Twimbow's Blog http://blog.twimbow.com Updates from the innovative and colorful social media hub Twimbow Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:16:46 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Twimbow v1.9 is out: local Twitter trends now available http://blog.twimbow.com/2012/02/16/twimbow-v1-9-is-out-local-twitter-trends-now-available/ http://blog.twimbow.com/2012/02/16/twimbow-v1-9-is-out-local-twitter-trends-now-available/#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:16:46 +0000 Twimbow http://blog.twimbow.com/?p=852 Another incredible version of Twimbow is now available, just two weeks after the previous release. We definitely wanted to make our users happy ;-) As usual, please make sure to delete your browser’s cache in order to make sure to see the new features (better you logout, close your browser and login back again).

Here is what’s new in this version:

Release notes v1.9

  • Twitter trends: Twitter trends are now available through an icon on the main toolbar. You can see trends from anywhere in the world and see how big each trend is in terms of “tweets volume” ;-)
  • Pinterest: support of native image preview from Pinterest
  • Hashtags into replies: now you can disable this option from settings (that is hashtags copied into replies of a message containing those hashtags)
  • Emoticon for “LOL”: some users reported that the famous expression “LOL” was replaced by an emoticon. We fixed this (doesn’t make much sense).
  • Link to Twitter profiles: link to Twitter profiles (like http://twitter.com/twimbow) are now opened inside Twimbow with the profile browser
  • FIX – space after username: in replies containing hashtags, a blank space after the username was missed (as many users reported, quite annoying). We added it.

Here is the new Twitter trends panel:

Enjoy this new version and let us know what you think!

]]> http://blog.twimbow.com/2012/02/16/twimbow-v1-9-is-out-local-twitter-trends-now-available/feed/ 2 Twimbow v1.8 Available Now! Facebook, signatures and more http://blog.twimbow.com/2012/02/06/twimbow-v1-8-available-now-facebook-signatures-and-more/ http://blog.twimbow.com/2012/02/06/twimbow-v1-8-available-now-facebook-signatures-and-more/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:06:36 +0000 Twimbow http://blog.twimbow.com/?p=846 Today we are very happy to announce that a new version of Twimbow (v1.8) is available to everyone. This is definitely a major release of our social media dashboard since we introduced a lot of improvements and new much-requested features. Here is what’s new.

Release notes (v1.8)

  • Facebook cross-posting: You can now add up to three facebook accounts/pages and send status updates to those accounts, too.
  • Twitter cross-posting: If you have multiple Twitter accounts on Twimbow, you can now send the same status update to multiple accounts at the same time
  • emoticons: you now see graphical emoticons. This option can be disabled from settings
  • redesigned “new message” window: the new message window has been completely redesigned and new accounts can be added directly from there
  • additional colors: more colors available!
  • URL auto-shortening: when you write / paste a URL in the new message window, the number of the characters left will take into account that the URL will be shortened (using the t.co format)
  • preview of message you are replying to: the message you are replying to is now shown in the new message window
  • tags on replies: if a message you are replying to contains tags, those are automatically added to the new message
  • signatures: you can now add a default signature to your status updates; very useful in case more people are managing the same account
  • new “send later” option: “slots” have now been moved to the “new message” window. More scheduling options will be added soon
  • slots shuffle: added the ability to re-order your scheduled messages randomly
  • go to source in reader (is back): the option to go to the original source in the Twimbow Reader is now back
  • native retweets bug: we fixed a bug, on Google Chrome, that was pushing native retweets by users whose native retweets were disabled on Twitter.com
  • improved RSS reader: some feeds were not working properly in the previous version, we fixed that
Here is what the new message window looks like:

Tons of bugs have been fixed, too, despite there are a few issues that have to be fixed yet. Please tell us what you think, your feedback is, as usual, much appreciated and very helpful to make Twimbow even more powerful.

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]]> http://blog.twimbow.com/2012/02/06/twimbow-v1-8-available-now-facebook-signatures-and-more/feed/ 12 Five Things That Make Twimbow Unique http://blog.twimbow.com/2012/01/23/five-things-that-make-twimbow-unique/ http://blog.twimbow.com/2012/01/23/five-things-that-make-twimbow-unique/#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:43:30 +0000 Twimbow http://blog.twimbow.com/?p=838 Many faithful users know very well what makes Twimbow unique. It’s actually a mix of innovative features and UI design that make Twimbow special, but today we would like to share with our new users five things that you can’t find elsewhere and definitely make Twimbow stand out of the competition.

1) Realtime

On Google Chrome, Twimbow lets you get any type of message in real-time. Your main timeline, mentions, retweets and so on, everything gets pushed to your browser as soon as it happens. Unlike other dashboards, on Twimbow you can disable the “auto-refresh” of tweets (unusable if you receive too many messages), so you have realtime but you can decide when to actually see them.

2) Colors

On Twimbow, colors are everywhere. You can add colors to your tweets (other Twimbow users can see them colored), assign color labels to users, change colors of messages related to you (mentions, DM, RTs), change your Twimbow skin with a new colored one… it’s just up to you.

3) Music Player

On Twimbow you can easily listen to and share your favorite music while tweeting. You can also choose any song and enable the “radio mode” so that Twimbow will play related songs automatically and continuously. The usic player has been updated recently and now it’s even more powerful than ever.

4) Reader

Any article and blog post your Twitter friends share is automatically opened inside the Twimbow Reader, a powerful news reader where you can read and share content, see what other users are reading and choose your favorite news sources so that those can always be at your fingertip.

5) Monitor

Want to keep track of what’s going on about things and users that matter for you? Just add them to the monitor. You will get real-time notifications about new occurrences of keywords, tags, new tweets from lists or from specific users.

Stay tuned, new exciting features are coming to Twimbow, very soon ;-)

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]]> http://blog.twimbow.com/2012/01/23/five-things-that-make-twimbow-unique/feed/ 5 Introducing The New Twimbow Reader (and version 1.7 is out) http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/12/22/introducing-the-new-twimbow-reader-and-version-1-7-is-out/ http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/12/22/introducing-the-new-twimbow-reader-and-version-1-7-is-out/#comments Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:09:20 +0000 Twimbow http://blog.twimbow.com/?p=832 We are happy to announce that we just released a new version 1.7 of Twimbow. Not many changes and we are aware a few little bugs you reported might be still there, but we wanted to make sure to release a major update to the Twimbow reader just before Christmas!

What’s the Twimbow Reader? Since the first releases of Twimbow, the Reader let you preview articles and blog posts from within Twimbow, without the need of opening a new browser tab. It was very useful to “consume” news from within Twimbow, but the concept was very simple. Today, we greatly improved the Reader and it now became a real dashboard inside the dashboard, from which you can discover news, keep track of what you read, see what other Twimbow readers are reading, bookmark your favorite content, share your favorite news and so on. The news is also that you can now open the Reader from the main toolbar, whenever you want.

Twimbow Reader

There are actually a few features missing, yet, but those will be added in the next release. Sync with Instapaper and Read Later, share on Facebook and a few other features, for example, will be available in the next release. At this point, we wanted to release the new Reader as soon as possibile in order to get users feedback and make it better in the next release

The new Twimbow Reader is, together with the new music widget released in the past release, another important step in order to make Twimbow a powerful tool to consume news and media socially, transforming it into something way more powerful than a social media dashboard.

What do you think? Please tell us!

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]]> http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/12/22/introducing-the-new-twimbow-reader-and-version-1-7-is-out/feed/ 5 Introducing Twimbow for Windows http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/12/14/introducing-twimbow-for-windows/ http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/12/14/introducing-twimbow-for-windows/#comments Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:36:14 +0000 Twimbow http://blog.twimbow.com/?p=826 As promised, after the release of a Mac App that works as a shortcut to run Twimbow as a standalone app on Mac OSX (more or less), here is a Windows installer to do the same under Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

On Windows, we couldn’t really use a separate Chrome instance, so it should share cookies with your main Chrome installation.

You can download the ZIP with the EXE inside from the button down here. If you have any problem, please drop us a line (Google Chrome must be installed in your machine).

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]]> http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/12/14/introducing-twimbow-for-windows/feed/ 7 Introducing Twimbow for Mac http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/12/13/introducing-twimbow-for-mac/ http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/12/13/introducing-twimbow-for-mac/#comments Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:54:30 +0000 Twimbow http://blog.twimbow.com/?p=823 According to the feedbacks we got from our users, it seems that a small percentage of you prefer standalone apps over web apps. I am not among them, personally, but I can understand their standpoint. Despite it is a small percentage, we tried to figure out how to make everyone happy.

Since we invested a lot in Twimbow as a powerful HTML5 app and at this time native apps are not our priority (neither running an HTML5 app inside) we found a very good compromise: a full-featured HTML5 Chrome App running on Mac OSX as a standalone app. You get a dock icon, desktop notifications and a stand-alone behavior, but leveraging our powerful and fast Google Chrome App.

That said, here is Twimbow for Mac! It’s our first release so we definitely need your feedback to improve it. A Windows version will be available in the following days, so please stay tuned.

You can download the DMG from the button down here. If you have problems, please drop us a line (Google Chrome must be installed in your machine).

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]]> http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/12/13/introducing-twimbow-for-mac/feed/ 9 Twimbow v1.6 is out: new skins, new music widget, many bug fixed http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/12/12/twimbow-v1-6-is-out-new-skins-new-music-widget-many-bug-fixed/ http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/12/12/twimbow-v1-6-is-out-new-skins-new-music-widget-many-bug-fixed/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:38:32 +0000 Twimbow http://blog.twimbow.com/?p=817 We are happy to announce that a new version of Twimbow is now available.

We fixed lots of bugs introduced with the real-time version in Google Chrome and we also added a new music widget that lets you listen to music while staying in touch with your friends way more easier than before. You can also discover more new friends who love the music you love ;-) More widgets will be available soon, all focused on making news and media consumption on top of Twitter and other social networks an outstanding experience for all Twimbow users.


Release notes for version 1.6
NEW: brand new music player widget (more widgets to come, stay tuned)
NEW: real-time for Chrome users: now available for everyone!
NEW: four new skins (Christmas!)
NEW: now the main toolbar is shown with one format only (no big one anymore)
NEW: improved anti-spam filterFIX: some fixes in the real-time management in Google Chrome

FIX: gaps (missing tweets) in home buzz when auto-refresh tweets was ON
FIX: sometimes the ability to go back in time was not possible in home buzz
FIX: DM or tweets sent from other clients were not showing up in real-time on Chrome
FIX: image previews not working for certain formats and links
FIX: error when you try to add the same Twitter account more than once
FIX: filters: now links contained in shortened links are properly filtered
FIX: reply-all available for native retweets (to the original sender and the user who retweeted)
FIX: Google Buzz (service no more available) is now “grey”. Will be removed completely soon.
FIX: other minor bug fixes

Please feel free to contact us for any information you might need about the new version. Enjoy!
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]]> http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/12/12/twimbow-v1-6-is-out-new-skins-new-music-widget-many-bug-fixed/feed/ 8 HOW TO: Mute A User On Twimbow http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/12/01/how-to-mute-a-user-on-twimbow/ http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/12/01/how-to-mute-a-user-on-twimbow/#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:01:30 +0000 Twimbow http://blog.twimbow.com/?p=790 Wondering how to mute a user on Twimbow? Can’t find the “mute” option? Well, it’s actually pretty easy.

1) Create a new label called “Mute” and assign any color to it (black?)

2) Assign that label to the user / users you want to mute

3) un-check that label from the home buzz.

Done, all those users won’t appear on your home buzz anymore ;-) You can check which users you previously muted by simply looking at the users belonging to that label.

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]]> http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/12/01/how-to-mute-a-user-on-twimbow/feed/ 1 Twimbow And The Web of Things http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/11/25/twimbow-and-the-web-of-things/ http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/11/25/twimbow-and-the-web-of-things/#comments Fri, 25 Nov 2011 11:22:55 +0000 Twimbow http://blog.twimbow.com/?p=784 Since the early days, color has alwasy been a fundamental part of Twimbow. We use it to assign gmail-like labels to users, to organize your friends and to make your tweets stand out and make them colored. People associate the word “colorful” to “Twimbow” by default now.

Today, thanks to the partnership with Paraimpu, we want to offer you another innovative way to use colors with Twimbow.

Let’s start from the beginning. T-Hotel is a wonderful 5* hotel in the middle of Cagliari, main city of Sardinia, the italian island in the middle of the mediterranean sea, where Twimbow was originally invented. On top of their big glass tower, there is a big colored light that makes it very well recognizable at night (installed by Quit). The color of this light can change: red, blue, green, orange, yellow, white, cyan    


Il THotel dal Parco della Musica

Starting today, you will be able to change the color of that light in real-time from Twimbow. You just need to write a new tweet on Twimbow containing the tag #thotel and, at the end of the tweet, the color of your choice. For example, if you write a tweet like the following on Twimbow:

  • “I’d love to stay at #thotel and I want its light to turn #red”.

it will be processed and will immediately change the color of that light to RED. The tag can actually be everywhere in the tweet, but if you put it at the end, the tweet will be shown colored on Twimbow as well ;-)

There will be video camera pointed to the light for 24 hours / day very soon. We will make sure to make #thotel a rich tag on Twimbow then, so you will be able to click on the T-Hotel icon (that we will show on the tweet) to see the live video.

Enjoy!

note: it works at night GMT+1.

 

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]]> http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/11/25/twimbow-and-the-web-of-things/feed/ 4 Twimbow v1.5.5 is here: now real-time! http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/11/17/twimbow-v1-5-5-is-here-now-real-time/ http://blog.twimbow.com/2011/11/17/twimbow-v1-5-5-is-here-now-real-time/#comments Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:42:53 +0000 Twimbow http://blog.twimbow.com/?p=775 We have been very busy lately and there was a very important reason behind that. Almost 90% of the Twimbow backend has been rewritten completely and a new realtime Node.js server has been introduced. The main reason was solving some issues that were preventing Twimbow from updating properly in the past version and, more importantly, introducing a realtime streaming.

What’s realtime streaming? In a nutshell, it lets you see status updates, mentions and everything else as those happen, in real time. No delays, just immediately. If you follow lots of people  and you have the “auto-refresh tweets” option enabled, your home buzz will become a no-stop waterfall of tweets :-) This option is available on our Chrome app only, since Chrome is the only browser that fully supports the technology that lets us offer this great feature. Last but not least, this option is available for every kind of message except lists (Twitter doesn’t support that yet).

Important notice: for the first days, this option will be enabled for selected users only. We need to make sure everything is working fine before opening up to everyone. We we’ll roll out  this option for everyone in the following days, you will just get it without doing anything :-)

We also fixed TONS of bugs, hopefully without introducing new ones :-) In particular, we introduced an optimized personal buzz cache (the previous one was causing issues to some users, who had to disable it) that should improve the performance of the app.

Please let us know what you think and, if you got the realtime option on Chrome, let us know if you experience any problem.

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