Geoff Spick19 May 2009, 11:57 PM
Twitter is a great application but a rubbish site, and most Twitter apps look like spreadsheets. That is until Blu came along.
Twitter is the fastest growing social Internet phenomena. However, the basic site is rather sparse, while many third-party apps pack in function but leave out the looks. So, for those who want their Twitter experience to look good on their spanking new Windows 7 Release Candidate (or Vista) desktops, give blu from thirteen23 a go.
Coming from an unashamedly design-rich company, the app sparkles into life, flips to reveal the settings screen and generally looks like a 21st century computer program should. With variable transparency, it can be as prominent or as faded into the background as you like.
As you can drag and scroll through the list of tweets, hopefully, if you have a suitable PC, you could use Windows 7's touch controls to browse through messages. Perhaps the best feature is that blu will link together tweets to form a proper IM-like conversation, rather than just getting replies to comments you have long-since forgotten about.
Another neat feature is that web links you enter are automatically converted to tinyurl. Although, it doesn't support other URL shrinkers. Also, it automatically loads new tweets as you scroll down, reducing the number of clicks still further. So, you get a lot of streamlined features with blu and a fantastic-looking desktop app into the bargain. Okay, it doesn't have the columns of topics that you get with something like TweetDeck, but it doesn't look like a spreadsheet either.