A Monster Update For Your Desktop
"Up from the depths, Thirty stories high, Breathing fire, His head in the sky. Godzilla!" - Godzilla, The Animated Series
Its all go here at TweetDeck HQ. We're working on new clients, hiring new staff and striking new deals every day. This hard work will result in some seriously exciting announcements over the coming weeks that we hope will blow your socks off.
But just because we're engaged in a whole bunch of cool stuff elsewhere, it doesn't mean that we have been neglecting our biggest existing client, the desktop. Far from it. While our mobile boffins have been busy working their magic on the iPad, Android and Mobile Web clients, our desktop boffins (yes, we employ boffins of all kinds...) have been working on something huge.
Something enormous.
Something that shoots lasers from its eyes.
OK, not the bit about the lasers.
But it really is huge, and today we're pressing the big red button onboard the USS Calico to summon "Deckzilla", AKA TweetDeck for Desktop v0.34
It's got Buzz. It's got Foursquare. It's got maps. It's got scheduled updates. It's got video uploading. It's got webcam recording. It's got custom URL shorteners. It's got custom Twitter APIs. It's got global filters. It's got swanky new designs. It's got fire breath.....
Here's the run-down in a bit more detail.
Get the Buzz!
We are thrilled to be able to bring you an integration with Google's new social network, Buzz. As one of the first desktop clients to offer this facility, we are very excited about the extra dimension that this brings to the TweetDeck experience. If you're concerned about, for example, privacy issues or technical limitations in your favourite networks, you now have a great new alternative baked right into your desktop app. Post to Buzz with no character limits, including location data. Easily engage in long-form conversations through Comments and Likes on your friends' posts. Mute the conversations you don't want to follow to stay focused on those that you do.
Put yourself on the map
In the online world today you are nowhere if you are not "checked-in" somewhere. Location is "so hot right now", so we have now made TweetDeck location-aware. You can now add your Foursquare account, allowing you to check in, find your friends, see tips and current visitors on Venue profile pages and much more! Add a Location column and you can keep all your location-related updates in one place and even filter them out of your other columns automatically. No Foursquare account? No problem. Simply find your location on the popup map and you can add location information to your normal tweets. And to polish off the location bonanza, you can now view location-coded updates in real-time on a Google map (now the standard mapping provider) in the location column.
Be there, even when you're not
We know that sometimes you need to be in touch with your followers when you're not actually within reach of a computer or phone. So in this release we have introduced the ability to schedule your updates to be sent at a later date and time. No longer do you need to stay awake all day in order to catch every major timezone in the world. Now you can set up your updates, wall posts, Foursquare check-ins and more all at the same time, and schedule them to post at specific dates and times in the future. A new, dedicated Scheduled Updates column allows you to manage the updates you have queued, where you can edit the update and reschedule or cancel as necessary.
Not only Twitter, but also...
The Twitter API has become something of a standard these days for transmitting short messages, such that several other companies have made Twitter-compatible APIs available to open up access to their own service. These APIs, like those from Tumblr, WordPress and StatusNet, use the same structure as the Twitter API and thus can make use of some Twitter-based tools that allow for custom APIs. We are pleased to announce that TweetDeck is now one of these tools and from v0.34 you can add accounts using custom Twitter-compatible APIs alongside your accounts for the core services we offer. And not only that, but it is also now possible to add custom URL shorteners in a similar way!
Lights...Camera...Action!
You have always been able to use 12 Seconds to upload short videos via TweetDeck, but with v0.34 we are giving you a new way to record and share videos of any length via a collaboration with TwitVid. Not only can you now upload video files just as you would an image file, but you can also record a video direct from you webcam and post the results to any of your accounts. Sharing your latest Lady Gaga impressions with the world has never been easier!
Cleanse your feeds with filters
Friends are great. We all love friends. Friends chat to us and send us jokes and pictures of their cats playing the drums. Sometimes though our love for these friends is tested when they just wont stop sending "OK here's another AWESOME bongo-kitty picture LOL!". Or When they have gone to a conference and you really don't want reminding that you're not "Enjoying the free mohitos at #kittycon". Or maybe you just get sick of their auto-posted "I just favourited a photo on bongokitty.com" statuses sent by their favourite site. Well worry no longer, as TweetDeck now has multiple, global filters, allowing you to hide updates based on sender, source or keyword. So now you can still love your friends, but you don't always have to listen to them.
As well as these specific features, we have included dozens of smaller fixes, tweaks and improvements, including a redesigned and rather funky new compose window! Check out the full changelog for all the juicy details.
Oh and don't forget, Twitter are turning off "basic authentication" in just a few weeks, so tell your friends to make sure they read this explanation of what's happening and get upgraded before it's too late! Failure to comply may result in a visit from one fire-breathing, laser-eye wielding mutated dinosaur...
Posted by Richard Barley
