Twits and Faces

I feel like some kind of dinosaur, because it's taken me till now to try to get to grips with Facebook and Twitter. I went for the double whammy and grappled with them both at once. I think I'm vaguely starting to realise what they're good for. But I also have a dim feeling that they are a decadent and self-indulgent waste of time. It's all about me, me, me (and a bit of you, so that you can get more about me, me, me), isn't it?

I heard on the Gadget Inspectors (see the telegraphonline website) that Twhirl is a good Twitter client. This got me a bit bogged down in installing Adobe Air (a fiddle-faddle involving the dreaded Terminal. I so wish that didn't keep rearing its ugly head. And why does copy and paste not just work with Ctrl C and Ctrl V as it does in every other program on the planet?)

Otherwise Adobe Air takes you back to the Wonderful World of Windows because its installation goes through the typical Windows-like stages. And no sooner had I installed it than it popped up asking to be updated!

Then to the Twhirl website, which proudly states it is for Windows and Mac. Luckily there is an Adobe Air logo. Sure enough, this makes it Ubuntu-friendly. Well, not exactly, because it seems to tell you that it is going to insist on installing Adobe Air (again!) before installing Twhirl. Are you still with me? It's wearisome, I know. However, you can choose Manual Install and you are at last in business.

After all that, Twhirl takes ages to start - the only program on my Ubuntu system that does that.