Newsfeed’s purpose is to show you a stream of activities happening all over the network. Since you are only linked to your friends, or people you would like to follow, the newsfeed is very relevant and unique to you. This, in theory, is the very core reason why everyone goes back again and again to a social network. We just HAVE to know what is up with our friends, don’t we? 
But to check status presents another problem, we don’t want to check it every other minute just to see if there are new updates. Our keypresses would be like ‘alt-tab’ ‘F5’ … wait … ‘alt-tab’ back to whatever we are working on. We want the updates to be sent to us as soon as there are new ones.
I found a desktop software that does just that. And not just for one, but many famous Social Networks. The most prominent ones are Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. I am sure in future updates, this software will link to even more Social Networks.
The best part I like about this software is that it consolidates all updates into one single feed. So be it from Twitter or Facebook, it will be displayed in a single list sorted by date and time. That make sense to me, after all, I want to know what happened at what time, doesn’t matter to me where the information is coming from.
This software is called AlertThingy. How to get it up and running? No worries, just follow the step-by-step below and you’ll be on your way.
Step One. If you haven’t got it, install Adobe AIR first.
Step Two. Download and install AlertThingy.
Step Three. Once installed, launch the application and the first button you should click is
. It is a setup button.
Step Four. In this page, you can begin to subscribe to the Social Networks that you have an account it. Click on each Social Network, enter the relevant information Some Social Network requires your to authorize the access (example: Facebook). No worries, no Username and Password will be required, so it is safe. You just have to login at Facebook.com itself and not through this application. By the way, there may be more than one authorization required, so don’t be surprised when you have to click on ‘Allow’ again and again. 
Step Five. Give it an account name for each Social Network. Just type anything you want here, it is just for your own use.
Step Six. Once you have added all Social Network you are connected to, you are done. Open the application (it will be situated at the bottom right of your taskbar.)

As mentioned, all updates will appear in one single list sorted by time. Very convenient.
Do note that this application is not just to view updates, but also to update INTO your Social Network too! Just Click on the
buttons. Different Social Network will look different, so you have to try it out for yourself.
One final note, a community is never complete without having someone that loves to spam. So if you want hide someone’s status updates, just click on Options, Filter and choose ‘Less Interesting’.
There you go, hope this application brings more productivity to you in terms of less time spent on refreshing and waiting for updates! By the way, if you have Twitter account, please follow me at http://twitter.com/laskersaw.
If you are using any alternative application, please do let me know at the comments.
(photo by Joe Shlabotnik)