Software analyst developer Paul Kinlan has released a beta version of FriendDeck, a web-based aggregator styled on TweetDeck, which searches FriendFeed for any search term, creating a window of results for each individual query.
Click on a username in FriendDeck and it spawns a FriendFeed search for that user’s shared stuff, displaying the results by category in another FriendDeck, i.e. grouping the user’s Delicious bookmarks, Flickr uploads, friends, etc. If you want to go directly to the originating item, clicking the service icon will take you there.
FriendDeck runs on Google App Engine, but the search queries are handled by the FriendFeed API. Each query refreshes in the browser every minute, making FriendDeck a contender for FriendFeed’s own realtime search.
So far the only FriendFeed feature supported from within FriendDeck is the ‘Like’ action. Kinlan plans to add more FriendFeed functionality to future versions of FriendDeck, but stresses it’s a side project; his current employer Qire is aware of his moonlighting so rest assured, TCUK is not outing him to anyone.
It’s an interesting take on solving a problem that a lot of FriendFeed users, myself included, have with FriendFeed, which is that it works, but only up to a point, before you have to kludge together this kind of functionality.
Kinlan dabbles a fair bit with metasearch queries and apparently likes nothing better than mucking about with jQuery and open APIs; he built Twollo, a Twitter app that helps users find and follow people with shared interests, and Topicala.com which he says is somewhat inexplicably quite big in India and Brazil.