate tab, just like direct messages are to be found on a seperate tab. In the timeline there is a button with I can mute a user with and next to that a button with which I can reply to a tweet. However I cannot see below a tweet what program users use or what tweet they reply to. So at any time I should have two browser windows open, one with Twalala and one with Twitter. Another disadvantage is that Twalala sometimes cuts off my text after the symbol ‘&’ so I should avoid that.

Application Day

This is only a small update because I have another course to work on today. Recently I started to tweet again (not every day though) and this morning I wanted to tweet from a new source, a new application. Last weekend I was working on the thesis chapter about applications and it felt something was missing. For fun and research I should try some more applications, this should give me more space to delete some reports from this chapter too. Some applications and plug-ins did not work, like TWAAI (Tweet All About It) and Tway. Twitterlicious did work and is a small two-way application that only shows the body of a tweet without displaying with what application it has been posted from or if it is a reply to another user. It also stayed on top until I deselected this option in the program options and disappears as a bug icon in the systray. I can also not reply to a tweet but a reply to me is displayed in blue. The program does show how many characters I have left when I type a tweet, and my tweet shows that I used Twitterlicious. Messages that have been selected went from bold to normal and when I scroll down it shows me more @replies in blue and direct messages in maroon. I would have liked this in different tabs like in TwitterFox though.

In contrast TwitTray looks more smooth and when double clicked it adisappears in the systray as a blue ‘t’ and when double clicked again it slowly re-appears. In this one-way application I cannot read tweets from users I follow but I can view my own old tweets in a drop down menu. My first tweet with this application was posted too soon but the second went allright and shows it was posted with TwitTray.

Another program I tried is TwitterGadget, an application that can be built into iGoogle or Gmail. The advantage is the small footprint version in Gmail which can be enlarged. In TwitterGadget it is visible to what tweet a user replies to and with which application this has been done. So I can use this apllication in combination with Twalala. In the footprint version are tiny tans for @replies and direct messages, but also for favorites. I can also turn off features like extra information of a tweet, although I like those features. When all features are turned off twittergadget loks just like m.twitter.com though.

More About Applications

Another week and other new applications and some theory too. This morning I posted a tweet with Twitlet, it’s a one-way only interface so basically I can only tweet with it. I can however include shortened urls through the use of the hashtag #link or #this. This application is comparable with for instance BigTweet which is also one-way only. Both interfaces can be used to empower users for specific needs. The great advantage of one-way posting is not being disturbed by updates from people I follow, so I can quickly update my Twitter status or say something, like I also can through sms.  Another application I used lately is Ubiquity, which is much more than one-way posting. It’s a experimental Firefox extension with which I am able to tell Firefox what I want to do through giving commands into an input box. So I can update my Twitter status but not read updates from other, I can easily look up something on Google (maps), Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube or translate a word or send an e-mail to someone. Posting a tweet in Ubiquity is very easy, I just press CTRL+Space, in the pop-up I only need to type tw or twi and the text of my tweet and press enter. In the next pop-up I enter my username and password and hit enter again.

One of my favorite and most used applications is TwitterFox, it’s a two-way application, which basically means that I can easily post a tweet but also read tweets. Two reasons why I like this applications so much is because it divides tweets into regular tweets, @replies and direct messages. It also has a subtle blue t in the very right corner of my Firefox window.

An example of an Adobe Air desktop application with multiple features is TweetDeck, where’s it’s possible to divide friends and their tweets into separate columns. Tweets can also be filtered into columns on the basis of a topic or keyword. Users can be the architect of their own adapted Twitter extension, ‘enabling the user to control application of the computer’s capabilities to his own service’.[1] Here I take TweetDeck as a computer controlled environment in a dialogue or negotiation with its users. Another useful feature of TweetDeck is that whenever @artgrrl has been used in the middle of a tweet instead of at the beginning, it does show up in the column @replies, although not always. Maybe I should experiment more with TweetDeck or the Twitter API.

What I like about the Twitter API, is that users can escape the rules that are imposed to them. In other words I like software that has some user interaction, where users have some kind of agency or control. ‘This interest in participation follows from a general feeling that architecture, particularly housing, has been inadequate and unresponsive to the needs and desires of its users’.[2] The trap with applications can be that we do away with one system, or a certain set of rules, and impose another on users, which is a criticism on Negroponte’s ideas on computer architecture.

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[1] Engelbart, Douglas, William English. ‘A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect’ in: Wardrip-Fruin, Nick Montfort. The New Media Reader. London: MIT Press, 2003: 239. <http://www.manovich.net/vis242_winter_2006/New%20Media%20Reader%20all/16-englebart68-03.pdf>

[2] Negroponte, Nicholas. ‘From Soft Architecture Machines’ in: Wardrip-Fruin, Nick Montfort. The New Media Reader. London: MIT Press, 2003: 355. <http://www.manovich.net/vis242_winter_2006/New%20Media%20Reader%20all/23-negroponte-03.pdf>