As well they look to have added a couple more themes to give you more choices beyond the typical Black and AIR color schemes. While they still don’t have an option for changing the font size; which was deal breaker for me in previous versions these new colors do make reading messages a little easier.

Now as much as I might like to use any 3rd party app for accessing FriendFeed it doesn’t fit in with my current work flow because I always have the FF page open in FeedDemon and I would end up bumping up against their API limits for getting new messages.

That said if I was to go strictly the client route my vote at this point would definitely be to use Alert Thingy. They have done a really good job on this release and other than the font pickiness on my part this version puts them in the front of the pack. Definitely worth downloading and using for both Twitter and FriendFeed.

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, Twitter, Adobe AIR

So once I had managed to get another coffee through the system and got caught up with my reading I grabbed the update and installed it. Now right off the but as Frederic at The Last Podcast pointed out in his review today this is not a unified client. twhirl will launch separate windows for each of the services. If you are already using twhirl you will need to add your FriendFeed sign-on info. Now this one took me a minute or two figure out as you would typically think that the place this was down was the settings section you can access from the main twhirl window open for Twitter. It’s not - what you will have to do is right click on the notification tray icon for twhirl and access the Account Manager dialog.

In the Account Manager dialog just select the FriendFeed service and add your info when asked for it. Once you have entered it a new window for the FriendFeed display for twhirl - you can see both displays in the graphic - just click on it for a larger view.

At this point just about everyone is comparing this newest twhirl addition with Alert Thingy - the current main desktop app for FriendFeed. What I will say as far as the comparison is concerned is that Alert Thingy has one thing over twhirl and that is you can post new messages to FriendFeed as well as include graphics. Whereas twhirl has Alert Thingy beat in that you can adjust the font size which was the deal breaker for me as far as Alert Thingy was concerned.

Other than not being able to post new messages directly to FriendFeed from twhirl is that when you like a post or add a comment to one that post doesn’t come to the top of the list as it does in the FriendFeed web interface. I think for a lot of FriendFeed users this will be more problematic of the two issues as this is the expected action and helps keep you on top of the conversation as it is happening.

One other thing I encountered with this release of twhirl is refresh issues when trying out some of the other themes that come with the program. Plus I had to restart the program when I went to try and rest back to my theme of preference as the Account Manager dialog just didn’t want to play nice.

If anything this first release of twhirl with FriendFeed would get my vote because of the simple matter that they let me adjust the font size so that I can actually use it however I did notice that there seem to be some refresh issues of new items but I can’t tie that one down so it could just be on my end. The one other thing that I would like to have the option of being able to do is to have the two different service dialog window use different themes. At this point when both of them are using the same theme it can take a second or two to differentiate between the two.

Personally I think that it is way to early to pick any of the available clients for FriendFeed as a leader and really the web interface is still the better of the options available.

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, twhirl, Alert Thingy

While not earth shattering it is kind of a cool idea bringing personalization to yet another service based by your use of FriendFeed

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, RSSmeme, personalization

That said it is getting closer to being usable to a larger segment of those folks looking for desktop FriendFeed apps.

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, Alert Thingy

Now if I was a Firefox user I would be probably heaping the praise on Aviv as well .. oh heck .. what the hell  …. Way to go man - keep up the good work.

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, filters, groups, Greasemonkey, Firefox

Sorry guys but Alert Thingy is still a no go for me until this is changed.

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, Alert Thingy

Well I do and it is simply this - you have to be kidding me. But rather than getting overly verbose how about a screenshot of what it looks like on my desktop

Now I might be a cranky old fart whose eyes aren’t the best in the world but how do you possible expect me to use this for any length of time without straining my eyes any further than I am.

The fact that I have no control over either the text size or the opacity of the background make this attempt next to useless. It doesn’t matter that you guys are still working hard at making all the parts of the FriendFeed API work; which I will give you credit for, but when I can’t read what is on the screen without squinting hard enough to make my grandson start laughing his ass off this makes the 1.0 release a nice try but I’ll be waiting for the 1.1 thank you very much.

Note: my apologies to Sarah for misspelling her name - the error has has been fixed

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, Alert Thingy

The client is written using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and the .NET 3.5 Framework and it lives up to the greatest fear that I had as a developer before hanging up my dev tools. Before I quit any dev work I was getting heavily into working with WPF and felt a great enthusiasm for what I believed that WPF could bring to the table for creating excellent interactive user interfaces. At the same time I was also greatly worried that developers would cross over that line of usability and be replaced with gaudy over animated interfaces that made the application behave and look more like a cheap little toy.

bTittleTattle crosses that line and in the process breaks just about every usability rule there is. Sure it looks cute and if that is what you want then hey go for it but cutesy only lasts up until trying to use the program is a battle between being productive and looking cool (click for larger view).

The idea that you have to have fly-out dialog screen in order to even write a comment or even mark something as ‘Liked’ makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Sure the ability to adjust the font size and message area on the fly is a nice touch but it isn’t something that needs to be on the front of the user interface.

If this was an exercise is showing off some of the cool things that developers can do with WPF and .NET then sure I would say they partially achieved their goal but in the long run as a full time usable FriendFeed client - well let me put it this way - it’s already in the recycle bin.

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, Sobees, desktop client, Windows Presentation Foundation, .NET

And today Eric has again unleashed a couple of Greasemonkey scripts that help make up for what some users of FriendFeed feel are some missing features. The first one is an easy to use Unsubscribe option. As Eric says "having to dig deep down into the user settings makes it difficult to unsubscribe from someone."

Another common request from the FriendFeed community is some sort of profile page and in answer to this Eric has released the FriendFeed Who Are You script that is accessed from a link under the user name

So if these; plus and updated version of Eric’s FriendFeed by Service script, are something that you are looking for then head on over to The Internet Duct Tape and grab a copy before they are all gone.

And BTW even though Eric doesn’t have a PayPal donation button that I could find bug him to get one in place and then make sure to shoe him some goodness for all the goodies he is bringing to the FriendFeed community.

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, Greasemonkey, Firefox, scripts

And for those of you curious about the link (http://tinyurl.com/5cqfqc) Jeremy posted it leads to the following screenshot

Now quit drooling on your keyboard.

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, Alert Thingy