Tweetie for Mac

Looking for a balance between the minimalistic Twitterific and the feature rich TweetDeck?

Well, you have found you match, and it’s name is Tweetie.

Tweetie is a simple yet feature rich free app for Mac. The free app is ad supported, but DON’T WORRY! The ads appear in-line with tweets, and use the same format, and don’t flash at all! The ads are provided by Fusion, and I’m sad to say that I’ve actually clicked on many of the ads because they looked interesting, and I actually bought an iPhone app that was being advertised.

Start out by looking at the interface.

Sleek, simple, stylish interface!

As you can tell, these are simply the tweets of people I follow. In the left you can click the variety of icons, that are self explanatory [but just in case, @= replies, the envelope=DMs, the magnifying glass=search].

If you look at the replies (@ symbol), you can see there is a blue dot above it. This indicates that there is a tweet in that category that I have not read. Once I have read the tweet the dot disappears.

Lets take a look at the replies tab [just click on the @ to get there].

Same sleek interface, but filtered everything but replies.

You can reply to a tweet at anytime by clicking the curvy arrow at the top right of each tweet. You can also repost (AKA retweet) a tweet by right clicking on a tweet ad clicking repost. You can set if it does ______(via @_____) OR RT @_____: _________ I prefer the RT @____:__ because it is more commonly used. You can change that in the preferences.

The DM (envelope) tab is quite interesting.

As you can tell, DMs are sorted into conversations with each tweeter (tsk-tsk) you have sent and received DMs with. Click on a user to see your conversation with them.

Almost like iChat!

You can click the big reply button in the top right to DM someone back.

The search function is also very interesting.

Search for Tweetie by entering tweetie on the previous screen and pressing return!

To search, click on the magnifying glass. In the search box that appears in the top right, enter a term (in this case it was tweetie), and press return. the box will disappear and tweets for your search will appear in the window. Visit any other tabs and come back to the search and the search term will disappear!

Another great cool feature of search is having multiple searches in different windows.

This function only available in searches.

After you open it in a new window, go back and enter another term. The window will remain with the same search terms, and you can open as many windows (which means as many searches) as you want.

Plenty of searches for popular twitter clients!

Also, did I mention you can use boolean search terms with the search (such as AND or OR)?

Wow, I almost forgot

1 to create a tween, just press Command-N. a small window will open where you can type anything. Type in a URL and press Option>Command>S to automatically shorten it. Then, just press command>return and the tweet will be off. You can also get a bookmarklet for your browser so on any page, you can click on the bookmarklet and a tweet will open with the URL in it. Cool! Also, you can even assign a global hot-key so in any app, anywhere, you can press this key sequence and the new tweet window will open, and not bring all of the other tweetie windows with it. Awesome!

Among all of these great things there are a couple of extra things that Tweetie does.

Tweetie has seamless support for multiple accounts, so you can have it look like this:

Click on the other icon to see replies, dms, etc. for that account!

Also, you can enable a small menubar icon which does one simple thing: indicate when you have unread tweets. When you have unread tweets it looks like this:

Click on the icon to show the tweetie window!

But when you have no unread tweets it looks like THIS:

Blends in fine!

I hope you enjoy tweetie, and for $20 you can disable ads, which by the way look like this:

Simple, interesting, in-line ads.

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My Top 5 favorite things about Mac

I love my Mac.

I actually was a PC fan for multiple years. Up until the summer of 2008, I loved PCs. I felt bad for all of the people who had tiger machines and I had absolutely no I dea what mac products were out there.

But in the summer of 2008 I went to a computer summer camp called DMA where I took a class on web design. At DMa EVERYTHING was Mac. The game design classes were using Windows (The main gaming platform after all) on bootcamp.

My instructor loved Macs. And the thing was, I had really never used a Mac and I was fine using it. I knew how to get around, it all simply made sense. And finally after one week of class, I wanted a Mac.

AnI love the simplicity, but here is a list of the top 5 things I love about my Mac.

5. The Menubar

Having the File, Edit, View etc. menus at the very top o the screen has proven to be easy and I like it. Why? I don’t really know…

4. The Dock

Instead of having application shortcuts cluttering my desktop or “Quick Launch” icons, The applications are right there in my Dock. And after launching an application instead of each window that appears of the application showing up in the menubar all of the windows are part of the one running application which is indicated in the dock. And when a new application is launched it shows up to the right of all the others. Also, when you minimize a window it goes to the right of the divider. With a cool animation! And then Stacks. Stacks is AWESOME! I love how I can move a folder there and instead of opening a new window to see what is inside of it a cool little fan or grid springs out to give me easy access. And having the trash bin right there? It just all makes sense and saves a lot of space compared to the windows menubar.

3. Mounted drives on desktop

When plug in a USB disk or DVD or whatever, instead of going into My Computer, It’s just right there on my desktop. And when I unplug it, it’s gone. Once again, it just all makes sense.

2. Built in printer drivers

My old HP printer stopped working, so I needed to connect to a printer downstairs (Oy). The printer was being shared through windows on a computer downstairs. If I was using a PC, it would be driver mania. On my Mac? It al makes sense. Open System Preferences (another of my favorite things instead of control panel), go to Print&Fax, Click the obvious +, Select windows, and select the computer downstairs, and select the printer connected to it. I want the Gutenprint, I click done and tada, I can print to it. So simple, no CDs or finding drivers on the web needed! YAY!

1. Spotlight

I have no idea what I would do without spotlight. I need to open an application. I can do it in 4 clicks, a ew scrolls, and some hard searching through alphabetized names. Or, I can find it in 5-* keystrokes, which will take much less time if you consider how much moving around the mouse you need and how fast you type. Just press Command>space and type the name of the file, application, iCal event, address book card, email, or even past visied webpage and press the return key to open it. No Start, All Programs, Etc. involved! Say I want to open system preferences. Instead of going and opening finder, going into Applications, scrolling until I find it, opening it, and closing the Finder window, I just press Command>space, type Syst and press return. System PReferences opens and the spotlight search dissappears and when you reopen it and it will have cleared the search for you. There is Google Desktop for PC users, but that takes up quite a lot if CPU. Spotlight is awesome!