I do most of my article gathering through Google Reader, which has a “share” option at the bottom of each article you read. If you follow me on Google, you probably get these articles in the “shared by others” category, but for those of you who don’t, I use the RSS feed of shared items that Reader puts out piped through an RSS to Twitter service (personally, I use TwitterFeed).

It’s not a perfect service, it will only push out articles every 30mins or so, but I find it more than adequate for my purposes. If something really great comes along and TwitterFeed isn’t an option, I sometimes push it out by hand to Twitter. And I actually think the 30mins delay is a good buffer so I don’t flood anyone’s Twitter stream with articles.

Google Reader also has a bookmarklet for things you want to share that’s outside your subscriptions. It’s very nice, I highly recommend it. You can get the RSS feed and “Note in Reader” bookmarklet from the “Share” tab down the left side of the page.

That’s how you get the Tweets formatted like “Currently reading” and “From CSSKarma”. I also recently hooked up Pandora, LastFM and YouTube to the services… so look out.

Earlier this week (this morning) I had a sorted break up with long-time-used FireFox add-on TwitterFox. Admittedly, I didn’t really plan for it – it just happened one day. Then there I was using the Web interface to update my Tweets. Which is fine, I actually prefer the Web interface over all the desktop apps that have been built.

Breaking up is like knocking over a coke machine. You can’t do it in one push, you’ve got to rock it back and forth a few times, and then it goes over.- Jerry Seinfeld

I had been unhappy with TwitterFox for a while (almost since the beginning), I was just using it because I needed something, it was the best I found, and I didn’t feel like doing more research on it.

Overall, it was an OK experience because I feel like I know exactly what I want in a Twitter updater. I know what I liked about TwitterFox, and, most importantly, what I hated about it.

TwitterFox Pros and Cons

Pros

• Presence – I have a browser open all day, and it’s right there, very fast to update, not a separate app eating up all my RAM
• @replies – It usually caught my @replies even when I wasn’t the 1st @ listed in a tweet

Cons

• Pop ups – I hate the intermittent pop ups of tweet. I’m sure it can be turned off, but I hated it
• Pop up interval – on the off chance that I wanted to read a tweet as it popped up, if the text was long, it didn’t stay popped up long enough to read. Then I’d have to stop and go read the tweet
• Lazy – it stopped catching all my @replies (the last month or so).
• Replying – the way replies functioned bothered the crap out of me
• I just didn’t like it.

Researching replacements

Just by looking at some people I follow on Twitter, I came up with a pretty good list of TwitterFox alternatives to investigate.

Apps

I don’t like the external apps for Twitter updates, but I’m going to give them all a try and see if I can get into it:

• Twhirl
• EventBox
• destroyTwitter
• Twitterific
• TweetDeck
• Twidget
• Digsby
• Snitter

In-browser options

• TwiterGadget
• TwitterBar
• TwitKit
• TwitBin

That’s what I’m planning to look in to right now. Are there any I missed? I’m open to pretty much anything right now. I was with TwitterFox for a while (maybe a year?) and generally not pleased with it, so I want to make sure to find something that really fits.