Despite showing a lot of promise, and more recently obtaining unofficial API support, microblogging platform Plurk has lacked desktop tools to compete head on with competing platforms such as Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku.

I’m no AIR expert, but I can hack my way around code enough to have created a very basic Adobe AIR client for Plurk: Plurkair. You can download and install it here (68k). Note this is tested under OS X 10.5.3, but should in theory work on Windows machines running AIR as well.

Plurkair uses the Plurk mobile interface to offer a desktop client that displays the Plurk timeline Twitter style. It’s a first release, so it may still have bugs, but it offers reasonable desktop functionality. Note also the app in its current release will show as unsigned, ignore this and install anyway, no nasty stuff I promise.

I thought I was catering for an unmet need but as I was testing Plurkair I mentioned AIR apps for Plurk on Plurk and somebody responded that someone has done a similar thing: Plurk It. I can’t describe the feeling of spending hours working on something to only later find someone else did nearly the same thing two days before, but it’s not their fault. They were first, so by all means feel free to use Plurk It instead of Plurkair. The only noticeable differences is that Plurkair uses the entire space and doesn’t add links or otherwise within the AIR window. Plurkair is also set to refresh every three minutes (standard, and not yet customizable…sorry), I think if Plurk It does refresh it’s less frequently.

The code for Plurkair will also be released under the GPL v3 public license. I haven’t uploaded it to Google Code yet, but it will be there in the next 24 hours. Coding it was remarkably simple, and I look forward to playing with the API for future versions, although Loic Lemeur coming out and offering Plurk support with Twhirl would be my preferred choice.

Update: link on the download box fixed plus tested under Windows XP and working. IE7 treated the AIR file as a ZIP file and opened the contents without running it in AIR. I have no idea why as I’m a long lapsed Windows user. It did however install immediately and with zero problems under Safari for Windows.