PeopleBrowsr my favorite Twitter client!

I like using Twitter though honestly it's web client is not as powerful as I would like it. I have used Seesmic, TweetDeck, and others but I often use different operating systems and having to install and maintain all these clients across 3 or 4 computers gets really old.

Enter PeopleBrowsr. A wonderfully powerful and feature rich client that works in a web browser! Please note that it does have an Adobe AIR equivalent which I have never used.

What I like about PeopleBrowsr is how much it includes in terms of integration with various services that I use such as Twitter, FriendFeed, FaceBook and LinkedIncombined with the rich organizational features that work across my favorite browsers like Firefox, Safari and Chrome.

I have my PeopleBrowsr set up to have several stacks of information based on a variety of searches which looks something like this...

PeopleBrowsr Stacks

Having these stacks allows me to see what is going on relative to different topics that are of interest to me in a Twitter-like stream manner.

As I mentioned before while it appears PeopleBrowsr only works with Twitter it actually has integration with many other services...

PeopleBrowsr Service Integrations

While I only use a few which I mentioned before you can see that PeopleBrowsr supports many other popular services like Digg, Plaxo, Flickr, YouTube and the like. As a result you can find yourself using one client for the services that you want.

You may also notice that there is a summary to the left of my stacks. In this case the summary contains important information for the services that I have chosen to integrate with. In this case I have a Twitter summary. However if I want other summaries for different services, I simply switch the context of the service and the summary changes to reflect information from that service. For example my FriendFeed summary looks like this:

PeopleBrowsr FriendFeed Summary

It includes my lists, my rooms, and other FriendFeed statistics while at the same time still maintaining my Twitter informational views. Yes you can adjust the pane to fit your browser.

Now if I wanted to see my FaceBook information I would again change the service context and the summary would adjust accordingly:

PeopleBrowsr FaceBook Summary

So now I can see very timely information from each of my services at a quick glance. Each of the informational items are links within PeopleBrowsr so simply clicking on the item I want will navigate to that stack for further information. If that stack does not exist, PeopleBrowsr will open a new stack.

PeopleBrowsr Stacks with other Services

You can close stacks that you do not want to keep to save space. 

In terms of navigating stacks in PeopleBrowsr there are a few ways to do it. One would be to use the scroll bar at the bottom in the web browser. This is fine for small adjustments but far too much work if you have a lot of stacks per screen view especially if you have an a widescreen monitor. Another option would be to use the page navigation at the bottom which look like little white dots. This is much faster than the scroll bar but still requires some fine adjustments once you get to your page. While the summary information allows you to get to some topics, it is service dependent so if you have stacks open from multiple services this will drive you wild. The best option is the stack navigator located in the upper left corner near the logout button. 

PeopleBrowsr Stack NavigatorThe stack navigator lists all the stacks that you have open and for each service. So all you have to do is select the one you want, and PeopleBrowsr quickly goes to the designated stack. What is really nice about this is that it also formats it nicely in your web browser so that any fine tuning is usually not necessary. It is a quick time saver if you have a lot of stacks open.

Each entry is actionable in a stack. If you place your mouse over the profile image for an individual entry a series of options come up with the most common being first followed by detailed other actions which can be expanded. 

PeopleBrowsr Actions

Actions that are available are again service dependent. While similar they are not always the same. The expanded actions allow for things like Favoriting or grouping. 

Another great feature for me happens to be how active a stack can be. Since I organize my stacks according to topics, rooms, lists, or people PeopleBrowsr gives me the ability to see a micro-trend if you will of a particular stack.

PeopleBrowsr Stack StatisticsThe statistics show general trends with greater details if needed and popular words for that stack for a particular timeframe. I use this feature alot to get some idea of how certain stacks that interest me are doing. This is nice to have at a glance rather than actually navigating over to other services that can provide similar data. This does not prevent me from going to other services, but statistics such as these can help give me what I generally need very quickly. There are map views and other views to the data as well.

When I want to make a post, PeopleBrowsr also makes things easier by putting in popular contacts or terms that you may have used before in the form of a recommendation list while you type.

PeopleBrowsr RecommendationsFor example if I wanted to use a particular use, I would begin to type their Twitter handle and PeopleBrowsr will then create a list of terms to choose from. The more I provide, the better the list becomes. It helps save time while typing and cuts down on the errors in names where handles may have case sensitivity mixtures that distinguish who they are.

Also when I want to send my thoughts out PeopleBrowsr while maintaining your service context as the default, allows you to choose what service you want to use.

PeopleBrowsr Service Context on PostsI can send my post as a tweet, FaceBook status update, to Ping.fm and the like. Again this really comes in handy especially when using Ping.fm with statuses which I want to send across my multiple services.

While PeopleBrowsr is powerful the options and look can be very daunting to many. The client addresses this with different modes. While the default mode I use is advanced, other modes are available.

PeopleBrowsr ModesEach mode has a little yellow question mark beside it to give you an explanation and an edit button in case you want to change something about that mode. However the basic difference between modes is what they look like and how many knobs/dials are available. It is not merely the case that the modes remove functionality. Rather the modes use the most powerful features in very simple ways so that the user can determine what is the best experience for day-to-day use.

PeopleBrowsr in Lite ModeAs can be seen in this Lite Mode, the theme changes not only in colors but in the amount of visible options to choose from and incorporates several functions automatically so that you can get the power of the service you were interacting with while keeping the visual options more manageable.

Like many web clients out there today, PeopleBrowsr allows the user to customize the appearance to suit their own individual tastes.

PeopleBrowsr Theme EditorWith the theme editor the user can change different logos, colors, appearances to their own tastes. They can even choose from sample themes. I have not really played around a lot with this feature but it does certainly intrigue me in that PeopleBrowsr appears to have the ability to create themes which can be published to others. I would hope that would be the case since at that point artists could create really nice PeopleBrowr themes and templates for the masses to choose from. Hopefully there will be something like that either all ready in play or in the future.

Some features that I find useful in PeopleBrowsr are the little things that are lacking in other clients or require me to navigate around. One such feature is the profile on mouseover for a particular user.

PeopleBrowsr Profile SummaryUnlike other clients that pop open another window or move the information to another pane, PeopleBrowsr makes it a hovering informational widget for quick viewing. Nice to see what people say about themselves :)

Also another nice little option is the ability to condense the posts which basically reduces the text font sizes to make it more compressed in a stack.

PeopleBrowsr Condensed PostsI typically use this option to make things easier to read in summary form and to get more posts in a stack. When I want to read it, I just expand the posts.

Also each stack has other options near the bottom that offer lots of flexibility in terms of viewing the contents.

PeopleBrowsr Stack OptionsIt allows me to organize the stack by most recently updated, to list only ones with links, to make the entire stack read, to remove items that I have read, to change it from text to pictures, to let me see how the stacks looks from a map view, and several others. This makes quick examination of information within a stack very useful and localized as opposed to making very large sweeping changes across all of my stacks.

Overall I have been very happy with PeopleBrowsr. I like the power, the simplicity in that it all fits within a browser, the portability of that web browser paradigm as I move from machine to machine, and the fact that PeopleBrowsr stores everything in the cloud such that I can have my preferences move with me from different locations and different browsers.

If you have not tried using PeopleBrowsr give it a test drive. You may just like it :)

Comments

[Technogran]

I actually use the Flock browser which lets you do most of this without all the 'fussy' look. I will take a look at this but can't see it beating Flock for usability and access to all your social networks in one place.

[cliedeFerce]

The DNS and ns records are a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the Internet.