14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter heavy users rejoice, one of the most popular desktop Twitter clients, TweetDeck, has been updated to version 0.33. It's a pretty big update with a number of new features but also updates under the hood. One of the most visible changes is the new Column Navigator which serves as a quick way of moving between them, especially handy when you have a lot of columns opened. Media integration got a big boost with YouTube videos and photos from Flickr and other sites displayed inline in TweetDeck.
The Column Navigator sits at the bottom of the window. It serves as taskbar of sorts allowing users to switch to any of the active columns with just one click. Hovering the mouse over one of the bars representing columns will pop up a small overlay showing the account associated with it and the number of API calls remaining for that account.
The other big feature for this release is the media integration. YouTube videos linked in tweets or status updates can be previewed in a window from within TweetDeck. Photos from Flickr, Posterous, Mobypicture and Twitgoo will also be viewable from the app. TweetDeck 0.33 also adds support for Mobypictures as an upload location.
Finally, maybe the biggest update, though certainly less obvious to regular users, is support for the OAuth authentication method. This provides a more secure way of accessing Twitter by itself, but it also means that users get more API calls per hour. In an effort to encourage developers to implement OAuth over other authentication methods, Twitter has increased the limit of API calls for those using OAuth. Currently, the limit is at 350 and is expected to increase in the future, which should give power-users more freedom in using the microblogging platform.
"Not only are we continuing to innovate on the desktop and iPhone, ensuring you always have the best client around, but we are also progressing our plans for branching out into other mobile platforms. We are expanding our team (more news of that in a later post) and we are well on track to be appearing on several new devices soon," TweetDeck's Community Manager Richard Barley wrote about future plans hinting at a mobile Twitter client for Android.
TweetDeck 0.33 for Adobe AIR (Windows, Mac, Linux) is available for download here.