Adobe AIR Desktop App For FriendFeed Coming - Bret Taylor

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Adobe AIR Desktop App For FriendFeed Coming - http://www.techcrunch.com/2008...

March 29, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Javid★, Jeroen De Miranda, Elliott Ng and 81 other people liked this

"We just heard that Howard/Baines will be releasing an Adobe AIR application for FriendFeed in the next week or so. So far all we have is the screen shot and a confirmation from Baines that his team is working on it. The application will be called Alert Thingy." I like the name :) - Bret Taylor

Now if someone could just combine a FF / Twitter Adobe AIR app -- making sure that tweets weren't duplicated -- that'd be super! Otherwise, it's annoying to feel compelled to run both (and no, I cannot convince all my friends on Twitter to sign up for FF, nor do I feel like creating Imaginary Friends for all of them). - Adam Lasnik

Thing is, I love the simple web-based FF interface. Too slick to make the switch. FF + Fluid + Fluid plug-ins = winner - Aviv

I don't feel the need to abandon the FF interface. In fact, I see myself doing other activities from within FF - http://ffapps.com/tabs/ - Aviv

Can't wait for this! It's going to be awesome. - Brandon Titus

Its about frackin' time. What took so long? :) - Tony Hung

Yes! My continuous partial attention does a little jig! - Ashton

I don't like the msgs popping up... - terababy

I sure hope it runs better then TWIRL - Noah David Simon

@Noah: Better than twhirl? I've never had issues with it. - Voyagerfan5761

Twirl has not has issues, it just happens to rely on the twitter api being up, which is the unreliable part. As long as the FF API can keep up with demand an Adobe Air app that works as good as twirl would be sweet. - Christian Burns

I'll wait for a non AIR app thank you :) - Steven Hodson

An iGoogle gadget would do me fine :)) - ceebee

THX 4 invitatiojn- guess my computerallergy holds me away from all this kind of internet friendship thing. Somehow too much letters...u know what I mean? Maybe it takes some time to come into that stuff. Virtual??? Prefer real air, trees and touch...talk soon NOAH. - Natascha Engelmann

Ceberius: http://www.google.com/ig... - Philipp Lenssen

@Philipp : oh wow! thanks! - ceebee

I'll be happy once Adobe AIR comes out for Linux. - Rishabh Mishra (p248)

@possible248 labs.adobe.com/downloads/air_linux.html btw ive been running adobe air through wine for over a month here is how you install it with wine www.ubuntu-unleashed.com/2008/03/howto-adobe-air-and-xdrive-desktop-lite.html - Kyle Weller

@defcon: I'll bet he'll like that link. I pointed it out over Twitter, but you never know; twhirl supposedly has some issues on Linux platforms that aren't fixed yet. Wine might take care of the problems. And BTW, links are automatically, er, linked if you start them off with http:// - Voyagerfan5761

I much prefer my online services to stay in browser windows - it's too confusing for my poor british brain otherwise! - Slippy "WildBeard" Lane

@Slippy: I used to think that about Twitter, until I discovered twhirl... But don't let me influence your decision. ;-) - Voyagerfan5761

Just in case anyone wanted an updated screen shot to watch while they are waiting - http://screencast.com/t... (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

@Jeremy: Sweet program! At least, the looks are good and it appears to have all the functionality of the site. I won't pry for a release date. :-) - Voyagerfan5761

Just got drag and drop image uploading on share... getting real close!! (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

You coders just constantly amaze me with your ability to whip this stuff up! - Phil Ashman

can't wait to see the final product - you don't need some more beta testers by any chance, Jeremy? :) - Frederic

@Frederic: I considered asking, but figured the answer was obvious. @Jeremy: So, do you? :D - Voyagerfan5761

Those lucky enough to be at the adobe AIR Tour - London yesterday would have seen a demo of the app plus a demo of a couple of bugs we need to fix :). The launch is currently being held up by thawte who we are waiting on to issue our digital certificate! Once that is done we are good to go. Thanks for all the offers, we have enough beta testers on windows and mac for now, but would be interested in anyone running AIR on linux! (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

...and if you want to follow me and the kinds of apps we build then please subscribe to me or follow me on twitter (jeremybaines) (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

@Jeremy: Will all comments posted via Alert Thingy have that tagline? Oh, and I believe @possible248 on Twitter (and here) is running AIR on Linux. - Voyagerfan5761

@Voyagerfan5761 yes they will. We think it's ok to ask for a bit of PR if we are giving you an app free. What do you think? It would be nice if there was a proper place to put the "via...." link, like on twitter, but the guys at FriendFeed have not provided anything like that for us yet! Bret.. are you listening??? (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

I would prefer to have the "via Alert Thingy"-tagline independent from the comment itself. I second that request. - sebmos

Ok that is 2 of us - Is that enough to change the API Bret? How many votes do I need? :) - Jeremy Baines

Of course, some of us might feel that reading a few words of advertising along with each comment is, you know, not exciting. - j1m

Adding the source to entries and comments from the API makes a lot of sense. I will think about it and take a look at what Twitter does, and come back with something. - Bret Taylor

@Jeremy - would be happy to try it out on Linux :) - Frederic

I'm so ready for this app, it hurts - Bwana ☠

@bret How are you getting along with the beta we sent you yesterday? (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

WANT. drool... - Phil G

I seriously seriously want this! but agree w/Adam - combo app would ROCK - Sarah Perez

Regarding the attribution for comments, how about adding a conditional "from %APPNAME%" tag wrapped in <small> tags after the name? It would be displayed only if there was a valid source for that comment. Thumbs-up? -down? - Voyagerfan5761

Get your copy of v1.0 - http://alertthingy.com/ (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

Its up now :) (via Alert Thingy) - Tony Hung

Nice. I have it up and running (via Alert Thingy) - Bwana ☠

If you like it so far so us your digg love - http://digg.com/softwar... (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

sounds cool - Shandiz

Just installed! Could do with customizable opacity, but otherwise it's just figuring out how to use it right now. w00t! (And making Enter save the comment...) (via Alert Thingy) - Voyagerfan5761

Is there a central location for feedback/suggestions? (via Alert Thingy) - Bwana ☠

you can send us email - help@alertthingy.com (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

Yeah, seriously way too transparent with no settings control. Other than that looks great. - Marston Alfred

Shameless blog comment fishing: http://voyagerfan5761.blogspot.com/2008... I figured this was an appropriate venue for that link. :-) - Voyagerfan5761

preeeeeeetty good (via Alert Thingy) - zeroinfluencer

I like it! (via Alert Thingy) - Tibor Paulsch

AT works okay but needs user prefs editable. Opacity is a must. (via Alert Thingy) - Jay Gilmore

It's great! (via Alert Thingy) - Dennis

We hear you on the opacity thing. Good point about scroling up when writing a comment (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

Anybody for marking items as seen, a la twhirl? It seems that would be useful for keeping one's place. - Voyagerfan5761

tried it out; seems just like a web browser... NEEEEDS functionality for me to re-consider using it - The Product Guy

It is cool. But: turned off sounds and they are back. Window scales, but not the text size. very small! oh, and while I was writing a comment in a tiny box an update came in and my comment so far just vanished... (via Alert Thingy) - Alex von Halem

@ Alex von Halem thanks I have added those to my list :) (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

@Jeremy Baines thanx. restarting stopped the sounds (perhaps just a note, that saving settings is not enough). Liking it more and more. Just a wee thing: when you hit the "comment" button: shouldn't your cursor start flashing in that field instead of having to click into it as well? Keep it up, it's going to be a winner! (via Alert Thingy) - Alex von Halem

Also good! they make the list ;) - not actually sure when we will have time to finish everything on the list! but nice to have one so we know what needs doing ;) (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

nice! - sandosh vasudevan

Just installed it. I don't like it (alert thingy)... much prefer the FF interface. But kudos to you on the "remote key" -- solid idea. - Michael Leggett

I don't think it hides the entries set to be hidden on FF. Anyone else can confirm this? - Turker Keskinpala

@Turker: I wrote about that this morning, so yeah, I can confirm. It's still showing my hidden stuff as I type this. I think the fault lies with the FriendFeed API, though. So far as I know, there's no indication of hiding status available. - Voyagerfan5761

Turkey and Voyagerfan5761: I will work on this today. We are not passing the "hidden" bit through to the API properly. - Bret Taylor

@Bret - can you look at the hide issue.. we are getting the hidden stuff showing in the API - Jeremy Baines

Thanks Bret. FF web interface is so fast and usable that it is not easy to switch to a desktop application. Nevertheless, good work Jeremy Baines. - Turker Keskinpala

It really is a nice piece of work, but I find the whole dark/translucent thing too hard to read. I also miss the collapsing of long comment threads (like this one). In fact, I didn't realize how nice a feature that was until I didn't have it and had to scroll and scroll to get to a new comment. - Chris Johnson

Can someone explain to me, in 42 words or less, why an app like this is better than just accessing FF over the web? Color me seriously confused. I'd try it myself, but I get an error anytime I try to download it (and yes, I have Air installed). - Adam Lasnik

@Adam Lasnik - Firefox can't handle a lot of tabs (non beta) and I'd rather use Alert Thingy or bTittleTattle then leave FriendFeed open in Firefox. (via Alert Thingy) - Corvida

@corvida ahh but, FF3 beta is solid and handles a wealth of tabs with great aplomb. :) I've got my eye on AT, but for now it taketh more functionality than it giveth. I suspect with all this attention, though, it will soon giveth a lot more! - felix

Corvida, or you could do what I do when I want to keep one or two tabs open persistently and easy-to-switch-to (e.g., Pandora): open them in Internet Exploder. What I was hoping to hear was that this Air app offered intriguing / helpful "extras" that one doesn't innately get in the web version. For instance, I use Twhirl because it aurally alerts me to direct messages AND displays all messages to me in chron order on one scrolling page -- something not offered on the Twitter web page. - Adam Lasnik

@Felix I FF Betas crash on me way more than FF2 and that's more important to me. @Lasnik I don't have IE installed =P Don't want to keep 2 browsers open anways, it's defeating the point in a way. I'm still wasting resources, though I think Alert Thingy is less of a waste. - Corvida

Okay, just tried it on another computer. Not for me. I find it much harder to read/scan stuff on it vs. the web page. - Adam Lasnik

Restart your copies of AlertThingy v1.1 is here! ...via AlertThingy - Jeremy Baines

search not working for unicode content? o_O ...via AlertThingy - minus-one

Nice, but my hidden stuff's showing up in Friendfeed so all the duplicate twitter action is annoying me. ...via AlertThingy - brad sucks

Yup! that is anoying! But a FreindFeed API issue not AT ...via AlertThingy - Jeremy Baines

i love this application and can't live without it. ...via AlertThingy - Kevin

Alertthingy's coming along nicely! I'll post a couple of suggestions on your site. ...via AlertThingy - Phil Ashman

http://shegeeks.net/feedali... - John Kotsaftis

Thwirl now offering FF integration on AIR - Steaprok

Just installed Twhirl 0.7.9 with FF support. Anyone care to tell me why AlertThingy is better? I'm kinda Twitter centric which is why I choose Twhirl. - Elliott Ng

Personally My social i am finding great on my laptop just having it all there in front of my and not haing to swap spaces to see what Alert thingy is doin ...via AlertThingy - John Spencer

I moved onto alerthingy from friend feed, stricly based on aesthetics. ...via AlertThingy - Osize Om