TweetDeck launched a new minor revision today and given all the hype it had yesterday, I was little skeptical. After watching the detailed video on what the new features are, I was most impressed by the little changes than I was the major ones. Here is a video showing my 3 favorite new features:

1. Translate feature – I never thought I’d like this feature but the speed and convenience of it makes me want to use it more. One can easily (and I do stress easily) convert your tweets to another language OR translate an existing tweet to your language.
2. Shorten URL tweak – Often in TweetDeck, I’d forget to click the “Shorten” button after putting a URL in the “Shorten URL” box. TweetDeck added a little fix that will automatically shorten a URL in the box when you post the tweet. Little things
3. #Hashtag tweak – Finally, when you reply to someone who has a hashtag in their tweet, the same hashtag is automatically appended to your reply.

It all boils down to the little things. If only Adobe Air would solve their memory issues, TweetDeck would be a must have for everyone. I like the client so much that I restart it every other hour to compensate. At any rate, good job @TweetDeck on a finely tuned minor release!

Follow me on Twitter, I’m @Bwana.

Related posts:

• Twitter 2008: Get Used To It (Goodbye IM/Track)
• Twitter Phishing Exploits Are Here: A New Variant
• Newsvine Improves Its Features

The Adobe AIR client, Alert Thingy, for FriendFeed launched. While it shows great potential, and is very young at version 1.0, there are areas that it can definitely improve. I’ve been using it for about an hour now and while I like it, there are some frustrating points which I believe should be addressed.

Here are 7 reasons that I’ve already sent the author:

1. Finite control of transparency and colors. People are picky about this one. While I like the default color scheme, others might not. The default transparency could use a slider control as well.
2. Control of how many comments to show in the window. Maybe there’s a way to collapse comments similar to the way FriendFeed does. Just look at Bret Taylor’s post on FriendFeed as an example.
3. This may go to point 1, but I think we need an option to dress up the service icons a bit. If you introduce a theming system, maybe it could address this.
4. Please honor FriendFeed’s “hide” settings. I’m seeing things on Alert Thingy that are hidden on Friendfeed.com. This is a high priority one in my opinion.
5. I don’t know if this one is possible, but it would be nice to bring FriendFeed’s “hide” ability to the client.
6. The ability to show the “everyone” feed in the client
7. Search ability for the “everyone” feed

So there you have it. I’m sure these will be addressed in some form or fashion and I look forward to using Alert Thingy more and more.

Related posts:

• 7 Ways to Utilize FriendFeed Rooms
• 4 Ways to Enhance Your Blog With FriendFeed
• 7 Ways To Harness The Power Of Real-time FriendFeed