Product Reviews

Socialite is a desktop aggregator for Twitter, Facebook and other web services. At first it feels like a customised web browser, but it's a little smarter than that. When adding a Twitter account, for example, it automatically notices and uses the Pin that Twitter offers to authenticate third-party applications, saving you a copy-and-paste moment.

Supported networks are Digg, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. Socialite can also import RSS feeds, added manually or imported from Google Reader.

Adding networks is mostly just a case of entering a password and following the prompts. The combined view of Unread items - culled from all the networks you've added

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- is a lovely way to catch up with what your friends and colleagues have been up to. Any item from any network can be flagged and will show up in the Flagged items view. This proves unexpectedly handy for collating items you want to deal with later.

Flagging items is a local function inside Socialite. You can separately star your favourite Twitter items, or 'like' stuff you see from Facebook contacts.

What's nice about Socialite is the level of detail that's gone into producing it. Every network has its own relevant preferences, and you can adjust how often they're refreshed. More useful details include support for Instapaper, a superb online service that saves web pages for you to read elsewhere (including your iPhone) when you get time. There's also support for a number of photo upload services popular with Twitter users. Finally, Socialite understands that Twitter users need short links, and works smoothly with no fewer than nine different link-shortening services.

The items display is a bit drab and item control buttons are a bit on the small side, but these are minor concerns. Socialite does what you'd expect it to, and throws in lots more extras besides. If social networks are important to you, this app is worth owning.