Well it didn’t take me long to get tired of the Google Talk / Twitter combo. I still love Google Talk and Twitter but I felt that Twitter was slowly hi-jacking my GTalk application with its fast moving updates. Despite its benefits, Twitter really is a catch-22. To keep updates under control, you need to be selective with your contacts but to get the full benefit out of it, you need to have as many contacts as possible.

This is where using GTalk became problematic - the updates were coming in so thick and fast that I had to eventually turn off the notification window - which resulted in me missing important IM messages from business clients. My girlfriend also got tired of Google Talk constantly opening flashing orange windows and she often shut Google Talk down - which cut me off from clients. Third of all, the flashing orange windows were wrecking my concentration and productivity. But I need Twitter constantly on to network. So in the end, something had to give.

For the past few days, I was testing some alternative Twitter programs and I was unsure which one to go with. But it was Amit Agarwal’s post today that made me settle on TWhirl. It runs on the Adobe AIR platform and I am a big fan of AIR. I have previously posted on other AIR platforms such as DiggTop and the Google Analytics desktop app. I also use the Pownce desktop AIR app on a regular basis.

One of the big advantages of TWhirl is that it only collects updates from Twitter every few minutes (a maximum of 60 requests to the Twitter server per hour). This means that updates come in much more slowly so it becomes easier to read each update and ponder it / respond to it before the next update comes through. This took a lot of getting used to at first (in fact it was so slow that I was convinced it was broken!) but now I am totally hooked on the idea. My desktop has calmed down and I no longer feel compelled to frantically speed-read all of the updates that come in.

Some other excellent positives about TWhirl :

• No beeping or other notification noise unless you ask for it. I currently have it set only to beep if I receive a direct message or reply.
• No flashing windows.
• TWhirl can be kept on top of all other windows. So I can work in the browser and have TWhirl updating to the right of my screen at all times.
• You can specify the size and style of the font on the interface. So if Arial doesn’t float your boat, change it to something else.
• You can make the interface transparent so you can see your browser window underneath it.
• You can see the photo associated with each Twitter account. It’s really nice to be able to put a face with a name.
• Multiple-account management.   If you’re a “super-Twitter” and maintain several accounts, you can easily switch between them in TWhirl.

The program does take a bit of getting used to though. For example, normally if you want to find out the details of a Twitter you are not currently following, you would use the command “whois :”. But in TWhirl, this doesn’t seem to work too well. Instead, it’s faster to just click on the Twitter username and the details will be instantly displayed in the window. What I found neat about this is that by typing a username into TWhirl, it will show you the last 20-30 updates that person made. So you can see right away if that person is worth following. Google Talk didn’t give me that functionality.

Another thing - which will eventually become annoying - when I was using Google Talk, my Twitter contacts were basically portable. When I was at a computer - any computer - I could log into Gmail and the integrated chat window would open up with Twitter updates. So wherever I was and whatever I was doing, I could log in and keep on top of Twitter. But now that I have moved to TWhirl, I would need to rely on the other computer also having TWhirl - or use the Twitter webpage instead. So a portable TWhirl for the USB stick would be nice at some point in the future.

Technorati Tags: Adobe, AIR, application, desktop, TWhirl, Twitter

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