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Seesmic Desktop – the new Twitter App that aims high

Posted by phorner On May 2, 2009

UPDATE: About an hour after I posted this article, an updated version of Seesmic Desktop was released. The new version contains:

  • Facebook Integration
  • Following and Unfollowing Twitter users
  • Fonts enlarged by 1 point.
  • Updated user interface for easier viewing
  • Ability to “Favorite” tweets and “Like” Facebook posts
  • Allowing to rename the account from the configuration window
  • Clearing the timeline from a “USERLIST” with the “CLEAR” button
  • Various bug fixes (for Mac and Windows). Bug fixes include:
    • webcam snapshot tool when opening
    • ensuring userlists and searches are saved
    • correcting various actions when Seesmic Desktop window is closed and reopened
    • various validation messages (url validation for short url, credential validation to share images)

Seesmic Desktop is a new application that displays your Twitter and Facebook streams. It uses Adobe Air and runs on both PC and Mac.

Seesmic Desktop has many great features. Firstly, the ability to add multiple Twitter accounts (you can only add one Facebook account at this stage). Rather than having to swap between accounts to track your Twitter streams, it logs into all your accounts at startup and displays all the Tweets in one list (the Home window). A greatly requested feature is the ability to split off each account into it’s own window pane (or column). The Tweet and Facebook streams are then displayed in this new pane for the chosen account. This functionality alone really helps to separate Seesmic Desktop from all the other Twitter apps out there. Each account pane has the options at the bottom to show incoming Tweets, replies, direct messages, your own updates, and to use the Lookup feature of Twitter.

One other great feature is the ability to sort the people you are following into groups. By choosing the Userlist option, you can create a list and then start adding users. For example, you create a list called “Celebrities”. Inside this list you add Ashton Kutcher and Oprah. When you click on the Celebrities list, a new window pane is created with all the Tweets from all the users in that list displayed. This really helps you to segregate the stuff you find important from the not so important.

There is a link between Seesmic Desktop and Twitpic. By clicking on the Share Image button, you can drag and drop an image into the Share Image dialog and then Seesmic Desktop will post it to Twitpic automatically for you. Also mentioned is that video sharing will also be implemented in the coming versions.

You can, of course, post Tweets to Twitter and update your Facebook status as well. You can select from which account the message is to come from, enter your message and even shorten URLs by using either bit.ly, digg.com, is.gd, snurl.com, tr.im or twurl.nl.

The layout of Seesmic Desktop is extremely clean and intuitive. On the left hand side you have the standard Twitter navigation options (Home, Reply, Private, Sent). Below these are the Accounts, Userlists and Search options. When a search is performed, the keyword or phrase is stored under this option for future use.

As this is only a Preview release at this stage, there are still many features not yet implemented. Some of the features to come are:

  • Block a user
  • Spellcheck
  • View Followers/Following
  • Add services other than twitter (friendfeed, seesmic video, ideni.ca, laconi.ca)
  • Read/Unread indicator

This video gives you a good overview of Seesmic Desktop.

Seesmic Desktop looks like it has alot of potential to become the king of the Twitter App heap. I’m looking forward to seeing the enhancements over the next few weeks.

For more information: Seesmic Desktop

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Facebook, Twitter

Multiple file upload using jQuery and Flash

Posted by phorner On May 1, 2009

I was recently searching for a solution that would allow people to upload photos of their homes on Golf Home Exchange. The standard upload method using HTML forms and PHP was not good enough as their was no indication of progress. As a result, the users thought the system wasn’t responding or something had gone wrong when simply it was taking a while to upload the image. Many simply gave up and never finished the registration process.

Luckily I stumbled across Uploadify, developed by Ronnie Garcia. Uploadify is a jQuery plugin that allows the easy integration of multiple (or single) file uploads. By default, the standard File Upload dialog in browsers only allows for single selection of files. To circumvent this issue and enable multiple file uploading, Flash is used.

To get started, you will need to download the jquery.uploadify-v1.6.2.zip package, then unzip and upload the files to your website.

Then in your HTML, add this code:

<body>
<input type="file" name="fileInput" id="fileInput" />
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
$('#fileInput').fileUpload ({
'uploader'  : 'uploader.swf',
'script'    : 'upload.php',
'cancelImg' : 'cancel.png',
'auto'      : true,
'folder'    : '/uploads'
});
});
</script>
</body>

This will set up Uploadify in it’s basic form. There are a ton of parameters you can set, plus event listeners (e.g. onAllComplete – triggers when all the files in the queue have been uploaded).

You can provide your own styled upload button and specifying the path to it by using the buttonImg parameter. If you want to customise the look of the upload progress bars, you will need to go into the Uploadify FLA and modify that manually.

Uploadify

You can also specify whether multiple files upload simultaneously or one at a time.

The script parameter allows you to specify your server side code that gets executed once a file has finished uploading. The example provided is PHP but you could use any backend development language.

There is only one downside to Uploadify, and that is that it needs Flash Player installed. If a user doesn’t have Flash Player installed, then it won’t work. I’m still looking for a File Upload solution for instances where the user doesn’t have Flash Player installed. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Apart from this small issue, Uploadify is a solid alternative to using the standard File Upload dialog.

For more information and documentation: Uploadify

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Flash, Javascript, Open Source