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In Depth: 8 of the best Linux FTP clients

<img src="http://cdn.mos.techradar.com//Review%20images/Linux%20Format/LXF%20137/LXF137.round.konqueror2-200-200.jpg"/>Transferring files across the internet used to mean getting your hands dirty with FTP commands. Nowadays, its use cases have become rather more isolated, but they still exist. FTP remains a fairly efficient protocol, and it probably has the edge in terms of speed for grabbing the latest ISO files from your favourite distro website. It's also still, in spite of WebDav, the primary mechanism for managing content on your web host. A good, fully featured FTP client is therefore something to be desired. Among its key features might be wide support for protocols – as well as standard FTP, there's FTPS (FTP using SSL), SFTP (FTP tunnelled through SSH) and more exotic types, such as FSP (the largely historic File Service Protocol) and the eminently useful FXP (File Exchange Protocol). Depending on your usage, other features might be desirable, too – keeping a website synchronised with a local copy is made dramatically easier with some sort of mirroring and diff functions, and then there's always the perennial problem of changing the file permissions. Would you want to edit remote files in place? Not covered in this roundup are some clients that are too old, some that are proprietary and wouldn't cough up a copy to test, and some that wouldn't install (we're looking at you, IglooFTP). The standard FTP command-line client also won't be covered. How we tested... Testing in 'real' conditions doesn't test much other than the current state of your network connection, so all the speed testing was done on a Gigabit LAN to a local ProFTPD server. The main speed test comprised sending over 300 files, containing 1.3GB of data in total. FTP is a very efficient mechanism for transporting large files, but transferring multiple files is a better test of the client's efficiency at initiating and completing the transactions. The local machine running the client software was a 3GHz Core 2 Duo box running Fedora 13. The latest revision of Sun's Java and Firefox were also installed for the software requiring them. CrossFTP<img alt="CrossFTP" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/Linux%20Format/LXF%20137/LXF137.round.crossftp-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>You might think that open source should have sewn this one up already, but there's always room for a proprietary app if it offers something novel. This is the only client on test that supports the Amazon S3 transfer protocols – a very specific usage case, but if it's important to you, this is a bit of a no-brainer. Downloading the install package leaves you with a folder full of stuff and a script to start up the application via Java – hardly inspiring, but a few disk accesses later you'll have a pleasant twin-panel pop-up. The basic controls are simple, and you won't need to delve into the menus for normal transfers – drag and drop, or click the buttons. The area under the file listings is given over to the queue list, if you have one, and a logging window that shows what the server is telling you – handy for working out what's going on. Opening up multiple connections creates a tabbed view, so you can switch quickly between directories. The easy-to-use queue management makes it possible to manage the demands of bulk transfers, and a scheduling system makes a reasonable stab at automating things for you. If you're going for a file-syncing operation, there's a button right above the panel to take care of it for you. Occasionally, there seemed to be refresh problems with the remote directory listing where it didn't accurately reflect the directory we were connected to. This could be down to the version of Java we tested it with, though. Most of the time the interface didn't have too much Java lag. Unfortunately, the performance of the client was poor – we need it to move files from A to B without too many Zzzzzs. Sadly, it does not. Verdict CrossFTP Pro Version: 1.65a Web: <a href="http://www.crossftp.com/">www.crossftp.com</a> Price: $25 Some great features, but does it have any excuse for being so slow? Rating: 6/10 FileZilla <img alt="FileZilla" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/Linux%20Format/LXF%20137/LXF137.round.filezilla-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>The wxWidgets-powered interface follows the traditional twin-panel theme, this time with a hard-to-understand toolbar and a thankfully easy to understand Quick-connect feature perched above it. Bookmarks are separated into two types, and can be quite confusing at the beginning. A global bookmark just stores path names, whereas a specific one also stores the server details (although unfortunately this failed to work more than once). The global bookmarks are useful for dealing with a lot of mirror sites or different sections of the same site. Queue handling is the best of any of the apps on test, in that you can see the queue, change priorities, remove files, and pause and resume transfers when you like without interfering with the rest of your session. The bottom tabs also keep a running log of any filed transfers and relevant information about them, including the ability to re-queue them. Plenty of other useful features have been added, such as a pattern-matching remote search, which will root out files on a specified search path. Once you've found what you're after, you can perform actions such as viewing images or editing text files using your system's filetype associations, or with the tool of your choice if you delve into the settings. Coupled with good protocol support and strong performance, the only real downer about FileZilla is the way it looks. We aren't just talking about ugly – some of the icons defy explanation. FileZilla might not do much for your desktop aesthetic, but it's a good tool to have on your side if you need to reliably transfer large volumes of data. Verdict FileZilla Version: 3.3.3 Web: <a href="http://filezilla-project.org/">http://filezilla-project.org </a> Price: Free/GPL Great all-rounder for performance, but it's a shame about the looks. Rating: 9/10 FireFTP <img alt="FireFTP" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/Linux%20Format/LXF%20137/LXF137.round.fireftp-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>We usually say that, by and large, browsers don't have the features to make FTP painless. Well, this is a sneaky exception designed to make us eat our words. Utilising the plugin architecture of the Firefox browser, this cunning code conjures a client from the bowels of the browser and provides a reasonable facsimile of a desktop app. You still get the twin-panel view, though this time it's neatly enclosed in a Firefox tab. The panels themselves include a useful tree view for navigating around local and remote directories, and between them are the idiot buttons for simple transfers. In spite of it being an add-on, it's pretty easy to forget you're running a web browser and think that FireFTP is just like any other desktop app. The only thing that really gives it away is when you resize the window, which causes a clunky and drawn-out redraw process. Actually, that sounds a bit worse than it really is, but it's noticeable. Moving on to the more advanced functionality, this client does support FXP, so you can use it to transfer files between remote sites. It also supports drag-and-drop operations, and more advanced file inspection – renaming, permissions and the like. There's a neat directory diff tool, too. Installation is a doddle – just use Firefox to search for the plugin (this is also cross platform). An added bonus of being integrated into the browser is that your bookmarks and passwords get stored along with the rest of your browser data. In terms of performance, it isn't the best client, but it's remarkably proficient considering it's just a plugin – definitely worth installing if you run Firefox, even if only as a backup client. Verdict FireFTP Version: 1.0.9 Web: <a href="http://fireftp.mozdev.org/">http://fireftp.mozdev.org </a> Price: Free/GPL Overcomes its humble origins to deliver a great performance. Rating: 7/10 gFTP <img alt="gFTP" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/Linux%20Format/LXF%20137/LXF137.round.gftp2-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>We should say that this client very nearly didn't make the cut, simply because it hasn't had a stable release since the end of 2008. However, it's one of the most widely used standalone clients, and boasts an impressive array of features. The GTK interface adopts the standard two-panel design, and harks back to an era when utility was the watchword. This is no reason to criticise it – apart from anything else, it's intuitive to use. The top toolbar accepts the salient information for any connection you wish to make, and then you just need to hit the Connect button. Transfer buttons between the panes make copying files almost foolproof (though you can also drag and drop), and right-clicking on any given files reveals a wealth of options and functionality. There's an option to view a file, but be warned, this only seems to work for text files – trying it on a binary file caused a segfault. gFTP also supports a surprising array of protocols, including FSP and SSH/SFTP, which makes it rather useful for accessing data on remote servers, rather than just downloads. Bookmarks are supported, optionally saving passwords and remembering complete paths rather than just the server name. Handily, a large number of useful sites are already stored in the list, including lots for different distros and open source sites. It should also be mentioned that the client can be used direct from the command line, where it's just as competent, but lacks some of the features of shell-only clients like NCFTP. It did well in the speed tests, but it lacks the modern helper tools we'd like. Verdict gFTP Version: 2.0.19 Web: <a href="http://gftp.seul.org/">http://gftp.seul.org </a> Price: Free/GPL It works, it's fast, but it doesn't offer much beyond the basics. Rating: 6/10 Konqueror <img alt="Konquerer" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/Linux%20Format/LXF%20137/LXF137.round.konqueror-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>You probably know Konqueror as KDE's browser application, but that's barely scratching the surface of its capabilities. Once you've roused the beast, Konqueror will be quite happy serving up any data for you, as long as an appropriate KIO part is available. This makes it child's play not only to transfer files from your local drive to an FTP site and vice versa, but between a variety of different sources, including Samba shares and NFS mounts. Although you will probably find it convenient to harness the power of FTP in a twin-panelled list view, there is no strict imperative to do so. Because the KIO protocol slave takes care of managing the connection and serving up a common set of features, you can view in any mode you like, and you can even get previews of image formats and so on. This functionality extends to anything you might reasonably want to do with a file. The right-click menus in Konqueror are context-sensitive to the location as well as to the file, so you shouldn't get any foolish actions (such as trying to extract an archive in situ), but you will be able to change permissions, rename files and even open them (though, obviously, this involves transferring them). The standard transfer is sequential rather than simultaneous, but you can still navigate around the directory tree and begin further transfers. There's no queue system for this, but that's not usually a problem unless you mix up what files you were copying to where. Being able to integrate FTP into your desktop is a great boon for many. It may be achieved here at the loss of some advanced capability, such as error handling, but for some use cases it's probably the perfect fit. Verdict Konqueror Version: 4.4.5 Web: <a href="http://www.konqueror.org/">www.konqueror.org </a> Price: Free/GPL Provides excellent file handling and amazing desktop integration. Rating: 9/10 LFTP <img alt="LFTP" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/Linux%20Format/LXF%20137/LXF137.round.lftp-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>Adopting a similar strategy to NCFTP, this command line client attempts to reclaim the shell for FTP power users, with an array of features and commands covering simple transfer actions to more extreme mirroring and FXP use. This is the only command-line tool in this roundup, and probably in existence, that uses this feature – an ability to initiate an FTP transfer between two remote hosts without acting as a go-between. This could well make it useful for some specific applications, though there are a few caveats. Although it's not too hard to use for basic functionality, getting into any of the advanced features becomes a bit more confusing. Multi-threaded support and a job backgrounding functions are useful, but it's often tricky to know exactly what's going on, even though it tries as closely as possible to follow the same sort of syntax as the shell itself. Much pain has been expended on the part of the author to make LFTP reliable, so that jobs can resume when disconnected, for example. Performance-wise, it did slightly better than NCFTP, and was similarly light in resources. The only worry was that the tool seemed to lose track of the current local directory often, but that's possibly due to some unnoticed side effect of one of the more complex commands we tried. Some of the local shell commands just didn't work on occasion. Tread carefully. As a comprehensive command-line tool, it can't be ignored. With support for proxies and very wide protocol support, it's technologically the most complete solution for the shell. VerdictLFTP Version: 4.0.9 Web: <a href="http://lftp.yar.ru/">http://lftp.yar.ru </a> Price: Free/GPL Good performance and features, let down by quirky behaviour. Rating: 7/10 Nautilus <img alt="Nautilus" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/Linux%20Format/LXF%20137/LXF137.round.nautilus-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>Konqueror was an obvious inclusion to the Roundup, since its dual-role as browser and file manager tend to suggest it should be able to combine both. A surprising number of people are not aware that you can achieve pretty much the same thing in Gnome/Nautilus too. On the Gnome desktop, a quick trip to the Places menu reveals a Connect To Server option. This will take you through mounting a remote fileserver, including FTP, and you can even store the connection as a bookmark. As with Konqueror, Nautilus then sees the remote filesystem just like any other, and you can interact with it on the desktop, copying, moving and editing files as you wish (this last action does involve downloading a copy, so don't start editing video files or anything). File associations are automatically taken from your desktop system, so remote files will open in the default application. Unlike with Konqueror, editing the permissions of the remote files isn't possible, which is a bit of a blow for web work. Long-term use of Nautilus in this capacity reveals some of its shortcomings. At times of high usage, the connection tends to get a little flaky. This can be more than just an annoyance – it can just hang midtransfer, leaving you in limbo as to which files are copied and what to do next. This may not be the fault of Nautilus itself, but the Gnome Virtual File System that it depends on. So, while it promises the same levels of interoperability as Konqueror, Nautilus has all of the shortcomings of this way of working without many of the benefits. Good enough for occassional transfers, but simply not recommended for serious use. Verdict Nautilus Version: 2.30.1 Web: <a href="http://live.gnome.org/Nautilus">http://live.gnome.org/Nautilus </a> Price: Free/GPL Good desktop integration, but poor performance and too many pitfalls. Rating: 7/10 NCFTP <img alt="NCFTP" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/Linux%20Format/LXF%20137/LXF137.round.ncftp-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>The original FTP command line client was pretty basic, yet it persisted for years as part of the default install because, well, everyone needed a command line client to fall back on. It did work, but it was pretty painful. Imagine, then, the scenes of jubilation when NCFTP was born – a command line client that didn't require all the hoop-jumping of the original. With advanced features like pattern matching and bookmarks, NCFTP certainly made the original FTP client look so dated that it's included in about every distro known to humakind. Running FTP software from the shell might not be your idea of fun, but it can be important. You never know when you're going to find yourself needing to fetch some file without the luxury of a GUI.There's also never an easy way to control a GUI client from a script, if you need to set up some automated task. As well as the interactive client itself, the NCFTP package includes some apps to make scripting easier, and it will handle batches using its own spooler. It does seem more focused on the automated side of things, rather than user interaction. Yes, it's vastly easier to use than the plain FTP client, but it could still be made a little simpler for non-techies. However, it supports proxying, backgrounding of tasks and will auto-resume disconnected downloads. Scheduling is possible through the background task, but that's when things get complicated. Sadly, this command line warrior fails to live up to the notion that everything you do via the shell is faster. NCFTP is certainly useful, but as far as day-to-day use for the desktop goes, it isn't really viable. Verdict NCFTP Version: 3.2.4 Web: <a href="http://www.ncftp.com/">www.ncftp.com </a> Price: Free/GPL An improvement over the plain FTP client, but not good enough overall. Rating: 5/10 The best Linux FTP client is... FileZilla: 9/10 <img alt="FileZilla 2" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/Linux%20Format/LXF%20137/LXF137.round.winner-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>Because the potential uses for FTP are very broad, there are any number of reasons why one client might be better for a particular task. The Amazon S3 support of the proprietary CrossFTP could be the clincher for some, for example, or the fact that you can install FireFTP as a browser add-on and use it crossplatform in a variety of places might seal the deal for others. Maybe you need to use FTP in a location where the GUI is unavailable or unwanted, in which case one of the command line tools would be the best solution. In terms of seamless desktop integration for general use, it is hard to beat Konqueror. Its FTP connection is robust, and the flexible nature of the program means it's easy to make using FTP a part of your normal desktop experience (even if you aren't running KDE). Being able to change permissions and view and manipulate files just as you would on the desktop (with some sane omissions) makes for a pretty painless experience. The same ought to be true of Nautilus, but it seems the GVFS implementation of FTP isn't as robust, and it also can't handle the more secure FTPS protocol, though it's not used as widely as perhaps it should be. For serious FTP use, though, the all-round winner has to be the one that not only performs well, but includes a lot of useful features you're likely to need. For this Roundup, FileZilla just about manages to edge out the competition. It's easy to use, loaded with useful, time-saving features, and has the performance to match any of the top contenders. It has to be said that it's still very ugly though, and that's not entirely down to the compromise of the wxWidgets toolkit – someone with more artistic leanings should really help out with their icon set. Ultimately, it's safe to say that every one of the clients here could learn a useful trick or two from its rivals.

In Depth: 8 of the best Linux FTP clients

Transferring files across the internet used to mean getting your hands dirty with FTP commands. Nowadays, its use cases have become rather ...

In Depth: Fusion, ARM and x86: what's Nvidia's next move?

<img src="http://cdn.mos.techradar.com//classifications/computing/upgrades-and-peripherals/processors/images/amd-llano-200-200.jpg"/>With AMD tooling up to give the market a <a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/graphics-cards/amd-radeon-hd-6000-what-to-expect-902180">second masterclass in DX11 graphics</a>, the spotlight will soon turn on Nvidia, its main rival in the graphics business.Nvidia has a few things up its sleeves in terms of new graphics chips. But even if the mooted update to the troubled Fermi graphics architecture is successful, that won't secure Nvidia's future.<ul><li><a href="http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/pc-components/graphics-cards/amd-radeon-hd-6870-902549/review">Read our AMD Radeon HD 6870 review</a></li></ul>The problem for Nvidia can be summed up in a single word. That word is fusion. Both AMD and Intel are committed to fusing most, and eventually probably all, of their PC processors with graphics chips. A single chip will handle all the computationally intensive work inside future PCs.Facing up to fusionNvidia, of course, doesn't make PC processors. It only makes the graphics half of the fusion equation. More to the point, it lacks the licences required to produce a PC processor. At least, it lacks the all-important x86 licences required to make processors compatible with AMD and Intel's x86 chips. Processors that will run software like the desktop Windows operating systems natively.Nvidia itself has more or less admitted it will eventually have to face up to fusion. In early 2009, senior Nvidia suit Michael Hara told investors that it was more a case of when than if Nvidia would want to get into the general purpose processor business."I think some time down the road it makes sense to take the same level of integration that we've done with [the ARM-based] Tegra...someday it's going to make sense to take the same approach in the x86 market as well," Hara said.Of course, the problem with that analogy is that British-based ARM is very much in the business of licensing out entire processor architectures to third parties. It doesn't make any chips itself.Sleeping with the enemyHistorically, however, Intel and AMD have done precisely the opposite, manufacturing everything in-house. Recently, AMD has shifted to a slightly different model, spinning off its manufacturing arm into a separate company. But arguably, even that caused ructions regarding its licenses to produce x86 chips. Flogging designs off to a third-party like Nvidia would be even more problematical.What, then, can Nvidia possibly do? In terms of directly licensing an x86 processor design, there really only seems to be one option, Intel. The good news is that Intel is indeed looking to get its Atom processor core into as wide a range of chips as possible.That includes for the first time farming out production to Taiwanese chip fab TSMC. Intel realises that custom chips are often needed for mobile devices like smartphones. The best way to serve that need is to allow third parties to cook up solutions based around Atom but including IP from other companies.In theory, that could include Nvidia. The catch is that relations between Nvidia and Intel are not exactly amourous. In fact, you could say that the very last company Intel would licence out Atom cores to would be Nvidia. At best, therefore, Nvidia would be a bit player providing graphics IP for someone else to knock out an Atom-based chip.There is, however, one last hope for an Nvidia x86-based fusion processor. Rightly or wrongly, America's Federal Trade Commission appears to have its sights set on Intel. Having already forced Intel to pay AMD one billion dollars for behaviour relating to CPUs, the FTC is now saying <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10416699-64.html">Intel is engaged in anti-competitive behaviour</a> in the graphics.To cut a long story short, it's just possible legislators and regulators in the US will force Intel to give Nvidia an x86 licence. Code morphingIf that doesn't happen, there is one possibility left, although very remote. Theoretically, Nvidia could produce a chip that implements some kind of translation technology to run x86 code non-natively.This approach isn't without precedent. A small startup known as Transmeta had a stab at this in the early to mid '00s with its "code morphing" Crusoe processors. The business failed. But its chips did work well enough to provide proof of concept.Rumours involving an ARM-based Nvidia chip with x86 codemorphing have indeed been circulated. Given that power efficiency is increasingly crucial, however, a non-native x86 processor and all the overheads that come with it seems rather implausible.But perhaps even more telling are recent comments made by Nvidia's head honcho Jen-Hsun Huang. "ARM will be the most important CPU architecture of the future and it already is the fastest growing processor architecture," <a href="http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4208752/Nvidia-ARM-smartphones-will-bury-x86-PCs">Huang said</a> in September.Intel and ARMIn fact, Huang claims ARM will replace x86 as the dominant processor architecture in PCs. It is indeed probable that Intel will face increasing competition from ARM-based architectures, even in its core PC market. Mobile devices are rapidly taking over the computing ecosystem and ARM rules mobile. ARM might even eventually come out on top.But that battle has only just begun. What's more, Nvidia's own ARM-based Tegra chip has so been a bit of a flop. So, even if ARM wins, Nvidia may still lose. However you slice it, in other words, Nvidia will need to up its game.

In Depth: Fusion, ARM and x86: what's Nvidia's next move?

With AMD tooling up to give the market a second masterclass in DX11 graphics , the spotlight will soon turn on Nvidia, its main rival in th...

In Depth: 6 of the best Mac Twitter clients

<img src="http://cdn.mos.techradar.com//Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20226/MAC226.group.imacmain-200-200.jpg"/>A big advantage of Twitter is that while you can use the website, there are also dozens of Twitter clients that provide a streamlined way to use the service. Here we've rounded up six of the most popular. While we conclude which of them is, in our opinion, the best available, if you disagree, all you need to do to switch clients is launch a different application and add your login details. Twitter clients Echofon - Free with ads/$20 Kiwi - Free (two accounts)/$10 Nambu - Free TweetDeck - Free Tweetie - Free Twitterrific - Free with ads/$15 Test one - General use Is the app usable and are important features available? <img alt="Kiwi" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20226/MAC226.group.1_kiwi-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>TweetDeck's Adobe AIR cross-platform origins result in a non-Mac-like and fiddly but powerful client, which enables you to define columns of varying content types. Conversely, Twitterrific is Mac-like but basic – it resembles a palette and only enables access to one account at a time, and so it's best suited to sporadic use. Nambu looks good in screen grabs, but we found its icon-heavy interface overwhelming and a little buggy. The other apps are broadly similar and usable. Switching between accounts is simple, and shortcuts enable fast access to important commands. Visually, Kiwi edges it due to theme support, but Echofon's minimalism and myriad keyboard shortcuts are welcome, even if its occasional lack of refresh on account switching and single post-window aren't; by contrast, Kiwi and Tweetie offer independent windows for posting. Elsewhere, Kiwi gains points for rule definition capabilities and displaying images inline. Test results <img alt="Test 1" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20226/Test1-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img> Test two - Posting tweets How easy is it to post tweets and attachments? <img alt="Tweetdeck" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20226/MAC226.group.2_tweetdeck-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>Our requirements: posting to any signed-in account; a live character count; dragging images from Finder for upload; optional shortening of links. Twitterrific mostly failed, offering no assistance regarding images and links. Nambu also fell short – images can be added but not dragged from Finder. Kiwi disappointed a little. Link shrinking is slow, and we found Kiwi sometimes posted to an account other than that selected in its post window. Echofon impressed though. Images are shown as thumbs, which can be previewed via Quick Look, and you can post screen grabs or iTunes songs. Tweetie's post window is similar, and can be accessed via a system-wide hotkey. But TweetDeck is posting champion: you can post to multiple accounts at once, and the app has geo-location support and tweet scheduling. It's complex, though. Also, TweetDeck and Echofon don't have separate post windows, so no working on multiple tweets. Test results <img alt="Test 2" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20226/Test2-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img> Test three - Having chats How about threaded conversations and direct messages? <img alt="Tweetie" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20226/MAC226.group.3_tweetie-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>People use Twitter for quick-fire conversation, both in public and in private via direct messages (which can be sent to anyone following you). Twitterrific does neither (unlike the iOS version), but the other apps all enable you to view public conversation threads. In TweetDeck you can display them in a separate column; Nambu expands them beneath a tweet, Echofon shows them in its drawer (in a rather fetching iChat-style) when you click on a conversation icon, and both Tweetie and Kiwi show a conversation when you double-click on a relevant message. On balance, Echofon's approach is simplest and clearest, even if chats look nicest in Kiwi. Surprisingly, all but one client lists your direct messages linearly in reverse-chronological order. Tweetie is the odd one out, enabling you to access them by contact, which is much clearer, although Nambu at least enables you to view sent and received direct messages separately. Test results <img alt="Test 3" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20226/Test3-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img> Test four - Doing searches Is searching tweets simple and can searches be saved? <img alt="Nambu" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20226/MAC226.group.4_nambu-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>All the apps on test, excepting Twitterrific and TweetDeck, enable you to use a search field to find related tweets, which are then displayed in the main timeline window. Terms you want to track can also be saved, although methods vary. With TweetDeck, this is the only means of making a search, and each becomes a separate column – great for tracking, but annoying for one-off searches. The other apps all enable you to flag any search made as a favourite that you can return to later; and, aside from in Echofon, new results are highlighted when your feed is refreshed. There are differences in search setups, though, and we found Nambu's icons awkward, but Tweetie's interface was very clear. Kiwi takes a different approach, enabling you to add searches as separately defined 'accounts'. This provides you with more scope for complex searches, at the expense of cluttering the account-switching menu if you've many searches stored. Test results <img alt="Test 4" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20226/Test4-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img> The winner / Echofon <img alt="Echofon" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20226/MAC226.group.winner_echofon_3-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>None of the apps here is poor, but three quickly fall out of favour. Twitterrific is too basic and fiddly, and TweetDeck and Nambu are too complex for their own good (although TweetDeck's worth considering if you need to track, manage and post to a large number of accounts simultaneously). Of the others, we like Tweetie a lot – its message threading is great – but it lacks support for some recent Twitter features. Its developer now works for Twitter, and a revamped version is likely imminent. Today, though, the title fight is between Echofon and Kiwi. Despite its small post area and occasional refresh issues on switching accounts, Echofon edges it, but if the minimal interface isn't for you, Kiwi and Tweetie are worthy alternatives. Final results<img alt="Final results" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20226/Final-results-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img><img border="0" height="1" src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/9809/s/f344a6e/mf.gif" width="1"/><div class='mf-related'>

In Depth: 6 of the best Mac Twitter clients

A big advantage of Twitter is that while you can use the website, there are also dozens of Twitter clients that provide a streamlined way t...

In Depth: Does Kinect herald the demise of the keyboard?

<img src="http://cdn.mos.techradar.com//Review%20images/PC%20Format/PCF%20245/PCF245.feature2.gun-200-200.jpg"/>Do you know TED? Not the guy called Edward who lives next door, the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference. It's a series of lectures for invited politicians, academics and commercial developers to tell the world about their best ideas, then cruelly limits their talks to 18 minutes so they don't get boring. Attendance at the events is both exclusive and expensive, costing over $5,000 a ticket. The <a href="http://www.ted.com">TED website</a> is more democratic and puts up videos of the best of these intellectual elevator pitches under the banner: 'Ideas worth spreading'. Subjects cover everything from tackling global poverty to nanotech to Wikileaks.org. If you're at all interested in what the PC of the future might look like, the conference has also featured talks about micro-projection, virtual keyboards and changing trends in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). It's particularly well worth digging out information about two talks that showcased at this summer's TED Global conference in Oxford. First up, Microsoft's Peter Molyneux took to the stage to demonstrate his forthcoming Xbox 360 game: Milo. Milo is a small boy who is significant in two ways. Firstly, he's the latest iteration of the learning AI technology that has been central to Molyneux' work since Black & White. Milo can be taught to clean up his room or crush snails, depending on your proclivity. It's a two way interaction though: he feeds back his thoughts about such actions to you with the kind of emotional depth that makes Kevin Spacey's robot Gertie from the film Moon seem callous and cold hearted. Milo learns from the movements and gestures picked up by <a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/hands-on-microsoft-kinect-review-673321">Kinect</a>, Microsoft's 3D sensor array that's coming to the Xbox on 4 November. <img alt="Kinect" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/PC%20Format/PCF%20245/PCF245.feature2.fileget-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>KINECT: Kinect needs to have sophisticated detection technology to accurately pick up your stupid dance movesKinect was first announced under the codename Project Natal just over a year ago, in June 2009. Kinect can track body movements from roundhouse kicks down to facial expressions and turn them into a control system for the games console. In many TED Global reports, though, Molyneux' talk was eclipsed the next day by Tan Le. Tan is the head of San Francisco's Emotiv Systems, and her showpiece was a wireless headset called EPOC. It turns the electrical traces of thought processes into input commands for a PC. Mind control and gesture-based interfaces? The desktop PC was going to have a tough time fighting off the torrent of new touchscreen tablets. Can it possibly remain relevant? For a couple of days, journalists were shown around labs full of 3D printers and machines with ten giant steel fingers that could put a keyboard through a lifetime of torture in just a few weeks. The tour was rounded off with a demonstration of a holographic-type transparent display, hooked up to a webcam which followed a user's hand gestures to move windows around, shamelessly aping the computers in Minority Report. It was a charmingly Heath Robinson device, complete with bare wires and Meccano-type struts, which wowed the crowd with its unexpected sophistication. Unfortunately, given the amount of work that had gone into this prototype and the creator's obvious pride, it wasn't destined to become Project Natal. Natal will be <a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/microsoft-xbox-kinect-release-date-10-november-710465">launched on 10 November as Kinect</a>, and is built using licensed technology from the Israeli company, PrimeSense. Kinect for WindowsMicrosoft isn't talking about Kinect for Windows yet – and indeed turned down a request to be interviewed for this feature about plans for desktop interaction in general. It's safe to conjecture that it wants to promote Kinect on the console for now. There's a good chance that something similar will be available for the PC before long, though. As well as the inevitable clones which will spring up, Microsoft doesn't have complete control of Kinect. PrimeSense is actively seeking ways to get its technology into other devices, and company VP Adi Berenson confirmed to Engadget.com that it has at least one set-top media player in the works, which was described as an 'HTPC', or Home Theatre PC. That suggests some sort of x86-compatibility. This HTPC is likely to be a sealed unit, but PrimeSense's NITE software, which provides the gesture reading magic, runs on Windows and Linux. Even if there's no official Windows product for a while, it shouldn't be long before there are unofficial drivers for USB variants that are available. With a Kinect-type device for the PC, it's entirely feasible that you could sit in front of a screen and wave your fingers into space to make letters appear, move a window or switch to the rocket launcher. If that's possible now, in five years time it'll be everywhere, right? MultitouchAfter all, look at how quickly multi-touch mousepads and phone screens have become ubiquitous after the launch of the iPhone; the human race must be crying out for an alternative to the keyboard and mouse. Not according to those in the know. "As a Human Computer Interaction (HCI) researcher I tend to have a sort of love-hate relationship with the mouse," says Professor Scott Hudson of the HCI Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. "The fact of the matter is that the mouse is an extremely good input device for what it does. If you are editing a document, working with a spreadsheet, or clicking on links on the web, you probably want to use a mouse for that because it does a really good job. In fact, you can show scientifically that for simple pointing tasks you are probably not going to get a whole lot better than a mouse in terms of basic performance." The path of progressAcademics in the field of HCI can be a surprisingly conservative bunch, but the history of the field teaches caution. Gadgets such as the iPhone or Kinect don't spring fully formed from nowhere and push back the boundaries of what's possible overnight. It took over two decades for multi-touch tablets and screens to move beyond proof of concept and specialist use into mass production and consumer electronics. For anyone who's not an HCI Researcher, the job title may suggest a working day that involves breakfast with HAL, a pair of augmented reality glasses and a some 'blue sky thinking' about anti-gravity operator chairs. This impression is probably due to the fact that the only time HCI hits the headlines is when something out of the ordinary is shown off or talked about in an academic journal. Most of the challenges in HCI are far more prosaic. Inspired by Kinect, the iPad, EPOC, et al, I went in search of holograms and USB spinal taps, and found instead the unsung heroes who use eye-tracking technology to illustrate bad web design and make the internet a slightly less annoying place. You're far more likely to find people working on very practical projects than chasing supercool sci-fi dreams. At City University's Interaction Lab in London, for example, projects include studying how people operate simple 3D games and hacking Wii-motes to turn a desk into a cheap collaborative touchscreen. One input idea which has taken a long time to gestate is voice recognition. There are some devices, notably the iPhone and certain in-car sat navs, which have a reasonably usable voice control system, but City's Interaction Lab Manager, Raj Arvan explains why it's failed to take off on the desktop: "Voice recognition applications are becoming more accustomed to picking up natural language and the way people speak, but they are limited culturally," he says. "That needs to be accounted for. You need to have the same level of language sophistication wherever a system is going to be deployed." There's also no reason for a new technique to supplant an old one that works well. The purpose of design is not to replace something that's already working well," says Raj Arvan, "The keyboard and mouse do a good job. "You could use voice recognition to augment them in small ways, say commands for printing or opening an email client, but they'd be supplementary to the core functions. That's how it starts off, then if in the future the next generation becomes more comfortable using dictation then they'll use it to write whole documents." <img alt="Courier" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/PC%20Format/PCF%20245/PCF245.feature2.courier-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>MS COURIER: Microsoft canned its two screen tablet, but Toshiba's Libretto is still due this yearThis is good news for us, because it means that the home computer as we know it isn't going anywhere for a while. Next time you're wowed by a demonstration of augmented reality overlays or thought-sensitive controllers, watch Keiichi Matsudafor's excellent short film '<a href="http://vodpod.com/watch/2939661-augmented-hyperreality-domestic-robocop-on-vimeo">Augmented (hyper) Reality: Domestic Robocop</a>' for a seminal lesson in why we should be wary of embracing new interfaces too quickly for our own good. "I think in five years that Microsoft Windows will look, well… like Windows," says Carnegie Mellon's Hudson. "The graphical user interface that Windows embodies does a very good job at what it does and I don't see it going away any time soon or necessarily turning into anything else. But I think that's not the interesting question. The interesting question is what else will we see along side [Windows]?" Get your supplements This sentiment is echoed in the corporate strategies of Microsoft, Intel and Apple. It's best summed up by Microsoft's 'Three screens and the cloud' picture of harmony between the telephone, the PC system and the telly that CEO Steve Ballmer spoke about at the 2009 Consumer Electronic Show. In the first half of the decade, everyone was competing to produce the single 'hub' device for the digital home. As a result there was a lot of pressure for the PC to evolve into a single 'convergence' unit with all manner of crap attached to it. Now there's an understanding that people don't want to replace the PC with one single device, but supplement it with other specialised boxes in the home.<img alt="C-Slate" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/PC%20Format/PCF%20245/PCF245.feature2.c_slate-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>C-SLATE: Work continues at Microsoft on the C-Slate, a display-based input padOne of Intel's Consumer Experience Architects, Brian David Johnson, describes this using the image of watching TV while looking up information about the show on a laptop and at the same time tweeting about it through their phone. Each device has a specialism that doesn't necessarily need to be supplanted. "People are very comfortable moving through their lives looking at different screens," he says, "It's not about the mobile phone killing the internet or the internet killing television and the PC going away … We need to understand that consumers' lives touch multiple products at any one time." Hudson thinks this process of device proliferation, rather than convergence, has only just begun: "If I were to take a guess," he says, "I'd say that we will see an explosion of very small, inexpensive, and highly specialised devices. You can now buy for less than $1 a single chip with a computer in it that's much more powerful than the computer that was used in the lunar module and landed men on the Moon. There is a lot of potential in these devices that we haven't seen exploited yet." The problem with trying to replace the keyboard and mouse combination is that clever new peripherals that may actually be better often have too steep a learning curve or are simply impracticable to use. Russel Beale is a Senior Lecturer in HCI and leads the Advanced Interaction Lab at the University of Birmingham. He co-authored one of the seminal textbooks on HCI, called simply Human Computer Interaction. "Where you're using movement and facial recognition to control what's happening in the game. It's a much more natural experience and a really involving one," he says. "But these these have to be appropriate. You wouldn't want to compose a letter in a word processor by scowling, grimacing and jumping around the room. It's horses for courses, there's a time and a place for a keyboard and mouse and typing stuff and a time and a place for waving imaginary lightsabers around a room." At the same time, if the iPhone and iPad have any lessons for interface designers, it's that people don't mind sacrificing capabilities for ease of use. "When people's experiences are intuitive and natural," Beale continues, "Then they'll put a bit of effort in to learn how to get the most out of [the device]. Desktop computers are the other way round, you have to put a lot of effort in to discover how powerful they really are." Perhaps the most surprising thing about the PC is how slowly multi-touch screens have taken off. There are a few laptops and displays available but other than French RTS RUSE, not many applications to use them with.<img alt="RUSE" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/PC%20Format/PCF%20245/PCF245.feature2.ruse-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>R.U.S.E: R.U.S.E. supports multi-touch interfaces, but also works just fine with a mouse and keyboard "I don't think multi-touch has come of age yet," Beale says, "Yes, you can use two fingers to scroll or zoom and shrink things on a screen, but if you look at devices, such as Microsoft's Surface, they don't actually do that much more than other devices." Touching baseThere are two problems which haven't been comfortably conquered with desktop touchscreens yet. Hands obscuring the view is a common complaint with iPhone gaming which carries over, and reaching out to a screen in front of you is uncomfortable after just a few seconds. "Sometimes there are great ideas that wait for the technology to catch up, and other times there are cool technologies that wait for the ideas."He continues: "I think multi-touch will come much more of age in gaming spaces and so on when you decouple the device from the computer a bit further and allow people to have a much more expressive way of interacting with the systems that they want to. In gaming, it's all about getting people drawn into the game and living the experience. Anything that you put in the way which makes it hard to use is going to be a barrier to that experience." Beale points out though that you can often use the drawbacks of a system to your advantage. "If you're designing a public information system in a busy place, you put it vertically because you don't want one person to stand in front of it for half an hour." Beyond motion sensingPredicting the future is a dangerous occupation, but it's safe to say that the PC keyboard and mouse combo is going to be with us for some time yet. Just in case you've picked up the idea that the future isn't going to be quite as exciting as you thought, though, I asked Professor Hudson if Kinect's controllerless motion sensing could possibly be topped by anything else. "There are many, many things beyond full-body sensing," he says. "As a researcher I tend to think of them in terms of questions that I want to answer. Just a few of the interesting ones might be: Can we interact directly with the brain? Can we make a cell phone that understands enough about its surroundings and what its owner is doing to not ring during a meeting or at the movie theatre?<img alt="OCZ nia" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/PC%20Format/PCF%20245/PCF245.feature2.nia-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>OCZ NIA: Thought control on the PC is nothing new, but how many people actually bought OCZ's NIA?"Given that every second looking away from the road puts us in danger, how can we create interfaces that work well in the car? Devices are getting smaller and smaller, but our fingers are not. How can we effectively interact with really small mobile devices? Are there ways to make interfaces that can automatically sense motor control difficulties like tremor or spasticity and compensate for it? Can we make input devices that move, change form, or otherwise allow us to make use of our sense of touch during interaction? These are all things I've worked on at least a little in the last few years." Maybe it's worth chasing that job in HCI after all. 10 crazy controllers New ways to interact with your PC may be few and far between today, but that's because of the explosion of failed designs that's happened in the past. Here's 10 of our favourites that never quite captured the public imagination. 1. Spacetech Orb 360 Like the Dual Strike, only less cumbersome in its foolishness, the ball on the left was supposed to be more accurate than a mouse for FPS games. Right… 2. PCGamerBike This dislikes fat gamers. Pedals replace forward and back game controls, keeping you fit while you play. Unless you're playing Starcraft II that is. 3. AlphaGrip AG-5 Nothing comes close to the AlphaGrip AG-5 in terms of buttons. It had 42 in an array of D-pad like layouts, most of which were on the base. 4. Zalman FPSGun<img alt="Zalman fps gun" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/PC%20Format/PCF%20245/PCF245.feature2.gun-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>A very accurate peripheral for FPSes that looks like a gun. Or it would be, if you could turn your brain on its side to transpose lateral hand movement to the vertical plane. 5. Sidewinder Dual Strike So nearly the Wii wand of its day, but it failed design test #1: Don't make life harder for users. The ball-socketed left handle controlled the camera in shooters. 6. Novint Falcon<img alt="Novint falcon" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/PC%20Format/PCF%20245/PCF245.feature2.novint-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>I played with a Novint Falcon on a stand at CES 2006. And I quite liked it. Based on a surgical robot controller it had promise, but it just didn't catch on. 7. Strategic Commander Microsoft has made some of the best controllers for PC gaming – and some of the worst. This mouse didn't move, making precision controlling nigh on impossible. 8. Sandio Game O'<img alt="Sandio game o'" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/PC%20Format/PCF%20245/PCF245.feature2.sandio-420-90.jpg" width="420"></img>Proof that too much of a good thing is too much: adding D-pads and rockers to give three dimensional cursor control just proved too confusing when in game. 9. The Claw In fairness, we could have picked any of the many attempts to create a small left-handed keyboard with a pared down set of buttons from Belkin's Nostromo to Saitek's GM2. 10. Logitech Cyberman You don't make the mouse better by fixing it in place - it just doesn't work. This, however, didn't stop Logitech from trying with this awful, flawed controller.<img border="0" height="1" src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/9809/s/f34cd60/mf.gif" width="1"/><div class='mf-related'>

In Depth: Does Kinect herald the demise of the keyboard?

Do you know TED? Not the guy called Edward who lives next door, the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference. It's a series of lect...