Twitter Is Not Invincible

(+ Tutorial for Free Twitter Mac Client)

Shocking News: Twitter Is Not Invincible.

Twitter is one of these Web 2.0 services that has to struggle with a non-stop growing community and obviously has troubles keeping up the servers running the way they should. Tisk. Tisk.

It happened a lot lately. Twitter is down. That’s what she said. So what is there to do other than tweet tweet tweet all day?

My favorite whentwitterisdown.com recommendations are… When twitter is down,

• find more productive ways of ignoring your family,
• there is no zeitgeist, 
• it kind of puts things (back) in perspective, doesn’t it?

Here a compelling list of things you can do whentwitterisdown.com! I couldn’t help but tweet about this blog entry, so excuse my twitteritis. 

Do you guys know a neat way of using twitter on a mac other than Twitterific (I don’t feel like paying 25 bucks, that’s EUR 15, for a software that does such a simple thing…)? Actually, I’ve seen quite a cool thing, it uses Fluid and Hahlo for Twitter updates. Can’t wait for the release of this menu extension for this application that allows browser specific applications. According to the man talking in the video, it should be out soon (it now obviously is - read the how to part of Twitter in your menu bar), so make sure you don’t miss giving it a go and save some money that you can later waste on ridiculous gas prices (in Austria the Benzin is up at 1.4something. That is insane!

How to Update Twitter right from your Menu Bar

(Mac Only - free software solution - requires Leopard, 3rd party app Fluid and hahlo.com)

This quick tutorial goes out to my Mac user audience. Are you also fed up with the fact, there there hardly is quite a useful and handy twitter client that is not too overpriced (Tisk tisk Twitterific!) and forces ads on you on a hourly basis? Well, I think i might have something for you in store.

If you follow the instructions below, you can get a free Twitter client with just a couple of clicks. Oh it’s free, it feels good (and has this iPhone GUI), oh lovely:

Have you ever heard of Fluid (a Mac application)? It allows site specific browser windows that you can start like an application. This is exactly the point that we are going to make use of for our menu-bar twitter client thingy we have been longing for since the release of twitter.

Step 1: Download Fluid.app on fluidapp.com! This guide uses Version 0.9.1.5! The software basically is very close to a 1.x release, I think.

Next thing we do is use the hahlo.com Twitter online client that is actually intended for iPhone users. I really like the iPhone’s resolution (it’s 320×480 pixel display) and this approximately is the size of the window I want to pop up for my occasional tweeterings (Attention: it’s addictive).

Step 2: Open up Fluid.app, enter www.hahlo.com and choose a name (here: Twitter Updater) - For a different icon than the hahlo H, you can chose any file. An icon that looks really good is the twitter T below. Drag the image onto your desktop for download or right click and Save Image As.

Step 3: Launch the application you just created you click Create open it with Launch Now. Default location is your Applications folder.

Step 4: Customize your Fluid Hahlo Application.

• Twitter Updater > Preferences > Appearance: I recommend the following settings. The window opacity shouldn’t be to low. The HUD (Black) look is the best looking window style. Plus, I don’t like my Spaces to jump from one into the other, so I want it to be clickable in all spaces.
  
• Twitter Updater > Convert to Menu Extra… This immediately forces a restart of the Site Specific Browser (that’s what SSB stands for) you just created.
  

Step 6: Login into your hahlo client with your twitter account information. Configure your Hahlo preferences by clicking on Menu > Preferences. You will probably want to see all the updates of you and your friends, so your home page should be set to Friends Timeline.

Step 7: Happy Tweeting. Click tweet and show some patience in case twitter is down once again. What to do when twitter is down? See the beginning of this post!

One last things that I would want fixed for the Version 1.x: Pretty downscaling of icons I provide in PNG. Now my Menu Extra icon looks pretty, but my Finder Icon is a pile of pixels.

Now that I gave you the magic trick instructions to an free Twitter client with just a couple of clicks, you should know that Twitter is public (unless you don’t want it to be) and you should think about the things you tweet before you hit that shiny Update button!

Update (July 2008) - Turns out Fluid is really useful in creating web-applications that substitute a offline client that does online jobs. Again, the free Twitter client with hahlo.com (see description above) is really handy and still in use. The Facebook “client” I had (with the iPhone version) turned out to be less handy. Facebook is too complex to cut out several features for me, obviously. Well, that said, I think, you should still give it a try and experiment with different web sites. It can be really useful! Fluid rocks. Btw, Apple plans on doing Web Applications in Snow Leopard. Is that the end of Fluid? *Duh Duh Duh Duhmmmm - Bethoven music*