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Sideline is a new Twitter keyword monitoring tool from the guys over at Yahoo. This AIR application is slightly different to the usual Twitter AIR desktop clients that we see in that this monitors the public timeline for keywords plus you can’t login or send a tweet from Sideline.

What it does do is enable you to build up complex search terms and keywords that you can then store in tabs within Sideline. After setting a refresh rate you can save any tweets to be a favourite – although this is purely within the Sideline app and not a saved tweet on your account.

Watch, search and monitor the Twitter public timeline in real-time.

When you first start the app it shows you some of the hot topics being discussed on Twitter right now, with one click you can add one of these search terms to a new tab. Tweet links are not clickable in this version of the app either.

Released as an open source application under the BSD license and is hosted on github.

Video Review

Sideline - Adobe AIR Application Review from RefreshingApps on Vimeo.

RefreshingApps reviews Sideline a new Twitter keyword monitoring tool from Yahoo.

Design eye

Sideline has a large bold look to it, he colours are striking and key items easily read. I found the process of adding a tab, then adding a search term which required a title then your search term to be rather clunky from a UX perspective and I’m sure this can be done successfully on one screen.

The tabs are easy to work with and wrap even when you add a stupidly long tab name in just to test!

I’ failing to see what the refresh button needs to be so large and prominent as the default rate is 1 minute so there is usually no need to hit refresh. Why not just move the interval slider to the main screen?

One other slightly irritating thing I noticed is when you go to add a detailed search, the modal window is almost touching the bottom of the app and the natural reaction is to click and drag it upwards. You can’t because it’s fixed.

The product page on Yahoo is really nice with a custom install badge too, so head over and check it out.

Technical eye

Built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The Yahoo Interface Library is used extensively within this application. And of course the Adobe AIR SDK.

There is a great blog post about the building of Sideline over at the Yahoo YUI blog by Chad Alud. It’s a really good read with some tips on how the YUI libraries play with Adobe AIR and more general Adobe AIR development tips.

In Summary

Nice demonstration application by Yahoo especially being made available as opensource. The concept is interesting and coming at Twitter slightly differently to some of the other applications we have seen.