Alert Thingy 1.3 – Talk About Timing

What a case of crazy timing. The day after I compare Alert Thingy to Twhirl, Alert Thingy comes out with a new version that pretty much addresses my major beef. The app now allows you to follow tweets in addition to FriendFeed, allowing the app to be used on both. It even goes to the trouble of removing duplicates – certainly a nice touch.

But, it still isn’t there. Here’s why.

In Twhirl, I can easily click on a person’s username and view their tweets and follow them – all from the interface. Alert Thingy does not provide clickable usernames and I cannot choose to follow people from inside Alert Thingy. Now, it is possible this is a drawback to the Friendfeed API – I have no idea. But, it does keep me from using it.

If I click on “Michael Arrington on Twitter” at the top, it takes me to my web browser to view that single tweet in the browser. Useless. Worse, if I wanted to click and view/follow any of the commenters on this tweet (Toby Brown, Ryan, Tony), I can’t. It isn’t clickable. This means I still have to return to the FriendFeed site to manage my account and that is precisely what I want to get away from.

It isn’t there yet. But, I’m still watching. For now, I’m not going to stop using Twhirl. One of things I really dig about Twhirl is that I can do everything from one client.

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