For many, given the up and down status of Twitter, the search functionality of Summize has become a must-have to find conversations, replies, and topics. A new AIR app, debuting today, called TweetDeck, features full integration with Summize, and lets you customize your Twitter experience, through dedicated columns for your feed, your replies, searches, and even the ability to create custom groups of those you follow on Twitter for a micro-feed.

Authored by Iain Dodsworth, TweetDeck (available here), could give other AIR options, like Twhirl and Feedalizer some new competition. While I'm not typically a huge fan of AIR apps, I found TweetDeck to offer a great number of customizations that have me keeping it open and on the desktop around the clock.


The TweetDeck Interface (Click for Larger Image)
TweetDeck offers four major columns in which to organize Twitter data: "All Tweets", essentially your friends' timeline, "Replies", showing replies to you, the equivalent of Twitter's replies tab, "Search", which will keep a running search window open for a term you've selected, and "Group", which lets you make a sub-set of those you follow on Twitter, and make a miniature timeline.

Unlike some applications, whose preferred mode is single column, getting me only my Twitter stream, TweetDeck is actually very well built for being used in full-screen mode, of course, running in the background. Now, with one glance, I can see all updates, see all replies, and keep my eye out for keywords. And rather than force me to go out to Summize to search a keyword, TweetDeck has integrated Summize's search capability and also its ability to find replies, although, in version 0.15 beta, released just this morning, Twitter replies now have precedence, should there be duplicates.

You can also, of course, post your own Tweets from within the app, just by hitting the "Tweet" button at the top and entering what you want to say. TweetDeck counts down the number of characters to make sure you don't exceed 140.

The recent strain at Twitter has resulted in the service reducing the number of API calls developers can make to get Twitter updates, and there, TweetDeck has you covered as well, so you learn if there's any slowness, where to lay the blame.

In the bottom right corner, TweetDeck reports: "Twitter Status: Pretty much ok" or "Twitter Status: Rate limit exceeded" when there's a problem. It also provides a status as to when it was last updated, how many tweets were received, and when the next update is expected, polling every couple minutes.

In addition to the integrated search functionality, I was most impressed by the grouping function. I was able to create a group called "Lady Digerati", and could hand-pick which Tweeters would be followed, including @corvida, @sarahintampa, @veronica, @TheMacMommy, @NicoleSimon and others. You could, of course, make your own sub-groups to get a different subset.

While Jesse Stay and others have said Twitter's major issues have decimated the developer community's efforts around Twitter, there are still some looking to innovate, TweetDeck being a good example. Of course, given it's early status, there might be some issues, but it's worth taking a look, as the application has some great potential.

Near the beginning of each month, I try to highlight five bloggers who have recently caught my eye, who I think you should take a look at, who are offering good insight, especially into the world of tech or social media.

While there's no specific criteria for naming what's well known or what's obscure, each of the blogs mentioned don't get mentioned often alongside so-called A-List bloggers, and rarely, if ever, have made the rarified air of Techmeme. Prior editions can also be found for March, April, May and June.

1) Bob Warfield / SmoothSpan Blog (smoothspan.wordpress.com)

Focus: Web 2.0, Cloud Computing, Enterprise
Recent Highlight: The Rule of 10’s Makes the Internet an Early Adopter Amplifier
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2) Jesse Stay / Stay N' Alive (www.jessestay.com)

Focus: Social Applications, Twitter, Networking
Recent Highlight: Developers Bailing on Twitter
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3) Franklin Pettit / FPettit.com (www.fpettit.com)

Focus: Microblogging, Firefox and Extensions, Web Applications
Recent Highlight: FriendFeed Temperature Taking
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4) Nathaniel Payne / NerdFlood (www.nerdflood.com)

Focus: Video Games, Social Media
Recent Highlight: What the hell is Toluu? And does it require a prescription?
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5) David Risley / DavidRisley.com (www.davidrisley.com)

Focus: Social Media, Early Adopters, RSS
Recent Highlight: Scoble is Wrong About Blog Comments Being Dead
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After a seemingly long ten days of seeing Sarah, the smaller of our twins, in the special care nursery at Lucille Packard Children's Hospital, we had the good fortune to pick her up yesterday morning and take her home, meaning our family of four is now complete. The doctors' concerns as to Sarah's low weight, small appetite and inability to regulate her own temperature were largely alleviated, and we now have the great opportunity to set into a routine of feedings, changings and alternating between our two small children, at least until I head back to work.

I announced Sarah's coming home yesterday on Twitter and shared early photos on FriendFeed, but as I know my last message, saying Matthew had come home alone, had raised some worries by avid readers of this blog, I know the right thing to do is complete the story.


Sarah modeling from home this afternoon.
Both Sarah and Matthew remain quite small. Sarah is about 4 pounds. In fact, with her weight below two kilograms, she wasn't eligible to receive a Hepatitis B vaccination, which will have to wait. And Matthew has only gained one ounce, to 4 pounds, 11 ounces, since he came home a week ago. Together, my wife and I are working on over-feeding both these kids and plumping them up, both for their health, and of course, so that they finally fit in the myriad of cute outfits they've acquired. Surprisingly, even the newborn sizes are too large, as both Sarah and Matthew are practically swimming even in their smallest onesies and caps.

I won't be wholly turning the blog over to family updates in lieu of tech and other news, but I thought it important to let you know Sarah's home, and we're very excited. So far, the kids have been absolutely great. I know there'll be days in the future where I won't think so, but it's exactly what we were always hoping for.

Want to help out? Now that we're a bigger family, we're going to need a bigger car (or two). If you've got experience in this area, help add on to the great FriendFeed conversation on what to do next. There are also rooms there called Babyfeed and Schwag Magnets, where I'll be posting more baby items going forward.

Last month, in Has FriendFeed's Comment Activity Eclipsed Native Conversations?, I reported that comments on blog posts and Twitter post notifications on FriendFeed represented about 40% of the total comments I received on the same number of posts, natively, on louisgray.com, for the month of May.

As June drew to a close, the issue of FriendFeed owning the comments flared up again, with Robert Scoble claiming "blog comments are dead". I can report they're not dead, but for the month, conversations on FriendFeed jumped to more than 78% of the comment activity here. This trend, if it tracks for just one more month, will see that FriendFeed has the majority of my comments.

All told:

* There were 493 comments on the blog.
* There were 254 comments on the blog posts on FriendFeed.
* There were 133 comments on FriendFeed via Twitter "blog post" announcements.

On the 38 posts:

* On 1 occasion, no comments were on either site.
* On 2 occasions, both sites received the same number of comments.
* On 4 occasions, FriendFeed blog posts had more comments.
* On 31 occasions, more comments were on louisgray.com.


June's Comment Counts for FriendFeed and LouisGray.com
(Click for Larger Image)

You'll note that the overwhelming majority of posts saw more activity here. So why the jump from May to June? Because, due to the more family-oriented updates, FriendFeed's very real community got engaged. While 14 of my more tech-oriented posts got absolutely no comments, I had 40 responses to my sad news of our dog passing away, 31 on a post saying our twins would be on their way in weeks, and 26 more when they finally showed up. For as much talk as there is at times about sites like this being circular in how they celebrate themselves and their underlying technology, when it comes to people and family, the community there is very real.

Also a change from May were a few discussions that struck around my Tweet updates, rather than waiting for the blog post to arrive. The mioNews story, which so far, has no comments here or my stream, has 22 comments on my Tweet, and there were 39 more around the same for Feedly's arrival.

Source data:
* louisgray.com
* http://friendfeed.com/louisgray?service=blog
* http://friendfeed.com/louisgray?service=twitter

As I noted last month, the data set of followers on FriendFeed and louisgray.com is actually quite close. As of tonight, there are 2,543 people following me on FriendFeed, and 2,336 RSS subscribers on louisgray.com, so in theory, with those two measurements being close, there is an equal opportunity for viewers to comment on either location, with there being some significant expected overlap.

Will FriendFeed grow to the point that I should close down Disqus and rely solely on the service to get me the conversations? Absolutely not. But I've made extra effort to participate and engage, and the result has been a more diversified discussion, wherever it makes sense, without demanding it be here. I'm looking forward to seeing just what these numbers look like at the end of July.