Twitterrific Wishlist

Twitterrific is a great little program. If you are a Twitter user and have a Mac, I can wholeheartedly recommend it to you. But it could be even better, so here is my wish list for Twitterrific:

1. New feature: A new search or filter, so we can quickly see all the twits with a certain keyword, or from/to a certain person.
2. Consistency: Show outgoing direct messages in the timeline. Incoming direct messages can be shown, but the messages you send are never shown.
3. Bug fix: The text field looses its focus when alt-tabbing to another application and then coming back to Twitterrific.
4. New feature: Support for multiple Twitter accounts used at the same time. (From what I read this one is coming.)
   

Basecamp new Feature: "Reply by email"

37 signals launched a new feature in Basecamp: the ability to reply to messages posted on Basecamp directly with your email client. This is great; in principle it should make Basecamp messages more useful, and I always like to see more features added to the products we are using (and paying for every month!).

I gave it a try this morning. My assessment so far is that it doesn't work well enough to be useful. Until at least some of the issues are taken care of, I will not use this feature and I will not recommend that our clients use it either. Here are few show stoppers:

• It doesn't deal well with end of lines. See for instance what other users will see when I post a message by sending a reply from Gmail:
  
  
• When you reply to a message from your mail client, in most cases the mail client will quote the message and add before that something that reads: On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 2:51 PM, such and such wrote. This line isn't removed by Basecamp. It will stay there at the end of all your messages.
• If you try to get around this issue by just removing the entire quoted text before typing in your message, your message won't back posted. You will receive an email from Basecamp telling you your message wasn't posted, but that reply does not contain a References header so it can be recognized as part of the same thread by your mail client, and it does not contain your message. So essentially you don't know which message didn't go through.

Screen Sharing Software: Some Are Good, Most Are Bad

I recently tried a number of screen sharing applications and have been generally disappointed:

• Yugma has been my favorite for a while, until Yugma came out with version 3. When it version 3 was first released I had a number of problems, which I finally managed to solve, but others I am using this tool with are having similar problems, and when they do it is in general the end of the story. Verdict: failed.
  
• Yuuguu, despite the ridiculous name, worked more often than Yugma. Unfortunately it has been very unreliable: the connection to the server is dropping on a regular basis, forcing all the participants to rejoin the meeting. Verdict: failed.
• DimDim doesn't support screen sharing on the Mac. It also does so many things, like providing document sharing and a shared white board, that I am worried they won't focus enough on screen sharing. I tried the it on Windows and found a number of refresh issues. Verdict: failed.
• Vyew is comparable to DimDim. Screen sharing didn't on a Mac from Firefox (the whole interface got locked up) but it worked from Safari. They have a page with known bugs, which was unaccessible at the time of this writing. It works from Windows, but people on the other side see a resized view of the screen with is always either too large or too small depending on the size of your browser window. (There doesn't seem to be a "show in 1:1 button".) Also the interface is way to cluttered for my taste. Verdict: close.
  
• WebEx MeetMeNow is WebEx "affordable" offering ($50/month per account), but it doesn't work on the Mac. Verdict: failed.
• GoToMeeting, like WebEx MeetMeNow is priced at $50/month, and like WebEx also doesn't work on the Mac. Verdict: failed.
• Glance does just screen sharing (I like that!). It is simple and works smoothly both on Mac and Windows. Pricing is reasonable at $50/month. It just lacks one crucial feature: the ability, as a host, to make one of the attendees the presenter. If you don't need this feature, this might be a good solution for you. Verdict: close.
• LiveLook is very much like Glance, without the need to install a software, but with the same limitation: the host can't make an attendee the presenter. You pay 2.5 cents per minute per attendee. So a 1 hour meeting with 3 other people will cost you $4.50. Verdict: close.
  

The best I have found so far is WebHuddle. Here is what I like about it:

• It works both on Mac and Windows.
• No installation is required; it runs entirely from your browser.
  
• It is based on open source software; it you wish, you can install WebHuddle on your own servers.
• You can schedule meetings, send a link to participants. Participants don't have to register; they just need to enter their name and email to join.
• You can switch to a full-color mode (called "JPEG mode"), so participants can see your screen exactly as you do.
• You can make other participants the presenter, at which point they can share their screen.

WebHuddle isn't perfect: the UI has room for improvements, and you can't let another participant control your mouse and keyboard. Still, if you use screen sharing, you should really give it a try.

If you are using other screen sharing tools not mentioned here and that work well for you, please let me know in a comment below.

Better Technology, More Facts, Better Politics

TUAW writes:

The iPhone transforms people like me from insufferable know-it-alls to insufferable know-it-alls with the entire Internet in our pants. (Or fashionable handbag.) (Or manziere.) (BRO!) Google and Wikipedia don't equate to wisdom and understanding, but they provide inexhaustible streams of on-the-spot factoids. End those "Who's right?" arguments fast.

Most phones today are using GPRS for data, which is painfully slow. GPRS still does miracles when you are on the go and don't have any other option, but it is not "Internet at your fingertips". Because of this, you still rarely see people, and even geeks, take out their phone to check a fact during a discussion.

All this of course will change with 3G, faster processors, and cheaper phones. We can now be confident that a few years from now we'll all have a phone in our pocket or purse that will enable us to very comfortably access the Internet.

Will this change the nature of face-to-face conversations? Will the phone succeed in becoming a tool that enhances our face-to-face experience?

Twitter: A Few Things I Like About It

1. It is simple. It doesn't impose much on you. It provides a layer of social network / public IM on top of what you already use. Unlike Facebook, it doesn't try to replace a lot of the tool you already use; it doesn't try to be the your only destination to do everything online.
2. It is public. Most of what is going on on Twitter is entirely public. It isn't siloed; it isn't made available to circle of friends you choose. The fact that every twit is public, archived, and searchable keeps people honest.
   
3. 140 characters forces all us to be concise, to go directly to the point.
4. It is open: you can access or post on Twitter from a number of different software and devices. Use text messages, www.twitter.com from your desktop browser, m.twitter.com from the browser on your phone, or an application like Twitterrific (native on the Mac) or Twirl (AIR).
   
5. You only see twits from people you decide to follow. People can direct message you (send you a private twit), but only if you follow them. This keeps spam out of the system.

Yuuguu: Screen sharing, Free and Easy

Yes, Yuuguu is a ridiculous name. Do you picture yourself asking a client to join you for a meeting on... Yuuguu? But it has some great features compared to many other similar tools I have used in the past:

• Signing up is super-fast. Download the tool (they have Windows and Mac versions), run it, register with the service, and you're up and running.
• When you are sharing your screen with other people, Yuuguu tells you what the current delay is before viewers see an update. This way you can pace yourself, without having to ask people "have you seen that? do you see now my screen with X on it?"
• By default, Yuuguu reduces the number of colors for the images it sends, to reduce bandwidth usage and improve speed. But sometimes colors do matter. Yuuguu lets you choose if you want to use "real colors" or not, and you can switch back and forth during your presentation.
• If you just want to share your screen with someone who won't need to share back their screen with you, you can just point them to a web page, ask them to enter a PIN, and they will see your screen in their browser, with no registration required on their part.

Give it try, and let me know what you think.

iPhone SDK and the Single Application Policy

Apple announced last week that you will be able to run only one application at a time on the iPhone. This means you won't be able to have applications that run in the background, maybe keep a connection open to a server and notify you when appropriate.

I see really two classes of applications that will be in great demand:

1. Games. Obviously.
2. Push applications.

By push applications, I mean applications that always have the latest information for you ready to use. (That information can be pushed through a connection which is left open, or the application can poll the server from time to time to download the latest information is almost an implementation detail as far as this discussion is concerned.)

Consider these examples:

• An IM client;
• A Twitter client that notifies you when one of your friends have posted a new message;
• A Podcast application that downloads shows over the air (say at 3 in the morning, so it doesn't bother anyone);
• A New York Times reader, which always have pre-downloaded for you all the latest articles from the New York Times;
• A Skype client, which notifies you when someone is calling you.
  

It looks like Apple's policy will prevent developers from creating this type of applications. Talk about a missed opportunity!