Some have asked me what Aloha is since I started tweeting about it, and I remembered that I never properly blagged about it.
Well, a few days ago, I decided to take a portion of my social networking app and separate it from the app itself, releasing it as a free utility. This little app has 2 functions: to replace qwitter.com (which is almost completely broken from my experience) and to replace emails from sites like twitter which notify you when you have new followers.
It works by notifying you via Growl in a very unobtrusive way, when someone stops or starts following you. Clicking the notification (except on the close button) will take you to the page of that user on that service.
Another difference from those services is that Aloha supports multiple services, including Twitter, Facebook, Identi.ca, and probably more. So if someone on Facebook stops being your friend, for example, you will get a nice little Growl about it.
Aloha stores its information in a Core Data database per Mac OS X user account, which allows for possibilities in the future such as graphing the data, or for new features such as a “re-display last notification” item.
Despite being a freebie, the app is currently in a very limited beta stage, mainly so that if I made any really dumb mistakes, they can go relatively unnoticed -mwahahaha-.
If you want to sign up for the beta, email me at [my first name] at degutis.org and I’ll send a beta with some details out to you.
Update: One of those embarrassing mistakes may or may not have just happened. For the 3 or so of you using the app, please email me for a new update. mumble mumble something about refreshing every 5 seconds instead of every hour mumble mumble