Nambu is another player in the multi-service social network client pool. It’s a native Mac application that requires Leopard to run. At first glance, Nambu is a mix of EventBox, TweetDeck, and Twhirl.
Nambu in Multi-Column View
Nambu uses tr.im and pic.im for URLs and images (all are developed by the same people). If you haven’t used pic.im, it’s a very simple service similar to TwitPic.
The Good
- The current beta release of Nambu only supports Twitter, though ultimately it will also support FriendFeed, Identi.ca/Laconica and Ping.fm. The feedback forums also suggest that Facebook integration will be a top priority.
- Replies to a tweet can be embedded directly below it. It’s a good idea but I feel that it disrupts the flow when you read the reply, scroll up, and read it again.
- There are multiple views which should work for everyone. There’s your plain-jane single column combined view (all updates in one column), a sidebar view which puts a menu of possible views to the left of a single column, and multi-column view which puts any number of columns next to each other.
- Inside of any column you can filter updates. It’s not terribly sophisticated but if you’re looking for mentions of a term, it’ll do fine.
- There’s an option to mark all as read, remove just the updates you’ve seen, or remove all regardless of whether or not you’ve seen them. This makes it easy to limit the number of updates displayed so you’re not inundated with a ton of info.
- Keyboard Shortcuts – ’nuff said. Well… there are some global shortcuts and some service specific shortcuts. Compose, reload, hide all, translate, reply, retweet and private message are some of the more useful shortcuts.
- Shortened URLs are decompressed and show just the domain of the destination. It looks weird at first but if you hover over any link it’ll show you the short URL and the full destination URL. This is going to take a lot of the fun out of Rick Rolls.
- It’s pretty. The interface is colorful and vibrant just like Twhirl is. My biggest gripe for TweetDeck is that every column looks the same. With Nambu, you’ll find some variation (albeit limited) in colors.
- You can group your contacts. Group management is a bit of a pain – you have to use the right-click/context menu to add a person to a group or select them from a huge list of all your contacts. Unfortunately when you’re using the list, you have to remember their name because it displays that instead of their screen name. Luckily if you have a general idea you can use the search box. Srsly – when will someone implement a drag-and-drop solution for group management??
- Persistent search – performs just like you expect it to
- A feature I haven’t seen elsewhere is a view for all links either sent or received. I’m not entirely sure when I’d use this but it’s still pretty cool.
- There’s a count on the dock icon of how many unread items you have. If you change the badge count to just the items directed at you, it easier to ignore Twitter.
- Growl support, which is pretty much expected for a Mac app.
The Bad
- The preview version is limited only to Twitter
- Looking up profiles is a pain. You have to find an update from that person in order to get to their profile peek. There’s no way to type in their name and view their profile. I really hope this changes, and fast.
- There’s no way to view a tweet’s parent. Good luck following a conversation backwards.
- Multiple account support at the expense of having them update at all times. You can turn it down to update every 15 minutes but I’d like to just shut off updates for an account. This lets me tweet from multiple accounts without using API calls for it. (Useful for monitoring search results)
- The columns are locked in place. If you want to move a column left or right, you have to close the column and then reopen them in the order you want them. This needs to be fixed ASAP.
- When closing a search results column in multi-column view, it doesn’t truly go away. It just spins in the background and bloats your unread count. I was totally confused why I had hundreds of unread messages after marking all as read.
- When new tweets arrive, the column shifts, making you lose your place.
The Verdict
Even though Nambu is in beta, it’s worth checking out and using for at least a day to see how you like it. It can be a little buggy but will be a solid contender with time. Some people are complaining of crashes but it’s only crashed once on me.
Things I Need
In order for me to want to use this all the time, I would need the following:
- Customizable audio notifications so I hear audio for replies or DMs and better granularity for visual notifications.
- Moving columns around. Drag and drop (ala Seesmic Desktop) would be great but I’d take the button option from TweetDeck.
- Better profile lookup
Screenshots
Sidebar View
pretty good, all things considered (CPU, Threads, RAM)
