Now you can chat on Twitter with the characters longer than 140 characters

On Wednesday, August 12, 2015, Twitter’s Product Manager Sachin Agarwal announced in Twitter’s blog that the most used micro blogging app Twitter has decided to remove the 140-character limitation from Direct Messages.

“If you’ve checked your Direct Messages today, you may have noticed that something’s missing : the limitation of 140 characters. You can now chat on (and on) in a single Direct Message, and likely still have some characters left over” wrote Sachin Agarwal in Twitter’s blog.

For Twitter’s user, this should be a great news because now they can chat on Twitter freely without worrying about the limitation of words they can type. But, please be noted that such change is currently only available for messaging through Direct Messages and not for tweets, which will continue to be 140 characters only.

“Today’s change is another big step towards making the private side of Twitter even more powerful and fun. You may be wondering that this means for the public side of Twitter. In a word, nothing. Tweets will continue to be the 140 characters they are today” said the product manager of Twitter further in the blog

After done removing the limitation of 140 characters from Direct Messages in Twitter itself, Twitter promised the further improvement by rolling out the change across Android and iOS apps, and even on third party apps such as TweetDeck.

We’ll begin rolling out this change today across our Android and iOS apps, on twitter.com, TweetDeck, and Twitter for Mac. It will continue to roll out worldwide over the next few weeks. If you can’t wait to try out longer Direct Messages, be sure you’re using the latest versions of our apps so you get the update right away.

So, when Twitter is going to break the 140-character limitation for tweeting in public side ? Let’s just wait for this big moment (HRD).

Thunderbird 38, now with more Great Features

I’ve used Mozilla Thunderbird for years as one of my favorite email client. Compared to Microsoft Office Outlook, the main reason why I choose Mozilla Thunderbird is because it has a portable version which available to be downloaded from PortableApps.com. So I can bring it everywhere I go. It’s really a handy email app for me.

If you’re a Thunderbird user and has updated to the latest version, you may find out that within the latest Thunderbird 38 version, it has been packaged with the calendaring extension of LIGHTNING (a thunderbird extension to organize your schedule and events in a calendar which is fully integrated with Thunderbird email. Using this add-on you can manage multiple calendars, create daily to do list, invite friends to events, and subscribe to public calendars).

As explained in Mozilla Support website, the integration of Lightning into Thunderbird will give a big advantage for previous Lightning users, because a compatible version of Lightning is always available with Thunderbird. It is also a great opportunity for Thunderbird users that have not been using Lightning as it becomes easier to process emails that contain invitations.

The integration of Lightning into Thunderbird of course does not mean that you must use Lightning. After updated to the latest 38 version, you will soon find out the existence of a notification bar at the bottom of the Thunderbird window. You may further free to choose to disable Lightning or keep it for good.

Here is the list of new features within Thunderbird 38 :

• GMail supports OAuth2 authentication, removing the need to manually select “allow less secure applications” in Google options for the account
• Ship Lightning calendar addon with Thunderbird and enable with an opt-out dialog
• Filter sent messages
• Filter messages when archived
• Enable search in multiple/all address books
• Add support for Yahoo Messenger in Chat
• Support internationalized domain name URLs for RSS feeds
• Show expanded columns in folder pane
• Allow file-per-message (maildir) local message storage
• Add a learn more link to support page in feeds subscribe dialog
• Add reading position marker line to conversations
• The editor for twitter should show inputtable character count

So, if you have not prefer Thunderbird as your email client, you should give it a try and see by yourself how it helps you organizing your email and how it can faster your work done. Get the latest 38.1.0 version from Mozilla.org or the latest portable version from PortableApps.com (HRD).