Tag Archives: Twitter

Social Media Experiments

Lately, I’ve tried out some new tools to increase my social media space, all with varying degrees of success.

I first heard of Klout through my Twitter feed when someone posted their klout scores. I knew immediately that I had to go and take a look-see.

What is klout?

It’s an online tool that people use to measure their influence on Twitter. It’s fairly simple and easy to use. Just sign up at the klout website, enter your Twitter ID, and within a day you have a detailed report. Here is a brief screenshot summarizing my report:

My Klout scores

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the summary tallied closely with my estimate of my Twitter presence. However, I find the little square in the figure above unnecessarily complicated. It does not really in any way reflect the text on the right. But, other than this little crib…I like my score, and I like the methodology by which klout has arrived at the score. They don’t just count the number of followers or even the number of tweets. They basically look at the response generated by each tweet, which sounds eminently sensible to me. It weeds out spammers, and hopefully those folks who are tweeting just for the sake of increasing their klout.

However, for an amateur blogger/tweep like me…using klout doesn’t seem to make too much sense apart from a purely curiosity value. But for professionals looking for business opportunities, it seems like a useful tool to track your effectiveness. However I know I’m not going to be tracking my score all that often.

Foursquare: I knew all about Foursquare for a long time of course. I just didn’t realize that I could use it effectively in India as well. However, my local Coffee Day disabused me of that idea. A large poster announcing discounts for Foursquare users (based on the number of check-ins) prompted me to try this out. Cafe Coffee Day is apparently offering 15% discount for users who have checked in 3 times into the same outlet. If the user is a Mayor of that outlet, Coffee Day serves them with a free coffee and a 20% discount on every 3rd check-in from that user.

Note: The offer is currently available only in Bangalore outlets.

Anyway, back to the topic of Foursquare. The physical incentive offered by Coffee Day prompted me to sign up, but I quickly realized how useful Foursquare actually is only during my recent trip to Chennai. The iPhone app rocks! If I am wandering around and realize I am hungry, I can quickly check out outlets close by, along with reviews of users who have already checked in there. Cool! Checking in to every place I go is fast becoming an obsession…what with all the unlocking of different badges that are available…and of course, let’s not forget the monetary incentives that I am sure more outlets will start offering .

I am still playing my way around it though, and am still too wary to check in when I am actually at the place. Just some vague sense of insecurity…not sure whether it is very wise to do so especially on empty highway spots, or during late night jaunts. I am looking to enhance my friends circle though, and hopefully can get more use out of it than I presently can.

And last but not the least, I have become addicted to Instagram. This is again an app that I downloaded and now use to post photos onto my Twitter feed. I love the ease and simplicity of the app. All I need to do is take a photo, apply an appropriate filter from the filters list (I could do with more variety of filters though), and there I have a nifty edited photo with an appropriate caption. Uploading that to Twitter/Facebook/Posterous/Tumblr is as simple as enabling it once through the configuration settings. So cool and easy to use.

I like the effects, and it’s making taking pictures (something of a chore normally) fun to do. The photos come out looking great, and if not great, well…the Instagram effects will more than adequately camouflage the inept photography ). What’s not to like? Well, nothing at all in my view

Have you tried any of these tools? What are your thoughts/opinions? I would love to know.

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I heart Windows 7

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Eh!! What’s a techie piece doing on my blog? But what can I say, when I love something this much, I have to spread the word . So here are my initial thoughts on Windows 7 (purely from a non-techie user). So, don’t beat me up if I have not provided any of the stats and numbers

A couple of weeks back, I traded in my old clunky Dell laptop running Windows XP, and got a spanking new, shiny Dell Latitude E6410 running Windows 7. It was an office initiated upgrade, and so I really had to go with whatever that was offered.

At first, I was wary. A previous bad experience with an HP laptop running Vista had me really running scared. I have never been a huge fan of Windows, and had pretty much resigned myself to another bloated, buggy, operating system experience.

But Windows 7 has been such a pleasant surprise.

The system admin had set up and configured everything – security, printers, software, so I really don’t have much to say on how easy/difficult it is to set up. But the usage, maan…it’s smooth, like butter. Really, no kidding…Windows 7 is a totally different user experience from Windows XP.

Some things I really like listed in no particular order:

The look: I am going to start with the superficial, and say I really like the look of the OS. It has the Vista’s beauty plus a little more added to measure. The translucent toolbars on the various Windows rock and in terms of looks, it gives the Linux and Apple’s OS a little tough competition. The day I got this, all my teammates gathered around to ooh and aah at the look. OK, have to be accurate here, maybe just 1 or 2 people, but still a big deal… it’s not easy to impress a bunch of techies with a Windows upgrade for heaven’s sake!
The desktop search: I didn’t really have any issues with the Windows Explorer search in XP. But this Search blows it out of the water. I just have to enter the search keyword and it’s off and running. Before I know what’s happening, it has searched the entire comp + email in Outlook and come up with the relevant results. The speed and accuracy of the search is too cool.
The speed: My work requires the use of heavy-duty applications that log a lot of disk space. In earlier avatars of Windows, I had resigned myself to a slower pace of working because of the time it took to get apps up and running. Now, everything runs at a nice, snappy speed. I am really enjoying this new pace.
Preview files: The preview feature in Windows Explorer is great. If I want to see what’s in a bunch of files, I don’t have to open each and every one. In Windows Explorer, I just need to select the file, and I can see its contents on the right-hand side of the pane. Very useful. I just wish I could read PDFs like this as well, but unfortunately no
Sticky Notes: I can now just stop writing random notes and reminders to myself in Calendar/Notepad. Now, I just use Sticky Notes (kind of like an online Postit note), which just sits on my desktop reminding me I need to finish up something. On a single monitor, this could cause clutter, but since I extend my view to an additional stand-alone monitor, this does not cause me any issues at all.
Application compatibility options: Now, some of the old applications that I used on Windows XP don’t work on Windows 7 anymore. But hold on, Windows 7 does offer some sort of option to run these programs. If you can get the product to install, you can run software by using the “Run programs made for earlier versions of Windows” option, and then just follow the directions. It didn’t work all that well for me, but the issue is more with the application vendor itself and not the OS. I am just impressed that Windows 7 provides this option at all!

Some things not so good:

The look: Again starting with the superficial. The default wallpaper of Windows 7 is horrible, downright horrible, and just doesn’t give the right impression of the OS.Yuck! First thing I did was remove this eyesore, and change to another more pleasant desktop wallpaper provided.
Ugly default wallpaper!
Gadgets: The number of gadgets is disappointing and unimaginative. From Vista, I see the same old clock, calendar, and picture puzzle. Yawn!. I like the RSS Feed gadget that I think is new. But, my next thought is, if you have an RSS Feed gadget, then why not a Twitter feed gadget? That would have been so cool! OK, may be it would be a tad distracting for a work laptop . The CPU monitoring gadget is cool, though and very useful!
Applications: Paint and Calc have some improvements, but not nearly enough in my opinion. Paint needs to have stronger graphic capabilities. Considering that free software such as Paint.Net and Gimp have advanced image editing options, it seems strange that Microsoft continues to keep Paint’s options status quo!
And of course, IE continues to suck!

How about you folks? Some of you moved to Windows 7? What were your experiences?

My Five Essential iPad Apps

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I have mentioned loving the iPad in an earlier post. In this post, I will list and describe in specific the iPad apps that I am addicted enough to turn to everyday…because after all any Apple product is ultimately about the apps, right? So, here we go:

iBooks: I’m in love with the design of this app. Since I got iBooks I have read a book a week and haven’t paid a cent for it. There are thousands of free classics in there. Some of the books I’ve reread recently are Black Beauty and Gulliver’s Travels. What I particularly love is the extensive dictionary. I can look up any word just by tapping it twice, and I can easily highlight and annotate favorite passages in several colours. It’s awesome for book bloggers!

Note: I am not aware if Kindle or Nook have this functionality, so I can’t compare. Also, I am seeing that the prices of some books are much higher when bought through iBooks as compared to Amazon…so, yeah, I love the app, but would like to see better pricing on the books.

Flipboard - My own personalized magazine consisting of my Facebook and Twitter feeds laid out in magazine format. If you are not into Facebook or Twitter, this app has its own feeds of cool stuff from around the internet…plus, this app is free.Here’s a video demonstrating how it works:
Houzz: If you are decorating/building a house and looking for inspiration, this is THE app to download. Again, free…it provides a series of ideabooks based on a particular theme. The images are awesome and there is enough variety to cater to everybody’s tastes. A word of warning though – this app provides ample scope for domestic disagreements. We are currently in the midst of building our house, and K and I are quite dismayed to find out that so far, we are drifting towards the opposite ends of the design spectrum . The only thing we agree on is that this app totally rocks!
Chicfeed: This is totally fodder for the girl interested in seeing what people are wearing. Do you spend a lot of time trawling style blogs such as The Sartorialist? Then, download this free app to your iPad now. This is a fairly basic app that gathers all the latest photographs from widely popular style blogs and displays it on the iPad. You can happily kill a few minutes scrolling through the latest photos from The Sartorialist, Face Hunter, Jak And Jill Blog, Cherry Blossom Girl, LookBook, and altamira. Because the app displays only one photo at a time, the page loads are faster than the actual web pages. So, you end up using your time more efficiently !
WordPress: How could I leave out this one? In an earlier post, I had complained that I couldn’t figure out how to publish my posts. But after a little playing around, I found the trick. Now, I totally love this app. It’s so easy and convenient for me to jot down my thoughts as and when they occur, and create a post out of it when I have the time. It’s faster than the wordpress.com admin dashboard, and it allows me to respond faster to comments. In short, it rocks!
Ebay: Ebay has always been my reference point to check for prices of gadgets and books online. And now, with the iPad app, I can watch/bid/respond to buyer-seller emails faster than I ever could. Earlier, I would just space out and forget to respond, but somehow the app’s notifications remind me if I am being neglectful, which is almost always Also, like chicfeed, and WordPress, the page loads and search results are much faster through the app.

So, these are my favorite apps. True, there are more than 5…but why restrict myself to a number? So, what are your favorite apps? I would love to know. Btw, all the apps mentioned above are free…I am cheap over things like that sometimes

Update on my Participation in the Bleak House Readalong

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The edition of the book that I am reading (Penguin Classics)

I am happily chugging along with my reading of the Bleak House. At the moment, I have managed to complete around 10 chapters without any flagging of interest.

Bleak House is a monster of a book – almost 1000 pages or so. When it comes to the overall book, I have barely made a dent. The first 7 chapters merely serve as an introduction to the various characters whose lives we will be following. And there are plenty of them. The major character and one of the narrators is Esther Summerson – a young, orphan girl whose background is a mystery.

Two other characters – Ada and Richard are distant cousins (and orphans). All three of them are under the guardianship of John Jarndyce and come to love with him in Bleak House. John Jarndyce is currently battling a decades old lawsuit, which is the bane of his existence. By the way, Bleak House is in no way bleak at all, but rather a rambling, adorable house on top of a hill.

Apart from these major characters, there are tons more minor characters who are introduced. I can already appreciate how difficult it must be to connect the dots between all of them (for both the author and the reader).

My thoughts on the book so far:

I can’t begin to explain how clever this book is terms of writing. Although I have read less than a quarter of the book, I am very impressed.

The book starts with a description of the London fog. Very quickly we learn that the fog is also a metaphor for the state of the Jarndyce vs Jarndyce court case. I know there is some writerly/editorial word to refer to this sort of clever writing (is it allegory? allusion? no, I don’t think so). But whatever it is, it’s really well done.

Apart from this, Dickens uses satire very cleverly to make a gentle (and in some cases, not so gentle) mockery of the characters. See his description below of the Dedlock family – one of the oldest and most reknowned families in England:

It appears…that there is no end to the Dedlocks, whose family greatness seems to consist in their never having done anything to distinguish themselves, for seven hundred years.

There’s plenty more stuff like this. He lampoons do-gooders, lawyers, beedles, and many more people both high and low. I wonder if this book might have ruffled a few feathers here and there when it was first published?

Another part of the book that I can relate to is the basic story of the never-ending court case. The court system of 18th century England is alive and well in today’s India. I personally have witnessed my grandmother battling a court case for a number of years; she has even passed on, but the court case continues with the settlement nowhere in sight…it’s rather scary how little progress has been made both in our personal court settlement as well as the justice system (which has been very kindly handed over to us by the British) in general.

Anyway, that’s how far I have progressed on the book. More posts and updates to follow.

I have also decided to start a hash tag on Twitter (#bleakhouse) to record any thoughts as they occur to me. I invite you folks who are reading this book to use the #bleakhouse tag if and when you want to tweet about this book.

Amanda from The Zen Leaf is hosting this readalong.

My new Early Birthday Gift…

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…is the Apple iPad. Woohoo!!

The First Generation Apple iPad

I bought it when I went to the United States in May on work, and I can’t believe I have managed to keep this quiet on my blog for so long.

Well, I had my reasons to keep it quiet. I wanted to take my time with it and to figure out what exactly it’s good for and isn’t good for, so that I am able to post something meaningful about it, rather than just post a list of stats and apps.

I am a total Apple newbie, I have never used any of their products before (yes, I don’t even have an ipod), so when I opened the package I was totally surprised by the beautiful and simple design of the product. The images that I had seen on the web simply do not do enough justice to this product. I was even more surprised when I was able to configure my wireless network connection and email within a matter of minutes. All in all, the initial setup on the ipad – internet, mail, twitter, and facebook took less time than my laptop takes to even start up and detect the wireless connection. My laptop is pretty old though and is pretty much on its last legs, but still I was amazed at how quickly I was up and running on the ipad.

After the first initial euphoria, I encountered itunes. To say that itunes sucks would be an understatement. The interface and the search functionality suck. I tried to use itunes to sync up music and photos from my laptop to the ipad, and found it a pretty tiresome experience. It would have been so cool if I could have just directly connected the ipad as a device to the laptop and just moved the files accordingly, instead of going through this itunes rubbish interface.

The itunes experience turned me off the ipad for a few days. However, once I accepted this disappointment and moved on, I found a whole new world of great things to do on the ipad.

Remember an old blog post where I commented that the ipad had the potential to convert a whole new generation of kids towards reading more books? That was an off-the-cuff comment, but I can see it coming true with the snubnose.

She often used to turn her nose at the books that I bought or borrowed for her to read. But the children’s e-books on the ipad have really captured her imagination. And why not? Some of these book apps are extremely interesting.

The snubnose’s favorite book app is Toy Story. It’s amazing how flexible the app is. She can configure the book to read using Tom Hanks’ voice, or we can record our own voices instead. The pages of the book are in bright, vivid colors…but if she feels like it, she can just turn off the colors on any of the pages, and color it herself. So many options, but they are so simple and user-friendly that she can figure it out and do it herself. How cool is that? Oh, and did I mention the app is free?

Here is a demo for the app in case you are interested:

Reading e-books has also enhanced her interest in actual paper books. So, that makes me happy as well …at least the books I bought for her are not a waste. This experience also made me realize that e-books will probably be the medium of choice for the next generation of readers. All the books on my library shelf might as well be antique pieces.

How do I find the e-book experience?

I found e-books to be a pleasant surprise. It’s not that I haven’t read books online, I have. But those were mostly badly formatted PDFs, which I read purely because I could not wait for the actual book to come in store (Harry Potter). Before you ask, I don’t feel guilty about doing that because I eventually bought the books anyway. It’s just that I could not be bothered to pre-order and wait in line.

Anyway, I like iBooks. I also downloaded the Kindle and Borders e-reading apps. This is great because it allows me to take advantage of book deals on offer on these e-readers. I am still figuring out how it all works, but it does seem like I have more reading options. However, the quality of the iBooks app is far and away superior to the Kindle and the Borders ones.

So what else can I do with the ipad?

Well, social networking is a breeze for me now. Earlier, Twitter and Facebook were strictly weekend activities, and most of the times I just did not bother. I mean who’s gonna take the pains on my slower than slow system just to send out a random tweet or message. Well, now, it’s just so damn easy. I use the Twitterific and Facebook apps to post my updates and photos within seconds.

As for blogging, hmm…that’s a slightly different story right now. I downloaded a WordPress app for blogging, and it works great…it’s only got 2 problems-major ones though.

First major problem – Editing and uploading images is super smooth. In fact, it is much easier and quicker than doing it on WordPress.com. However, I am having issues getting the blog post published. I am still trying to figure it out, but my first inclination is to set it aside as a bug.
Second major problem – Saved drafts created using the WordPress app do not appear if I open the Admin Dashboard on WordPress.com and look for it in the Drafts folder. This sucks big-time as you can imagine. Both these problems combined renders the whole app pretty much useless.

However, I am hopeful that the next version of the WordPress app (hopefully there is one) will fix these issues and make blogging on the go a reality for me. However, this is a WordPress issue, and not an ipad one…so no putting the blame on the ipad.

Apart from blogging and social networking, I use the ipad to check and respond to work email quickly. I can also use it to make and mail notes to myself. I have yet to attempt any word processing applications though and I also don’t want to try. Do not want to get into frustrating compatibility issues with iPages and MS Office (what I use for a lot of my work).

The one thing I have yet to try with any seriousness on the ipad is Farmville. Yeah, that game that keeps clogging everyone’s Facebook walls. I have always been curious about it, so it was one of the first things I downloaded. I don’t really get the game, I tried it out and got bored within minutes. However, the snubnose seems to have got the hang of it pretty quickly. I noticed that within a very short span of time, she has grown and harvested corn, strawberries, and apples on her little patch! Impressive, right

So, in short Apple has one satisfied customer in me. The ipad’s turned out to be a gift for the entire family, and we all take turns (not without a little squabbling) with it. I would heartily recommend the ipad to anyone who asks me for my (admittedly uninformed, purely laywomanesque) opinion.

The only thing I need right now is a good case for the ipad. Until I get one, it’s going to remain securely at home.

So, any of you readers have any experiences to share regarding the ipad? Please share, I would love to know

Taking Back a Twitter Comment on American Television

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Yesterday, I tweeted that American television is a very strange beast. Couple of questions then bounced back asking why.

Well, I guess I need to undo that statement. You see, I am not a regular or even occasional TV watcher. If physically forced to sit down (times with the family in front of the TV) and if I don’t have anything interesting to read, well then…and only then I watch TV.

The point I am trying to make is that I have no idea that Indian TV is any different from American. I am sure there are enough and more reality shows, dating shows, and movie gossip and stuff. It’s just that I haven’t been exposed to it.

These days after work, I get back to my dinky little hotel room, sit back with a cup of coffee, and switch on the TV – just because it’s too late to do anything interesting.

And all I see are car chases, news items about crazy things happening in the world, and weather reports, which are really not mind-blowingly interesting.

But then, once in a while I come across something really sweet and heart-warming, which makes me go a little ooohhh…

Watch this clip I was able to pull out from youtube:

It’s a lovely video of how a bus driver’s regular passengers decide to surprise him on his birthday. Just catch his smile at the end of the video . It’s so sweet that I am wondering whether this could be a fake. What do you think? Real or fake?

Has Anyone Tried Posterous Yet?

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I am probably very late to the Posterous party, and everybody already knows everything there is to know about it; but still I need to think through Posterous out loud and hopefully, you guys can tolerate my rambling on about yet another blogging/social networking tool.

So, what is posterous? It is apparently the "simplest, easiest, and fastest way for anyone in the known universe to become a blogger, a journalist, a lifestreamer".

If you can send an email, you can create a Posterous blog. That’s because that’s the way you blog – you simply send an email to post [at] posterous.com. Your email gets posted, and you get a dedicated URL for all your thoughts – often yourname.posterous.com.

Sounds good?

Well, in addition to creating the blog post for you, Posterous will automatically update things like your Facebook status, your Twitter status, your other blogs, or even an iTunes podcast, every time you email Posterous (depending on the settings you have configured).

I did some more investigation and found out that this could be the perfect tool for a lazy blogger like me. I could send Posterous any kind of attachment and they will format it appropriately and post it to my Posterous page. They accept *.doc, ppt, pdf, jpg, gif, png, mp3, avi, and mpg formats.

So, based on all that I read, I decided to start a Posterous presence. I don’t want to use the term blog, because well even though it is a kind of a blog, I am still not very sure what I”ll actually use this page for.

After setting everything up, I sent out a mail to Posterous with a bunch of photos, and this is what they created for me: http://booksandmore.posterous.com/lunch-at-serengeti – a very nice little slideshow. This is incredibly efficient. It took me just 2 mins to mail these photos before they were up on the site. I don’t have to fill up dreary forms, no long uploads, no signing in …nothing. I just have to attach photos to my GMail account and hit Send. How easy is that?

After seeing this, I am quite inspired to use this site to post all family photos, and videos. I do wish I had thought to give a different name to my Posterous space though, because as of now, I am not really planning to post anything books related there. I don’t plan to change the name now though. My tool loyalties are so fleeting that I am never sure whether I am going to use anything long enough for it to be worth the effort of configuring it. If I am still using Posterous a month from now, I will definitely try playing around more with it.

Because Posterous can even publish stuff to my WordPress blog I am definitely going to give that a whirl, starting with this post. Let’s see how it displays.

If it is good, I could continue using it to post to my WordPress blog, which is always slow at the best of times, and impossible at its worst!

Mom, in case you are reading this post, you can check out my posterous link this weekend. I will be uploading tons more photos there

Test Results : If I include the body of the text within the email, Posterous formats it beautifully and uploads it here (much faster than doing it via WordPress itself). However, I did need to log in to WordPress to add tags, categories, and create the slug (but it is still quicker because you can use WordPress Quick Edit facility).

I need to do another post with images, and see how it displays.

Overall, I am quite satisfied with how quickly Posterous publishes. I do wish there was some way for me to specify the tags and categories within the email, so that it makes it even quicker for me.

I also do wish there was some way to automate the “digg” and “Share” links that I add at the bottom of my posts. Sigh! things would be just dandy then!

And the Blogging Experiments Continue…

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After including a Rating button on my blog, I decided to experiment a little bit more.

I have read a great many blog posts that rave about the value of social networking and how it can radically increase the number of hits on a blog. And, today I finally decided to take the plunge.

I have signed up on to Digg and am now going to include a Digg button at the bottom of all my posts. In addition, I am also including an “Add This” button that allows readers to bookmark and share blog posts, along with the existing rating button.

All these add-ons mean that there is a lot of clutter. So, reluctantly, I have decided to stop signing off on all my blog posts. Reluctantly, because I have been pretty happy with my signature, and always felt that the signature makes my blog a little bit more personal.

Let’s see where these additional buttons lead to. The Digg button is a little bit more cumbersome because every time I update my blog, I need to manually go to Digg, submit the link, and then add the Digg button here. I would much prefer such activities to be automated. What I do like about Digg is that it is connected with Facebook, so when I submit a link to Digg, I can automatically choose for it to appear on my Facebook wall as well – very similar to TweetDeck, which allows me to post to Twitter and Facebook simultaneously. My lazy self loving this content reuse aspect

Eagerly waiting to see whether subscribing to social networking sites such as Digg and Stumble Upon really make that much of a difference. I do hope that adding these buttons do not reduce the number of comments. After all, it is much easier to click on a button than penning down a few thoughts. Will wait and watch and definitely let you know how it all works out…

If you want to add a Digg button to your blog posts, follow the instructions here:

http://support.wordpress.com/digg/

To add a Share button to your blog, follow the instructions here:

http://support.wordpress.com/addthis/

Update: I removed all Digg and Share buttons from my posts after WordPress created an easy option to automate this.

My Twitter and TweetDeck Experiences

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I have been a little late to get on to the Twitter bandwagon. Primarily, because I thought it was quite a pointless addition when I do so many status updates with my Facebook account. But recently, I have been getting a little tired of Facebook and spend much lesser time on it that I used to.

However, I tried Twitter last month just for the heck of it, and I think I am already hooked. I enjoy receiving news and updates from other people, without feeling too much pressure to respond. Also, I like the fact that Twitter is a very simple and basic application that does not include too many additional bells and whistles.

Another great aspect: I can display Twitter updates within my WordPress blog. How cool is that ! Everything in one place, I love the idea! Now, WordPress guys, please add support for Shelfari too…this is a long-pending request from my side!

Using the Twitter web interface, I was able to add (follow is the Twitter terminology) existing friends and make new friends very quickly. So quickly in fact, that my Twitter web interface started getting very cluttered, and I was feeling bogged down again. Luckily, I came across a blog that mentioned TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a Twitter client that you install on your system, and it’s UI looks something like this:

The TweetDeck Client Interface

What I am loving about TweetDeck:

The TweetDeck screen has three columns, which neatly categorize all your Tweets into replies, direct messages, and general tweets. This ensures you don’t really miss anything that is addressed to you amongst all the general Tweets. In addition, there are options to group tweets into various categories, making everything much more organized ( I am very big on organized ).
I also like the fact that it is integrated with Facebook, so you can get Facebook status updates as well.
Because TweetDeck is a client app, it works like GTalk. You can keep it minimized in your taskbar, and a little window will pop up and notify you if you have received any tweets. Verrry convenient!

What I am not loving about TweetDeck:

The download takes an extremely long time. Before you download TweetDeck, you need to download something called AdobeAir. Not quite sure what that is, but I am not very happy with it, and I am concerned that it might turn out to be a very heavy application, which is the last thing I want right now!
Looks like it could be very distracting, and I definitely would not like pop up updates all the time.

Anyway, this is an experiment, and I am looking forward to seeing how it goes, and whether I continue using TweetDeck to manage my tweets. Also, let’s see how long Twitter catches my fancy before the next big thing in social networking comes along.