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Seesmic desktop is the new desktop Adobe AIR client by Loic Le Meur’s company. They previously purchased the Twitter AIR application Twhirl.

This time around Loic has clearly gone after Tweetdeck. Columns are in and so is Facebook integration using the new Facebook Open Stream API.

You can add multiple Twitter accounts and Facebook accounts which is nice and you get the ability to share an image. Choosing from an existing image on your drive or take one from your attached webcam you can then upload to Twitpic, nice.

User lists which are simply basic column groups like Tweetdeck are available to help keep track of your friends.

Seesmic desktop videos

Design eye

The design is neat and clear. What I really don’t like is the interactions. The columns are just so confusing and frustrating, with no ability to seemingly close a column. After playing with it I came to the conclusion that there is a main column that you can then ‘push’ it’s contents into an overflow column area – weird. Simple works just have a button to add a column and one to remove it.

The font kerning is too close for my personal taste and can lead to some words being hard to read consistently.

Technical eye

Seesmic desktop is built using Adobe Flex with the Open Stream API from Facebook and of course Adobe AIR.

Summary

Has some features that the other desktop Twitter clients don’t have currently. I liked the image options and ability to have multiple Twitter accounts.

That said the package is let down by some strange interactions and excessive button clicks to achieve a simple outcome. For example columns are easier to use on Tweetdeck.

If you are constantly on Twitter and Facebook then you could do a lot worse by not trying this and seeing if it is for you.