Tired of going to the Twitter website each time you want to tweet about something? Are you looking for a Twitter client that has native Mac interface? YoruFukurou is such a software, allowing you to read and write tweets from the desktop.
Like it or not, Twitter is a very important part in our life. It has become more than a social hub, where people share experiences and thoughts. Twitter is also used by software developers to share the progress of an application or receive feedback. Artists use it to share their current tour information, album status, etc.
Twitter is a rich information source that provides free access to all the things you are interested in. Accessing Twitter from your desktop does not raise too many problems, since there are a lot of Twitter clients available. While many are running on the Adobe Air platform, only few of them are designed to run on Macs natively. YoruFukurou is one of them.
The Looks
All Twitter clients have a simple, accessible interface, and YoruFukurou is not any different. Tweets and replies can be visualized and written from the main window, which is small, but gives access to a lot of tools.
One can view the tweets timeline in 3 different ways, having the possibility to decide whether it wants a practical or a more stylish approach. Side panels are used for viewing the personal information of any Twitter user. They provide an easy way to view profile info without opening a new window.
The Works
The first thing you have to do when using YoruFukurou is to enter your Twitter account information. Based on the credentials you've entered, the app will grab your latest tweets and let you visualize them in the main panel, using your pre-defined visualization mode.
While using YoruFukurou, you have full access to all Twitter features, so you can add favorites, retweet or delete a tweet. I enjoyed the fact you can add various notes to any tweet, in order to find it faster. One can also add a tweet to favorites, if the information here is precious, or just fun.
Another feature I find very useful is the fact that you can filter your tweets using personal criteria, and then delete them if needed. Filters can also be
extended to persons, and one can use them when a having to block people that send annoying tweets.
Any image contained in a tweet can be immediately visualized in a side panel, both full scale or resized, depending on its resolution. YoruFukurou also comes with a pretty useful autocomplete feature, which is very handy if you don't want to write full words in order to find what you're looking for.
A fun thing is that you can use YoruFukurou to automatically tweet your currently playing song from iTunes or the webpage you are currently viewing in Safari. While this is useful for some people, others will find it annoying, mainly because it generates a lot of tweets if you are spending a lot of time at the computer.
Unread tweets can be accessed simply by pressing Space. This action will lead you to the oldest unread tweet. The behavior can be disabled from the options menu, a pretty useful feature because one can press Space accidentally, and jump from away from the currently selected tweet with no warning whatsoever.
Using Growl, YoruFukurou is able to send notifications each time a new tweet is available. Very useful, but sometimes annoying. Why? If you have a lot of subscriptions, and the people you follow tweet a lot, your Mac's screen will be full at all times. Of course, you can easily disable this Growl notifications if this is the case.
Also interesting is the fact you can customize the tweet color, making personal tweets easily recognizable. Aside from Space, there are a lot of keyboard shortcuts, which give you an easy access to features like sending messages, opening links and previewing images.
One of the most interesting things brought by YoruFukurou is the image uploading function. This lets you upload any kind of image file to TwitPic and YFrog, without having to visit the websites. All you have to do is drag and drop the image files into the upload window. This feature can prove to be extremely useful for all people that are constantly sharing pictures due to the huge amount of time users can save when not having to visit an image sharing website each time they want to send their friends a picture.
The Good
YoruFukurou is small, but pretty powerful. Managing your Twitter account via YoruFukurou is both easy and fun, and it is very helpful if you are using the Twitter service daily. The fact that you can receive notifications, access the autocompletion function and other features give it a unique, practical touch. Side panels are a good addition, since they provide additional information on any person or tweet and let you visualize images.
The Bad
What I disliked the most was the Growl notifications feature, that brings all the new tweets on your desktop. If you follow a lot of people, the desktop will soon be filled with notifications.
It would be nice to have advanced options for managing the Growl notifications feature: to choose the people you want to receive tweet alerts from or to exclude the ones that fill your Twitter screen with tweets that you're not really interested in.
The Truth
YoruFukurou is simple, handy, and it makes your Twitter experience lots more fun. YoruFukurou also makes visualizing and managing tweets much easier. Because the app features both ease of use and a lot of customization options, each user will experience YoruFukurou in his / her own way.
Overall, YoruFukurou can prove to be a very useful Twitter client and, if you won't take my word for it, download it on your Mac and take it for a spin yourself.
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