Fuck Tweetdeck so hard that I’m not even going to do that middle-of-word-capitalization thing that its creators insist on (It’s supposed to be “TweetDeck,” which is fucking stupid so fuck that, you fucking fuckers).

Normally, I’d just switch to another Twitter client that doesn’t suck, like Nambu, except I switched away from Nambu because the one thing that did suck about it ended up driving me nuts: multiple account support. Tweetdeck, however, solves the problem with Nambu by being a piece of fucking shit.

Recently, I signed up for a second Twitter account, @omgpurplefox. If you click that link, you’ll notice that it’s a protected account, and you need to request my permission before any of the things I post there are visible to you. You see, sometimes I feel like shooting out 140 character blasts of information I don’t want my mother to read. Oh, and about 99% of the planet, too, don’t forget them. Now, naturally, since I’m used to updating and reading Twitter via a client, I’d like to be able to manage the private account from a client as well.

Nambu allowed me to do that, but that, in turn, made one of its best features a pain. It tells you, in numbers, how many tweets from people you follow you haven’t read yet. But if you have it track two accounts which follow some of the same people:

If I have Account A and Account B following Person C, and Person C sends one tweet, Nambu tells me that I have two tweets unread. Thus, I have to mark things as read about 39725686 times, which becomes a chore. This problem was annoying enough to force me to switch to Tweetdeck.

Tweetdeck, on the other hand, doesn’t inform you of the same tweet twice. It just doesn’t tell you anything:

Well, okay, it does. Whenever it determines that you have unread tweets, it shows you a message in the upper right corner of the screen saying “(number) Tweets) or something. This goes away after about five seconds, so if you’re not staring at your computer right at that moment, there is no fucking way to know if there are any new tweets.

Oh, and it pulls the exact same crap for your @Mentions and Direct Messages, which, for Twitter purposes, are basically the equivalent of email addressed to you personally. You kinda want to read them when they come.

Actually, I’m lying. Tweetdeck does tell you if you have any unread tweets. Here, see if you can guess which of the tweets in this Tweetdeck column are marked as “unread”:

The unread ones are the first two. The ones with the tiny dot next to all that tiny text. WOW, HOW OBVIOUS. Now imagine five columns of that, each seven boxes tall. Yeah, it’s totally easy to see which ones are new at a glance. Real easy.

Now, Tweetdeck does have some other nice features. You can create “groups” of people you follow, for instance. Except about 10% of the people I follow are inexplicably not available to be put into groups, while about 50% of people I followed in the past but unfollowed are still on Tweetdeck’s list. And there is no way to fix that.

Ultimately, I hate Tweetdeck, and wish I could use something much, much better. But I need a Twitter client that lets me:

• Tweet and send DMs as either of my two accounts
• Track people I follow, as well as @Mentions and DMs for both accounts
• Notify me, in a way that actually works, how many tweets and messages I have unread
• Not drive me insane when the two accounts follow some of the same people

Because I prioritize necessity number 4 over number 3, I’ve had to abandon Nambu in favor of Tweetdeck, which is the only other client I’ve found that achieves my other needs satisfactorily. Seesmic Desktop is, from what I can tell, more of the same, so there’s no point in switching. So until Nambu at least gives me the option to fix its redundant notification system, I’m stuck with this crappy thing.

In closing, what the fuck is this shit that keeps popping up:

I keep getting that fucking thing for no reason and it takes 3656867357 presses of “Continue” to make it go away.

So how can more physical activity by gamers, still often stereotyped as overweight nerds, be a bad thing? I started to have my doubts reading Gizmodo reader kagegiri’s comment on an article about the physically challenging (and possibly dangerous) Tony Hawk Ride:

It’s peripherals like this, Natal, and Sony’s baton that make me feel like some people don’t get the charm of video games and virtual reality.

When you get perfect-mapping motion games, yes, you can apply real-world skills to a game. But it turns out a lot of the population can’t swing swords properly, or kick a soccer ball far, or swing our arms fast enough to hit a real home run, or balance on a skateboard while doing tricks, etc. If it’s too realistic, it’s like your physical weakness in real life is translated into weaknesses in game.

This is definitely a concern for me. Frustration due to failure in Grand Theft Auto causes far more urges to go on a shooting spree than actually succeeding at shooting virtual people; anything to increase the chances of frustrating failure in a video game is not a good thing by any means. But while many people can overcome their “physical weakness” by excessive exercise, what about the people who can’t?

Like people in wheelchairs?

Some people are wheelchair-bound their entire lives. Others will be wheelchair-bound temporarily after playing Tony Hawk Ride. If video games get too physical, not only will the ability to feel like a superhero be limited to actual superheroes, but less people will be able to play. Some people already can’t play games because they can’t afford all forty-seven platforms; adding a physical ability barrier on top of the economic one isn’t a good idea.

That’s not to say the idea of greater physical immersion in games doesn’t excite me, but there always needs to be an alternative.

Wow!!!

Dude!!!!

Awesome!!!!

Am I being too cynical here, or is it perfectly okay to criticize this for looking like crap as soon as you click on something?

Yeah, yeah, it’s “in Labs” or whatever, but that’s no excuse for a completely unusable interface.

Most Google services, Google Maps in particular, have obscenely convoluted URLs. Why do I have to type “http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=eiffel+tower&sll=40.748517,-73.985345&sspn=0.007445,0.01369&ie=UTF8&ll=48.858299,2.294544&spn=0.006296,0.01369&z=17&iwloc=A” instead of just “http://maps.google.com/Eiffel-tower”? It’s the Eiffel Tower! There isn’t exactly more than one! And if somehow there is more than one, um…you’re Google. You can show us.

Our friend Mr. Winer had this to say:

Google should hire someone to beautify their URLs. Seriously would make their products 100 percent more attractive and usable. A URL czar.

I agree, Dave, though you seem to be making suggestions to them free of charge. Mind if I join in? Well, actually, this is the Internet, so if you did mind for some reason, you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, but I’ll just assume you’re okay with it.

Currently, Google Maps does have a somewhat less bone-headed URL system: http://maps.google.com/?q=Eiffel+tower will search for “Eiffel tower” (though if you click “Link” in the toolbar thing, it still gives you the gigantic thing to copy and paste for no reason). This is exactly the same as normal Google Search, with which you have http://www.google.com/q?=search. However, this system uses two horrible conventions in URL naming that need to be Killed® With Fire™: “?q=” and “+”.

“?q=” is a set of three ugly characters that don’t need to be there. A simple “/” will work fine, thank you. And using “+” as a space is ugly and annoying; the “+” key isn’t anywhere near the home row and requires you to hold down Shift. While the hyphen isn’t a major improvement, at least it’s used in lots of URLs, doesn’t require you to hold Shift, and gives a much better aesthetic feeling of a space than “+”. And given that it’s Google, hyphens are automatically detected by their omniscient robots if you don’t type them in your search, so there’s no “but I want to search for a hyphen” conflict. Because you probably don’t.

Or MAYBE they could use, um, a space. Seems to work perfectly fine already.

Now, obviously, eliminating the “?q=” (it looks like the emoticon for licking a runny nose, ewwwwww…) would require some things to be reconsidered. On Google Maps, it would be pretty easy (Google Maps Support could easily be moved to “maps.google.com/support/[language]“, or, perhaps, “help.google.com/maps”), but vanilla Google Search still launches its searches from pure “google.com/?q=”. Well, there’s an easy solution here…

How about to search for “Decent Looking URLs”, you go to “search.google.com/Decent Looking URLs“? OH GOD THAT’S HORRIBLE WE CAN’T DO THAT!!!!!! >.>

Honestly, Google, just sit an intern down with the .htaccess file for a few hours. It’s not that hard.