TweetDeck: the App That Keeps on Giving

TweetDeck is a Twitter application that I've been using for quite some time. It's developed and maintained by a one man team: Ian Dodsworth. What initially drew me to the program was the ability to group tweets into different columns. While I do not follow hundreds of people, this feature alone made the program worth using for me. As much as I loved using Twhirl, once I started using TweetDeck I never looked back. Like it's predecessor on my system, it runs on Adobe Air, so it'll run wherever you can install that particular runtime environment.

At the time, what I didn't realize, is how responsive Ian is with his development. Not just to bug fixes and giving help to users who need it, but also in response to feature suggestions and then their implementation. Since I started using the program here are some of the things that he's added:

- A slew of URL shortening services (it seems he adds new ones every release).
- TwitPic and 12Seconds support.
- Built in spell check (YES!).
- Visual and audible tweet notifications.
- International font support.
- Color palette customization.
- Un/Read indication, the ability to clear read tweets.
- Integration with Search.Twitter.com.
- Replies are pulled in via the above, so you can see anyone who has replied to you, regardless of following status.

Going forward, we have to look forward to multi account support, among other things. This is particularly impressive considering that he is a team of ONE.

If you access Twitter on a computer, you are doing yourself a huge disservice by not checking out this program. It has changed the way that I interact with the service, and I know that my usage is relatively light compared to a lot of people out there. Just having a separate column for people I know, verses news or other automatic posting services helps to cut down the signal to noise ratio.

There arn't many programs out there that I endorse 100%, this is one of them.

Check it out at: www.TweetDeck.com.

Slight Adjustment to Layout

I've gone ahead and updated the template, very simple, single column. As a result ten posts on the main page made the main page way too long, so I've cut it back to just five.

The header image is something that I've been wanting to use for a very long time just never got around to implementing it. Random shot I took in a subway that conveys, to me anyway a lot of depth.