While browsing the web and looking for cool stuff and apps, I came across this lifestreaming desktop app called Skimmer.

Skimmer℠ is an Adobe® AIR™ desktop application designed to streamline, beautify, and enhance the experience of participating in your most frequently used social networking activities. It improves upon your day-to-day interaction with multiple social networks, removing distractions and providing a rich experience that is particularly suited to multimedia content.

What Skimmer is trying to do is create an integrated social web experience for the user and enable the user to interact with multiple social networking sites from one application or interface. Right now, Skimmer provides access to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Blogger.

Screenshots:

Feed Mode (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Blogger)

Flickr Mode

Flickr Sets

Flickr Slideshow

YouTube Mode

YouTube Videos

YouTube Fullscreen Video

Twitter Options

Skimmer notifies the user of updates via a pop-up window on the lower right corner of the screen like the one seen in the screenshot below:

The Skimmer stream has 3 modes – Feed mode, Flickr mode and YouTube mode which can be viewed in 3 different layouts.

The Feed mode displays all updates from different accounts grouped together or sorted according to the account it belongs to, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Blogger. You can view update options by clicking on the + sign found on the right side (the + sign shows up when you hover your mouse on the right portion of the tweet). Updates are color coded and each account is assigned a different color – Facebook – dark blue; Twitter – light blue; Flickr – pink; YouTube – red and Blogger – orange.

Although Skimmer has Twitter, Facebook and Blogger capabilities, its features are obviously more geared towards Flickr and YouTube with its different viewer modes and other extra features. On Flickr mode, you can click on a photo from your Flickr set or one of your contact’s Flickr sets and it will display a larger version of the image and from there, you’ll be able to see the photo’s title, date uploaded, tags and number of comments. You also have the option to post a comment, view a larger version of the image or watch the whole set in a slideshow presentation. On YouTube mode, its basically the same as Flickr mode where it will let you watch videos on fullscreen. I wasn’t able to try out all the features for YouTube mode because I couldn’t login to my YouTube account via Skimmer. Its giving me an authentication error. Btw, you can also upload photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube via Skimmer’s built-in media uploader found on the lower left corner. (See screenshots below)

If you want to use Twitter, you can access and view your friend’s tweets from the Feed mode. From there, you’ll have the option to visit the persons profile, reply, send a direct message or retweet. (See Twitter Options screenshot)

Facebook features are quite limited. Skimmer updates you when your friend change their status, upload photos or when they get tagged in a photo. If you click on an added photo update, you’ll see the photo that was uploaded, name of the album and the option to view the photo on Facebook via your web browser.

Skimmer’s UI (user interface) is absolutely gorgeous. The only problem with Skimmer is that its a bit of a resource hog and eats up more memory than TweetDeck. Since Skimmer is an Adobe AIR application, it means you can install it on either a Mac, PC or Ubuntu/Linux powered computer. I installed it on both my Windows and Ubuntu partitions and they both run smoothly although its a bit sluggish at times and I’ve encountered a few minor bugs like there are occasions when Twitter updates don’t show up. These are minor bugs that you can bear with and ignore as Skimmer is still in beta.

Overall, Skimmer is a cool app that has a gorgeous user interface. Unfortunately, its a resource hog and I’d only recommend it if you’re more into Flickr and YouTube but at the same time would like to have access to Twitter and/or Facebook. If you’re like me and you’re more active on Twitter and Facebook, then you’re better off with TweetDeck.

NOTE: If you’re concerned with your online privacy and personal data, make sure you read Skimmer’s Privacy Policy before you download and install it on your computer.

Based on the screenshots and the stuff I shared with you, what do you guys think of Skimmer? Would you be interested in using it? For those of you who have tried it or are currently using it, whats your experience with Skimmer? Did you like it or did you uninstall it right away? What other options/features would you like to be added to Skimmer? Please share your thoughts via the comment section. Thank you!