Blue Chi’s

My previous post on my addiction to Twitter attracted a lot of replies, many were written by people who are not Twitter. I have reached this stage where quitting Twitter is NOT an option. I feel that I am part of a community of people I care about and whom I have no other direct regular method of communication with. I am, like the majority of people in my Twitter circle, having a lot of fun on Twitter, I’m meeting new people, learning about new things to do in town and discussing topics through methods that cannot be replicated on any other medium. I just CANNOT QUIT.

What I would like to do is be able to carry on with my life and still have fun on Twitter like everybody else. I have developed a simple strategy to be able to do this. First of all, I decided to CLOSE DOWN TweetDeck when I’m doing something else. It is really not rocket science, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to do anything else when there are 5 new tweet update notifications every 30 seconds. For example, this time I don’t have TweetDeck opened as I’m writing this blog post! See!!!

Second thing, I am going to have a Twitter break each 45 minutes or between switching tasks. This way I will have something to look forward to and will have a systematic method for checking Twitter. In order to time myself I’m using my good old Klok application which I’ve been using for a couple of years now. I cannot live without and I don’t know how I never used it since I got back in town earlier this month. I have Klok installed on my work machine and my computers at home.

I am also starting to get back into a systematic to do list workflow for everything. I have installed a number of iPhone apps and will see which one to go with. Will try using GTD, but not sure if it’ll work.

Finally, I’ve stuck up a new banner in my room to indicate my next goal! I want to receive a 1,000,000 page views a month at the Republic of Code. I’ve been stuck at around 500,000 pageviews a month for a year now and never exceeded. Some of you remember my old banner, which worked. All I need is to have a goal to work towards!

I have already implemented many of these methods today and I managed to respond to all new forum threads, read two chapters in a programming book, AND GO OUT OF THE HOUSE AND BUY A PAIR OF SHOES. I have also chatted with Twitter and had fun with the guys over there. So I think it should work out if I properly focus!

A lot of bloggers in Oman are starting to use Twitter these days and it was really fun having a number of people giving us live coverage of Gulf Cup matches using twitter.

One thing I noticed is that the majority of people are using the standard Twitter web portal to tweet, which is extremely bare and does not provide a lot of fuctionality, I am not sure how mny people know that there many different standalone Twitter clients that can enhance your Twitter experience.

I tried a number of clients on the PC and the iPod touch, but the one I would like to talk about today is TweetDeck. This is is a desktop client available for Windows, Mac and Linux that is built on AIR - an Adobe technology for creating desktop applications with online functionality. 

TweetDeck runs on your computer like any other application, it can be minimized to the toolbar. Whenever someone makes a tweet you will get a small IM like notification. TweetDeck has one-click URL shortening, message shortening, TwitPic upload, and friend groups. Like the majority of AIR applications, it is extremely light and has a clean UI.

TweetDeck is free, so if you are a Twitter user there is no reason for you not to give it a try. You will need to install the Adobe AIR runtime if you don’t have that already.

I have previously also tried twhirl - another AIR based desktop client, twitterfic – an application for the iPhone/iPod touch, Twitter Tools – a WordPress plug-in for making tweets (currently using this for Republic of Code twitter account), and the official Twitter Facebook application for posting my tweets as Facebook status updates.

I used the Twitter Mobile Portal in the past, but now I make most of my on-the-go tweets using SMS.

I’m not sure if anybody else uses any special Twitter clients, but Muscati seems to be using TwitterBerry on his Blackberry as you can see from the screenshot above.