Localizing everything can some times be a waste of effort. In other cases, localization (ie. of an infrastructure) can be well worth its while. Ning is such a case. In terms of multilanguage support prolepsis, as english is a simpler language than greek and others, building localization mechanisms is no easy task and translation can be tricky…

The case in point is four terms in Ning Forum’s messages greek translation. When Forum conversations grow long, pagination is introduced at the bottom of the page with the english messages “First”, “Previous”, “Next”, “Last”. The greek terms used for these messages are “Όνομα” (”honoma”), “Προηγούμενο” (”proeghumeno”, in Ning notation, where “h” shows where the word is stressed), “Επόμενο” (”ephomeno”), “Επώνυμο” (”ephonymo”) respectively. However:

• “Όνομα” is greek for “First Name”, not “First Page”. The correct term would be “Πρώτη” (”prhoti”, “first in order”)
• “Προηγούμενο” and “Επόμενο” are basically correct. In greek, however, adjectives have a gender. In this case the term refers to a page, which is “η σελίδα” in greek and has a she-gender. Therefore, the correct terms are “Προηγούμενη” (”proeghumeni”) and “Επόμενη” (”ephomeni”) respectively
• “Επώνυμο” is greek for “Last Name” (or “Surname”), not “Last Page”. The correct term would be “Τελευταία” (”telefthea”, “last in order”)

Ning first-last messages in english

Ning first-last messages in greek (translation error)

Thanks, Ning, for allowing us to built our own social networks. Please keep improving!

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Pros

• The PeopleBrowsr people listen and respond
• Multiple Stacks
• Very Strong Search
• Multiple networks support (alphabetically): Bitly, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed, Identica, LinkedIn, MySpace, Photobucket, PingFM, Plaxo, Seesmic, Trim, Twitter, Webpage, YouTube etc.
• Multiple accounts on each supported network
• Both a Web and an Adobe Air version
• An impressive list of Options in Settings, including but not limited to:
  • Auto refresh rate in seconds
  • Auto sync Following/Followers
  • Auto Refresh
  • Show real names
  • Show Location
  • Persistent Stacks compression for more information in the same space (Stacks can be individually set to be compressed or not, but the setting is not saved when the session ends)
  • Show absolute times instead of how long ago posts were posted
  • Added value among PB users
• Combination Stacks like DM+Replies+Stacks for Twitter
• PB Groups can contain accounts from different networks, thus not becoming obsolete after Twitter introduced Lists
• Color-coding and custom names for Stacks
• Twitter threads (when available)
• Posts can be delayed, repeated and post on multiple networks at once

Wishlist & Shortcomings

• Trim down the top


PeopleBrowsr top part

The top “Post”, “Search”, PBIDboxes, PBExpet and Logout boxes/buttons/choices are too wide and actually takes a 1030pixels wide window for it to display properly! When narrower than that, the Search box goes down and sits on top of these stacks’ titles. Very annoying.

• Improve non-latin text support: Sometimes Greek, Cyrillic etc. text decoding fails to display properly
• Keep Twitter Lists up to date: My lists seem to have been read once and have not been updated since
• Keep FriendFeed Lists and Groups up to date: They seem to have been read once and have not been updated since
• Friendfeed Lists and Groups cannot be managed at all
• Improve the Twitter Lists and PB Groups manager: As it is, it leaves a lot to be desired; see the “Twitter Lists Support: Management Status & Optimization Wishlist” post
• Fix the “Font Size” setting to work in both the Stacks and, while it used to work properly, now (v1.5) only sets the Quickstrip’s font size and is not persistent between sessions
• Improve the memory management: PB keeps allocating more memory while running, eventually bringing any system down on its knees
• Fix program exit: When I close PB Air, it remains resident withholding large amounts of RAM & virtual memory and can’t start again until its previous process is killed
• Prefill #hashtags and all @twitterers in replies
• Add a “delete post” feature
• Update the database when posts are deleted from other clients, so deleted entries do not keep showing
• Support OpenID

I like PeopleBrowsr; a lot! And I’m impressed with the work done so far. Which is why I expect even more from the development team

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• Clients that support Twitter Lists
  • Seesmic for Windows now offers read only support
  • SocialWhale offers read and add support on a per user basis, like Twitter
  • PeopleBrowsr initially offered read only support and now also supports additions
  • TweetDeck was the last to market but offers the best support so far, including read, easily add and export of its own Groups to Twitter Lists
• Export the application’s Groups to Twitter Lists
  • SocialWhale asks users to import their preexisting Groups to Lists at login
  • TwitDeck fully supports copying Groups to Lists
  • PeopleBrowsr initially did the opposite; it copied Twitter Lists to PB Groups. It does not do it in the right direction
• Bulk-add accounts to Twitter Lists
  • Twitdeck shows a selected Group, List or the complete list of followed accounts and allows to multiple-select-and-import any account from all friends, TweetDeck’s own Groups or Twitter Lists to a Twitter List
  • PeopleBrowsr shows 16 accounts already in the Group or Twitter List with an “x” next to each one for one-by-one removal. To add an account to the List, one needs to manually type (part of) the names one by one and can’t bulk select them from a full list or PB’s own Groups
• Applications’ own Groups vs. Twitter Lists management tools
  • Oddly enough, both TwitDeck and PeopleBrowsr have different Managers for their own Groups and for Twitter List

The winner, so far, is TwitDeck; hands down. The race is not over, though and neither is my work, as I still have the PeopleBrowsr and PockeTwit groups to convert to Twitter Lists. So, I am waiting for them to add a competitive Lists Manager that not just gets the job done, it also removes some of the pain that goes with it. Some optimization suggestions to that extend:

• Show the avatar, full name, site’s URL, following and followers along with account names

Long lists are difficult to handle just by a nick name.

• Make the list auto resizing with the size of the window

The more the information available, the faster and easier the process.

• Make it reliable and responsive

PeopleBrowsr often shows me a partial list of Twitter Lists and TwitDeck sometimes retries and fails to add accounts to Twitter Lists.

With Christmas and New Year around the corner, it’s a good time for wishes to come true… Meanwhile, I will update this post will any relevant information I come across, so check back.

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