Blogging Tips

Being someone who tries hard to keep up with all of the social sites I’m a member of, I’m always looking for a tool that will make that task a lot easier. Personally, I prefer web applications to desktop tools. I don’t like having to download too many applications to my computer plus, web applications are more convenient.

Streamy is the latest that I’ve added to my list of tools to try out and I must say, it was definitely love at first use. Not only is it a social aggregator letting you keep up with the likes of Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and more but it’s also a feed reader for your favorite blogs as well as a combined instant messenger.

Services

Streamy supports Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Flickr, FriendFeed, AIM, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, and Windows Live Messenger. Each social service has its own little tab and each tab has its own functions. For instance, on the Twitter stream you can reply or retweet and on the Facebook and FriendFeed timelines you can like and comment. And yes the timelines are all in real-time and you can pause them whenever you like.

IM services are combined in a column on the right side of the page. You can sign into all at the same time or just one at a time. Streamy also has its own messenger; anyone that you follow on Streamy will show on your Streamy buddy list.

Widgets

Each tab by default shows just the timeline for the specific service but you also have the option to add widgets. The types of widgets you can add depends on the service. For Twitter you can add a search, user, direct or mentions widget. For Facebook there’s the tagged photos and events widget. For FriendFeed there’s the search and list widgets. You can also add additional columns and move your widgets around to suite your preference. This really comes in handy for those with large monitors. My only dislike here is that I can only add one Twitter account.

Environment

Streamy has three different colored themes that you can choose from. You can also choose which page to start up with and even choose to mute the sounds effects.

Subscriptions

Websites can be added by the actual site URL or the feed URL. Alternately, you can enter a search term to find a specific blog or just look through a list of blogs that you may be interested in reading. Blogs that you are subscribed to show in a list on the left side of the page and the content shows in the middle column.

Sharing

If you come across something that you’d like to share, whether it be in one of your subscribed blogs or a link from your twitter stream, you can easily share it on any account that you have connected to Streamy or one of the people you’re following. What’s so nice about this is that you simply click, hold and drag the link or title you’d like to share and then a picture menu will come up with several options as seen below. You then drag the item to the social network or person you want to share it with. A box will then come up allowing you to enter additional details before finalizing.

With all that said, I’m still sure I’m leaving something out but as you can see, Streamy can definitely help you be more productive when it comes to keeping up with the social world and lets you share items in a snap. I’d definitely like to hear your take on Streamy; will you use it or is it just another tool that will soon be gone with the wind? Please share.