Great Scott! TweetDeck engages the Twitter Flux Capacitor

By
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
Marty: Wait a minute. Wait a minute Doc, uh, are you telling me you built a time machine… out of a DeLorean?
Doc Brown: The way I see it, if you’re going to build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?
Back To The Future

Time and the Real-Time Web wait for no man (or woman, presumably…). 
Now, until we release what we are calling the “Marty McFly Module” there is certainly not a lot we can do to help you as far as Time is concerned here at TweetDeck, but with our latest release we are giving you an update that will certainly allow you to blast through the real-time web faster and easier than ever before.
Here are some of the headlines for this exciting new release.

Hop on board for API heaven!

At this year’s Le Web conference, Ryan Sarver from the Platform Team at Twitter announced the imminent availability of an increased API rate limit for those applications accessing the API using a method called OAuth.
We are delighted to announce that TweetDeck v0.33 accesses the API using OAuth in the background and can thus take advantage of this increased API limit. At the time of writing this post, the new limit is 350 calls per hour, but this is expected to increase further soon.
We think this increased limit is a very exciting move, allowing you even greater flexibility than before to configure your TweetDeck exactly how you want it without having to worry about running out of API calls. 
Alongside this increased limit, we have also introduced an automatic intelligent API management option, which we highly recommend as the ideal way to ensure you get the most out of your API allowance. This will also ensure that as and when the limit increases further, your TweetDeck will just start making the most of it straight away.

Get the big picture with the Column Navigator

It’s all well and good being an uber-tweeting social-media genius, but when your TweetDeck columns extend for miles off the screen, what you need is the big picture.
Enter the Column Navigator. This handy new feature, nestled in the previously empty space at the bottom of the screen, shows a representation of all your columns and allows you to navigate around them quickly by simply clicking.
Hovering over a bar in the navigator also shows some key information such as the time remaining before this column refreshes and the current level of API calls remaining.
We hope you will find this a handy addition to your TweetDeck, and we look forward to refining and improving it based on your feedback.

More Media Magic

You can now view more photos and videos inside TweetDeck than ever before.
Clicking on links to Youtube videos will now show the video in a TweetDeck preview window. Flickr image links will also now open in a preview, along with pictures from Posterous, Mobypicture and Twitgoo.  
And we have added Mobypicture to the list of available image upload services, giving you even more choice for sharing your favourite photos.
Your browser just became a little bit more redundant…

Love your search columns? Now edit them with ease

Search columns have always been a hugely important part of using TweetDeck.
However the one difficulty has always not being able to edit your boolean masterpiece once you had created it. Making a small tweak to your search terms was impossible, causing, quite rightly, some frustration.
We recognised this difficulty and so in v0.33 it is now possible to edit the definition of your search columns. Just click the Edit button on the column header, edit your search terms and click Save. Your column will continue to refresh using your new search query.
A small, but very welcome change, we think you’ll agree.

Helping us, helping you

There is a brand new help screen within the application that should help you and us.
From this screen you can access some “getting started” videos, ideal for new users. There is also a search box to help you find answers to your TweetDeck questions in our FAQ forum.
Wondering if you have the latest version of TweetDeck? Use the version checker on the new help screen.
If you have logged a support ticket with us, you can also automatically submit full diagnostic information to us by just entering your ticket number and clicking Submit. Super simple but hugely helpful, and saving all of us a lot of time and effort.

A bit of spit and polish

Version 0.33 contains more fixes, tweaks and minor improvements than you can shake a reasonably-sized stick at. We have picked up on issues old and new from across the application to ensure your TweetDecking experience is the best it can be.
Version 0.33 of TweetDeck is available to download now from www.tweetdeck.com . You can see the full changelog here .

In other news…

As expected, 2010 is shaping up to be a very busy year for us.
Not only are we continuing to innovate on the desktop and iPhone, ensuring you always have the best client around, but we are also progressing our plans for branching out into other mobile platforms. We are expanding our team (more news of that in a later post) and we are well on track to be appearing on several new devices soon.
The TweetDeck Directory continues to go from strength to strength and is improving all the time. The Directory currently contains thousands of great Twitter Lists for you to follow, and we’ll be supplementing this soon with some very exciting new features that we think you’ll really love.
So thanks for all your support. We really appreciate all the great feedback we get from you and we hope that you are as excited about the future of TweetDeck as we are!