What Ven Thinks!

I don’t know about you, but I’m a master procrastinator. I’m also a list-maker.

Former co-workers branded me as the “Queen of the Post-it®” because I always had dozens and dozens of Post-it® notes all over my desk. Appointment reminders. Mini To-do lists. A grocery list of things to pick up on the way home. Stuff like that. Unfortunately, it was a disorganized mess and, in spite of my best efforts, I had a terrible time keeping up with all those lists.

I still use Post-it® notes an awful lot but I’m no longer the Queen. I’ve found a better way to manage my lists and get things done. It’s a software program called Efficient To-Do List and I can’t get through a day without it. Literally can’t! Everything I need to do

I tried Seesmic Desktop alongside of TweetDeck for a short period of time and it didn’t take long for me to realize that Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck are shadows of each other. If you look at the two clients side-by-side, you can barely tell the difference. Seesmic looks a lot like TweetDeck and has most of the same features. Each client also has features the other lacks, which makes it very hard to chose between them. Even as I write this review, I find myself once again waffling between the two clients. Sometimes, TweetDeck works better for me, but at other times, Seesmic is the better fit.

These are some of the features Seesmic Desktop has in common with TweetDeck:

• Handles multiple Twitter accounts.
• Support for multiple URL shortening services.
• In program profile viewer with the ability

Of all the Twitter clients I tried, Digsy was the one that almost stole me away from using TweetDeck, which is surprising considering Digsby was the most lacking in features of all the clients I tried. I used Digsby for several months before making the switch to TweetDeck and still alternated back and forth between the two for while after that. Even now, there are days when I’m tempted to use Digsby just to get a break from the annoying TweetDeck chirp.

Here are a few of the benefits of using Digsby:

• Handles multiple accounts for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn
• Ability to open separate columns for each account, resize them, and move them to any position on the screen.
• Completely customizable appearance with skins.
• Ability to customize the notification sounds (big, big, BIG plus for me).
• Can be

Twhirl is one of the Twitter clients I tried when I finally became fed up with logging in and out of Twitter and Facebook to manage my multiple accounts.  Twhirl has some very nice features and for people who need a simple client to manage a few Twitter accounts, it is an excellent choice. Here are some of the best features
of Twhirl:

• Connects to multiple Twitter accounts.
• Notification display and sound for new messages.
• Support for bit.ly URL shortening.
• Twitter search with saved searches.
• Option to change the font size of the time line.
• Single column display.

In spite of its many wonderful features, however, it didn’t take long for me to realize that Twhirl was not the right client for me. In a side-by-side comparison with TweetDeck, Twhirl doesn’t measure up.

Facebook Support:

• Twhirl: No facebook

Do you have multiple Twitter accounts? How about a Facebook account or two? MySpace? LinkedIn? Foursquare?

If you’re like me, you probably have multiple accounts at several of these sites and keeping up with them can easily become overwhelming. In the past few weeks I’ve tested several different options for managing those accounts without logging in and out of each one on a daily basis. Here are just a few of the options I’ve tried:

• Digsby
• Twhirl
• HootSuite
• Seesmic Desktop
• and, of course, TweetDeck

I am primarily a Twitter user, but do have accounts on some of the other sites and after much tinkering and testing under my normal usage patterns, TweetDeck has emerged the winner. Although there are a few things about TweetDeck I would change if I could (annoying chirp notification anyone?), overall, the features