Julio Ojeda-Zapata (@jojeda) is a guest author at Microblink. Julio has been on the front lines of the Internet and computer revolutions as a syndicated columnist, editor and award-winning reporter for more than a decade. He covers consumer technology for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and recently published “Twitter Means Business,” a field guide for companies seeking to master the world of microblogging.

Even though I am a Twitter addict and superuser with (at last count) four active accounts, I have stubbornly kept tweeting in browsers as others have migrated to specialized Macintosh or Windows applications.

I’m a minimalist by nature. I’d rather keep my Twitter use streamlined than deal with overwrought applications that make my life seem more complicated than it needs to be.

Besides, many top Twitter apps hurt my eyes. App publishers have had difficulty duplicating the elegance and readability of the Twitter’s basic Web interface.

Loren Brichter of software publisher Atebits may have finally done it. He’s the one behind an iPhone-based Twitter app called Tweetie, which is a hot seller on Apple’s App Store. Tweetie is sheer elegance, with a near-perfect blend of minimalism and raw functionality.

Now Brichter is duplicating this difficult feat on the Macintosh, with a desktop version of Tweetie that could be the best such app yet, on any computer platform.

I’ve spent more than a week testing several private-beta builds of Tweetie, which went public this morning. To say I’m impressed is an understatement.

Tweetie is sleek, superfast, powerful and drop-dead-gorgeous. Judging by the insane level of buzz on Twitter, it also looks to be very popular. It may, in fact, be a Twitter killer app, though one that Windows users must lust after from afar (sorry, guys).

Tweetie for Mac looks deceptively simple. It is a narrow, vertical window with a toolbar on the left sporting a mere four control buttons (for a user’s main Twitter timeline, replies, direct messages and searching). Click one of the buttons, though, and the Tweetie magic ensues.

Moving from one toolbar option to another triggers a vertical fast-slide effect I find delightful. Click a user’s avatar or username and a fade-zoom effect reveals his or her particulars. More fast-sliding (horizontal, this time) moves you among that user’s tweets, faves and info.

Double-click a public reply and the entire back-and-forth conversation is revealed in threaded form. Your private exchanges also are threaded (but, strangely, with IM-style colored bubbles that deviate jarringly from Tweetie’s otherwise-consistent interface guidelines).

Though Tweetie lets you drill deep into the Twitterverse via willy-nilly clicking, it will always guide you back to your point of origin. It does this cleverly by displaying every step you took, each as its own clickable hyperlink, along the top edge of the application window.

The tweet-posting interface is even more minimalist; it’s a little window that swoops to the center of the Mac desktop (via a customized keyboard combo, if you like). This is a swell touch, especially when you do not want to be distracted by the tweeting of others. Tweetie lets you send direct messages in a similar fashion, and the posting window opens with a handy autocomplete field for entering a recipient username.

Tweetie does clever things with photos, too. Click a TwitPic link or a user’s avatar photo within his or her info page, and the enlarged image appears in a slick-looking standalone window that zooms to the center of the Mac screen. You can easily upload photographs, too, by dropping them into the posting window; they are then pushed up to any of four photo-hosting services Tweetie supports.

Tweetie handles multiple Twitter accounts with equal grace. Each one is displayed via its avatar in the toolbar, above or below the four primary buttons. Click one and it becomes the active account (the others gray out). Double-click one and you’re taken to an info page for that account. Bubbles alongside each avatar subtly flag you about new account activity (tweets, replies, direct messages).

I think you’re getting the idea: Tweetie manages to cram an incredible amount of Twitter utility yet it never seems intimidating, and is easily whisked out of sight with a single click of a tiny icon at the top left of the Mac OS X desktop.

That menu-bar icon is also a notifier, turning from a neutral gray to a glowing blue when you have new tweets, replies or DMS (y0u can customize it to glow for only some of these).

So (assuming you’re on a Mac), is Tweetie for you? Loads of alternatives exist.

Some are positioned as feature-festooned Twitter dashboards with little pretense of minimalism. Examples of these include Twhirl, TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop (all running atop Adobe AIR software that allows their use on Windows as well as Mac).

For Apple diehards who detest the appearance of AIR apps, there is Nambu (with a multicolumn interface similar to that of TweetDeck, but a Mac-like look and feel) and Lounge.

Those needing access to other social networks, along with Twitter, can dabble with the Mac-native EventBox and the AIR-derived Skimmer.

Need absolute simplicity with a touch of elegance? the Mac-native Twitterific and the AIR-based DestroyTwitter fit that bill nicely.

But Tweetie looks to become my default Twitter client on the Mac as well as the iPhone because it manages to do so much without becoming overbearing. That is the genius of developer Brichter — He has an uncanny knack for striking a perfect balance.

I did run into a few issues during my testing. Tweetie at times would not take more than one of my accounts; Brichter told me this is a known issue he is addressing. I also craved absent features like saved searches, a refresh button and Growl support (this refers to the popular system-notification software used by other Mac-native Twitter apps to flag users on new account activity).

Some users also want an ability to create Twitter subgroups, a la Tweetdeck and Nambu; Brichter said he isn’t inclined to provide this feature, and suggests an obvious alternative.

Tweetie, though, is a must-look for serious Mac-based Twitter users. And it needn’t cost them a cent; In addition to a $15 version (the price goes up to $20 after May 4), Brichter is offering a free version that embeds an occasional banner add in Twitter timelines.

This is similar to the approach taken by Twitterific maker Iconfactory, and not an unreasonable one. So download Tweetie today; even if you find it doesn’t fit your needs, I guarantee you will be impressed with it. As a Twitter app, it is state of the art.

It’s only been about three weeks since we launched What the Hashtag?! and we’re happy with the reception it’s gotten so far. We’re currently nearing our 900th hashtag in the catalog. To sweeten the pot and get more people interested, we’ve decided to hold a giveaway when we reach our 1000th hashtag.

The Rules

To enter, just follow these simple guidelines:

1. You must be registered at What the Hashtag?!
2. You must enrich the site (and community) by making at least 1 meaningful edit. By meaningful we mean you have to add something worthwhile to the current listing (adding information to a hashtag or creating a new listing).
3. Getting others to retweet about the contest will get you bonus points.

The Prizes

Here’s what we’ve got on tap for prizes:

• Five (5) $10 USD iTunes gift cards
• Five (5) 48×48 featured user slots on Microblink for two months

Choosing a Winner

To choose a winner, we’ll pool all the users currently registered that have at least one qualifying edit. We’ll choose a random user from the pool to win an iTunes gift card. Lather, rinse, and repeat for 4 more cards and the 5 featured users slots. To remove any suspicion of nonsense or shenanigans, I’ll record it all on webcam and embed the video for you all to see.

So, get out there and register to enter yourself for the contest. We’re not entirely sure when the thousandth hashtag will come in, but we estimate that it will be sometime in the next week.

Tweetie announced yesterday that there is a simple way to send a URL from Safari to Tweetie when browsing on your mobile device. The bookmarklet makes use of the tweetie: protocol, which in turn tells your device to launch the Tweetie app. There are 9 steps to creating this bookmarklet and they’re all pretty simple.

When you’re browsing in Safari, just bring up the bookmarks option and tap the bookmarklet. You’ll be redirected to the Tweetie app where you’ll select an account (if multiple are present). Once you’ve done that, you’ll be greeted with a pre-shortened URL (compliments of bit.ly). Fill in the rest and away you go. This is something I use quite often with BigTweet, so it’s nice to see there’s a simple way to do it with tools I already have.

Tweetie is available from the App Store for $2.99 [iTunes link]. View more iPhone/iPod apps here.