Alert Thingy 3.0, The New, Stunning, Desktop Twitter Client

Yesterday I read somewhere on Twitter about the release of Alert Thingy 3.0, a new cross platform (AIR-based) desktop Twitter client. I was familiar with Alert Thingy as a Friendfeed desktop client and I also wrote about it a few months ago.

Now they released a wonderful and full-featured Twitter client which deserves to enter the battle to became the leader among the available (and more popular) desktop Twitter clients. What immediately catches your attention is the multi-column support, something that only Tweetdeck has been offering so far.

You can basically create different columns for different services or search criteria on Twitter. Available services are Basecamp, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Huddle, Jaiku, Ping.fm, Tinyurl, Tumblr, TwitPic, Twitter, Twitter Search, Yammer. Some of them are not social networks but useful collateral services (like TwitPic or Tinyurl), but you can create different columns showing messages coming from the related service or search criteria. Twitpic is completely integrated with the client and even using Tinyurl for shortening URLs hasn’t been easier.

If you want to keep an eye on some specific news sites or blogs, Alert Thingy works with any RSS feed and you can create a new column showing just the content you need.

Moreover, the way Tinyurl is implemented is definitely a time saver. You just need to copy the url you want to make shorter, click on the Tinyurl button, and the next paste will contain the url shortened.

A special feature I like a lot is the ability to mark users you are following as “very interesting”, “interesting” and “less interesting”. Users’ tweets will be shown according to your choice, for instance “very interesting” make tweets highlighted while “less interesting” doesn’t show the user’s avatar.

One feature I still haven’t found is the ability to see direct messages. It looks very strange to me, but it seems this feature is missing. To be honest, there is no specific feature to see “@” replies, too, but you just need to create a Twitter search for “@yourusername”. Has anyone found how to show direct messages?

Anyway, aside for this little missing feature (I say little since you can get email notifications of direct messages), I’m really falling in love with this client. Unfortunately, as most AIR applications I tried in the last couple of months, it uses a big RAM foortprint (now it’s using 450MB, with 5 columns open). Why I’m still using it instead of Tweetdeck? Honestly I find the GUI of Alert Thingy designed way better and more ergonomic. Anyway, I’m pretty open to look back: if you can give me 5 reasons why I should switch back to Tweetdeck, I can think seriously of doing that.

Any thought? If you haven’t tried other desktop Twitter clients so far, you should check Twhirl, Twitterrific (mac only) and Destroy Twitter (this last one another new entry in the game…) too.

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Tagged as: AlertThingy, desktop client, facebook, Flickr, friendfeed, luca filigheddu, Ping.fm, TweetDeck, TwitPic, Twitter