A&L Enterprises Tech Line » Recommendations

Twitter/Facebook Client Recommendation: Seesmic Desktop

andrew — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:57:35 +0000

I finally have a good recommendation for a Twitter/Facebook Client: Seemsmic Desktop. I’ve tested Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Seesmic and found they all have good features. For me the Seesmic Desktop had the set of functions I needed to be effective:

I needed access to the following.
- 2 Twitter Accounts
- Personal Facebook Account
- Multiple Facebook FAN pages
I wanted the ability to have a combined view of all these accounts – so I don’t have to switch panes, etc.
I wanted the ability to view comments/add comments in the client.
I would have liked to have my LinkedIn account also tied in – but I noticed all I got was this person connected to this person – which wasn’t very meaningful to me.
I would like to have Google Buzz tied in – but I don’t think any of the clients support this yet.

So here’s my personal strategy:

I will have Seesmic client open – which consolidates all of my feeds into one timeline panel. It won’t display the updates like Tweetdeck (which I liked) but I can scroll down the list to where I left off – or if I’m logged in does provide a discreet notification.
I post most of my content via this blog – which takes care of my main twitter account and Facebook FAN page. I use ping.fm to do the push and LinkedIn is connected based on a tag in the post.
For my secondary Twitter/Facebook FAN page I’m creating a “page” on this site and manually posting it to Facebook – which pushes it to Twitter.
For my groups on LinkedIn I think the weekly notifications are a prompt to login and interact with others.
For the Google Buzz experiment I’m just manually posting a link to these – I’m still not sure about Google Buzz as the default view of all comments expanded is driving me crazy.

Comments about Tweetdeck:

I was actually using Tweetdeck for some time and quite happy with it. I liked the pop-up notifications and the overall GUI.
Unfortunately when I built a 2nd Twitter account it didn’t flow well as I couldn’t configure it well.
I think I also noticed that the “tweet” notification sound was occurring on my wife’s login – which was kind of annoying

Comments about Hootsuite:

I don’t have as much experience with this one as the others.
One of the key differences of this tool is that it exists totally in the browser – as opposed to a desktop client

Browser Recommendation: Google Chrome

andrew — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 03:10:08 +0000

For a long time I was a pretty regular IE user – never really paying much attention to Firefox or other browsers. I was impressed with tabs in IE – as this is a great usability feature. Most everything I needed to do worked fine in IE – and it was very dominant in the market share. Then I started to have problems – when IE would try to restore the tabs after a reboot (which we know doesn’t happen very often with windows) and would seem to crash. It seemed to get less and less stable over time…

Sometime last year I finally made the plunge and tried Firefox. I was quite impressed with Firefox – especially with it’s support for more standards (like curved borders!!) and the extensions. It’s just neat to be able to apply a theme to the browser so it looks cooler.

Recently I decided to try out Google Chrome as I had heard a lot about it too. I find myself really liking Google Chrome – as it seems to work very well. While I haven’t measured it – it seems to use less resources than Firefox does – and it has some nice features. I like how the the downloads work – with a bar at the bottom appearing to show the progress and the recent downloads. The status bar only appears when it’s needed. You can right-click on a page and it will give you a print option, search Google on that word, etc. What I also like about Chrome (or Firefox) is that they have built-in spell checking.

So I narrowly recommend Chrome over Firefox – more for it’s efficiency. They are both better browsers than IE – offering better standards compliance (web pages work better) and great extensions. If you are still using IE (Internet Explorer) I would encourage you to try out Firefox or Chrome:

Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/ (open source from Mozilla Foundation)
Google Chrome: http://www.google.com/chrome (open source – version built by Google)

Recommendation: Upgrade Vista to Windows 7

andrew — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 02:08:53 +0000

I was talking to some people this morning and I recommended they upgrade any Vista Computers they have from Windows Vista to Windows 7. To me Windows 7 is like Vista the way it was supposed to be. I don’t have it myself (my computers are still on XP and are not Windows 7 ready) but I from what I’ve seen and heard it’s a good operating system. So I don’t hesitate to recommend it – especially as it comes on new computers. If I had a Vista computer I would upgrade it to Windows 7 -as it will work better and has some more features.

Here are some steps I would recommend to upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7:

Verify your computer is ready for Windows 7 – see http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1B544E90-7659-4BD9-9E51-2497C146AF15&displaylang=en for to download the upgrade adviser.
Backup – see http://www.anlenterprises.com/2009/11/11/backup-backup-backup-am-i-paranoid for my recommendations for backup.
Ensure you have your disks/downloaded programs.
Backup (got the point yet).
Do a clean install of Windows 7 – there is an upgrade path but a clean install will ensure the best results – especially if you are having problems with you PC now. See http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp for help on performing a clean install with upgrade disks.
Restore your data.
Re-install your programs.
Play around with your spiffy new-like computer.