« Posts tagged Twitter

Ad Company Apologises for Justin Bieber Ad

February 3, 2012 / posted in "It's a Feature", Twitter / No Comments

The other day, I was happily using my free (ad-supported) version of MetroTwit when I noticed this ad:

This prompted me to finally bite the bullet and buy a license for MetroTwit Plus, as well as post the following:

.@metrotwitapp If this was your plan to get me to buy MetroTwit Plus, mission-fucking-accomplished.  [link]

A few hours later, I received this reply:

@laslow sorry we don’t review all the ads that are delivered. :(  [link]

I replied again, and then sort of forgot about it. Later, though I was retweeted, and that prompted the following reply (again from the @metrotwitapp account):

@Rob_Aarts @laslow if you guys have feedback about the ads, the guys at @140ProofAds are listening [link]

And indeed they were! A few hours ago, 140 Proof, the ad company themselves tweeted:

@laslow Thanks for the feedback on the ad you saw. Sorry, we never intend to annoy. Will pass along the feedback to the team. @metrotwitapp [link]

 

Clearly, the lesson to be learned from this is if you want to sell licenses for ad-free versions of your software, sign a contract with Justin Bieber and only push his ads.

The State of Desktop Twitter Clients One Year Later

January 6, 2012 / posted in Twitter / No Comments

In January, I posted a list of complaints I had about desktop Twitter clients, and how they stacked up against mobile clients and the official Twitter website. Several months ago, Twitter user MrBretticus reminded me of that post, and I figured it would be fun to check up on some of the popular clients and see how they’re doing now. I started writing this post then, and ended up forgetting about it. I’ve dusted it off to start the new year, though, so here’s where we are today.

Blu
Wow. Despite having a new version available, Blu really hasn’t changed at all. It still only has four settings (none of which are an SSL toggle), doesn’t let you customize/disable toast notifications, has annoying UI animations, and refreshing bumps the tweets in the timeline making you scroll around to find where you left off. Yep, still crap.

blu

All four of Blu's settings

Seesmic Desktop 2
Basically, SD2 has the same issues as Blu. Not enough settings, screws with your timeline position if you’re scrolled to the top, no in-app media previews, and doesn’t know where you left off when you relaunch the program.

MetroTwit
There have been a few improvements since I last used MetroTwit. The client has always had a wide selection of settings, but now there are options for forcing the use of SSL, disabling Toast notifications, and even allowing you to choose which services to shorten URLs and expand them with. Nice! However, there are still two concerns I have with the program: The unread count is annoying, there still isn’t an in-line image preview, and the UI is noticeably slower to respond (not to mention that going in to Settings, changing something, and then saving results in your columns blanking, forcing you to restart the program to see any older tweets). Happily, clicking on a link to a service like yfrog, twitpic, or most other image/media hosting services (including YouTube) now results in a small in-app popup with a preview of the media!

MetroTwit now also remembers your timeline position after you close the program (sort of)! When you reopen MetroTwit, it will automagically refresh and marks the last read tweet from your previous session with a mark line on the tweet itself and on the scrollbar. Given, it still starts you at the top of the timeline, but this makes it very easy to scroll down and start reading where you left off. You can also toggle a setting that allows the timeline to stay where it is when MetroTwit refreshes.

A fair word of warning, though – MetroTwit does include an ad. Yes, just one. By default, it sits at the top of your Direct Message column and is very subtle. I rarely notice it, but even when I do, I find the ads to be nothing objectionable. If you want to remove them, you can pay a one-time fee of (currently) $16.11CAD ($14.95AUD).

With all of the improvements that have been made, and with the release of New New Twitter, I’ve officially switched the MetroTwit as my full-time Twitter client. It really is that good.

MetroTwit

 

Twitter’s #NewLook Bothers Me, So I Fixed It

December 10, 2011 / posted in "It's a Feature", Twitter / No Comments

I’m not exactly a fan of Twitter’s #NewLook – I like my content on the left, and nav/other crap on the right. Twitter, apparently, doesn’t.

Ugh

So after seeing @Kosh post about a script available on Stylish for Chrome I installed the extension and then loaded the script. Success! But I wasn’t really happy with it.

I actually wanted something that would not only move the dashboard over to the right again, but I wanted the dashboard fixed, so that even if I scroll it stays there. After brushing up on my CSS, I modified the script like this:

Section 1:

.dashboard{
    margin-left:10px !important;
    position: fixed !important;
    right: 28%;
  }
Section 2:
.content-main{
    position:relative !important;
    right: 38%;
}
(Note: You may have to adjust the right: percentages depending on your screen resolution.)


Perfect: Now it's exactly how I like it!




Notice how even though I've scrolled down the page, the dashboard on the right is still visible.

			

		

		

			
Windows Desktop Twitter Clients Suck (And Here’s Why)

			
January 17, 2011 /  posted in "It's a Feature", Rants, Twitter / No Comments

			


I use Twitter semi-frequently. I’m more of a reader than a poster (in the 2+ years I’ve used the service I’ve only tweeted around 8,100 times), so it’s always struck me as odd that while mobile Twitter clients (such as Plume) do an amazing job working with the Twitter API, desktop clients never seem to live up to expectations.


Timeline Position


Mobile clients reign supreme in this, the seemingly hardest-to-master part of Twitter. I follow upwards of 170 people, and when they’re all actively tweeting my timeline fills up with sometimes ungodly numbers of tweets. These days, most mobile clients remember where you left off reading, and add new tweets above that point. Then, when you refresh the timeline, you just need to start scrolling up and you haven’t missed a thing.


Sadly, though, desktop Twitter clients still haven’t figured out that this is an important feature. I really love the look of MetroTwit, Seesmic Desktop 2, Blu, et al…, however it and every other desktop client I’ve tried will either scroll you up to the top of the timeline on refresh or do the same when you quit and reopen the application. This leaves a huge mess, and you need to remember the approximate time you stopped reading so you can scroll back through the mass of tweets that have collected since.


As a side note, a large number of desktop clients will scroll on refresh as you’re reading (I’m looking at you, MetroTwit). If I’ve just refreshed and scrolled back over 50 tweets, it really sucks to be scrolling up as I’m reading only to have the client force-scroll down as another 20 tweets come in.


View Conversation


A great feature in Twitter’s new website redesign is the ability to click on a tweet, and a tab will open up beside the timeline showing you the contents of the tweet, other tweets by the person, and most importantly, if the tweet was an @ reply to another tweet or series of tweets, it will show those as well. Mobile clients typically allow you to tab on a tweet and have the conversation show up inline, or in another view, but once again desktop clients have missed the boat on this one. MetroTwit requires you to right-click on the tweet and go through a few levels of context menus before you get to an option to show the conversation, and most lack this feature entirely, making it difficult, if not impossible, to find out what each of the 15 new @ replies are referencing. So far, Blu appears to be the only client to provide a quick-view of conversations similar to mobile clients.


Image Previews


Another feature of New Twitter is ability to click and tweet and Twitter will show you, in the pop-out tab, a preview of images linked to popular sharing sites like TwitPic. Mobile clients will typically add a small thumbnail (and some, like Plume, will allow you to view the image without leaving the client, as below).




Once again, the only desktop Twitter client to do this is Blu. The others still require you to click the link, switch to your browser, and then switch back to the client. Why not just use the Twitter website, then?


Your Retweets


Ever want to see which of your tweets have been natively retweeted? Unless you’re on twitter.com (or using Blu) you aren’t likely to find out. Even mobile clients fail at this one, despite the fact that native retweets have been around for over a year.


The Takeaway


So it might seem like Blu is the ultimate desktop Twitter client, seeing as it actually does most of the things listed here, right? Of course not! Much like other desktop clients, Blu lacks the option to configure most of it’s settings (there are exactly three options on its Settings page, and one is font size). Don’t want toast notifications? Screw you! Want to make the mouse scroll wheel scroll fewer than a page at a time? Up yours! Adjust the colour scheme? We’re blu(e)! Have more than one column, change the auto-refresh options, or tweak the font size (alright, they can do the last one)? Go to hell!


The TL;DR of the matter is, if you want a good desktop Twitter client, stick with http://www.twitter.com – it still has the most features, is less annoying, and doesn’t suck as hard.

			

		

		

			
Short: Hide Twitter’s “Who To Follow” ‘Feature’

			
August 29, 2010 /  posted in "It's a Feature", Short, Twitter / No Comments

			


One of the reasons I deleted my Facebook accountTwitter Logo was because of all of the useless ‘features’ they threw in, one of which was a box suggesting who to be friends with. Well, Twitter recently added a similar feature called ‘Who To Follow” that suggest people you should follow based on people that are followed by the people you follow. Right.


Well, fortunately this ‘feature’ is easy to disable if you use Firefox or Google Chrome. Simply install the Adblock Plus extension for Firefox (or Adblock for Chrome), subscribe to a filter list, and then manually add the following filter:


twitter.com###wtf-inner


Done! No more “Who To Follow” box!

			

		

		

			
Hidden Messages in Twitter Trending Topics

			
August 23, 2010 /  posted in Non-Tech, Short / No Comments

			


I’ve always suspected that there were hidden messages in Twitter’s trending topics, and today I found a perfect example via the Canadian trends:


Trending Topics
The order wasn't edited - only the boxes and snarky comments added.

			

		

		

			
After 5000 Tweets: A Review/HowTo of Twitter

			
June 11, 2010 /  posted in Android, Apple, howto, Rants, Twitter / No Comments

			


I recently hit the 5,000 tweet mark on Twitter, and figured that it’s as good a time as any to write something about my experience on the abbreviated social networking site. It also seems appropriate as I permanently deleted my Facebook account (well, I’m in the process, anyway).


Click ‘Continue Reading’ below for the wall-of-text review.


 »Read More

			

		

		

			
Non-Tech: The Prize

			
March 16, 2010 /  posted in Non-Tech, Short, Twitter / 3 Comments

			


I went to check my mail at the post office today and was happily surprised to see a parcel card in the box. I wandered over to the post office counter, and the clerk informed me that I’d have to pay $6.44 plus GST (note: after July, this same transaction will cost more due to the incoming HST). As I was expecting a few different packages, I paid the fee, and the Postie returned with an over-stuffed envelope. From the logo on the return-to-sender portion of the envelope I knew immediately that it was the prize I won for being @Telus‘s 4,000th follower on Twitter.


Pictured: The meerkat, the envelope, and my receipt.


Immediately after I posted about this on Twitter, the nice representative Direct Messaged me, apologized, and offered to reimburse me for the expense. I declined (as, after all, a matter of ~$7.00 isn’t worth taking their time over). Besides, it’s actually pretty funny – I regularly get ‘bent-over’ by my cell carrier, Rogers (get it? Bent over? Rogers? Rogered? Huh? Come on, it’s funny!). At least Telus apologizes when they do it accidentally!

			

		

		

			
On Trends

			
August 30, 2009 /  posted in "It's a Feature", Tomfoolery, Twitter / No Comments

			


One of the more confusing aspects of Twitter can sometimes be the Trending Topic feature – it lists the top-ten-most-tweeted-terms currently running, as below:


Trending Topics
What's Twitter up to?


Sometimes, though, you may not understand why a topic is trending, even after searching it and reading the tweets. Spam bots often take advantage of trending topics and flood those with ads for products and phishing attempts, making it that much harder. Enter What The Trend, a site that claims it will help you figure out why something is a trending topic.


Sometimes, though, it’s a little too accurate. Or maybe not enough. You decide.


Wait, what?
Wait, what?