Twitterfall

We believe it's very important to use our own product, that's why both of us use Twitterfall every single day as our main Twitter client. We also believe it's very important to listen to what people have to say about Twitterfall, and that's why we both do a search for 'Twitterfall OR twfall' all the time in Twitterfall.

We've heard a lot of people and media talk about how spam is a big issue on Twitter. We've noticed it too; when it comes to trending topics we see hundreds of spam tweets all the time, making it very hard for trending topics to be as useful as it used to be.

Twitter has a very simple spam reporting process, you just have to send a direct message to @spam with the name of the user in question. But now if you use Twitterfall it's even easier. When logged in, simply click the small 'Report' link above the users name. You will receive a prompt confirming you want to report them, and then Twitterfall will do the rest (it will even follow @spam for you if necessary).

Sometimes the system lets you down and you need to be able to filter your tweets yourself to remove the garbage. That's why we've added a new 'Exclusions' filter which allows you to filter tweets beyond the simple syntax of Twitter Search.

Our exclusions filter is case insensitive, supports simple 'from:' syntax, and filters ALL of the tweets falling down your page. We use a clever search algorithm which means you can have as many exclusions as you like without causing problems.

Right now exclusions are not saved when you leave Twitterfall. We know that this is important, and we're going to be working on it as soon as possible. We just really wanted to get these features out so that people can start using them and giving us feedback on them.

These are the two biggest new features for Twitterfall, and we're really pleased with them and hope you are too. However the new features don't end there!

You can now perform Geolocation searches without a custom search! This means that you can view any tweets about anything in your area. We've had loads of requests for this, and we're really pleased to be supporting this now.

You can now edit searches inline. This means you don't have to delete the search and read it any more, which should make using Twitterfall much easier.

When you visit Twitterfall for the first time (or have nothing saved) Twitterfall no longer defaults to 'All Terms'. Instead, you receive a welcome message explaining some of the things you can do. This makes it much easier to set up Twitterfall for the first time with your custom searches, login, exclusions, and so on. This is a bit of an experiment and if we feel it's working out we'll be working on improving the 'initial launch' experience to help people get off to a great start with Twitterfall.

We now support Mentions. Previously we told people just to search for '@username', but of course this means you miss out on private tweets, so we've included support for the mentions API call. Worried about using up your API? Don't worry, because Twitterfall is a web-based service, using it does not use your API for other applications such as Tweetdeck.

Your browser tab just got more useful. Now when you're not viewing Twitterfall, the browser tab will update showing you what new tweets you have (it will say if they are timeline tweets, search tweets, and so on). Note that support for this is varied. It works fine in Firefox, but in Safari you have to be using a different window in order for this to happen, not just tab. We're hoping that Safari and the WebKit team solve this problem soon.

Got a Mac? Get 'Twitterfall For Mac' by clicking 'Twitterfall for Desktop' on the right hand side. This is a packaged up Site Specific Browser using the Fluid framework, correctly set up to support Twitter oAuth (which by default, Fluid doesn't support as it opens a new window when you try to login). We're hoping to include information about making Site Specific Browser's for Windows and Linux soon.

Improved Presentation Mode. Now you can include a heading at the top of the Presentation Mode (a selectable theme). Great for use on a projector (for example, you could have 'Include the hashtag #twitterfall to get your tweet up here').

We think you'll agree that this is a lot of new features. We hope you enjoy them all. We've also fixed a few bugs here and there, notably:

• Searches with long words don't wrap any more
• Setting a large fall size works now
• Countless performance optimisations

Let us know what you think about all these new features by leaving a comment, or getting in touch with us via Twitter.

After a month of waiting on Apple, the first major new update to the Twitterfall for iPhone application has been released. The new features are outlined on iTunes, but for reference and in more detail:

You can now search for people directly and follow them. When you open the application, just tap the user icon and type in a username to get a quick drilldown of information about that user. We added this feature because sometimes we find we just want to quickly look up a Twitter username - and then follow them - without have the distraction of anything else.

You can now add a default search term. Simply go into the Settings application on your iPhone, tap on Twitterfall, then type in your default search term. Whenever you load Twitterfall, this will appear by default in the search box when you tap the search button.

You can now turn profile images and retweets on and off. Turning retweets on and off is a popular Twitterfall feature, and turning profile images off makes the view a bit more streamlined.

You can now change the text size. This is useful for seeing more in one screen, or showing tweets to someone else (for example).

You can now set default settings in the Settings application. This is fairly self-explanatory.

We've also altered a few UI features, and fixed some bugs.

We're continually working on and refining the iPhone app, so let us know what you think by providing feedback in iTunes, or on Twitter to the @twfall account.

In the Apple spirit (Snow Leopard) we have been working on refining Twitterfall recently, improving some of the backend, optimising the code, and improving some of the user interface and experience. We have a few cool things to share with you today.

Firstly, Presentation Mode. We try to focus on all use cases when improving Twitterfall, and we know that a lot of people love to use Twitterfall at conferences to display the back channel, but sometimes 'Hide Panels' just isn't enough - you want to show JUST the tweets, in big text, and nothing else. That's why we've added 'Presentation Mode' to the list of themes, which automatically hides the panels, removes the top panel, and makes the text nice and big. Perfect for projecting onto a big screen.

Next, and possibly the most obvious, we have revamped a lot of the default theme. Now we have new icons, a cleaner look, and we've removed the performance-sucking translucent PNGs that were really reducing the visual performance of Twitterfall. Now, by default, everyone can enjoy a much smoother Twitterfall experience. We're open to suggestions and comments about the new theme, and of course all the old themes are still present (minus 'Simple', which this theme is replacing). Transitions to the new theme should be painless.

My favourite new addition, is the built in URL shortener. Now when composing a new tweet, reply, DM, or retweet, you have the option of shortening your URLs for maximum tweet-length efficiency, and without having to leave Twitterfall! The replacements are performed 'in-place', which means you just have to type your tweet out as normal, and then hit 'Shorten URLs'. We're considering this in 'beta', as we're still ironing out any bugs, but we're really excited to provide this feature, and hope you find it useful. Currently we support is.gd and have no plans to support any others, but we'll see how it goes.

Finally, there have been numerous little bug fixes and adjustments:

• General optimisations, our CSS selectors are now way more optimal.
• Added a '200' fall size as per request
• Links to both screencasts when you click the 'Screencast' link.
• Reduction of the top panel for a more streamlined view
• Optimisation of removal of tweets from the bottom of the page.

Don't forget if you find any bugs, let us know via email, or the @twfall Twitter account. Enjoy!