Nambu: Promising But Very Beta

There’s been quite a bit of buzz recently about the launch of Nambu, desktop, AIR-powered software for Mac OS X that, for now, lets you handle multiple Twitter and Identi.ca accounts (Friendfeed and Ping.fm are coming soon).

As someone who’s constantly looking for new ways to use Twitter, I downloaded Nambu with high expectations. After a few days of use, the verdict is that Nambu is interesting but it’s far from polished or ready for prime-time. That said, it’s still in beta (does anything ever leave beta?) so bugs and shortcomings are to be expected.

First, the positives:

- Nambu had a nice, user-friendly interface that offers a number of different viewing options, including multiple columns that TweetDeck users really appreciate.

- The columns that Nambu lets you create include links that have come into your Twitter stream, favorites, pre-established groups (business, family and friends), and Trends (sort of like TwitScoop but busier)

- If you click on someone’s username, it generates a nice profile that includes their most recent updates, their s followers, and the people they’re following.

Now, the negatives:

- Nambu is unstable and prone to freezing and crashing

- When the latest upgrade was installed, all of the existing Twitter accounts were deleted. This meant setting up accounts all over again.

- The URL shortener (tr.im) is far from user-friendly. In fact, I’ve yet to figure out how to shorten URLs using Nambu.

- If you send direct messages to someone, you can’t see if the DM was sent (TweetDeck had the same problem but it was fixed during an upgrade)

Overall, I would suggest Nambu has promise, although it has a long way before it can catch up to TweetDeck and the new Seesmic Desktop (formerly known as Twhirl)

For more on Nambu, check out Web Worker Daily.

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