Those things are true, but I’m personally much more likely to use an app with direct access via Wolfram|Alpha’s API than I am to use a web version.  Particularly on Edge, which I face anytime I leave my house, the difference in amount of data transmission is important, as is the "snappiness".  Optimization for use with the iPhone’s native controls, editable history, and integration with my other iPhone apps and services?  Sold.

Is the price wrong?  Yes, for everyone except people like me.  And I think Wolfram Research priced this app knowing exactly who they were and weren’t selling to.

Then see this.  The U.S. Dollar is weak, but not that weak…

http://translate.google.com/translate?&u=,Query 3,&sl=,Query 2,&tl=en

Cut and paste the above into the Expansion box and apply to the keyword of your choice.  Use the shortcut, the two letter abbreviation of the source language, and the URL you wish to translate.  For instance, I chose "gt" for my keyword, so to display the Zócalo Saltillo newspaper in English, I’d type the following into the address bar:

gt es http://www.zocalo.com.mx/

If you need to specify both the from and to languages, you could always use:

http://translate.google.com/translate?&u=,Query 4,&sl=,Query 2,&tl=,Query 3

And then use as (to display the above site in German):

gt es de http://www.zocalo.com.mx/

Wrong Assumptions

Tweetie, like many Twitter clients, starts with the assumption that you both follow other users and that everything said by those whom you follow is possibly relevant to you.  For me, this is a complete failure.  I have no interest in using Twitter for social networking - I use it for work, and that’s it.  The only accounts I follow are those directly related to EllisLab (and one upstart account that I want to keep an eye on to see what it’s all about).  I use Twitter to both broadcast and aggregate information for my job from that data source.  That means that I’m interested in aggregating, not people, but content that relates to ExpressionEngine, CodeIgniter, EllisLab, etc., regardless of who says it.

Signal to Noise

A real-world example: I’ll pick on Michael Boyink.  Boyink, creator of of Train-ee.com, often speaks about ExpressionEngine in his Tweets, and responds to others who might be asking about it.  In Tweetie, to have easy, instant access to this information, I’d have to Follow Boyink, which means I now have to filter his posts about ExpressionEngine out from the dozens of other tweets he writes about Jeeps, his family, life in Michigan, etc.  It also means that Tweetie is going to prompt me to open the app whenever he tweets anything regardless of whether it’s content from him that I’m interested in or not.  For me, this is noise.  He’s entertaining, and we might have conversations about these things outside of that context, one-on-one, but it’s not the signal I’m looking to receive from Twitter.

With one or two people, you can easily scan and it’s not that big of a deal.  But our EllisLab account is following 603 accounts at the moment.  To be useful to me, this content should either never be displayed to me or should be dismissible with a single click or a hot key, and certainly never prompt me to look at it.

But Tweetie Has a Search Feature

Yes, Tweetie supports searches.  I maintain searches on a variety of keywords, and in Tweetie this translates to dozens of new windows to hold each search.  Yuck.  Could they not have used tabs?  Worse yet, the searches are not persistent, meaning if you relaunch the application, you have to set each one up again.

And speaking of multiple windows, I’ve heard many people rave about it, but having message composition in a new window is a backwards step for me as well.  A new window is appropriate for email, because the content can be long, you may want to refer to other emails, save as drafts, etc.  Twitter is limited to 140 characters, and is much closer relative to instant messaging.  Can you imagine how annoying it would be if in order to instant message someone, you had to open a floating dialog box?  How Windows ME is that?  It annoys me no less in Tweetie.

Why not use Tweetie for tweets and RSS for Twitter searches?

For me, the data source is important.  Information gained from Twitter is not equal to information gained from the web sites whose feeds I subscribe to in NetNewsWire.  I tried it thinking I’d really like it, and Twitter searches felt so out of place, it’s silly.  It also further fragments the information I’m trying to receive by using two different applications to access the same data source.  And I don’t want my Twitter sourced information updated at the same frequency that my site feeds are.

Tweetie is not all bad

Since some might find this entry after searching for reviews on Tweetie, I’ll include a bit of positive.  It has a nice UI, seems to function pleasantly enough, can connect to multiple accounts, and separates them nicely for you.  It makes it easy to follow a message to its source to glean more context, as deeply as you’d like to dive.  It’s probably great for people using Twitter as a social network, perhaps the leader currently in quality of Twitter apps.

So what am I using?  Right now, EventBox, as it meets most of my needs.  It has a lot of useless stuff, though, since I do not use Facebook, Google Reader, Flickr, or Reddit.  And it can only access a single Twitter account, which is painful.

Topic vs. Speaker

The sum of this story is, that I must be in a tremendous minority, but I can’t imagine that I’m really the only person out there that wants to use Twitter to connect to content, and not to people.  There is a distinct difference in aggregating information based on what’s being said versus being based on who’s saying it.  Someday the right application will come along.  Right now, for me, it’s not Tweetie.

[html4strict]Sorry, Digg is trying to show you my site in a frame.  Open this link in a new tab or window to see the content you were trying to reach:

@@@[/html4strict]

Update: For those unfamiliar with Extension installation, here’s what to do after downloading:

1. Place ext.diggbar_blocker.php in /system/extensions/
2. Place lang.diggbar_blocker.php in /system/language/english/
3. Visit Admin > Utilities > Extension Manager and enable the extension
4. Click "Settings" to customize the message.
5. Want to test it out?  Type http://digg.com/http://example.com in the address bar, replacing example.com with a URL on your site.

Download the Diggbar Blocker extension

The goal of Ticket to Ride is to score points by claiming railway routes between cities, the longer the route, the more points.  At the end of the game, whoever has the most points (there’s a score track on the perimeter of the board making it easy) wins.  Unlike many other intellectual board games, the goal for victory is very straightforward, making the strategy component much more subtle, such as trying to fulfill "destination ticket" cards, or deciding whether to lay a short route now, or save up for a longer route later.

As described by one avid fan of the game on YouTube, this is a "serious" board game that is as easy to get your friends to play as UNO, with people even asking for a rematch if they lose.  Perfect!  I’m hoping that Ticket to Ride will be a gateway board game that I can use as a spring board to Settlers of Catan.  Someday.