Quite by accident I discovered a cracking Twitter desktop application yesterday. But you can only use this if you’re on FireFox, because it’s a FireFox Addon.
I’ve tried a few different Twitter desktop applications in the past. All have had their good points and all have had drawbacks.
As a result, I’ve always ended up using the one that has the least drawbacks. And there’s always been something that frustrated me.
Not this time. At least, not so far.
Yesterday I discovered and added the Yoono Add-on to FireFox.
Although I only use it for Twitter, it also handles Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, AIM, MSN and Gtalk.
So What’s All The Fuss About?
I love it for a number of reasons, all of which can be summed up in one phrase: efficiency improvement.
Once it’s installed it defaults to the expanded view:
From the top, this view tells me which account I’m viewing, gives me an update box, displays a row of icons for Updates, Friends, DM’s, Replies/Mentions, Lists and a Search Button.
Below that is the box to type in your search term and your currently saved searches. And finally comes the time-line for whichever view you choose to follow.
I’m following my WordPress Questions search in the screenshot above. So, as you can see, it’s telling me I have more than 999 updates in the Update view from people I’m following. Clicking the Updates button will display those tweets.
If I have unread DM’s or Replies/Mentions a count will appear beside each icon and I can click on the icon to respond.
So I have everything I need to know at a glance.
If you want to reply to a tweet, hover over it and three options appear: Reply, ReTweet and More.
Clicking the reply option brings up this screen:
Here I can type in my reply. If I want to add a link, I simply bring up the web page I want to share in the browser window and click the Share button.
On the web page in the browser window two options will appear, allowing me to share either the entire page or just portions of it.
Make your choice and the link is automatically shortened and inserted into the tweet.
How easy is that..!?
And finally, when I want to get on with some real work, I can collapse the Yoono window and I have my full browser window back again:
It automatically starts and logs in to Twitter (or whatever you’ve set up) when you fire up FireFox and it retains your settings from one PC to another (I’ve got it on both my laptop and my desktop). I’ve no idea how it does that, but I was impressed. 
And the downsides?
In terms of its pure functionality I can honestly say I haven’t found anything that’s frustrating me yet. I know it’s early days, but it’s definitely the best Twitter desktop app I’ve used to date.
The only downside I’ve discovered is that when it’s doing its stuff (syncing with Twitter) it causes FireFox to momentarily pause. That means if you’re typing something your cursor will freeze for a second or so when Yoono syncs.
Not a big deal to me, and I’m getting used to it, but that may frustrate some people.
Anyone else using Yoono? Add your thoughts in a comment below.
Cheers,
Your details are safe with me.
My Privacy Policy.
{ 7 comments }
Yesss. this really great and brilliant..
i love this
.-= wiyono´s last blog ..Indonesia and the Reality =-.
Hi Wiyono,
Yes – I still haven’t found anything about it that frustrates me yet
Cheers,
Martin.
I just thought you’d like to know that Yoono is the application that allowed my Twitter account to be hacked. They may have changed this, but as of 4 months ago, they did not secure or encrypt your passwords for social networking sites, so anyone can grab one.
If they have changed their system, please let me know because I love the program & would be glad to be able to use it again, as long as my accounts aren’t open to hackers!
.-= Tamara Holmes´s last blog ..Day 3 of Juice Fast – Part 2 =-.
Tamara, hi,
Thanks for the heads-up.
There was certainly a security hole last year, but it was corrected on 6th July, 2009. Here’s the report from Security-Assessment.com.
There’s more coverage of that security issue here. If you found a new security hole you should report it to Yoono (if you haven’t already done so).
Cheers,
Martin.
After downloading this program someone on a hotmail address hacked into my aim and activated my webcam. Please be careful of this program!!
Do you know (for sure) it was Yoono that enabled them to hack your AIM? If so, I hope you reported it to the Yoono guys so they can investigate and sort out the security leak.
As you’ll have seen with the earlier commenter, they react very quickly and effectively when a genuine loophole turns up.
Martin.
I’m pretty sure because just as soon as I downloaded it, I received an instant message from this strange individual and all of a sudden my webcam was activated and I was watching myself on screen. I have my settings on aim not to allow webcam viewing as well so they somehow bypassed that.
This was about a month ago that it happened. Way too much of a coincidence if you ask me. I had to put duct tape over my webcam because now I’m paranoid. Needless to say I uninstalled the program completely.
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