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Birdie

Note: Birdie has not been actively developed in a long time. With the new Twitter requirement for OAuth-based authentication, I believe Birdie will not work at all now. Will I update Birdie someday? Perhaps, but the way I wanted Birdie to work will not scale well and it will only work with a few Twitter followers, not with hundreds and thousands. So not sure it is useful any longer.

Birdie is an Adobe AIR desktop Twitter client which is cross-platform and so runs under Windows, Linux, and OS X. Being in Sri Lanka, where Internet access is not always reliable, I like having access to all my tweets, as well as the tweets from my friends, even when I have no access to the Internet. This was the main reason for creating Birdie. It stores all of your tweets, the recent tweets from your friends, your direct messages, and even the direct messages you sent to others in a handy database. And since all the data is displayed from the database, there are no annoying delays between updates as there is with some other Twitter clients.

Of course, if you have a lot of tweets in the database, it is possible that Birdie will become unreliable or unresponsive. So Birdie uses a paged interface where it only displays a certain number of tweets at a time on the screen. You have to use the page back and forward buttons to access the rest of your tweets. It seems to work fine in local testing and so I'm hopeful that it will prove to be stable for most users.

Features

  • Offline Twitter client - gives you access to your tweets even when you are not connected to the Internet.
  • Can store all your tweets, direct messages (sent and received) from the beginning of time, or when your Twitter account was started, whichever comes last :)
  • Brings in updates only since the last updated tweet, direct message etc. and so is faster than most other clients out there.
  • Cross-platform - works under Windows, Linux or Mac OS X.
  • Supports multipe Twitter accounts from the same interface - allowing you to keep track of multiple Twitter accounts (and post from them) at the same time.
  • Contains buil-in search functionality which allows you to see only @ messages to you, @ messages from you, direct messages to you, direct messages from you, or tweets by an individual user.
  • Also supports searching all tweets (or a subset of tweets) for a specific word or phrase.
  • Provides the ability to group tweets by users and/or keywords and view only tweets from a specific group.
  • Allows filtering out tweets based on user or keyword from the default tweet display (but also provides a way to see filtered out tweets).
  • Since it uses Adobe AIR, it's cross-platform and will work on Windows, Mac OS or Linux.
  • Supports automatically saving and restoring the window size and position.
  • Has paging support for displaying all your tweets and so does not load all your tweets at once, thus slowing down the app and your machine.
  • Supports minimizing closing the application to the system tray under Windows.
  • Has notification support to let you know when new tweets have arrived.
  • Allows you to delete tweets (both from the local Birdie database and from Twitter) with a click of a button.
  • Supports creating short URLs (via is.gd) for long URLs that you want to tweet about from within Birdie itself.
  • Shows the original message for an @ message if the original message is in the local databse.
  • Shows tweets, direct messages (sent and received) in one easy to understand interface.
  • Allows you to send a long message (exceeding the 140 character limit of Twitter) which is automatically split into multiple messages.
  • Contains a (limited) history of past tweets so that you can re-send a tweet without having to type it all in again.
  • Provides some user management/filtering capability so that you can go through your followers and those you're following to see who's following you back and who's not.

Screenshots

Birdie main screen
The main screen

Birdie Settings
The Tools Tab
The Tools Tab
About Screen
About Tab

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Support

This is a free application developed in my spare time. So don't expect a ton of support :) However, I do try to fix bugs and attend to user issues in a reasonably fast timeframe. The best way to get support is to go to the RookSoft Support Forums and post there. You do have to sign up to post (but not to read posts) and you have to wait on me to approve the account due to all the spammers who sign up. Alternatively, you can e-mail me directly.

Alternatively, you can look me up on Twitter itself - just look for FahimFarook :)

Planned Features

  • Theming and user selectable colours
  • More user management options such as viewing full user details, following/unfollowing etc.

FAQ/Known Issues

  • The database and the user avatars are saved in a folder named "Birdie" under your documents folder depending on your operating system. The caching of avatars sometimes goes wonky and this might require a delete of all the cached avatars, a clearing of the database and then re-loading all tweets.
  • I upgraded to Birdie 0.93 (or later) from Birdie 0.91 and I'm having problems. What's going on?: You need to first upgrade to Birdie 0.92 and then upgrade to a later version since the 0.92 version has code to switch Birdie over from the original configuration file format to database-based configuration saving.
  • I sometimes get blank tweets or tweets without the avatar.: This is a display issue and if you scroll the tweet list, it will fix itself. I'm trying to resolve this issue.
  • Will Birdie run under <insert OS name>?: Birdie is cross-platform and should work under Windows, Linux, and OS X as long as you have Adobe AIR installed.

Version History

Birdie 0.95 - 08 January 2009
* Fixed page numbers not updating when switching between various types of views
* Modified the colour scheme and styling for Birdie to be more uniform
+ Added a global status bar that is visible from any tab
+ Added error checking and warnings when doing a full avatar refresh
+ Added option to enable starting Birdie with user login
+ Added searching for @ replies via the Twitter search API so as not to miss anything overnight
+ Added a quick navigation box to type in page number for displaying tweets
+ Added a user management tab for all your friends and followers
+ Added two new toolbar buttons to refresh the friends and followers lists
+ Added the ability to split a tweet longer than 140 characters into multiple tweets and send them out automatically
+ Added a 20-tweet history for sent tweets which can be scrolled up and down

Birdie 0.94 - 16 December 2008
* Modified tweet deletions to first delete remotely and delete locally only on success
* Fixed the Twitter account selection box not changing the currently selected user
* Fixed all DMs and Sent DMs (since last refresh) not being fetched correctly on a refresh
* Fixed tweets duplicated between two or more accounts (on a multi-user setup) not showing up for all accounts except one
* Fixed issues with fetching more than 200 tweets from unfetched tweets
+ Added a "Retweet" button which allows you to easily forward tweets
+ Added filter support which allow you to filter out posts by keyword or user from the default view
+ Added code to handle user information (name, screen name, image) changes and to update database
+ Added groups functionality so that you can group tweets by user and/or keyword(s)

Birdie 0.93 - 05 December 2008
* Fixed clicking on the "Reply" button for the same person twice in succession not working
* Fixed the is.gd URL sometimes being preceded by "null"
* Changed the application ID to adhere to common naming standards
* Modified functionality so that the notification sound plays even if Birdie is not minimized, as long as sound is set to play
* Overhauled the Twitter API call structure to resolve several issues
+ Added support for hash tags - they now take you to the Twitter search page
+ Added option to turn off the notification sound
+ Added new multiple search options for filtering tweets
+ Added multi-user support
+ Added notifications when Internet/Twitter errors occur with rate limit (if available)
+ Added an automatic updater accessible via the "About" tab

Birdie 0.92 - 30 November 2008
* Modified display to show user names with @ and URLs in a different colour
* Fixed the is.gd linking to not overwrite any text currently in the tweet box
* Fixed display wrapping issues with tweets overlapping each other
* Fixed the tweet display order being wrong - now it displays by tweet create date and time
* Fixed @ messages not always being linked to the correct message
* Fixed sent direct message info being saved incorrectly
* Modified the display of sent direct messages to include a "To " before the recipient name
* Fixed notification support when receiving new tweets
* Fixed the purge-by-date functionality
+ Added support for saving (and restoring) Birdie window size and position
+ Added support for minimizing/closing to the sytem tray
+ Added display of target when a message is in response to somebody. If Birdie has the message in the local database, it will also display the original message inline.
+ Added displaying direct messages (sent & received) in different colours
+ Added a default notification sound
+ Added the ability to delete your own tweets and direct messages

Birdie 0.91 - 25 November 2008
* Fixed paging back not working beyond page 2.
* Fixed multiple @s and multiple URLs in tweets not being properly linked.
* Fixed several issues with quoted names and sources causing SQL issues in Birdie.
- Removed the status bar at the bottom of the main Birdie window since it does nothing.
+ Added option to get a shortended URL via is.gd from right within Birdie.
+ Added support for the Twitter source parameter so that tweets from Birdie are identified as such.
+ Added a new "Refresh Avatars" option under Tools to update any user avatars which hadn't been locally cached.

Birdie 0.90 - 20 November 2008
* First public release of Birdie.
* Storage of all tweets in a database with paging facility to access full history.
* Fetching of direct messages sent and received in addition to tweets.

 
       
Copyright © 2001-2008 Fahim Farook