Twitter Clients
Writing a Twitter client has become the new Hello, World! There are Twitter libraries in just about every major language such as PHP, Ruby, ActionScript, Python, Java, and more. The Twitter API is simple enough that you don’t need much, you can go a long way with the command line and curl.
As Twitter popularity grows so does the number of Twitter applications. On the iPhone I have tried three of them and on the desktop one. But with all the growth and creativity surrounding Twitter the desktop are essentially all clones of the official Twitter web interface.
To amend for the huge gap in what Twitter client do and what I think they can do in terms of missing features I have thrown my developer hat into the ring. There is a virtual arms race as startups rush to develop Twitter desktop clients. To add fuel to the fire, a few days ago a new Twitter desktop client was announced.
Tweetbox
Tweetbox, released under pre-beta, is my hello, world twitter client. Tweetbox is written mostly in JavaScript and jQuery with a PHP back end that acts as a Proxy to Twitter. Tweetbox also uses Google Gears for added functionality and desktop interactivity. As of the current release of Tweetbox, version 0.1, the key features is the ability to have multiple Twitter accounts. I currently have a huge laundry list of features to complete, including UI plastic surgery, adding support for timelines, retweets, and replies.
I do hope that in the near future Tweetbox will hit the sweet spot for some users. An ultimate goal is to allow extension points to allow for plugins.
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Juxie TechKnow…love the name! Glad to see you using your creativity on an app that a lot of Twitterholics can use. Keep us updated.
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[...] Twitter client in alpha/beta stage! Blogger of Juxie TechKnow has taken on the Twitter API and uses javascript via Google Gears and jQuery and aims to jump in [...]