Twitter’s popularity continues to grow, second only to Facebook in terms of the sheer number of users. The Twitter.com website offers a sophisticated interface, but there’s a healthy community of third-party developers providing apps that access Twitter’s features on the desktop and on mobile platforms.

The Apple ecosystem has been blessed with a number of really solid Twitter clients for Mac OS X and iOS (iPhone/iPad/iPod touch), and one of the best — Twitterrific (which was featured among Macworld’s “10 best reading and productivity apps for 2010″) — has just released a major new version for Mac OS X.

Download Twitterrific 4.0 for Mac OS X:

• from IconFactory
• from the Mac App Store

Priced at $10 for the Mac, where the iPhone/iPad version is free for use with a single Twitter account, though you can purchase an in-app upgrade that unlocks advanced features, this price is not out-of-line considering the cost of competing apps and the value it provides.

As a regular user of many different Twitter clients (I’m not a fan of the Twitter website), something I value highly is having the same interface available across devices. Using Twitter’s iPhone app together with Twitterrific or Kiwi on the desktop is a recipe for confusion. Confusion that can result in sending what you thought was a private reply (a Direct Message) out to all of your followers on the public stream. Oops.

The main contenders offering Mac OS X and iOS clients are Twitter, Echofon and Twitterrific.

Twitter’s Native Apps

The Twitter app for Mac OS X (née Tweetie) was late to the game, and is very good. It’s also free, and has the competitive advantage of inside-knowledge of where Twitter’s feature-set is headed.

Despite that, the leap-frogging of iPad/iPhone/Mac versions of the client has resulted in a somewhat disjointed experience, with the iPad version in particular feeling a bit over-the-top in terms of interface conventions.

Twitter for iPad is also a bit buggy (direct messaging is a mess, frankly, with disappearing text and “send” buttons, inexplicably-inverted direct message timelines that lose position, etc.)

Echofon

Echofon costs $20 on the desktop, and has solid iPad and iPhone versions, and offers a compelling feature that I wish all Twitter apps would embrace: remembering what messages you’ve seen already — across devices. What Echofon lacks is an interesting interface. They’ve chosen a minimalist approach that many will love, but which doesn’t make it appealing to me.

Twitterrific

It’s hard to pin down what’s so good about Twitterrific. The cross-device consistency is a big part of it. It’s got an overall spit-and-polish that other platforms lack. Twitterrific’s colour-coding of your public stream, mentions and direct messages is one of my favourite features. It makes things easy to grasp at a glance and is very easy on the eyes.

Minor niggles

I only mention these because I like Twitterrific so much. Most people will never notice or care about these things, but I do.

1. the page-up/page-down keys do nothing in Twitterrific 4 for Mac (this harkens back to Tweetie, which fixed this in Twitter for Mac. Please fix this! The Home button scrolls you to the top of the stream, but that’s little consolation…)
2. when the timeline is scrolled to the top, there’s a gap at the top (the elevator/thumb/scrollbar doesn’t ever get to the top of the window), which makes it look as though there’s another message. The iPad version has this gap, but it’s much smaller.
3. messages (e.g. “Connection error”, “Message posted”, etc.) show up at the bottom of the window. But your attention is at the top of the window, where new Tweets show up. On a 27″ or 30″ display, that makes them effectively non-existant
4. Twitterrific 4.0 for Mac continues Twitterrific’s disjointed tweet-specific menu system. Right-clicking a tweet brings up one set of commands, while clicking the tweet’s arrow brings up another. Worse is that on iPad/iPhone, it’s hard to hit the arrow, which brings up the other menu, which is frustrating.
5. Twitterrific’s Messages pane mixes all of your DM conversations together; Twitter shows you each person’s avatar and lets you view conversations separately, which is better in that you’re less likely to send a reply to the wrong person

One of the best things about Twitter as a service is that it’s easy to switch clients, just to try them out, and switch back. There’s a lot of great, innovative work being done in this space, so download some apps, try them out, and reward the developers with a few dollars. They’ve earned it!

It’s never been easier to add video to your web site, and you have many options; but with options come choices. It can be a minefield. Here’s an overview to help guide you through it unscathed.

Start with a video

Where has your video come from? The old adage, “garbage in, garbage out”, is especially true for video, and not all sources were created equal:

• Digital camcorders are an ideal source; their clean, noise-free video compresses really well and is easy to work with. Standard definition or high-definition will work fine.
• Screencasts are also an excellent source and, despite usually being compressed during the recording process, are well-suited to posting online.
• Video DVDs might be okay as a source, depending on how good they were to start with, but they’ve already been heavily compressed for the DVD, and re-compressing them for the web will degrade the final picture quality and/or increase filesize. If you can, get the original digital files that the DVD was made from instead of ripping them.
• VHS tapes won’t provide anything you’ll be proud of. The sad fact is that from a technical standpoint, VHS — even the higher-quality S-VHS — is quite poor. If you have to use VHS as a source, be prepared to use it at smaller sizes, and be prepared for it to look dodgy.

You’ve got an edited piece and you’re ready to unleash it on the world.

How do I get my video onto my site?

You have 2 main choices:

Host it on a third-party site (YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr or Facebook, etc.)

• Advantages:
  • inexpensive — it’s free in most cases to set up a basic account
  • simple — it shields you from the technical complexities of video formats and compression options
  • easy — it’s easy to copy a link that you can use to place your video into your web site
  • flexible — some sites (YouTube, Vimeo) will convert your clip to multiple sizes and formats (suitable for desktop browsers, Apple TVs and mobile devices like iPhones, iPods and iPads)
  • encourages sharing — it’s easy for others to embed your videos on their own sites
  • robust — these content-distribution networks (CDNs) can handle a lot of traffic should your video become wildly popular
  • exposure — sites like YouTube get a lot of traffic, which can’t hurt
  • social — people can comment on your video.
• Disadvantages (many of these will be especially true of free accounts):
  • support — may not have high-priority support; may have to rely on FAQs or user-populated support forums
  • limitations — may limit the number of videos per month you can upload
  • limitations — may limit your videos’ length
  • limitations — may limit the amount of bandwidth you may consume per month
  • lack of control — you don’t own the web site your video is hosted on, so you have no control over content policies, your videos’ address, what other content might appear on their site, or how they handle disputes arising with other users of the site (if someone accuses you of stealing content or of defaming them, it may take a long time to settle; this would be a rare occurrence, however)
  • ambiguity — if the company is acquired by another company, then the terms & conditions under which you uploaded your video may change
  • “related” videos — you may not have any control on what content the hosting company chooses to show alongside your video as ‘related’. If keywords associated with your clips have unfortunate other meanings, or unfortunate associations, that could be uncomfortable. An example would be the word “Fundy”, as in “Bay of Fundy”. “Fundy” is also a short-hand term for a religious fundamentalist; the association may be innocent, but that doesn’t mean you want it or can prevent it. Keep in mind that these things also change over time, so it would be wise to monitor your related videos on a regular basis (e.g. the Wisconsin Tourism Federation wasn’t happy when “WTF” took on a new popular meaning, and went so far as to change their name over it).
  • unwanted advertising — your video may well have advertising superimposed on it; the content of the ads may be related to the content of your video, again exposing you to the vagaries of keyword-association. You may even find ads for your competitors in your own clips on your own web site.
  • legal implications — what country or countries are your files hosted from? What are the laws in those countries?
  • user comments — people can comment on your video — yes, this was also listed as an advantage. It’s best not to be squeamish about this, but really: have you seen some of the comments on YouTube? Either way, people can still comment on your video using Facebook or Twitter, so keep an eye on things, and engage in the conversation — don’t be a victim of it.

Host it on your own web site

• Advantages:
  • simple — your web developer will shield you from the technical complexities of video formats and compression options, and will embed your video in your web site for you.
  • targeted — your web developer/compressionist will make appropriate technical recommendations based on your content and your site’s audience.
  • controlled — since you own the web site (you do own your domain, right?), you are in complete control of the file, its address, your site’s policies, etc.
  • on-message — no third party will be able to insert advertising or associate your video with third-party content.
  • high-quality — your web developer/compressionist’s skills should ensure the end-result is high-quality video — including brightening, enhancing colour and contrast, sharpening and cropping.
• Disadvantages:
  • expense — there may be bandwidth costs associated with hosting video files if they’re large and/or popular. Ask your hosting company about this. You will also have to pay to have your video compressed, uploaded and added to your site.
  • discourages sharing — it will be more difficult for others to embed your video into their web sites; whether this is truly an advantage or a disadvantage is up to you.
  • not so social — If your site doesn’t already allow commenting or discussion in the way that video sharing sites typically do, then it makes it more difficult for your video to effectively draw people into a conversation with you or your business. With some effort on your part, though, you can still take advantage of Facebook and Twitter to engage your customers directly.

Next time: file formats, Apple vs. Adobe, HTML5, and some tips for great online video…