Tweetie - Twitter Client for the Mac
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Not just another Twitter Client!

Since Twitter has become the cool place to hang out online to almost everybody now, there are new Twitter clients coming out practically every day. The latest to appear is Tweetie. Although Tweetie had been a big hit on the iPhone/iPod Touch platform where it was first introduced, it’s a recent entry into the desktop Twitter client arena. So don’t we already have enough Twitter clients to fool around with? Well, yes, but none that really does a decent job. I’ve personally gone through everything from Twitterific to Twhirl and am still not satisfied with the experience! But Tweetie from Atebits may just be the app that i’ve been waiting for. On the Mac platform, it is the best Twitter client out there in terms of usability and interface.

Features (4 out of 5)

Conversations

The problem as I see it with Twitter is the signal to noise ratio! Its not possible to have a normal conversation on Twitter, its rather like a space where several people express their ideas loud and clearly making it hard for anybody to listen. One way of tackling that is to view your tweets as a conversation, much like you have on iChat or Google talk or Gmail for example.

There is a separate pop text entry field provided to enter your tweets, which makes things easier, in my opinion, for entering tweets while working with another application. Since the tweet enty box is a separate box you can have as many open as your screen real estate can support, and blast away those tweets without having to switch to the application. So mad tweeters out there can just go crazy and release a torrent of posts!

MainWindowWithCompose

SearchTrends

The search box at the right top corner is a nifty touch to simulate Spotlight and it works great to look up twitterers, tweets and just about anything on Twitter. Also worth mentioning is the thread-like structuring of the direct messages, just like in an IM chat, which makes the usage seamless. Direct messages can be viewed by clicking on the respective icon, which again pops up in the convenient conversation format, which allows you to make sense of replies that you might get from friends after a day or two!

Do you have more than one Twitter account? Don’t fret, Tweetie comes with support for multiple Twitter accounts and therefore makes it the perfect for high volume twitterers! You can access this setting and further Tweetie settings from the preferences menu of the app. One of the settings that I discovered here is the option to allow Tweetie to open at the same message that you last closed it with, this way all the newer messages come up on top making it easy to catch up. Posting images is easy with Twitpic and other services as these are supported inherently. The client also has a bookmarklet that can be added from the site which will allow you to post the current page that you are reading as a tweet, nifty eh?!

Prefs

Tweetie - Make sense of Twitter madness

Twitter is an amazing communication tool, no doubt about it. As a characteristic of any powerful communication tool there is too much background or noise, but you can help make sense of the information flood with a handy tool like Tweetie. Tweetie is available for download from Atebits both for the iPhone and the Mac now. Tweetie costs $19.95, however for a limited time (until May 4th) it is available at an introductory price of $14.95. If you are cash-strapped you can also still use Tweetie for free on the Mac, with an ad-supported version.