But all hope may not be lost. Lifehacker reports that a group of developers are scrambling to develop an open-source version of Sandy.

The open-source project proposes to recreate Sandy from the ground up, ensuring that users still have access to the functionality that the original Sandy possessed. They're beginning to consider plans for monetization, as well.

Like many open-source pursuits, this project stems from user frustration over the lack of control they have in the situation. It will be interesting to see where the community decides to take the project now that they have more control over Sandy's features.

For now, the developers are seeking guidance on initial features and functionality:

"If you are a fan of Sandy, let us know here or at mysandy on twitter what features are most important to you, highest priority for us to focus on implementing first. Note that we won't be able to recreate all of Sandy's full feature-set for a first release. So it's helpful to know from you what your priorities are. Please keep in mind we'll need to provide features based on what's available to us open source and free, for now, so that will be a constraint on what features are in the first release."

It's also interesting to note, that there are already mentions of working with identi.ca, the open-source microblogging tool that sprung onto the scene during a similarly difficult time with Twitter.

Whatever the case, they're off to a running start. The team says they currently have a proof of concept prototype up and running.

We'll continue to keep tabs on the open-source Sandy, even without the original Sandy around to remind us to do so.

With the addition of Identi.ca, Twhirl now supports for four of the most important social streaming apps: Twitter, FriendFeed, Seesmic, and Identi.ca. These apps are different than traditional social networks like MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo, etc., because they are, for the most part, about immediate interactions. Seeing tweets, "dents," shared social streams on FriendFeed, and even updates of your friends' recorded videos (perhaps the slowest stream of the bunch) is a much different user experience than when we interact with the large application-filled social networking platforms. Instead, the new social network is always on.

That "always on" feature is exactly why social media enthusiasts are dealing with "information overload" issues. Because we're somewhat addicted to these types of interactions, we're hesitant to log off for fear of "missing something." However, for the regular user, always on social networking doesn't have to be a source of stress - it just means that when you go online, socializing with others just becomes part of the overall experience of being on the internet. For today's digital natives this extra information stream isn't worrisome, as uber-multitaksers themselves, they're more adept at dealing with "noise," so this real-time social web is just another channel from them to tune in to.

Twhirl To Get New UI

As for Twhirl, by combining access to these four always-on networks, they're establishing themselves as the go-to application for all your real-time social networking needs. And although you might feel a bit overwhelmed at the moment - especially considering each app opens a separate window - it won't be that way forever.

Johann Romefort, CTO at Seesmic, and Marco Kaiser, Twhirl's creator, have both confirmed some big changes to the Twhirl UI. Specifically, they've said that their goal is to have all accounts in one window. This update will include a "(kind of) tabbed interface," says Marco.

That makes the most sense since FriendFeed is indeed "richer" as Johann says, which means that it should get its own tab. However, he tells me that Twitter and Identi.ca's streams will be combined into one stream. How much longer will you have to wait to see what these changes look like? The ETA on this update is before the end of the summer (which includes September, says Marco).

Conclusion

Once these streams because accessible from only one window, the value of Twhirl will skyrocket. Some people have trouble using Twhirl now because of the numerous windows required, so they simply use it for their Twitter needs. But with everything easily accessible from tabs, Twhirl will easily be the real-time Twitter client of choice, especially when you also take into account its other excellent features like built-in search (Twitter Search, formerly Summize), URL-shortening services, and direct posting of photos, to name a few. Killer app? Yes definitely....Unless you just don't care about the social web...in which case, maybe I can just direct you here.]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twhirl_adds_identica_becomes_killer_app_yes_really.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twhirl_adds_identica_becomes_killer_app_yes_really.php Products Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:25:00 -0800 Sarah Perez When we first reported about the new microblogging service Identi.ca  earlier this month, it looked like an interesting experiment. Since then, its community has grown rapidly and today, it implemented an API that is compatible with the Twitter API. Thanks to this, any application that connects to Twitter can now also work with Identi.ca by simply pointing to identi.ca/api instead of twitter.com.

Many new services struggle to build a developer community around their platform. By being compatible with Twitter, though, Identi.ca's developer pool is now virtually identical with Twitter's developer community, which means that it is only a matter of time before Twitter clients like Twhirl, Snitter, or TweetBox will make posting to Identi.ca an option.

As Twitter is making it more and more difficult for some third-party developers to hook into its API by severely restricting the number of calls any given application can make within a certain time period, Identi.ca will probably see a lot more interest from developers in the near future.

Web Products

Adobe Makes Flash Searchable

For years the big problem with Flash-based websites is that they could not be properly indexed by search engines. Flash websites have been favored by marketers and advertisers for a long time, because of the ability to create rich, interactive Web experiences. However for most other businesses, particularly those with a lot of information on their website (let's face it, that's everyone except marketers and advertisers), Flash has been nearly an automatic 'no' for website development. That may be about to change.

Hulu To Earn Up to $90M In First Year....But It's Not A Success Story Yet!

To the average user, Hulu.com, the free web site that offers high-quality streams of TV shows and movies in the U.S., looks like a runaway success: the selection of available content is more than decent, Hulu's Collections make browsing related videos easy, HD videos have been made available, embed codes are provided for re-posting the videos on the web, and the site gets a good amount of traffic, too. In fact, Hulu's CEO reported in March that 5 million visitors watched videos on the site during the past 30 days while the service was still in beta, and that number has been increasing ever since.

Gnip: Grand Central Station for the Social Web

Ping, ping, ping! That's the sound made day and night by the new social media technologies rapidly proliferating around the web... and the machines are getting tired. Polling for updates to user data streams, wishing they spoke the same language and dreaming they knew which accounts belonged to the same people across different services. Sounds like a great opportunity for an infrastructure provider, doesn't it? Enter the sexiest infrastructure provider we've seen in a long time: Gnip. Venture funded and built by exited MyBlogLog co-founder Eric Marcoullier, Gnip wants to serve as the grand central station and universal translation service for the new social web.

Identi.ca: May A Million Twitters Bloom

Identi.ca is a new microblogging service that launched this week- but it's not just another also-ran. The service is an Open Source, CreativeCommons framework for a distributed network of federated microblogging services. If you've become interested in the paradigm changing model of communication popularized by Twitter but have been frustrated by Twitter's frequent down time or other shortcomings - then Identi.ca could be for you.

It's Official: Firefox Downloads Set Guinness World Record

We already knew that Mozilla had a record breaking day on June 17th when Firefox 3 was downloaded close to 8 million times, despite the download site not working for at least part of the morning. Now, Mozilla has announced that Firefox 3 has indeed made it into the Guinness Book of World Records with 8,002,530 downloads. Mozilla had set itself a goal of only 5 million downloads.

See also: Mozilla Releases Weave 0.2: Filling in for Browser Sync

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

Web Trends

Does Microsoft + Powerset Beat Google?

What can the plan be with Microsoft's purchase of hot startup Powerset? The 3-year old company, founded by Dr Barney Pell, recently launched a semantic search experience for Wikipedia. It is doubtful that Microsoft bought the company just to enhance Live Search. Possibly the plan is to replicate the Wikipedia solution, then incorporate Powerset into Internet Explorer. In this post we look at what the thinking behind the acquisition might be.

See also: Microsoft Releases Interop Docs: Is This What Data Portability Looks Like?

Yahoo Would be Just Fine Without Search

Hitwise Intelligence took an interesting look at the breakdown of Yahoo's properties this week. They come to the conclusion that, even if Yahoo sells off its search division, Yahoo's other properties probably wouldn't be too affected by this, as they get most of their traffic from Google's search anyway. Only Yahoo Image Search, Games, Maps, and News get most of their traffic from Yahoo Search.

Is Email In Danger?

Human history is one of progressive improvement in communication. From the 20th century mail was a fundamental form of communication. The invention of electronic mail (email) changed two things. It became cheap to send mail, and delivery was instant. Email became favored for both corporate and personal communication. But email faces increasing competition. Chat, text messages, Twitter, social networks and even lifestreaming tools are chipping away at email usage. In this post we take a look at what's happening and assess if email is in danger.

Mobile Web To Get Standards

A group of mobile operators have just unveiled a new initiative they're calling "BONDI" whose goal is to encourage development of new mobile web applications while not compromising customers' security. BONDI was created by members of the OMTP (Open Mobile Terminal Platform), an industry group that includes participants from all parts of the mobile world and whose members include operators like AT&T, Hutchison 3G, Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

If you've become interested in the paradigm changing model of communication popularized by Twitter but have been frustrated by Twitter's frequent down time or other shortcomings - then Identi.ca could be for you.

Note that initial interest is already challenging the first implementation of this service, they are working on improving performance but it will work best once there are multiple interoperable installs!

Jabber Support

Many people love Twitter's messaging through GTalk, but the feature isn't always available. It's available immediately on Identi.ca.

OpenID

We created an account on Identi.ca using an OpenID account in under 60 seconds. It made us happy.

Right: I got my Failwhale shirt in the mail today from FailWhale.com

Coming "Soon"

Identi.ca just launched today but lists a number of features it says are coming "soon," including SMS, URL shortening, cross posting to Twitter and other services, a more AJAXy interface and much, much more. Exciting.

There is no "replies" tab on Identi.ca, but Twitter users will already be accustomed to that, right? We hope that functionality will come to Idneti.ca quickly.

Remote Subscription

Identi.ca uses a new technical spec in the works called OpenMicroblogging, something that would let users of one supporting subscription to send and receive messages securely across different microblogging services. This sounds like a great idea, and uses the OAuth user authentication protocol we like so much, but it doesn't appear to be usable at launch.

Federation

Ultimately, this means federation. I put a customized version of the foundation software (called Laconi.ca) on my server, you put one to your liking on yours, we both get friends on our local copy and any other versions around the web - and everyone can communicate with each other just like we were using the same service from the same provider. Whoever comes up with the best alternative to the garbled name Identi.ca wins!

That's something that many people have wanted to do for a long time.

Can it work, work it scale? At least it's open source so the development community doesn't have to play armchair quarterback for a black box like they are with Twitter. Maybe these little puppies can get tied into Gnip, the social media switchboard service we wrote about yesterday. Especially once Twitter integration happens, we expect to see Identi.ca become an important part of our work day here at RWW.

Now if you'll excuse use, we need to go make a desktop app for Identi.ca using Fluid.