Gleek: It’s not just a space monkey anymore

Oh, the choices of Twitter clients!  I can’t speak for iOS or Android (or BlackBerry, Symbian, whatever else), but for Windows Phone 7 alone I can quickly find 8 just on the first two pages of searching (2 of which I’d never heard of…).  Well, Liquid Daffodil is adding GlƏƏk to the mix!

I’ve spent the last 30-60 minutes playing with it, and here are my impressions:

Nicely Metro-fied.  It has a lot of design elements in common with …I’m a WP7!, but that’s to be expected and is not a negative.  It starts up with the “Start” page, a grid of Metro squares for New Tweet, Search, Messages, Friends & Faves, Trends, Lists, GlƏƏks!, and your profile.  Swiping along the top we have PƏƏks (more on that in a bit), Timeline, Mentions, Retweets, and back to Start.

New Tweets is nice and simple: A  box at the top to remind you what account you’re posting to (so 1 box is ticked immediately for me – multiple account support). Below that is a larger box with the character count it large grey numbers underlaid beneath your text in the upper right.  The text you type is nice and large!  That’s very good for my old eyes on this small screen.  You can add an image, and when you do, the image icon next to that textbox is highlighted. 
    You can also add “effects” to your tweet: bubble letters, flipped letters and “glƏƏkified” letters (your “e”s will be flipped and large).  These effects show up in GlƏƏk, Mehdoh, twitter.com, the integrated Twitter in your Me tile, and Twit (that’s what we have in our house).  They DO NOT, however, show up on Tweetdeck, which is what I use on my desktop.
    If you’re familiar with …I’m a WP7!, you’ll also find that our smiley additions are also available in GlƏƏk.  Unfortunately, from what I tested, only about half of them show up in any ANY client, including GlƏƏk.  Awww, I like the octopus! 
[Edit: So the developer tells me that this is a limitation of how Twitter store certain double-byte characters. Ah well.]

Effects do not, unfortunately, show up for Direct Mentions.  Huh?

The Retweets panel has three sections: Retweets to Me, Retweets by Me, Retweets of Me.  Retweets to Me seems to be “stuff-my-friends-retweeted.”  The other two seem to both be “stuff-I-retweet,” which doesn’t seem to be right.  Retweets of Me seems like it should be “my-stuff-others-have-retweeted.”
[And more Edits: This is just me, evidently. The dev tells me that this is how Twitter’s API works, and how it is implemented in the Twitter app as well as Carbon, another 3rd-party Twitter client.]

Switching between accounts is very, very simple. Just tap the double arrow “switch” icon on the bottom, choose the account, and off you go.  Very nice.

Various settings:
    When reading tweets, you can set the app to show pictures in the timeline. If set to on, you’ll get a “view image” link in the timeline, and the image will open in a little “pop up” window. Just tap the phone’s back button to close it.
In the settings, you can choose which panel for GlƏƏk to open up to: the Start, PƏƏks, Timeline, Mentions, or Retweets.  You can also turn PƏƏks & GlƏƏks on or off.   
    GlƏƏk  will work in both portrait and landscape modes. You can, however, lock it to either one. 
    If you’re familiar with …I’m a WP7!, you should be aware of the “Today’s Pick” pictures.  You are (hopefully) aware that you can set your Theme to use the Today’s Pick as your background, giving you a new background every day.  This feature is duplicated in GlƏƏk ; however, the picture is laid on TOP of the text!  A busy background would make your Timeline Very Difficult to read.  I’d like to see LD change that to put the text on top of the picture.
    You can set your Timeline to show in a List or a Slide view.  I tried both, and saw no difference.
    There is a Live Tile setting to turn them on and off, and also to turn on or off (separately, thanks!) mentions and notifications. 
    You can turn location on or off, choose the style of your retweets (RT:, via [screenname], or quotation marks).  You can even encode custom hashtags that will be added to all posts.  This will be good for blogs (coughthisonecough), companies, and the like.

The Search function searches only tweets, not users.  I’d like to see that added if possible.

You can get the number of your friends and followers in your statistics (in the profile section), but I think I’d like to see that added to the Friends & Faves area too, even if it’s just a small number beside or next to the section header.

Okay, the fun stuff: PƏƏks and GlƏƏks!  PƏƏks are simply random (boy are they random) tweets from anyone, anywhere.  If you find one you like, you can glƏƏk  it (retweet).  Open yourself to different Tweeters.  Read stuff totally out of context.

I haven’t tried to get support from other clients, but Liquid Daffodil has a great tract record of being Very Good at communicating with users, despite being an incredibly busy dude.  I need a full-time job; I wonder if he’s looking for a virtual assistant…
{Edit: And I’ve already talked to him about this. He’s read it and already has some of this in mind for v1.2!  WOO!}

So over all, I’ll give GlƏƏk  high marks.  I really do search on people more than rarely, so I’d like that added, and there must be a way to get these other smilies to show, at least in its own app!  And that Retweets panel seems like the one section needs looking at.  I can’t wait for it to show in the Marketplace and for people to start using it!

Version 1.1 has already been submitted and is awaiting approval. Hopefully it will address some issues.

It’s not in the Marketplace yet, but if you’ve got …I’m a WP7!, you can grab it from the “Member Apps” section.