The Author – Bart Busschots
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Apr
4
Experimenting with Itsy (a native OS X Twitter Client)
Filed Under Computers & Tech on April 4, 2010 | 1 Comment
I’ve lost count of the amount of Twitter clients I’ve tried, and none are perfect. There may well be a client out there that does everything I need exactly how I want it to, but I’ve yet to find it. In recent times I’ve settled on Syrinx because it ticks most of the boxes, but it’s not perfect. I haven’t been actively search for a new client, but I’ve still been keeping my ears open. Hence, when Tim Verpoorten talked about Itsy on a recent episode of the Mac Review Cast I decided to give it a go.
Aug
19
Twitter Login Not Secured – WTF?
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Security on August 19, 2009 | 9 Comments
I don’t normally log in to Twitter directly – I almost always use clients – but today I did, and I noticed something which shocked me – Twitter is sending login details over an unsecured HTTP connection! I have no idea if Twitter’s always done this, or if they are experiencing some kind of bug today, but either way, this is a serious issue.
Were I to be using public WiFi or any other un-trusted network it would be trivial for someone to get both my username and password and take over my Twitter account. Worse still – if I were to use the same credentials elsewhere like so many people do – all those other accounts could be taken over too. This is just not acceptable in 2009.
Jul
4
A Quick Review of Syrinx – A Native OS X Twitter Client
Filed Under Computers & Tech on July 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment
I recently moved to a new machine (a hand-me-down G5 20″ iMac), and when it came to installing my new apps I decided I’d had enough of Adobe AIR and the whole idea of web apps pretending (poorly) to be native apps. I like OS X, and I want the full power of OS X in my apps. I also like how OS X apps all look and work similarly to each other. You just don’t get that with AIR apps like Twhirl (which had been my Twitter client up to that point). Not long before I got my new Mac listener Scott had contributed a short review of Syrinx to the NosillaCast, so I decided to give it a go.
I took and instant liking to the app because it’s a proper OS X app, because it uses the OS X keychain to securely save my password, and because it has Growl support. The fact that it’s free also helps of course! I’ve been using it for a month or so at this stage, and I’m still happy enough with it to keep it as my current client on all three of my Macs. It’s also under very active development at the moment with updates coming out regularly, so I have high hopes for this app’s future.
Jun
15
@spam – The Beginning of the End for Twitter?
Filed Under Computers & Tech on June 15, 2009 | 8 Comments
There can be no doubt that Twitter has taken off. It has become completely main-stream, and is rapidly rising in popularity and usage, last weekend’s twitpocalypse is proof of that! It would be nice to think that Twitter can remain the peaceful and relatively spam-free haven it is now, but I can see the start of the downward spiral already. Spam. Sure, you choose who you follow, and if you choose badly you can un-follow people, but does that prevent spam? Unfortunately it doesn’t. Anyone can message you using the @ sign, even if you don’t follow them. In many ways this is a great thing, for me, it lets listeners to my podcasts contact me without my having to give out my email address. However, this provides spammers with a mechanism to target people with their infuriating crap.
Feb
9
Twittering on the Mac Revisited
Filed Under Computers & Tech on February 9, 2008 | 1 Comment
It’s only been a week since I posted my first thoughts on Twittering on the Mac but already I need to make a correction and two additions. First to the correction, Twitterific is free, the website is just very confusing. You can use it for free but you get ads, and if you pay you don’t get ads. I gave Twitterific another go because I was quite hard on it last time. Turns out I was right the first time though, it’s not a particularly good client and it’s certainly not an inspirational piece of software. There are better clients out there for free.
Feb
1
Twittering on the Mac – First Impressions
Filed Under Computers & Tech on February 1, 2008 | 7 Comments
I’ve heard Leo Laporte prattling on about twitter for what seems like years on TwIT and have been actively avoiding it for ages. However, a few weeks ago I finally caved in and decided to give this whole Twittering thing a go. My overall impressions are that it’s a great idea, just poorly implemented. The service is about as stable as a pencil balancing on its point! I’ve only been twittering for two weeks and already I’ve experienced two Twitter outages, there’s no word for that other than poor. Then we come to their website. What an ugly and clunky mess! Yea, it works, but not that well and it’s far from a joy to use. Then we come to the main thrust of this post, Twitter clients on the Mac, overall I’m not really that impressed. I’ve settled on a client that’s good enough, but that’s the highest praise I’ll give it.
[tags]Twitter, OS X, Titterific, Spaz, TwitterPod, TwitterPost[/tags]