My Search For The Perfect FriendFeed Desktop Tool [List]

Over the past 3 to 4 days, I’ve been desperately trying to find the perfect FriendFeed desktop tool. Seeing that I’m always so busy working on various projects throughout the day, I’d really like an easier way to keep up with my friends & network (besides keeping a FriendFeed tab open).

What I’d really like is a Socialthing! desktop tool but, since there doesn’t seem to be any at the moment, I’ll settle for a FriendFeed tool.

So, I’ve ventured out searching for the perfect FriendFeed application. Perfect for me means having a decent amount of features & options as well as notifications/alerts; I love those new content notifications like the ones I get using Digsby & Socialbrowse. Notification get my attention & kind of force me to at least try to keep up.

There seems to be TOO many desktop tools out there for Twitter but not enough for FriendFeed; it really shouldn’t be this hard to find a GOOD FriendFeed desktop tool! By now, I would have thought that there would be a bunch of them but, I guess not. In my search, these are the desktop tools I decided to test out & as you’ll see, it was hard to find my perfect one.

Alert Thingy – I kind of like this Adobe Air application but, there’s just not enough options for me; I’d really like to be able to customize the notifications because there’s often too many of them popping up. I also don’t like how every time I add a comment to a post, no matter where I am, it goes back up to the top of the post; what a pain. I always end up losing my place & getting upset.

Twhirl – This is another nice Adobe Air application & also the favorite tool of many Twitter users. There are lots of options but I don’t like their FriendFeed setup. First of all, it gives you 2 separate windows, one for Twitter & one for FriendFeed; I’d prefer just to have one window containing both. The Twitter window is perfect, I love the setup but, the FriendFeed window, not so much. Once again, when I post a comment or “like” something, it takes me back to the top of the list & then I lose my place, just like with Alert Thing.

bTT by Sobees – This is almost the perfect tool but the thing that ruins it is the notifications. Instead of showing the actual content in the notifications, it shows the number of new messages, new comments, new tweets & new “likes”; that’s really not what I want. Besides that, everything else is great. There are a lot of extra features & I don’t lose my place when adding a comment (like Alert Thingy & Twhirl). So, I can probably get over the lack of notifications if need be, since everything else is a good fit.

MySocial AIR – Just by looking at the comments, I was reluctant to try this out. I did download it though just to give it a spin & I must say, it has a long way to go. From the looks of it, it’s a very new tool that needs a lot of tweaking. Also, I kept getting an error message about the Twitter API so, I couldn’t even do anything with Twitter (there were comments left stating they had this issue as well). There are no options at all & the look of the tool is not very aesthetic either. Maybe I’ll try it out again once it’s been through a few versions.

Eluma – Lastly I tried this desktop tool, which is actually a bookmark manager, newsreader & desktop alerts tool. It just so happens that Eluma can also be used as a desktop tool for FriendFeed as well. It’s definitely something I would have never even thought of using for FriendFeed but, it does the job & it does it pretty well.

I did have Eluma installed a few months back, when it was in private beta, but ended up uninstalling it because I didn’t understand how to use it. Now, after view the short video about how to use it as a tool for FriendFeed, I was totally convinced to give it another try.

Eluma has has notifications/alerts in the form of popups, a flashing system tray icon, or a ticker (that displays at the bottom of your screen. Personally, I love the ticker option. It’s not too distracting & when you click on an item on the ticker it opens up in a browser tab – which then marks it as read & removes it from the ticker.

Of course, you can’t post to FriendFeed from it but, I would rather use Ping.fm for that anyway. You can also view the feed in a window instead of having to open in each post in a new browser tab; there are lots of options & features to help you customize Eluma to your liking. Another thing I found out is that when you click on “comment” in the feed window, it opens up a new tab in your browser, instead of letting you reply in the window; a lot of people won’t like that.

So there you have it, the perfect FriendFeed tool that isn’t even a “FriendFeed tool”. Not only do I get a tool with FriendFeed functionality, but I also get a feed reader, bookmarks manager, alerts manager & more.

What about you? Do you use a desktop tool for FriendFeed (or Twitter)? Do you use Eluma? Is there a tool that you can suggest that might be better? Do you think you might try out Eluma? I’m all full of questions!

Technorati Tags: friendfeed, desktop tools, twitter, twitter tools, desktop applications, alert thingy, twhirl, btt by sobees, mysocial air, eluma