Identi.ca’s official desktop app ain’t ‘alf bad

Identi.ca is the open source equivalent to Twitter based on the StausNet (formerly Laconica) micro-blogging server.

Identi.ca boasts many features not found in its tweeting rival such as XMPP support, groups & personal tag clouds.

Applications

Whilst several desktop applications already provide support for Identi.ca the developers at StatusNet have decided to build their own cross-platform desktop client that will better exploit the feature set StatusNet services – such as Identi.ca – provide.

“StatusNet has unique features that we’d like to see expressed fully in clients” Zach Copley, API lead and developer relations manager for StatusNet said when announcing the reasoning behind the decision, “We think the best way to get this done is to build clients with these features ourselves.”

“We need official go-to clients we can point new users to, ones that are guaranteed to work with and be in sync with the latest version of StatusNet server.”

The application, snappily titled ‘StatusNet Desktop’, is built using Titanium, “an open source rapid applications development system that leverages web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript to build native applications for each of these platform.”

The application is in an early public-test and, for the most part, works as well as you would expect it to. As with Gwibber in single-pane mode you have a left-hand pane of easy-access categories such as replies, messages and search.

Clicking on the ‘new notice’ button pops open an entry window with a hand character limit countdown.

Test StatusNet Desktop in Ubuntu

• Download the relevant Linux package for your system @ http://status.net/desktop
• Once fully downloaded right click and > extract
• Double-click on “StatusNet Desktop” inside the extracted folder to start the installer

Lucid Fix for StatusNet Desktop

Lucid users need to be brave after installing StatusNet Desktop for there is a known bug that afflicts the Titanium runtime, resulting in the application being unable to launch. The fix is as below but PLEASE be super duper careful with these commands and enter/paste them exactly as they are.

• rm ~/.titanium/runtime/linux/1.0.0/libgobject-2.0.*
• rm ~/.titanium/runtime/linux/1.0.0/libglib-2.0.*
• rm ~/.titanium/runtime/linux/1.0.0/libgio-2.0.*
• rm ~/.titanium/runtime/linux/1.0.0/libgthread-2.0.*

Once accomplished simply click on the same “StatusNet Desktop” icon in the extracted folder as you did to install.

Using Identi.ca with StatusNet Desktop

Logging in with an Identi.ca account is nowhere near as simple as it should be thanks to the need to specify a site address.

• Enter your username
• Enter your password
• Enter ‘http://identi.ca/api’ in the site field.
• Click ‘Ok’.

For further information pay heed to the StatusNet Desktop Wiki @ http://status.net/wiki/Client