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AlertThingy 2 is the latest incarnation of the Adobe AIR application by London agency Howard Baines. AlertThingy was originally a desktop AIR application for FriendFeed and worked really well. Not content with that Howard Baines have been hard at work on this version 2 which is a brand spanking new application built from the ground up.

AlertThingy v2 brings the very latest updates from your favourite social networks direct to your desktop. Plus send Tweets, update your Facebook status, upload photos to Flickr, post to Tumblr and more. With v2 AlertThingy makes it faster and easier to manage the online you. Plus you get the coolest looking RSS reader on the Interweb.

I met with them recently at Adobe Max in Milan and they were really excited about AlertThingy 2 but were being very coy about the feature list, and now I can see why. What they have done is to create a personal social network aggregator for your desktop in a very sleek and well designed package.

Lifestreaming is becoming a vital way of keeping up with the many friends and new sources we have scattered over the Internets. AlertThingy 2 does not limit you in ways that other apps can, it’s not just Twitter or Facebook. You can add RSS feeds from the predefined list or by adding in your own.

The timeline of alerts that appears over time is an amalgamation of the data from your chosen services and feeds. Including any time where you were offline, or when you posted a status update. The icons to the left indicate what service the update was from. The same concept is applied in the Contacts screen where all of your contacts are shown from your added services.

There is a comprehensive settings window where you can add extra feeds and services while also setting application options like launch at startup.

If your still a fan of the original FriendFeed AlertThingy then your still in luck, you can get the special FriendFeed Edition right here.

Video Review

AlertThingy 2 AIR application review from RefreshingApps on Vimeo.

Design eye

Lovely looking application with a simple clear interface and iconography. The overall design takes cues from Apple OS X applications with the placement of the search input box and large header area.

Textual content is easy to read and the distinction between the types of updates is clear although I would like the service icon to be consistently placed and possibly a different colour to the standard text. System status updates are in a standard 37 Signals type yellow and that works well against the other types of update. Rounded corners on the avatars is a nice subtle touch.

A video introduction screencast to adding new feeds and services would be a nice addition for new users, guiding them through the first steps with the AIR app.

Technical eye

This is built using the Adobe Flex 3 framework with the AIR runtime SDK.

In Summary

The application is a little slow on startup and can take a while for your updates to appear, noticeably slower than Tweetdeck. Also it allows multiple accounts on things like Twitter, but a small bug allows you to enter the same account twice. On the contacts screen I would have liked the ability to send a direct message using Twitter etc but that appears to not be available.

When you add an image to Flick by dragging it into the Flickr update window, the thumbnail does not appear, just a missing icon. SHould be an easy fix.

Nice looking application and I look forward to some interesting new updates in the near future.