Comparing Connections glue to StatusUpdater and WildFire

Connections Glue is a popular tool for keeping up with your Lotus Connections and Twitter networks. Following my earlier post where I compared Status Updater and Wildfire tools for doing the same thing a few people asked me to do a comparison between these tools and Glue.

I had never used Connections Glue before and so I found this video demonstration gave me a very quick look through the features:

The main difference between Glue and the two other tools is that it is implemented as an Adobe AIR application rather than a Notes/Sametime plugin. If you (like me) keep Notes and/or Sametime running on your machine all day long, it is handy to use a plugin for your microblogging, but if you don't a tool like Glue would be a much more light weight.

The main limitation with Glue is that it only supports Lotus Connections and Twitter. In addition it can only support a single instance of the Lotus Connections service (like Status Updater, but unlike Wildfire). However, in common with most AIR applications I have seen, Glue has  a very slick UI. I said before that the Satus Updater UI is smoother than Wildfire, but Glue takes things to another level:

• When minimised Glue hides unobtrusively in the system tray
• When new Tweets or profile updates are received in your network you are notified by a subtle semi-transparent pop-up which will dismiss itself after several seconds.
• You can re-tweet the tweets you are reading with a single click.
  
• When browsing through updates from someone outside your network you see a + sign which you can click on to add them to your network if you like.
• Glue provides you with an interface to the files functionality in Lotus Connections as well as the profile updates.
  

In summary I think that Glue may be an interesting tool for users who don't normally keep Notes or Sametime running on their machines, but for anyone who does I think they would prefer either Wildfire (for non-IBMers) or Status Updater (for IBMers).