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I recently expressed my frustration with the lack of good clients for Linux that effectively aggregate Twitter & Identi.ca.

In the comments to that post, Kari suggested I try out PeopleBrowsr.com, and I have to say…I’m pretty impressed. PeopleBrowsr takes pretty much all your social networks, and allows you to view updates in streams arranged in columns–a lot like TweetDeck. So, while everything’s not in one stream the way I prefer, all my updates are easily visible and in one window. I can live with that. PeopleBrowsr also has some really useful features I’m already really enjoying:

• It’s easy to ReTweet, Follow, and Unfollow straight from the default PeopleBrowsr interface.
• Facebook integration is tight. Comment on status updates and search Facebook straight from PeopleBrowsr. This drastically improves my Facebook experience.
• Saved searches make keeping track of hash tags and keywords easy. Plus you can sort search result with powerful options like location and time.
• Integrated trending topics display is also really convenient.
• Threaded conversations. Need I say more?

Pros:

• Features. See above.
• Simple sign up…just an email, plus your Twitter info.
• Runs in your browser or via Adobe Air.
• Attractive and customizable interface.
• Will let me keep using both Identi.ca and Twitter productively.

Cons:

• Interface can be a bit sluggish.
• Not free or open source.

So, there you have it. I would of course, prefer a free (as in speech) solution, but PeopleBrowsr works, and seems to work well. Check it out, and let me know what you think.

Managing multiple social networks is rarely easy, and almost never fun. I’m always trying to streamline and simplify, and one thing that’s really been eating away at me lately is having to handle two microblogging communities.

I know there are ways to have my tweets show up as dents, and my dents as tweets…cross posting really isn’t the issue. I just hate having to check two websites for @replies, group messages, etc. As of right now, there doesn’t seem to to be a single desktop app for the Linux desktop (or possibly any desktop) that aggregates the two services the way I’d like.

Twirl uses multiple windows, Tweetdeck doesn’t have Identi.ca support, and Friendfeed (a web-based solution) requires me to manually create “virtual users” in order to get updates from Identi.ca peeps that
aren’t members. There seems to be no simple solution. Gwibber would great…if it worked. Seems like it’s been pretty unstable lately, though…lots of crashes, unresponsive windows, losing of tweets.

So what should I do? Give up one of the two communities? I’m not happy with this idea because I love what Identi.ca stands for and I enjoy many relationships I’ve built through it…but Twitter is equally hard to leave because of its ubiquitous presence.

I haven’t decided yet, but I think until a workable desktop application (or a really awesome webapp) comes along, I may have to ditch one or the other.

So, I recently upgraded to latest Firefox (more on that later) and–to cut the chase here–I’m sick of how it continues to blatantly ignoring dark GTK themes. The bookmarking dialog is unreadable, and the “Awesome” bar urls look absolutely horrible (bright blue on gray, anyone?). While Firefox is still technically usable, these issues cause real annoyance and do cut down on its usability.

Notice how hard it is to read urls. Click for larger image.

The problem is…I love Firefox. Despite its flaws, it stands head-and-shoulders above Epiphany (which remains a bit too simple for heavy web browsing) and just about every other browser out there when it comes to features, security, and extensibility. I’m not giving up Firefox anytime soon, so…I guess I have to change my choice of GTK themes.

Naturally, I went to GNOME-Look.org (a great site) to begin my quest for a light theme that would look great on Firefox and my desktop, but I couldn’t find quite what I was looking for…light, but not cold. Most of the bluish themes out there lack any warmth or inviting feel to them. I like a clean look, but with a bit of cosy-ness to it.

MurrinaVerdeOlivo is clean but warm. Click for larger image.

In the end, I installed the Murinne GTK engine from the standard repos along with the murrine-themes package, and found some nice options…right now my desktop is running the MurrinaVerdeOliva theme with the Blended Metacity window borders and the Crashbit Ubuntu icon set. I’m pleased with the look. If you install those packages, you’ll also get some nice blue themes and couple cool graphite options as well.

What’s your favorite light theme for GNOME/GTK?

Dropbox has really done a lot for me in terms of making managing files across multiple machines actually workable. One the greatest things about this cool app is that it makes it fairly simple to sync all your personal information stuff like contacts, calendar info, and notes. Nothing beats having all of your notes instantly available on and offline on all of your machines. It comes pretty close to pure bliss for me, actually.

I’m using Dropbox to sync my Zim Wiki notes, but tech blog Starry Hope gives us the low down on how to best use Dropbox for all you Tomboy users out there. Looks really simple, and I bet you could do something similar with the private-beta Ubuntu One, too.

Full Story: Synchronize Tomboy Notes With Dropbox

Linux Journal has a detailed write up on web browser that was totally new to me called Conkeror. Not to be confused with KDE’s browser/filer combo Konqueror, Conkeror uses Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine (just like Firefox) to display beautiful webpages.

Unlike Firefox, there are absolutely no buttons or controls (”chrome”) to get in your way; everything is done with Emacs-like keyboard shortcuts. You can have multiple webpages open in one window with “buffers” and many Firefox extensions are compatible with the browser.

If you’re not a fan of Emacs-style keyboard navigation, the shortcuts are totally customizable, so you can get it to behave anyway you like…even like Vi(m).

Conkeror on my Eee PC with the buffer list open. (click for larger image)

I’m aware that there are extensions for Firefox (like Vimperator) that make it more keyboard friendly, but the advantage that Conkeror offers is its super-light resource usage. With two buffers (the equivalent of tabs) open, Conkeror was using about 66 MB of RAM. With the same tabs, Firefox was using well over 100 MB. So Conkeror makes for a great, full featured browser for low-end systems. Without all the chrome, it’s also a great choice for netbooks like the Eee PC series, Acer Aspire One, or HP Mininote.

Full Story: The Conkeror Web Browser Conquers Small Screens

How do you browse from the keyboard?