Want to Start Tweeting with Twitter?  Check out twhirl!

August 24th, 2008 at 3:00 PM - Columns and Opinions by John F. Braun

Product Link: twhirl (Donation-ware)
Company Link: Seesmic, Inc.

One of the more recent developments in the evolving social networking space is the concept of micro-blogging. In a nutshell, the concept takes the best features of both blogging and instant messaging, delivering tiny, bite-sized updates of what you are doing to those who choose to follow your adventures. One of the more popular services in this space is a service called Twitter. By some estimates, there are over a million total users of the service. Although one can interact with the service via a simple web interface, those who wish to have more functionality may like using a stand-alone client on their computer. Enter twhirl...

Twhirl is delivered via the Adobe AIR platform, which itself is a cool way to deliver applications to multiple platforms. Adobe AIR currently supports Mac OS X and Windows, with an alpha version for Linux. One you install the application, youill be asked to enter your account information. In addition to twitter, twhirl also supports identi.ca, friendfeed, and seesmic. From the configuration screen, you can also select a new color scheme, select your preferred language, or check for an update.

twhirl Configuration

Once youive entered your account information, you can get started. If you have any twitter friends, anything that they type will be displayed in the main twhirl window. Likewise, anything that you type (with a limit of 140 characters, remember, this is micro-blogging) will be seen by those who follow you. Various icons near the input window will let you access even more Twitter features. You can view replies, which are Twitter messages sent to you, but can be viewed by others. You can view direct messages, which are private messages that only you can see. You can view favorites, which are "tweets" that youive previously marked. You can also view your friends and followers, and even search for new friends by entering their profile name. To round out this set of icons, you can also search all tweets for specific keyword(s).

Main twhirl Window

Twhirl also links to some popular tools. If you have a URL that youid like to share, but want to shorten it (remember that 140 character limit) you can submit a URL to snurl.com, is.gd, or twurl.nl and receive a shortened URL. And if youid like to share photos, you can submit them via twhirl via the twitpic service.

So start getting into social networking today, and give twhirl a try! If you like, you can also follow John via his Twitter account johnfbraun. If you have any other Gadgets you think John should look at, you can suggest it via Twitter, or [removed]eval(unescape(i[removed]('boring old email')i))[removed].

John is a software engineer who works in the corporate R&D group of a Fortune 500 company, focusing on imaging and printing technologies. He has AS, BS and MS degrees in various computing disciplines, so his friends and colleagues are somewhat surprised that he’s a Mac enthusiast.  After spending the day developing in an environment comprised largely of PCs, and watching colleagues wrestle with the horror that is Windows, he’s glad to come home to a MacBook Pro and PowerMac G5 at the end of the day.