Posty, an Adobe AIR cross-platform client we discussed a few weeks ago, released an updated version of the application on Saturday, October 18.

New features in the latest version include the following:

• Automatic updates. Upon confirmation Posty downloads and installs new versions.
• Improved usability of login forms (which show up when needed)
• Clickable in-text links
• Url shortening (via http://is.gd/)
• Support to Twitter Direct Messages
• Support to Identi.ca Direct Messages
• Configurable notifications of new Twitter updates
• Support to Retweet
• Support to Twitter favorites
• Support to Identi.ca favorites
• Memorization of services to update, preselected on startup
• Choice of active services to be displayed on startup

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Posty founder Cesare Rocchi (@funkyboy) describes his app as a lightweight desktop application that allows a user to browse and update accounts across various microblogging platforms. He suggests that the more important question in front of microblogging is not “What are you doing?”, but rather, “Where do I post this?”

Where Do I Post This?

As new microblogging platforms seem to pop up every day, it can become difficult very quickly to stay active in each place. What Posty allows you to do is to input all of your microblogging account information and post messages from within the Posty interface to whichever platforms you choose.

Unlike Ping.fm’s setup, which generally blasts messages out to all accounts recorded (without some extensive setup work), Posty let’s you easily choose which platforms to post a message to each time you hit the submit button. Including or skipping a microblogging platform is as easy as checking or unchecking a list of boxes in the sidebar.

Other great features of Posty include:

• browsing of personal/public/friends timelines
• interactivity with Twitter, Identica, Jaiku, Pownce, FriendFeed, Pownce and Tumblr
• spellchecking of new messages and replies
• Visualization of multimedia items (YouTube and Vimeo videos, Tumblr audio, Flickr/Zoomr/Smugmug galleries)
• Works behind proxies

I’ve been using Posty quite a bit lately for our various Microblink accounts. I don’t regularly use it to broadcast posts across various networks, but I do use it to quickly check in on our different timelines and replies. Ingenuities like the “open in a new window” icon also makes it easy to take messages or links outside of Posty and into their original environment if the need arises.

Where Does Posty Fit in the Lineup of Microblogging Apps?

Posty doesn’t support the same amount of services as Ping.fm, but its other features and uses outweigh Ping.fm overally. Although Posty was intended to be a simplified, cross-platform posting device, I would actually place it in the same category as Twhirl, which is a client for accessing and using the different microblogging platforms.