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Individually updating all your accounts on multiple social networks or services can be a hassle. If you want to streamline your social networking, get Gwibber. BY JOE ‘ZONKER’ BROCKMEIER

f you belong to one - Gwibber, like any good *nix program, quire a lot more overhead than Gwibber ing site, you probably belong to sev- does one thing and does it well. In Gwib- has or needs. @eral. But who has the time to visit all ber’s case, it works as a way to send and The Gwibber interface is straightfor- those sites and provide updates for each receive messages from multiple social ward. When you launch Gwibber, you’ll one? If you want to keep up with the so- networks and microblogging services, see a window that says, “Welcome to cial scene, but don't have a lot of time, and that’s pretty much it. Gwibber.” If you go to Accounts | Man- check out Gwibber. This handy tool is a Note that Gwibber isn’t currently set age, you’ll see a dialog in which you can client for several microblogging services up for posting to actual blogging services start adding your accounts to microblog- and social networks, including , like WordPress or TypePad, which is ging services (Figure 1). Once you add , Identi.ca, , and Pownce, probably for the best – its compose win- an account, Gwibber will start retrieving and it can help you update and follow dow is designed for short and straight- the most recent batch of messages and all of these without having to open your forward messages. Meandering display them in the main window. If you browser. Gwibber is open source, li- posts with a lot of formatting would re- have multiple accounts, you can choose censed under the GNU General Public different colors (Accounts | Username | License Version 2, and written by Ryan Properties) to differentiate between the Paul. You can find Gwibber on Canoni- messages from each account. cal’s Launchpad [1] with packages for Replying to a message is simple Fedora, openSUSE, and . thanks to Gwibber’s separate tab for re- With the use of openSUSE packages, I plies. If you move your mouse over the installed Gwibber with the One-Click message to which you’d like to reply, mechanism. If you’re using openSUSE you’ll see a curved arrow. Clicking on 11.0 or Factory (or a later version) you the arrow will start a message for you should be able to use the One-Click =`^li\(1DXeX^\pfliZfcc\Zk`fef]d`Zif$ with an @reply for the user to whom packages to grab Gwibber. Ycf^^`e^XZZflekj% you’re responding (Figure 2).

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Note that you can choose to use Gwib- Twitter, Identi.ca, and other social net- ber in read- or write-only modes. For ex- working sites. Be careful, however, be- ample, if you manage a Twitter account cause if you have two or more accounts to send notices about events, you might set up, by default Gwibber will broad- not want to read all the messages from cast your updates to all the networks – your subscribers. In that case, you can unless you’ve set them to read-only. turn off “Receive Messages.” Alterna- If you follow someone who has the tively, you can just use Gwibber as a same username on multiple services – reader if you have a lot of friends on a such as Identi.ca and Twitter, for exam- network but don’t get around to updat- ple – Gwibber will “bundle” the mes- ing the service yourself. sages in the main window if your friend Some accounts are less straightfor- updates both services with the same ward than others. For example, Facebook message. If you use two or three other =`^li\*1PflZXeklief]][`jgcXpYlYYc\j% requires some gyrations beyond just microblogging services to follow friends, tossing Gwibber your username and this helps keep the interface from be- some networks don’t support getting di- password. First you need to find your coming overly cluttered. For instance, if rect messages via Gwibber. In fact, you friend update URL. To do so, log into Fa- your friend sends the same message to might want to avoid using Gwibber to cebook and head over to the All Friends Twitter and Identi.ca, you’ll see one send direct messages altogether. For ex- | Status Updates. (Get there by going to message in the Gwibber main window ample, I use Gwibber with accounts on your homepage on Facebook and click- with a plus symbol (+) in the corner of Twitter and Identi.ca. Although I can use ing Friends or navigate to http:// www. the message. Clicking on the plus sym- d username message to send a message new. facebook. com/ friends/.) bol expands the message to show it from to someone on Twitter, if I use that syn- On the left-hand side of the page is an both services. Early versions of Gwibber tax on Identi.ca, it will just send a mes- RSS icon and text that says Friends’ Sta- did display each message independently, sage that says “d username message,” tus Feed. Copy that URL, which should which could get old fast! which might be a tad embarrassing if I look something like http://www.new.fa- was really trying to send a genuinely pri- cebook.com/feeds/friends_status.php?id Gi\]\i\eZ\j vate message. =XXXXXXXXX&key=XXXXXXXX&for Gwibber has a minimal set of prefer- In general, if I really have something mat=rss20, and then remove .new from ences, as befits a simple application. The private to say, I avoid using a social net- the URL. Next, go to Accounts | Create in notification preference is particularly work to do so. Email is still a much bet- Gwibber and select Facebook. Then, useful, although I don’t like that Gwib- ter method for private messages. enter your URL into the Feed URL: field ber displays “bubble” notifications every In my experience, Gwibber does han- and click Authorize Gwibber. This will time it updates. If you happen to have a dle @replies appropriately (when you take you to a page with a key on Face- lot of contacts, you’ll see a slew of notifi- direct a message at another user with @ book’s site, and you’ll need to enter the cations that take over half your screen in front of the username), which means key into the Gwibber dialog box. every update interval. However, you can that if you reply to a message from a At first, it’s a bit of a hassle, but after turn this off pretty easily by opening user on Identi.ca, it won’t send the same you get it set up you’ll be able to post Gwibber’s preferences and unchecking @reply to Twitter as well. status updates for Facebook without log- Display bubbles (Figure 3). ging into the Facebook website, making Another important variable is how 9cf^8nXp the effort well worth your time. often you refresh. Twitter, for example, Now that you have the scoop on Gwib- After you have accounts set up in will deny access if you try to visit the ber, head over to Launchpad, grab Gwib- Gwibber, you can send messages out to website too often; this counts for API ac- ber for your platform, and get to (micro) cess, too. In Preferences, you can scale blogging. Socializing online has never back the number of times you refresh. been so easy! p Because I tend to get lots of updates, I set it to 30 minutes because going longer INFO than 30 minutes would mean losing [1] Gwibber on Launchpad: some messages. https:// launchpad. net/ gwibber/ Under Preferences, you can also set Gwibber not to display an entry in your taskbar. If you already have dozens of Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier works for windows open, this might help conserve Novell as the openSUSE Community Manager, has a regular blog at http:// some valuable taskbar real estate. zonker. opensuse. org/, and is on Twit- ter and Identi.ca as jzb. Before joining ;`i\ZkD\jjX^\j Novell, Zonker worked for a number One thing to note with Gwibber is that it of publications as a technology jour- nalist and editor covering the open

doesn’t support sending direct messages AUTHOR THE =`^li\)1:c`Zbk_\XiifnkfjkXikXi\gcp% via some networks. That is, the APIs for source beat.

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