If you’re one of those people who boast huge numbers of buddies amongst several different networks, Meebo has a lot to offer you through its instant messaging network. Boasting around 65 different networks that it can communicate with, most people will find at least one group they already belong to on the list.

Meebo uses the built in iPod keyboard for communication which, in my opinion, is not a bad thing. It’s certainly not as easy as a full keyboard on a home computer, but it makes it fairly easy for short conversations back and forth. Additionally, it has the added functionality of grouping all friends throughout the various networks into one, easy to use buddy list. This added functionality is great for those that have several different accounts that they use to communicate with. Personally, it was a whole lot of unused power for me.

Meebo does make it extremely frustrating to communicate if you frequently switch between your home computer and your iDevice for instant messaging. More often than not I would be trying to communicate with someone in AIM on my home computer, see them continue to type items in the window I had popped up, and never see anything come through. Ultimately, this information was received by Meebo and was awaiting my return to the iDevice. I spent a bit of time trying to figure out what setting I had turned off, before I realized this.

Additionally, it took me several attempts to actually add each account, and some of them I could not add at all. For instance, I downloaded the app late last week and added all of my most used networks onto it. This process took 35 minutes because of the 4 networks I was trying to add, two of them didn’t ever end up working, and two of them took about 5 minutes each in the loading process. I came back a couple days later and finally was able to load one of the other two networks.

Even with these problems, adding networks isn’t all that difficult. The directions within the app are very clear, and finding networks is as easy as looking for them on the list within the app. Once located, clicking on the network will bring up an additional screen to interact with, before officially having the network loaded.

Graphically, Meebo is a lot of fun. Instead of the boring line by line conversations, chat bubbles appear on one side of the screen for you, and one side of the screen for whoever you are talking to. It makes it fun and easy to carry on conversations.

For those of you desperate to find a multi-network instant message program, Meebo is an acceptable option. It won’t necessarily make a difference, however, to those of us who restrict our conversation tools to one or two programs. The occasional problems with functionality further complicate the usability of the program as well. Overall, it’s really only for a niche audience at this point. Further improvements could see drastic changes to Meebo’s usability.

Oobah studio’s “Sponge” helps to bring all of your news and social networking needs together in one convenient app. Currently Sponge supports Facebook, GMail, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and RSS feeds from sites that you input. The app is extremely simple to use, just click to add a feed, insert the website, user name and email, or required information. Head back to the home screen, and refresh the page.

Between my regular day job, part time reviewing apps for 148apps.com, a fairly active social life, and a pregnant wife, my days are pretty full. Sponge is an app that helps alleviate some of the time constraints I face on a day to day basis. I like it because it allows me to one click update all of my most visited sites with any of the recent news articles, Twitter posts, status changes, and news information that I would otherwise have to spend time gathering myself.

I love using my iPod touch for social networking. The big limitation to iPods however, is their lack of 3G coverage. For those of you with constant wifi access, a 3G connection, etc., this app has even more to offer. The neat grouping of information makes navigating through the various accounts a breeze. Facebook and Twitter messages can be uploaded, emails sent back and forth, YouTube accounts of various users reviewed, and the most recent news stories retrieved, all from the comfort of one app. Find a news story you like? Post it directly into your Facebook or Twitter account without ever leaving Sponge.

Sponge is not without its flaws, however. This is especially true for iPod Touch owners. The first and most significant is the need for a wifi or 3G connection for updates. It is possible to check over information that’s been previously downloaded, while there isn’t a connection available. It certainly isn’t perfect, but it helps if you’re on the run and just need a quick update to check out later. The problem is that Sponge also continues to pop up network error messages when there is no connection available. Not a terrible problem for those with some semblance of patience, but a terror for those lacking this quality.

Sponge only updates on status, news, etc. You won’t be cycling through your friend’s list, changing settings on your accounts, or in my case, checking out the most recent web-comic strip from Ctrl-Alt-Del. You will however, find out what’s going on in your friend’s lives, exchange Twitter messages, and find out what Tim Buckley (Ctrl-Alt-Del’s writer) has been up to as of late through is news feed.

Sponge provides an excellent compact vehicle to collect all of a person’s important information into. For those people who like the convenience of having information available to them quickly and efficiently, Sponge is a solid app to achieve just that. This is a perfect app for those of you looking to speed up your surfing and sharing of content. At $2.99, it’s a cheap and easy way to stay updated.

I normally wouldn’t dabble in Avatar creators, but I was looking in the top 10 paid apps today and saw WeeMee Avatar Creator in the 10 spot. I figured, “what the heck” and downloaded the app. I needed a new profile picture for the site anyways.. the old one of me eating a pancake was getting a bit stale.

It's me!

WeeMee Avatar Creator is a simple app that does what it says, it creates avatars. Much like the avatar creator on the Wii, you create your little person from preset shapes, hairdos, and clothing. The variety is pretty nice, as I was able to create just about every person I knew. Along with basic person creation, WeeMee allows you to add side items like guitars, computers, and pets, as well as changing the backgrounds to different landscapes.

Sharing options, where an app like this could really shine, are fairly limited. Since social networking is so pervasive these days, it would be nice to be able to instantly link the avatars through things like gravatar.com, Twitter, and Facebook. Instead, WeeMee only allows you to assign an avatar to different address book contacts and to save them to your photo album. This does give you the option to import them into different programs yourself, but automatic is like free… it’s always good.

If avatar creation is your thing, WeeMee is a great app. I don’t personally see myself sitting around and making fake people, but I could see myself creating avatars for everyone in my address book on my next plane flight. This would also be a great app to keep a kid occupied for a very long time. I’ve seen my little sister sit on her Wii for hours creating all of her friends, so I’d expect the same here. I say that if you can entertain a little kid for a few hours for less than a dollar, the app is well worth it.

]]> http://www.148apps.com/reviews/weemee-avatar-creator/feed/ 0 http://www.148apps.com/reviews/weemee-avatar-creator/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/148apps_reviews/social-networking/~3/Q1k6JWerorM/ http://www.148apps.com/reviews/osfoora/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:48:13 +0000 Arron Hirst http://www.148apps.com/?p=27680

Lets face it. People love to tweet .. and if you’re anything like me, you like to do it as often as possible. With the introduction of the App Store and the iPhone, we can finally take tweets on the move in style. There have been many attempts to create the perfect Twitter client to suit everyone’s needs, and as a result the world and his dog are developing iPhone Twitter clients. From Icon Factory’s Twitterrific to TwitterFon and Twittelator, Tweeterena, Twizzle and of course, Tweetie, to name just a few, the App Store is jam-packed with tweetelicious offerings.

The latest in the line up of these offerings is Osfoora. Before I get into the actual review though, I just have to note that Osfoora looks extremely similar, both visually and functionality wise, to Tweetie. I mean, who can blame them for trying? .. the last time I checked, Tweetie was extremely popular with the App Store crowd, some might say being the choice of clients among many. But enough of that for now, let’s get into what Osfoora offers you, the user.

First and foremost, I’m diggin’ that name. To my knowledge it doesn’t have a physical meaning, but does it need one? Just like my own internet alias ‘razorianfly’ .. I like people who step out of the box and become creative about their own product branding.

Starting out when you open Osfoora, the first thing you’ll probably notice is its main menu which is rather unique. Set out in four distinct sections across a 12 item grid, the app displays one tap access to the majority of the Osfoora’s functions .. starting with Accounts. Tapping the accounts option will (surprise, surprise) throw you to the accounts menu. Here, you can add, edit and delete each Twitter account you’ve previously setup. Once you’re done just tap ‘Home’ to return to that gridded main menu. The next section is ‘Profile’. Pretty straightforward, this section allows you to see the profile you are currently signed into, displaying information such as the account name, Twitter handle, bio, location, website and the numbers of friends, followers, faves and tweets you have. Moving further down you’ll see a similar setup to that of Tweetie, displaying options for Twitter Lists and Retweets – although you’ll notice the app lacks the tight integration with third party services such as Favstar.fm. Tapping ‘Edit’ (top right) will allow you to edit the main sections of your profile info, directly from within the app.

The third option from the app’s main menu throws you into Osfoora’s ‘Compose’ window. The app’s compose toolbar, located above the iPhone’s keyboard, allows you to perform a number of actions to enhance your tweets. These include: upload a photo from your iPhone’s camera roll, take and upload a photo then and there, search for @usernames to @reply, attach geo-location data, search and import hashtags and finally shrink URLs. Once you think your tweet is ready for the world just hit ‘Send’ (top right). Need to save it for later editing, tapping ‘Close’ will slide up a options panel, offering choices to save the tweet as a draft or discard it completely.

Need to check what the latest Twitter Trends are up to? Tapping ‘Trends’ from the main menu will throw you into this. Now I have to say this is were Osfoora probably has a bit of a leg up on Tweetie, allowing you to see the current top 10 trends, today’s top 20 trends, and finally, the week’s top 30 trends. Searching from Osfoora is pretty straightforward too. Here, you can search Twitter as you normally would, search via nearby or search within the current trends. Below these options, you will also see the search terms you have previously saved at an earlier date – and tapping any one of these will instigate a search of that term.

Other options from the main menu include: Nearby, Favorites, Drafts, Lists, Public and Find. I haven’t quite worked out what the ‘Public’ seciton is for, yet. Presumably this section is displaying all the tweets in your timeline from people who have their Twitter.com profile unlocked and public?

“Okay, so, um dude .. Where’s my timeline?” – A question I asked myself over and over again, until I finally found it. Not a good first impression of a Twitter client when I couldn’t even find the main timeline. For anyone else wondering, to find your timeline you have to tap accounts from the main menu and then tap the account you wish to view the timeline for. All in all, it’s a little too long-winded for me. In my opinion your timeline should be obvious, immediately. In timeline view you have the usual four tabs along the bottom: Timeline, Mentions, Messages and Search. Tapping and dragging and releasing the timeline will reveal a “hide-on-demand” toolbar, consisting of options to goto your profile with a tap, refresh your timeline manually and jump right to the bottom of your timeline. Tapping any tweet within your timeline will allow you to drill down into that particular conversation. Need to see which tweet is in reply to what? Simply tap the tweet and tap the little ‘In reply’ button, located at the bottom of the screen. This will then display the full threaded conversation.

The settings of the app provide the ability to turn auto rotation off, set the tweet load amount, set the timeline refresh rate, change themes with options of both ‘Light and ‘Dark,’ chage font size ranging from 12pt to 20pt, show either the @username or full name in the timeline and set options for image and video upload. Osfoora supports TwitPic and YFrog for image upload, Vidly and YFrog for video upload and Bit.ly, Bit.ly (Custom) and TinyURL for URL shortening. The app also allows you to save tweets for later with Instapaper (registration required).

I know what you’re probably thinking at this point; “What’s with all the Tweetie comparison. Jeez. Give Osfoora a chance. Just because it happens to be a good-looking Twitter client, doesn’t immediately make it Tweetie.”. You’re probably right. I do love Tweetie, and after all, Tweetie can’t keep all its UI candy to itself .. forever, I realize there are going to be similar apps with similar UI elements, but I can’t help but notice the sheer similarities between these two. Yes, they are both iPhone Twitter clients, and yes they both look good, but certain parts of Osfoora just scream Tweetie at me. Loudly. Maybe this is what they were banking on? Who knows.

All this said, it isn’t perfect, yet .. and if you were to ask me if this lives up to the easy of use and fluency of Tweetie, my answer would be no. For one, Osfoora still lacks a few features I’d personally like to see. For one, it’s lacking the ability to add your own URL shortener with custom API endpoints. Also, compared to Tweetie, the user cannot see replies to tweets with a simple slide of the finger in the compose view. I think Osfoora could also benefit from moving its reply, fav and re-tweet functions to the timeline. Currently, without physically drilling down to single tweet and conversation views, these functions have to be performed from the compose window.

Overall, a good attempt at a Twitter client. The basic functionality is there, which is more than I can say for some. I think Osfoora’s problem, is it is trying to be a lot of other Twitter clients at once, instead of creating its own style. While its visual style does differ from its competition, (and I have to say, I like their style), I just found that actually finding the functionality I needed to use within the app, was very difficult and at times, long-winded. With a little jiggling of UI layout, I think Osfoora could become a serious competitor to Tweetie.

Update: Developer states that Osfoora’s reply, fav translate and re-tweet functions, can actually be used from the app’s timeline view, using the below method:

Hello,

I am the developer of Osfoora, and I want to thank you for the review on 148Apps. Just thought I would point out that you can access the reply, fave, re-tweet and translate methods from a contextual menu that shows up by tapping and holding on a tweet in the main timeline.

Best Regards,
Said Marouf

Please note: Out of respect, I have hidden the identity of my friends and family throughout this review.

As I’m sure you’ll agree, there are basic functions a mobile phone like the iPhone should come with. Seeing as though Apple left off its iChat software for whatever reason they saw fit, it then fell to the App Store and Apple’s current reservoir of registered, talented developers to fill this gaping hole. Nowadays, instant messaging is a fierce business, with competition between the big names being most of time, rife. Because of this, the App Store is now full of instant messaging start ups among the big names, providing as a whole the instant messaging fix we all crave on a daily, and sometimes hourly, basis.

Known to most for their browser based chat service, eBuddy allows its 30 million users to connect to other users around the world to connect with chat services. With rich emoticons and text styles, the last couple of years have seen eBuddy really become the choice for most while away from their more capable desktop chat client. Now the once browser-based client has come to the iPhone, but just how does it fair against its many rivals? – Quite well, actually.

eBuddy pro is the premium version of the FREE eBuddy client offered by eBuddy. As a result, eBuddy Pro comes with no ads and a tonne more features. As with most chat clients you’ll have to create an account before you can start chatting, in this case, an eBuddy ID. Once created (takes about 1-2 minutes), you can then go ahead and setup your chat accounts. The app allows you to drag in accounts from a number of existing networks, including: MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, GTalk, Facebook, ICQ, MySpace and Hyves. Once eBuddy verifies your account you’re ready to roll! Your buddies will be shown in the ‘Buddies’ tab, just one of fives tabs across the bottom of the app. once you start chatting with someone their chat will show up in the ‘Chats’ tab as an active one. Need to manage your chat accounts? Head on over to the ‘Chats’ tab. here you can add, delete and modify your chat accounts, as well as signing into or logging out of all your accounts simultaneously.

Once in a chat, you have a few different thing you can do. Firstly you’ll see above the five tabs along the bottom you have your chat box. If you just want to chat you simply tap this box, compose a message and hit ‘Send’ (bottom right) .. your message will then be wished off into the night. Want to add emotion to your message? Tapping the smiley face button right of the chat box will throw up a panel of emoticons. Found the one you want? Simply tap it and it will be added to your message. Alternatively if you happen to have Japanese Emoji enabled you can use this too, although it’s worth noting that these will only show up on your recipients end if they too are using an iPhone messaging client. For full compatibility I found using the built in emoticons worked a treat.

The feature which makes eBuddy Pro stand out though is its user customization. This aspect of the app really makes eBuddy Pro feel more like a desktop client, especially due the lack of customization offered in iPhone OS itself from the get-go. With the setting of the app you’ll have the option to change the whole theme of the app, including bubble colours and chat backgrounds, choosing from 11 built in options. While good, I found that user themes within eBuddy Pro could have gone a little bit deep, allowing the user to change specific colours or specific objects inside each theme offered. Other than that, with a tap of your finger, you can really make Buddy Pro your own.

Missed a message, no worries! eBuddy Pro also has push notifications. Here you can close the app and it will alert you of all new messages you receive, just like if you were to receive text messages. Also, in the settings on the app you can also set how long you wish eBuddy Pro to keep you signed in for, before it signs you out again. Options for this run from 15 minutes all the way up to a whopping 3 days!

Overall, eBuddy Pro is a great customizable instant messaging and chat offering from a long-standing player. I think the app could benefit from a few more user customizable options, but other than that, the app is great for what it was designed for, connecting you to your friends and family on the move.

There’s no doubting that the App Store is a big place. In fact, it’s so big that many now struggle to find exactly what they’re looking for, and with the iTunes App Store search only able to pick up keywords, finding a certain app from a certain developer can be a challenge. Chomp aims to fix that by narrowing the search down to applications it thinks you may like, based on applications you’ve reviewed.

Similar to Apple’s own Genius, Chomp takes searching for applications to buy back to basics, providing a wide and varied outlook on the general opinions of App Store customers. Once you’ve created an account which is both free and quickly achieved, the app is split up into 4 main sections. These include: Live app reviews, recommendations, add people and bookmarked apps.

Live app reviews is really the aspect which makes Chomp stand out. Sure, there are other social apps which display apps based on user aspects, take Apple’s iTunes Genius service for example, which was introduced a few months back now. This takes applications you’ve bought from the App Store, scans them, and results a slurry of apps it thinks you’ll like based off what apps you currently have and tend to use. Live app reviews in Chomp are just as they sound. Using clever jiggery-pokery, Chomp allows you to see a live stream of user iTunes App Store reviews, specific to each individual application. These are then filterable via three categories: Everyone, Following (the people you’re currently following on Chomp,) and You (reviews you yourself have submitted). For each live review shown, the person’s iTunes username, along with the app category and time the review was published to the store is displayed.

Tapping any one of these reviews brings you to a more detailed panel, showing the love to hate ratio of the reviews submitted by the users, and ability to find out more about the application, share, bookmark and of course buy or review the app yourself. From here you can also drill down further to reveal the user behind that certain app review, and follow them if you feel the urge.

The next section in Chomp is of course, Recommendations. Here, the app will delve into the reviews you’ve submitted to the store, and based off the mood of the review will determine what apps you like, dislike or down right hate with a vengeance. From here, Chomp will then display the 11 most popular apps if thinks you might like to checkout, shown in this ‘Weather.app’ esque card fashion. This section is also filterable in two ways: Price and Category. In Price you can narrow the results down from All to Paid and Free, and in Category you have the option to see All Recommendations or view them by Category. Don’t like a recommendation? .. Hit the cross button on the top right of each card. Doing so will tell Chomp you’re not interested with the app stating “We won’t recommend you this app again” and offering to fetch the next app available. Now, while I found this system worked for the most part it was a little clunky. Mainly I think due to some of the recommendations not seeming to match what I’d previously reviewed. Ever get that feeling an app is blatantly guessing? .. Yeah. I’d like to see a future update rectify this, if possible.

Adding people to your ‘Chomp’ network is pretty painless. From the main menu tap ‘Add People’. Here you can add people via Facebook, App Celebrities (a selection of influential people in the iPhone space .. albeit in Chomp’s own opinion), Top Reviewers this Week (top users in Chomp’s network), via Search or Recent Followers. Need to get a friend to join Chomp? You can also shoot an e-mail invite or invite via Facebook, straight from within app. The last section is of course Bookmarked Apps. This section of the app displays all the apps you’ve bookmarked on your travels. Got no bookmarks? Tap the ‘Find apps you’ll love button’ to we whisked off into apposphere.

Summing up, while Chomp provides a real-time outlook on user feedback to a number of applications on the store, I found during use that the app was a little user intuitive. While the app does boost a similar UI to that of the official Facebook app, certain elements and sections of Chomp felt slightly clunky. For example searching for some well know App Store titles didn’t seem to return the results expected, and alongside this, some of the apps button placements didn’t seem to feel right for the type of function expected. With all that said though, Chomp is a welcomed addition to any app-addicts life, and definitely a unique idea, providing a true insight into what customers really think of apps on the iTunes App Store.

If you’re familiar with Twitter or indeed have an account yourself, it’s more than likely that you’ll know about or use Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a web-based service provided by Vancouver-based interactive agency Invoke Media, which unlike Twitter.com, provides tools to allow you to add schedules to your tweets. In the beginning, Twitter was seen as “instantaneous thoughts” .. meaning you didn’t think about what you were putting down beforehand, you just did it. Off the cuff, with not a care in the world.

Hootsuite destroys this “old” way of thinking, and instead replaces it with one which allows you to think about a tweet in advance, save it and then set it to be published at a later date. Yesterday, Hootsuite announced Hootsuite for iPhone, and as of now, it’s officially the first iPhone application to allow the scheduling of tweets. Set to hit in a few hours in the US, but already available in Europe, Hootsuite is a well designed version of the online interface we all know and love. In order to use the app though you’ll first need an account at Hootsuite.com. If you don’t already have one, you can create one straight from within the app. Once you’ve created an account, you’ll then have to add your Twitter account(s), and once that’s done you’re ready to roll. The main screen of Hootsuite is just like any other Twitter client. It has various options which allow you to see different sections of your Twitter account. These include: Home Feed (the global timeline of people you follow), Mentions, Direct Messages (Inbox), Direct Messages (Outbox), Sent Tweets (your stream) and Favorite Tweets (tweets you’ve favourited). Tapping any of these sections will display the information in a timeline-like view, similar to that of Tweetie. Talking of similar to Tweetie, remember Tweetie 2’s signature ’swipe down to refresh’ timeline refresh mechanism? Well, Hootsuite for iPhone has that too. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not, but yeah.

See the thing is, Hootsuite isn’t just for scheduling, it’s a basic Twitter client too. In my opinion, they should have left Hootsuite at scheduled tweets, because even though they’ve attempted to incorporate the basic functions of a Twitter client, it’s lacking. For one, it doesn’t show conversations. It doesn’t have landscape, and it’s probably not as customizable as many would of liked. On the plus side, it does incorporate the official re-tweet API, and you can burrow down into your timeline to singe tweets and single out options for these individual tweets.

Navigation within the app is simple but elegant. For example, entering ‘Mentions’ you can swipe right to enter ‘Direct Messages (Inbox),’ or swipe left for ‘Home Feed’. The position of where you are in the app is shown by a set of ‘homescreen-like’ dots, located just above the apps tab bar. Along the bottom you’ll find four tabs. These include: Streams, Stats, Search and Settings. Starting with Streams, this is the ‘main screen’ of HootSuite for iPhone, providing the sections we talked about above. Next though, is Stats. This is really nice. By default, Hootsuite uses it’s universal URL shortening service ‘Ow.ly’ to shorten links within tweets sent from the Hootsuite web interface .. and the iPhone app is no different. What’s great though is the app actually sniffs out Ow.ly URLs in your steam, and displays graphic-based stats based on the amount of clicks and ratings you got for that particular link. These stats include a graphic of clicks, total clicks, user ratings and the date that tweet was created. Something which I think every iPhone based Twitter client should incorporate in the future. It’s slick.

The search tab on the other hand allows you search for keywords, surf the current Twitter trending topics, as well see your recent searches. The settings tab allows you to modify your Hootsuite account details, as well as any Twitter accounts you have configured. You also have the option to send out various ‘Hootsuite Love’ tweets, expressing your love for the app, as well as send Feedback to the developers.

Hootsuite for iPhone could have been great, but with it’s intermittent crashing and basic Twitter client feature omissions, I can’t help but think it’s not worth it’s price, yet. That said, it is what it’s good at – scheduling tweets – and with that, its it’s own App Store first right there.

Summing up, in my opinion Hootsuite is for the general Twitter power user. For someone who cares about the content they publish to their stream daily, Hootsuite will allow you schedule when and how that happens. The best use of Hootsuite I can see is setting tweets up to publish when you’re away from or can’t access your usual Twitter client. When you’re asleep, for example.

But, I really think this was intended to be used alongside your favourite client, rather than become a stand-alone client itself. Currently, it won’t stand up to something like Tweetie. To be frank, it’s just too buggy! Hopefully we’ll see an update shortly, as I think the potential this had is just great.

These days I barely know what it means to have a spoken conversation on the phone. Seriously. My friends, family, coworkers and clients all use some form of instant messaging. It enables me to multitask in conversation, something I just can’t do on a phone (even though switching between and merging calls on iPhone are fun, it’s still limited). It’s important to be able to do this if I’m juggling a hefty social life, client base, or participating in some serious office drama. And all without straining my vocal chords! Typically I manage all this from my desktop, but BeejiveIM puts it into the palm of my hand – now there’s no escape!

First up, here are the protocols BeejiveIM supports: AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN/Windows Live, Myspace IM, and Yahoo! Messenger. As an OS X server administrator that sets up Jabber/iChat server for clients, I was particularly impressed with the Jabber integration in BeejiveIM. If you use just two of these messaging services, the convenience factor of BeejiveIM jumps up considerably.

Until Apple gets their iPhone push notification services running, BeejiveIM has come up with a really acceptable workaround for remaining logged into your AIM accounts when the app isn’t running: When the app closes, you can have BeejiveIM forward your incoming instant messages to a push email account. You’ll receive an email letting you know who is contacting you, and there will be a button you can touch to jump you right back into BeejiveIM from Mail. You can leave this forwarding active for up to 24 hours. Sweet!

I’d like to talk about the interface of the app now, which really is my favorite part about BeejiveIM. Everything aspect of the app can run in landscape mode – Yes!! Widescreen chatting!! The app has lots of beautiful transitions for doing things such as deleting a chat, or when you shake the phone to tab over to the next chat. If you touch the name of a buddy in the chat window, a sheet drops down that gives you the ability to record and send a voice note, upload or take a picture, delete the chat, or email the chat transcript. You can also scroll through your active chats on this screen. There’s a slew of UI preferences in the Settings app on iPhone, you can do things like change the colors of the chat bubbles, alter the IM sounds, set a chat background, change the name display order, etc. BeejiveIM really shines when it comes to customization and attention to detail, traits that I believe really add value to the app. Not only that, it’s just plain fun to tweak out your chat client, and the more options, the better!

BeejiveIM actually started out as a free web based chat client. In my opinion, it has always been the best, and this holds true through the app’s transition to running natively on the iPhone. If you want to get a taste of how cool BeejiveIM is, pull up Safari on iPhone and browse to http://iphone.beejive.com but remember there are tons of features on the native app that aren’t available in the web client.

I have very few criticisms of BeejiveIM. I’ve been using it exclusively for chatting on iPhone since MacWorld 09 and have noticed a few areas where there could stand to be some improvement. First, BeejiveIM seems to take up a hefty amount of resources on iPhone; if I get over 4 simultaneous chats running while listening to music, the audio playback will skip quite a bit. I often get signon on timeouts for my Gtalk account. Sometimes pressing the button in Mail to launch BeejiveIM, BeejiveIM will crash as it opens. These few quirks in the face of all that BeejiveIM offers make them totally excusable in my opinion. Plus, their support team is really friendly and responsive. The app is a bit on the pricey side at $15.99 – there are other free and less expensive IM clients for iPhone on the App Store, but none of them seem to match the polish and quality of BeejiveIM. I was a bit apprehensive at spending the money, but ultimately I realized it was well worth it after just a few moments of playtime. I suggest Beejive Inc. drop the price to a flat $15 so that the smallest denomination of iTunes gift card could buy the app, that might make it seem a little more accessible to potential buyers.

If you need hardcore IM on iPhone, BeejiveIM is simply the best out there.

Push notifications are lovely things; I just wished that all of the services I used supported them! Enter Boxcar: a so-called “Free+” app and one of the best Push notification solutions for Facebook, Twitter, and email. It’s by far the simplest, most intuitive notification app I’ve used so far, and the fact that you get one service for free makes it a steal.

Boxcar offers a number of services: Facebook notifications, email alerts, or Twitter alerts. I’m going to go through a brief explanation of how each service works:

1. Facebook
This is what I use Boxcar primarily for, since I’m not too active on Twitter. Facebook Connect logs you into your account, and then you’re set; all of your notifications get pushed without any problems at all. I love this for a somewhat silly reason: my Scrabble games. Finally, I don’t have to keep re-opening apps to check and see if it’s my turn to move!

Note that Push notifications are supposedly coming in the next official version of the Facebook app, so this function may become obsolete. For now, however, Boxcar delivers a much-needed service that the official app can’t match.

2. Email
Boxcar’s method of email notifications is somewhat unique, and it’s very different from how applications like GPush handle things. You’re given a Boxcar email address, and then you have to set up email forwarding to that address. In gmail, this is a cinch to do, but I’m not sure about other email clients. Either way, it’s well worth the effort. Boxcar says that they don’t store the emails, and with this method, you never have to reveal your password.

3. Twitter
Boxcar has quite a few delectable options for Twitter users. Not only can you get @replies and DMs pushed to your iPhone, but you can also get you’re whole timeline pushed out. Now, I wouldn’t recommend this if you’re following more than a handful of people, but it’s a nice option. (And, thankfully, it is optional.) The best part, however, is that Boxcar will connect with your Twitter client, and you can chose to automatically open that app instead of Boxcar when you get a new notification. (Popular ones on the list: Tweetie 2, Twitteriffic, and Echofon.)

Okay, so there’s the functionality of Boxcar in a nutshell. The real joy, however, is found in the execution. Notifications are sent relatively quickly; my Facebook ones are nearly instant. Then there are the levels of customization: choosing different sounds per service, setting how to open each push notification (Facebook mobile? Gmail.com? Boxcar?), and being able to turn certain portions of each service or off at the flick of a switch. There are many other great features: the way that new notifications are stored within the app itself, for example, and the option to have generic, “private” alerts that simply read, “You have a new message on Twitter!”

There are some features I’d like to see: the ability to set a “quiet time” when notifications aren’t sent or a giant “silence switch” would be fantastic. But all told, Boxcar pulls of everything with flair and ease. The interface is slick, the services work wonderfully, and I love getting my notifications. And then there’s the fact that it’s free—well, for the first service, anyway. You’ll have to pay $0.99 for extra ones. But honestly, Boxcar is by far the best Push notification app I’ve used, and it just works.

So. Go on. Download it already!

As Martha Ross states on her blog, “I’ve found many apps that send your location to others but somehow all these apps assume that all your friends have an iPhone and have installed the same app as you do” and she is very right. There are plenty of apps out there that will take your position using GPS and relay it to your friends. I have several of them including the most well known Loopt. However, unless my friends also have Loopt, and in most probability an iPhone too, then I’m broadcasting my location to thin air.

So Martha Ross did something about it and decided to develop an app that broadcasts the user’s location to their Facebook account, rather than just those that also have the app. Now obviously not everyone has Facebook, but if you’re someone, you have Facebook, that’s all I need to say. By using the GPS in your iPhone, as well as the Facebook Connect functionality, Map Social lets you update your profile’s feed with your current location. Not just that but you can add a little note explaining where you are or what you’re doing and a nice little map is displayed on your profile courtesy of Google. It’s simple, but genius, and is something that should have been available from the start of the app store. It immediately makes my Loopt application redundant – deleting now.

That's where I am!

The interface is quite simple; you have one page with a massive blue button which you hit when you’re happy with the GPS accuracy, and a second page that lets you customise the message that is sent to Facebook with your location. The app also stores your Facebook information so you don’t have to enter it each time. Martha Ross has gone to great lengths explaining how the app works on her blog, and she assures users that little to no information is ever retained concerning your location and none of your personal information is stored. In fact, as soon as you update your location it erases the previous data (as Facebook links to her site for a larger map). Some may not like that any of this information is hosted on her site, but it’s kept under a random URL each time that it would be near impossible for anyone else to access. It’s great that previous locations are deleted as it keeps your location up to date for your Facebook friends, however you’ll find that previous entries aren’t removed from your news feed and any friend clicking on those entries will be redirected to the newer one. This may be out of the developers control though, depending on what an app can access on your Facebook profile, I am unsure.

Hit the button when you're ready to be located.

The app is great and does something that is much needed, and should be very popular with users. However, given the simplicity of it I imagine it will not take long before we see free equivalents in the app store. Also while it does what it claims to without problem, you do feel a little as though something is missing, or that it could at least be designed slightly better. Granted, the downside to Loopt and others is that there are often too many features, but is there any reason to have two separate pages to the app? It could quite easily have a button and text input on one page. The app is also referred to as MapMe on Facebook, so I’m not sure the reasoning behind the inconsistent names. It might see more adoption as a 99 cent app, but if you travel a lot and use Facebook as your primary social network, there really is no better way to keep people up to date with your travels.

It’s the one we’ve all been waiting for. Highly anticipated and loved by many, Loren Brichter’s Tweetie now has that of a cult following. Following the huge success of the original Tweetie, Tweetie 2 promised a faster and more efficient overall ‘core’, lots of new functionality all the while retaining that simple, elegant style we’ve all come accustomed to.

At his iPhone development talk at Standford University in May – which by the way is well worth the watch – when asked why he thought Tweetie was so popular, Loren explained that he believed a huge part of Tweetie’s success to date came down to that of pure luck. I disagree. Yes, Tweetie found a gap in the market when it did, but in my opinion its sheer simplicity of use, and full feature set, for me, was its ‘unique’ selling point. Tweetie 2 carries this way of thinking forwards, bringing with it a huge feature-set and really, for me, taking Tweetie 1 to the next level.

Opening the app you’ll be asked the login with your Twitter credentials, and once in you’ll be throw to the mutli-account manager screen. Just like Tweetie 1, Tweetie 2 supports multiple accounts, with options to add, delete and set settings for each. Opening your timeline you’ll begin to realise this is where Tweetie 2 really comes into its own. The first thing you might notice is the plain ‘White’ shaded theme. Simple and easy to read, each tweet is separated into its own box. The overall layout of how your tweets hasn’t changed at all, with your twitter avatar remaining on the left and yours and everyone elses twitter handle displayed above each tweet. What you probably will notice is the position of the ‘time’ a tweet was tweeted as changed. Instead of being above each tweet as in Tweetie 1 (which I have to say, now looking at Tweetie 2 looks cluttered and a bad design choice), the time is now displayed within each tweet area, in the top right. Allowing you to see at a glance when a certain tweet hit your timeline.

Also new is the bottom tab bar. Instead of following the usual rigid and uniform ‘design’ rules, Loren has added a tab bar design that you’re unlikely to find anywhere else on the App Store. Slightly thinner than the usual, and similar in design to that of Leopard’s dock, Tweetie 2 sees the same amount of tabs added, but this time they’re slightly different. Running from the left to right you have; Timeline, Mentions, Direct Messages, Search and More. When something new appears in your timeline, or you get a new mention or DM, Tweetie 2 will now alert you by the way of a electric blue ‘dock-like’ indicator. The new tab bar also introduces a new feature for reading DMs, too. If you want to mark all your DMs as ‘read’, all you have to do is double tapp the DM icon (the envelope with the downward arrow), and all DMs will be marked read.

But the additions don’t stop there, far from it. Need to find a specific tweet you remember seeing, but didn’t have time to fully read it at the time, and don’t fancy scrolling to find it again? Tweetie 2 now includes a ’search’ field for searching your entire timeline. But, it’s what’s above this search field which is the real star-feature of this app. In Tweetie 1, refreshing your timeline was less than exciting. All you did was simply tap a slightly beveled button, with a refresh arrow and BOOM, your timeline refreshed.

This is gone, and it’s been replaced with – in my opinion – the best implementation of timeline refreshing an App Store Twitter client has (and probably will) ever see. To refresh your timeline in Tweetie 2, all it takes is a flick of your finger. At the top of your timeline there is an expandable ’section’. If you tap, drag and pull your timeline down, you’ll see it, and it says ‘Pull Down to Refresh …’ along with the date of when you last refreshed. All you do is drag this down, until it switches to ‘Release to refresh’ .. release, and your timeline refreshes now accompanied by this cool “pop” sound.

This feature really needs to be played with to understand how … well how revolutionary it is, if that’s the word.

You’ll also be glad to hear this new refresh mechanism is present in Tweetie 2’s replies tab, too. Surprisingly though, you won’t find it in your DMs tab. Something which took me a while to get accustomed to, due to the current amount of daily DMs I receive, and me being on Twitter for most of the week. But, the more I think about it, for the general user the need to refresh your DMs every second of the day isn’t needed, and you’ll be glad it know you’ll only have to wait seconds for the DM to refresh with your latest DMs.

On the new tab, search, you have the options to search Twitter via keywords, and view the current top 10 Twitter trending topics. Tapping an individual trending topic will return a timeline of activity for that topic. Okay, Miley Cyrus is trending, but maybe you’d like to see exactly why Miley Cyrus is trending? (okay, maybe not). Well in Tweetie 2, you can do that too. Tapping the ‘Tag’ -like icon bottom left will show the description of a current trending topic, in a nice iPhone OS-esque notification bubble. Moving away from trending topics though, and going back to the search tab, you’ll also find another feature which has made the jump from Tweetie 1. Nearby.

Introduced in Tweetie 1, nearby was a feature designed to show you who was tweeting around you, in relation to your location. The feature would make a timeline of all those tweets around you, and display them just like your ordinary timeline – and, although nice, many people (including myself) thought the feature could have been enhanced. In Tweetie 2, it is. In fact, the feature has been completely rewritten. In the new version, you’re actually shown a live Google map of surrounding tweeters. Need to switch to the ‘old’ way of thinking, and the timeline view? Don’t worry, you’ll find a tab for that, too – the only different being in nearby list view you can now click on any tweet, and see the exact location that tweet was tweeted from. It’s worth a note that your location is only available to Tweetie to do this, if you wish it to. You can easily turn the setting off in iPhone Settings, General, Location Services.

Moving to the ‘More’ tab, you’ll see a few welcome additions, the two most notable being the ability to save tweets ‘as drafts’ which we’ll get into a bit later, and the ability to edit your Twitter.com profile, right from within the app. Now this isn’t something I ever thought I’d need or use, but surprisingly it’s really nice and like most of the additions in Tweetie 2, now feels like it should be there. Editing your profile is as simple as hitting ‘Edit’ from the ‘My Profile’ screen. Once you do, you’ll see you can fully edit, your profile, account name(s), URL, location and your bio. I have to say it’s very convenient to be able to do this straight from within Tweetie instead of having to go to Twitter.com.

Stepping away from Tweetie 2’s tab bars now, I want to shift focus onto the re-vamped compose screen. If you still happen to be using Tweetie 1, you’ll likely notice the compose screen feels a little ’static’. You have a compose box, a character count and a send button. Simple? Yes, Does the job? Definitely, but in Tweetie 2, your compose experience is about to be seriously enhanced. On first look you might think what is he talking about, Tweetie 2’s compose screen is the same. You’d be right, but tapping the ‘character count’ will have you thinking different. This slides down the keyboard to reveal 6 new posting options, including; Photo from Camera, Photo from Photo Library, Geotag, @Usernames, Hashtags and Shrink URLs. Some of which are pretty self-explanatory.

Say you’re looking to reply to someone, but can’t be bothered searching your timeline to find a tweet, just so you can send a public reply. The new @username option allows you to search the Twitter directory of usernames, to find the person you’re looking for – all the while, live searching. The new hashtags option is pretty much the same. You don’t want to be left searching your timeline to copy and paste (as much as it is now convenient with iPhone OS 3.0) a hashtag, you just want to be able to create one. Simply input the hastag you want to create, and Tweetie 2 adds the hash symbol, automagically.

Need to save a tweet as a draft, to edit later? Maybe it doesn’t have that ‘awesomeness’ yet, and you’ve developed tweeters block? Don’t fret. Tapping cancel will give you a ‘Save as Draft’ option. Remember that ‘More’ tab? Just hit ‘Drafts’ and you can continue editing your tweet right where you left off! Alternatively, if you have Birdhouse installed you can send your tweet there, too.

The option I really want to talk to you about though is ‘Shrink URLs.’ It’s just as it sounds – but this time, with a difference. Amongst the many new features within Tweetie 2, the one which really caught mine and James’ (a friend) eye, co-owning the rapidly growing URL service rfly.me, was custom URL shortening API endpoints.

In Tweetie 2, anyone with a custom URL shortener and an API, can use their service. Providing the API URL is setup to conform with this developer article found on atebits.com.

To setup the rfly.me service for use in Tweetie 2, simply head on over to our ‘rfly.me in Tweetie 2‘ API page, more of which you can read about on the official rfly.me blog.

As well as the trippy new ‘Custom’ URL shortening option, Tweetie 2 still supports the usual’s including; j.mp (bit.ly), TinyURL, is.gd and Linkyy (among others). Along with those options, the app also retains options for video shortening, image shortening and ‘Read it Later’ services. To be honest, ‘Read Later’ is a feature I don’t particular have a use for, but it’s pretty straight forward. It allows you to save tweets for later, for offline reading, with Tweetie 2 introducing a further online service into this section, ‘Read it Later‘.

Tapping ‘Advanced’ in Tweetie’s now built-in settings panel also reveals even more functionality. The most notable by far being the five popular Twitter-related social networks which are now interfacing with Tweetie 2. These include Tweet Blocker, Follow Cost, Tim Haines’ FavStar.FM, Favrd and Tweetoerites.

There is one issue with the software however, which was only pointed out to me today, and that is timeline caching. Basically this means your timeline is saved and restored between uses. Although great, there’s a big issue Loren and some other users using the app may have missed. But what could I be talking about?

In Jeff’s words:

“Example – you load your timeline and close the app for 10 hours. When you relaunch, you will see 10 hour old tweets and the latest 100 load above those. The issue is that if your timeline has had over 100 new tweets you can’t get to them – there’s a gap after the initial 100.”

A showstopper? Possibly. Maybe you didn’t even notice it at first? I know I didn’t. As Jeff explains, it may not be an issue to most. Loren is aware of the issue, and current status on the matter is that he will try to fix this ‘bug’ in version 2.1.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is the fact that this wasn’t the usual ‘update’ to an existing application, but an entirely separate app. With an entirely new $2.99 price tag for existing users to swallow. Something which I imagine Loren got quite a lot of stick over. Personally, I think Loren did have just reason to submit Tweetie 2 as a completely separate app. Not only because it was in fact a complete rewrite of Tweetie 1, but the functionality, innovation and polish added in this release, it deserves the spotlight.

In Loren’s words:

“Making a “2.0” could have been easy. I could have changed the version number, added video tweeting and called it a day. Other apps call that “2.0” – I think it’s lame.”

Wrapping up here, Loren has proven that once again Tweetie is a superior Twitter client. Although this release did see some decisions which won’t be looked upon lightly by everyone, for example, the fact that Tweetie 2 now only has one theme option, this release definitely sees Tweetie as a client, for me, take a step up from the original Tweetie 1.

Yes it currently does have it’s flaws (as seen above), and yes, some decisions made within this version of the app may put you off entirely. The way I see it? At this stage, the positives outweigh the negatives, bringing once again the charm and style of Tweetie 1 in a overall very powerful and feature-full package.

With improved composition options, the ability to save tweets as drafts, new timeline and refresh mechanisms, offline reading, enhanced nearby functionality, custom URL options – and who can forget those accompanying refresh sounds? It’s hard to deny that Tweetie 2 has, in my opinion, once again secured itself as one of the best Twitter client choices for both iPhone (and iPod touch) – and once it resolves its issues, dare I say it; Apple Design Award 2010, anyone?

For tonnes more screenshots of the new Tweetie 2 for iPhone, see our ‘Tweetie 2 First Look‘.
New to Tweetie? Don’t forget to checkout the official Tweetie manual.

Tweet N’Go is another Twitter application. With there being so many now in the app store is it possible for an app to take center stage? Could this be a Twitter app that would wow users away from the one they currently use? With most of them now following the same format, it would have to be a very high quality app and one that could potentially offer users something new or unique. Additionally, with Tweetie 2 being highly anticipated, new Twitter apps have their work cut out for them. Let’s have a look at what this one can offer…

Tweet N’Go Pro is described by the developers as being appropriate for the light user. It seems to want to corner the market on having an easy to use interface, so someone new to Twitter could get into it a lot easier. With that in mind though I’m not sure anyone who was a light user would pay the $2.99, but I want to check out the features and see where it has its strengths.

Good things this app offers…

The buzz most people are looking for: Push Notification for which you can alter the settings in the main phone settings panel. (When I tested this app, I did get DM’s and Replies, but I didn’t see any notifications. This may be a time delay or just wasn’t working at the time of testing.)

SEARCHING: The search feature in the main timeline window is great. Though it doesn’t remember your searches (not even what you just typed in!). The search results opens the users timeline and also has the options to reply, Retweet or Direct message them. You can also favorite their tweet. Also nice is you can click on each tweet in their timeline and the options then appear specific to that tweet, essentially so you can reply to a specific tweet which is nice. You can also unfollow the user from that window too.

INBOX AREA …

REPLIES: If you click on the second icon in, it brings you to your “Inbox”. Here at the top of the screen you have the choice between viewing your replies (default) or clicking on to any direct messages you may have received. If you do click on one of the replies in this list it then shows you the previous conversation that they are replying to. You can then also reply to them etc… all the normal options are there. This was a little slow to load initially.

DIRECT MESSAGES: The DM screen is in list format like so many other apps, and is not in my preferred ‘conversation style’ but it is still unique in that on the tweet that you click, you can DM them or go to their profile. That’s a nice touch.

You can then also see any tweets that you have favorite’d. There did seem to be an issue where some of them appeared 3 times, but it’s a minor issue that can be fixed and doesn’t really make any difference to the app.

WORLD: Fourth icon in was the “world”. This is actually a nice thing that most of the Twitter apps seem to miss out on having. It’s nice sometimes to just take a step back and read what everyone else is tweeting. This is especially great for a new user because it can be so difficult to get started, and into the idea who you follow is how your timeline will look. This also seems to be a chosen feed from latest news. I liked that they made a decision to give users what will essentially be both a ‘clean’ and useful stream.

FEEDBACK: Lastly and again unusually, they have a link to feedback on the main screen (last icon). This is a nice thing to have if they use it and read the responses they get.

Not sure why they decided to include Yelp into the screens as something for you to click. Maybe they have had some feedback that people are after this feature? For me it didn’t actually do anything but maybe it does something impressive for other users.

Some things that weren’t so great…

PHOTOS: When I tried to take a picture to include in the tweet, once the pic was taken the app crashed & closed. When I then went to tweet the message again, it was gone which was disappointing. Many of the apps, if they do quit unexpectedly, still have your tweet ready to be posted.

Also – you seem to be only able to send photos from the camera and NOT from your camera roll. No Camera roll? WHA? This is just a really bad omission and needs to be fixed / implemented.

Not sure how I can see my own profile as well or my timeline… that maybe would be a better use of that end icon instead of the feedback feature which I’m not sure many people will use.

Again, I might just be being picky but there is a weird delay or something about the way the keyboard & tweet screen opens when you select to write a new tweet. Again that’s just minor but now when we have access to so many high caliber Twitter apps, and so many free twitter apps, I think we are demanding near perfection if we are going to pay nearly three bucks for it.

In terms of design, they are using the standard UI elements in the iPhone SDK and it could use with making something a bit more unique or polished really. When you start charging for an app users demand more, and I think a few custom UI elements would be far nicer.

FROM API?! EEK! Lastly – for me personally, I won’t be using the app unless they change / fix that when you post something it says “from API”. For me this is a total killer and I don’t want that in my Twitter stream. Most twitter programs have “from Tweetie” or “from Echofon” etc, but as soon as I see “from API” I just think it’s from some feed or generated tweet. I have actually unfollowed some people if it’s all API, I just think it’s generic generated tweets. This is a total app killer for me and was so disappointed when I saw it.

Worth noting that there is only support for one account, but they do say it is for the light user, so I don’t think someone would expect this feature.

OVERALL…

This is a tough call, as I was using it, I was thinking that this is actually a pretty good contender, I liked some of the features it offered and was thinking they may have some nice unique app features here. I LOVED the search at the top, that’s a real winner. I also liked clicking on a tweet and it brings up the user information. But the “from API” really did completely put me off it and I won’t be tweeting from it at all.

I hope they fix the few issues with it and keep at it because it does have potential, but try the Free ad supported one first.

(please note all pictures are from their website and not my personal twitter account)

Tired of faceless phone numbers calling you at random points of the day? Paranoid about the FBI actually finding out that you moved to Fiji to avoid that vandalism charge from your “experimental” years? Do you hate forgetting your parents birthday (not that you’re friends with you parents on Facebook)? I have found the app for you.

Ladies and gentleman, I introduce to you: feX for Facebook.

The Good
This review is going to be pretty short, because really all there is to say is, “Go and buy this app!” and indeed you should. feX works on the very basic principle of keeping local iPhone contacts and your plethora (or lack of) Facebook friends in perfect sync.

Launch the program, log in to Facebook, and sync. It truly is that simple. The interface is clean and easy to understand. Syncing your contacts takes seconds and once your friends are linked up with their vCard counterpart you can make sure you always have the most embarrassing, drunken photo for your friends’ awaiting call.

The birthdays menu makes it easy to remember any upcoming special days that you might have forgotten. Also, if you’re an iCal user it will keep your “Birthdays” calendar up-to-date.

With extra customizable option, you can adjust where you want photos to be cropped, how many birthdays you want shown, and more. If you want less data to be downloaded, there’s options for that too. Wow, these guys have thought of everything.

The Not-So-Good
The first time I started up the application it wiped all of my contacts…

Now, I’m sure plenty of you are saying, “Umm…that’s a pretty big issue…” but fear not, I screwed up my Google Sync preferences so that was all my bad. Once I reloaded my contacts again, everything was peachy keen.

So, really, I’ve had no outstanding issues. Push notification would be awesome for an app like this and possibly some more options to sync (such as phone numbers, job information, social security number…you know…the basics). One other thing that bothers me is when my image synced to the phone, I have a large picture of my crotch as my default now. Multi-touch image sizing would be nice so I could make sure my photos are focusing on the right objects…you know…like a person’s face.

My Verdict
This is one of those programs that you need in your arsenal, especially if you’re a social networking nut like the other 18-30 year olds out there. In all seriousness, this will make your job of updating pics, birthdays, and adding new contacts from Facebook so much easier. Its $2. Go get it. Now.

Cons
- Needs more sync options
- Push notification would be nice
- Multi-touch image sizing

Most people reviewing an app like TweetDeck are going to be twitter users who have run the gauntlet of various applications and iPhone apps in order to utilize twitter. I started on the iPhone with Twinkle for its nearby tweets, moved onto Twitterfon when Twinkle mostly showed me local male amateur pornography via various twitpics, and finally downloaded TweetDeck earlier this week. I’ve been using TweetDeck on my desktop for a while and like it better than anything else that is available.

TweetDeck for the iPhone is definitely designed to be a companion to the desktop, everything feels similar and the usability comes easy because of the similarity. I had a really difficult time figuring out how to sync the columns from my desktop to the phone app, but a little bit of exploring lead me to the “more” block along the bottom menu. Setting up column syncing and the quick follow button next to it were features I found incredibly useful, even more so if I actually used them. Typically I find other users from searching or from friends, so a quick follow button is somewhat lost on me. As well, inside the New Tweet window, I’m still not sure what the “link” button does. I understand the map and photo buttons, which has a nice link to map feature I haven’t seen in other clients, but am unsure what a link button needs to be present for—mobile users typically aren’t working heavily with URLs unless they’ve already copied and pasted it in iPhone 3.0. Lacking from the New Tweet window is an easy way to include someone you’re following into an @reply. Also missing is a landscape mode for composing tweets.

Power users will find it useful to have their API calls and time to refresh listed in the main window, the ability to use multiple accounts and having the option to use either twitpic or yfrog for mobile picture uploads. These same power users may also find it hard to swallow the recommendation of only carrying six to eight columns during sync versus the ten column limit in the desktop version. I’m also left wondering if push notifications could out do the notification bars.

Besides these minor complaints, TweetDeck for the iPhone is a solid entry into the vast field of twitter applications. Handy notifications pop up when you receive new tweets and a breakdown of the new tweets can be found from the update icon. Columns can be zoomed for a more full-screen viewing effect which also hides the settings icon on the corner of each column. Flipping between columns is easy and very reminiscent of the design used on the iPhone’s home screen providing good usability for novice users. The compose button is large and easy to locate. The updates icon lists the number of updates and touching it shows a more detailed breakdown of where those updates came from.

Overall TweetDeck iPhone will give most TweetDeck users a familiar environment, but it comes with limitations. Some users will find just what they are looking for in TweetDeck iPhone while others will want to stick with apps like Twinkle, Tweetie, or TwitterFon Pro. Being a free app without any advertisements might give it the edge against TwitterFon, but the lack of landscape makes me quietly contemplating dropping some cash on TwitterFon Pro.

The “message in a bottle” concept has been rehashed again with a new app called Aw’ Shugs. In this app, you use Shugs—cutesy carrier pigeons, essentially—to send your messages to who-knows-where. Shugs looks slick and has a few neat features that could make it the best message-in-a-bottle app, but the difficulty associated with catching the Shugs and their scarcity makes it near-useless unless you and a few friends buy the app together.

Unlike some message-in-a-bottle apps, Aw’ Shugs relies on location. The app will manually determine your location, or you can set it manually…by struggling with a slow-to-load global map that opens up in Australia. I’d recommend letting the app set your location for you. Location is a central element to Aw’ Shugs, as I’ll explain later.

Creating Shugs
Like I said, Shugs are basically carrier pigeons. There are a few varieties, but they all do the same thing: give your messages a cutesy avatar. When you make a Shug, you entrust it a message (up to 250 characters) to carry. From there, you give it a name, decide if it’s stationary (it’ll stay where you throw it) or movable (it’ll wander around), choose an avatar (Shug type), and send it on its way. You can add tags, too, but that’s optional. Once you’re done customizing the Shug, you throw it. You can throw it to your current location, a random location, or a location that you select yourself on that same lag-tastic global map.
One nice feature is the ability to “track” your Shugs; you can view a map of their path and see how many people have caught, kicked, or hugged them, among a few other features. You can track them through the app itself, through email updates, or both; it’s your call.

Catching Shugs
Once you have your default location set, you’ll see Shugs that are nearby and you’ll be able to catch them and them to your bag. Once caught, you can read the message, add your own message, hug them, or kick them (animal cruelty much?). From there, you can either hold onto them indefinitely or throw them back into the wild.

Admittedly, Aw’ Shugs isn’t that popular, so it makes sense that there wouldn’t be that many Shugs floating around…especially in rural Maryland. You can’t catch Shugs that are too far away from you, so I tweaked my default location to an area with a supposedly sizable concentration of Shugs (at the time, there was a cluster of 7 in California). I reached out to nab a Shug…only to be greeted by, “Shug is too far to catch.” It took me a while until I finally relocated to Australia and managed to catch my first Shug. It was a message left for someone else’s friend that basically said, “HAI.” Huh. Not too interesting.

Oh, and you can’t change your default location once it’s set…supposedly. I guess that I was able to manually adjust my location by virtue of a bug the first few times, but now I’m stuck in Australia. The app does update based on your current location, but that basically means that you’re rooted to your physical location. For an app that boasts a global community of world-traveling Shugs, that seems kind of silly. Also, the location-limit on catching Shugs means that it’s ridiculously difficult to find new, interesting messages floating around the world. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to catch a Shug halfway across the world. Simulating reality is all well and good until it begins to restrict the app’s usefulness…and believe me, it’s a huge limitation.

Thoughts
Aw’ Shugs is a nicely packaged message-in-a-bottle app. The ability to choose whether a Shug will stay put or roam free means that you can either solicit random strangers or leave messages for your friends. The app’s iTunes page recommends leaving notes for your sweetheart, or a review at a local restaurant. These would all work fine…in a world where everyone owned Aw’ Shugs.

That’s Aw’ Shugs’ ultimate flaw. Its entire premise is based around having a thriving community that sends interesting messages to each other, but the location-limit on catching Shugs severely hampers its chances of evolving. As a result, Aw’ Shugs is nearly useless. I could see this becoming popular if there was an interesting, dynamic community and if it was easy to browse through different Shugs. As it stands, Aw’ Shugs is a pretty app that really can’t do much…yet. This one’s success will be determined by future updates, and whether or not it somehow goes viral.

Writing a review for a game is pretty easy. Writing reviews for news or utility apps can be a bit tougher because there are few surprises, little emotional involvement, and usually painfully straight forward. For this reason I contacted Erwin Mazariegos, owner of politicoTracker, to talk with him about his app Politico Tracker Twitter Edition. Speaking with him gave me the ability to get some insider information so that I could provide 148apps.com readers with more valuable information than just my opinion.

What was the inspiration for Politico Tracker Twitter Edition?
This app is a companion app to politicoTracker. politicoTracker is an app that follows politicians in the news so you can easily stay in tune with what they are doing. The Twitter Edition serves the purpose of being able to hear what they are saying. The idea for politicoTracker was inspired during the 2009 election when it occurred to him that the app would be a great way for people to stay on top of the news of their favorite politicians. Inspiration for the Twitter Edition came from the knowledge that politicians are twittering. It made sense that people would want to know what they are saying on a day-to-day basis.

Easy to navigate interface

Use of the app is pretty intuitive. You’re presented with a list of each state’s political figures. Select the politician you want to read about and voilá, you’re looking at a modified Twitter web page. This is really cool because unlike a feed in a dedicated Twitter client, you get to see the politician’s custom Twitter page. If you want to follow the politician on this app, just click the plus sign on the top right corner of the page to make him a favorite. Once you have an established list you access all of your favorites through the apps icon in the top left corner of the home screen. If you want to remove a politician from your favorite list later, just click on the trash icon in the top right corner of that person’s page and it will no longer appear in your Favorites list.

One of the really cool features of this app which dawned on me early on, and was later emphasized by the developer himself, is that you can use this app without a Twitter account. This is great because you don’t have to open an account, or you can keep your existing personal/business Twitter account free from political timelines. In a sense, this app turns into a dedicated Twitter client. The only downside some may see is that this app is read only. Erwin expressed to me that if there’s enough interest he will integrate writing capability.

I am the Governator

I did find getting to the Favorites a little difficult at first. I also didn’t understand the difference between bookmarking a page and saving a page. Then I went to the user guide found within the app and everything was explained. Personally, I like an app that doesn’t require a user manual to pick up on some of the main functionality, but it’s good that they can be found easily enough if you have to look.

Final Thoughts
This is a well-planned app. I’ve never been much into politics as they frustrate and anger me more than anything else. That doesn’t negate the fact that I should follow local politicians to be informed about what’s going on. It can be very frustrating to find and follow news about local or interesting politicians. Erwin’s dedication to maintaining a database consisting of 6,000 politicians, and growing, is commendable. If you’ve been meaning to get into politics, or you’re a stalwart fan, Politico Tracker Twitter Edition makes easy work of staying abreast of political news.

Is there an accent in here?

Erwin always wants feedback and suggestions on his apps. Contact him through his website and let him know what you think and/or feature requests. It was fun speaking with Erwin and I look forward to trying out his other creations.

]]> http://www.148apps.com/reviews/politico-tracker-twitter-edition/feed/ 0 http://www.148apps.com/reviews/politico-tracker-twitter-edition/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/148apps_reviews/social-networking/~3/h51hA4BYgoE/ http://www.148apps.com/reviews/twitterfon-pro/#comments Thu, 21 May 2009 16:29:36 +0000 Christine Morris http://www.148apps.com/?p=10583

This application connects to your twitter account. It has functionality and features which should fulfill your every twitter dream. This new version of Twitterfon Pro comes after they ‘upgraded’ the free Twitterfon app. (and I tell ya, it’s a good thing I’m not reviewing that one cause I preferred the previous version of their free app) Having said that, in a way it was a smart move. It has prompted folks to buy their app.

Twitterfon Pro really is a pro. New and exciting features introduced from adding support for multiple accounts, colored themes, landscape keyboard, shake to refresh, conversation style DMs and a slightly added-to interface which makes for better usability.

Soooo the juicy bits…. sit down and enjoy the ride.

The icon, this icon is brilliant on the iPhone. It now has a place on my dock and it belongs there, it’s almost smiling at me. Anyone who knows me or reads my reviews, knows that this is a real clincher for me, I need a sexy icon and this certainly fits the bill. When you launch the app there are some settings that you can modify but first enter in your twitter account details.

MODIFICATIONS Some of the modifications include: Autoload, you can select from / or all Friends Timeline, Mentions and Direct Messages. Theme choices are Plain, Twitterfon, Silver or Black. These themes are pretty stylish and I can’t decide between them at all! These load so that when the tweets are new it is a slightly different colour so you can clearly see what you have / have not read.

Additionally you can enter in your bit.ly credentials, add bookmarklet to safari, and there’s a link to help topics, so, how to get a Twitter account, forgetting your password or open the Twitter help page.

ACCOUNTS When you are happy with your settings, you can add more accounts. This is a great new feature for Twitterfon and may have been a factor in some folks choosing alternative Twitter apps. The way it accesses these additional accounts is simple, you just click the very top of the ‘friends’ time line and it returns to that initial screen. Really great to have that feature there yet also out of the way.

INTERFACE Once in the app itself, you have the same interface as before which is neat and tidy. Along the bottom is the icons for friends timeline, mentions and DMs as well as favorites and search. All of these have the wonderful red notification icons when there are new tweets. This particular feature is what has always kept me coming back to this app. I love being able to see if there are any messages, and can just glance at it if I’m busy.
The top bar has a refresh icon (but you don’t really need to use this often) and then the posting a tweet icon on the right.

TWEETING Clicking that icon opens the area to enter your 140 character Tweet. While you are typing it counts down the number of characters for you (essential) and the number turns red and negative if you go over that amount. You can also bin/garbage the message if it’s not what you want to send by selecting the little trash can.

There is the location compass if you want to attach your location to your tweet and the camera, if you want to include a picture from your pictures or to take a new one. If you are taking a photo, it will ask you to confirm that you want the picture you took or if you would like to re-take it. Lastly on that screen of importance is the friend icon on the lower right. This is your list of friends. I haven’t used this feature much actually, but when testing this ability I thought it is a great thing to be able to do, just scroll through really quickly to who you want to tweet.

Unfortunately when testing this feature (twice) it had a message of “Getting your friends list…” but I waited for several minutes and gave up. It didn’t let me cancel and took along time for it to respond.

The Direct Messages are in conversation style which I love. For me this is such a big selling point and is one feature that always made me go back to Twitterfon over other apps. It is great to see a conversation rather than tweets received and tweets sent.

The search feature enables you to save your searches if you want to which can be great and it loads up really easy. Also it refreshes with the notifications icons on the bottom so you can go check your tweets and then go back to your searches.

MORE Additional things that I’d like to add but this is turning into the hardback version is Twitter Trends, Quick Add/Remove Favorites; which is a star you can click that is on each tweet (really handy!), user lookup, Ticker Symbol for StockTwits, Landscape Keyboard, Shake to Reload (nice touch), Instapaper Integration and no ads.

THE DARKSIDE A few negative points are that it has crashed a few times. Keep in mind I do have it opened a long time and maybe it was just that. It only closed the app and nothing was lost or changed so it wasn’t a big issue. Also, I’m not convinced by the little notifications in the DM view which hey have added to this version. It puts a little grey oval next to the persons name but there really is no need to. Maybe it will grow on me.

Lastly, sometimes when writing a message, the message you’re writing seems to be slightly below the writing area, this slightly leaves your text down a bit and can be frustrating to fix typos etc or read it clearly. (I’m picky – what can I say?)

OVERALL This is pretty much everything I need in my Twitter app. Its been a long journey on the quest of perfection but I think I may now delete all other applications (well not really but thinking of it). If they could add a cute notification noise I think I would be in Twheaven (too much?).

I’ve reviewed all kinds of apps in my time here with 148apps, and with each one I try to come to some sort of fair decision on a rating. Usually I can determine how good a game is by the richness of the gameplay or the functionality of the utility, but I am now befuddled. Since all Twitter apps pretty much do the same things, just differently, coming to some sort of coherent conclusion is quite a challenge.

First off, I’m not going to bother explaining Twitter. I’m pretty sure it was created by a mad scientist living in a lair of bluebirds and butterflies. He was lonely one day so he created Twitter. His first post was, “Is anyone out there?”. The answer was “yes”… everyone was out there.

None of that was true, but you can indeed quote me on any of it.

For those of you who aren’t big on the whole Twitter thing yet, you have to understand that selecting a Twitter app is a deeply personal experience. All of the Twitter apps have their own feel, even though they all do the same thing. For example, many of the Twitter power users use Tweetie because of its ease of use (and PEE, check it out… hilarious), the expert deal-finders tend to use TwitterFon because of it’s… free-ness, and the people who like unicorns and happy things use Twitterena, because it’s really really happy.

Twitterrific definitely isn’t a newcomer onto the Twitter scene. It’s original version won the 2008 Apple Design Award for best iPhone social networking app, capturing the hearts of millions for a short period of time (we Twitter users are a fickle bunch, jumping from client to client at a moments notice), but has since become a bit long in the tooth. It needed an update, and Icon Factory responded.

Twittering with Twitterrific 2.0
Posting tweets, the heart and soul of Twitter, is relatively simple, but a bit cluttered with Twitterrific 2.0. On the new tweet page (activated by hitting the text bubble icon on your user page), you are presented with your standard post area with the standard keyboard, but then there are some other icons that seem foreign to me. The icons on top are very functional, consisting of the shorten URL utility, the add picture utility, and an “add map link to Tweet” utility (Note to Iconfactory, if you try to compress text without having any text in a tweet, the app crashes. Note to users, don’t try to compress non existing text). The utility that doesn’t make any sense to me is the ute that lets you look at your friends posts while you type. In my mind this is a perfect place for a re-tweet function, but instead, all you can do is look. Sad face.

Reading posts on Twitter, arguably the most important aspect of the program, is the most personal part of the app. Some people like the way that different Twitter clients work, while some value ease of use. Some, the Twitterena fans in particular, value the happiness of the app over anything (don’t think that I’m picking on Twitterena, I used it for the whole day yesterday and felt cleansed of all negative thought). Twitterrific definitely falls into the category of functionality and utility. The default theme presented to you is made up of darker colors, reminding me of an Apple pro app. I guess that I could change it to a lighter color scheme, but I am a Twitter Pro darnit! So the functionality of the post area (called the timeline in Twitterrific 2.0, and probably every other Twitter app) is rooted into 3 buttons. The button on the top right determines the size of the posts, (large boxes w/ big pics, small boxes w/ no pics, and regular boxes with regular pics) something that is not too common among Twitter apps. The other two button rest on the bottom of the toolbar. We shall start with the “posts about you” button that looks like a funnel. We shall also start a new paragraph… this one is getting a bit long for my taste.

Ok, much nicer. Inside the “posts about you” button (named by me, not Twitterrific), you get to choose between @ you posts, DM’s, favorite Tweets, all posts made by you, and any post you mark for later viewing. The other button, marked by a big *, is activated by clicking on a post… any post, they all work. This * button brings up a menu that lets you you look at the author’s info page (which looks really nice, I’ll talk about it a bit later), @ author posts, the area for retweeting, a link tool, an e-mail author tool, and a way to mark posts as a favorite or just something to come back to. The author page, although a bit tough to get into, (it should be more easily available, maybe just by clicking on the name in the post page) looks amazing. It is, by far, the cleanest looking info page on any Twitter client, giving you almost all the information that one would want about someone. The only downfall, and it is of epic nature, is the inability to see who the person is following and who are their followers. This really needs to be fixed, because stalking people… er… skimming a persons friend list is a great way to meet new people with common interests.

The other stuff… very important. On the main page of the app allows you create multiple accounts on, get this, different micro-blogging sites, such as identi.ca and present.ly.Thinking about alternative micro-blogging sites while trying to become a Twitter ninja just hurts my brain, so you’ll have to try them out on your own. I’m sure they all work about the same (I could be wrong, don’t shoot me!). There are also a bevy of options for adding an account that I just don’t need, such as which server to use and whether or not you want to use SSL. You can also customize what you want to see on your page. For those of you who hate listening, you can even turn off the post area (Timeline)! Insanity.

Back in the main page, there is a whole are for searching, which lets you search by words, screen names, and places, or you can just read all the posts that are nearby. Another great feature on the home page is a trend area, easily providing you with a lovely list of current Twitter trends. Apparently Star Trek is a big topic (I can’t wait to see it… don’t judge me), but so is Grey’s Anatomy. I don’t know what this says about the Twitter community. Some people just need to put away their promise rings.

Winding Down
This is the moment you have all been waiting for. Will I, Chris Hall, SN @el_christo, use Twitterrific 2.0 as my primary Twitter client? That is tough to say. I really like Twitterrific, but the inability to easily view other people’s followers bothers me. The layout is also a bit confusing due to the fact that there are so many icons to dig through. Sometimes less is more, mostly when becoming familiar with a Twitter app. I think that Twitterrific will grow on me though in the coming weeks. One cool thing, for all of you looking to maybe purchase the app, there is a free, ad-supported version available that will surely please your bank account.

One final note, to my delight, Twitterrific 2.0, much like Twitterena, happily chirps at you when there is a new tweet. I love this. You should love this too.

If you want to know my up to the minute thoughts on Twitterrific 2.0, tweet me @el_christo. Be sure to add @148apps too, we give away promo codes like its nobodies business.

iPhone users have been awaiting the release of this app since the phone was announced. Skype is a service that allows its users to make telephone calls over an internet connection. This means that you’re no longer limited to your voice plan’s restrictions as long as you’re using the service over a WiFi connection. Users can call other Skype users free of charge, while Skype to mobile calls can cost as little as $.021 cents a minute, or $2.95 a month. The obvious catch here is the necessity of being connected to the internet, as Skype will not work over 3G. Skype also works on the iPod touch, though users are required to have an external headset and microphone.

In typical Skype fashion, the interface of this app is beautiful. The app brings as many features to the table as it’s desktop counter part. With the option to use your iPhone’s contact list within Skype, you can make a call, start a chat, or browse contact profiles within just a few easy clicks. I’ve had nothing but perfect voice quality thus far and wouldn’t expect anything less from such a well known company and long awaited unveiling. For a VoIP client, there’s not a whole lot more to ask for here. Some users are reporting instability within the app, but I’ve yet to experience a crash, stutter, or dropped call. As a mobile client, Skype has certainly hit a home run here. It’s silky smooth feel and ease of use certainly makes this one of the “must haves” for the device. With the ominous cloud of the recession hanging over our heads, this is a picture perfect opportunity to drop your voice plan down a notch and save a few sheckles.

It’s worth noting, however, that beta testers of the iPhone 3.0 software are able to make calls over 3G. The ability to function over 3G would be a welcome addition, though hard to see as feasible as it directly competes with AT&T’s voice plans. While unsure if this is a future feature or a simple bug, 3.0 user reports are also confirming a much higher rate of failure within the app. Jailbroken iPhones can hardly seem to get passed the sign-in screen, let alone make a phone call. Putting the screen to sleep or receiving a text message during a phone call also puts the call on an unexpected “hold.” This is likely to be fixed in future updates. Unfortunately, this app is unavailable for Canada.

It’s difficult to find any negatives with this app aside from it’s lengthy development time and necessity of a WiFi connection. Skype has created an intuitive application that goes hand in hand with both the service it offers and the device on which it’s intended. If you’re an iPhone and a Skype user, there’s no reason not to be utilizing this one. If not, this is a great opportunity to save a few bucks on your monthly bill and start using a fantastic VoIP client. Touting a pricetag of “absolutely free,” Skype gets nothing but high marks from this review.

The idea behind iWallFlower is simple, share your artwork with the world. After starting the application you’re immediately presented by artwork created from strangers living around you. The artwork can range from silly (an alien abducting sheep) to very personal messages (one user wrote R.I.P. Dad) to some amazing works of art.

As the application cycles through different pictures you are presented with an animated pin dropping on a 3D globe displaying exactly where the user drew the picture. Along with the pin, you are also presented a glimpse of what steps the user took to draw the picture. For example, one user drew a smiley face then drew black over it, then drew a face with a frown. This is a very unique look into what steps people take while drawing a picture. It’s a simple touch that adds a lot to the application.

You can also view the global wall where strangers can choose a small section of the wall to draw their artwork. Some people take up multiple spaces on the wall and use this space to promote themselves (I saw someone ask to be friended on Facebook), others use this space to promote social issues (Global Warming for example.)

At any time if you feel inspired enough, you can click the “Crayon” button at the bottom of your screen to start your own drawing. iWallFlower has a very simple way to draw pictures. Select the brush size, then the color and you’re good to go! Tap and drag on the screen to to draw a simple (or complex) picture. The only problem I had with the drawing is iWallFlower does not start with a black (or white) background color, instead gives the user a picture of the Earth that you must paint over.

This application is a very neat social experiment that lives beyond my expectations. The app handles very well, even when displaying hundreds of user made pictures on the screen at a time. Also, the ability to see how people have made their creation gives a glimpse into their creative process, a very unique perspective.

I had a great deal of difficulty trying to get iWallFlower to load pictures over an EDGE connection. Pictures would load very slowly and sometimes not at all. However, this is almost expected when you are dealing with thousands of images from across the world.

iCloseBy created an excellent blend; two parts art, and one part social experiment and ended up with an application that rivals the best in the App Store. The accessibility, creativity of the user base and the awesome animation of drawings make this an application that will stay on my iPhone for quite some time.

Some featured artwork:

This could be a good contender for a top spot Twitter client. However, even with all the amazing features, there are still some factors that will stop me using it exclusively.

This is another Twitter client. Designed to give you as many features as possible, including features you didn’t even know you needed.

Why this is a good application is because it is feature heavy. So much so that I would have to write a small book just to cover all the features and additional things it does. I am a heavy twitter user, and currently have a favourite application to access my twitter accounts (2) and this application may actually take their place on the bottom bar on my phone.

Here’s why. It seems to have the feature set of two of the top applications, all into one application. I will touch briefly on some of the features, but it really is too numerous to go through them all. Firstly I like that it has a little notification sound.

My favourite thing is the ability to copy and paste. You can copy a link, or a tweet and paste it in a new tweet. I have not come across any other iPhone app for twitter that does this. There is also, unusually a ‘help’ button, that sends out your location and an emergency message. Images that are tweeted are shown in the main timeline too which save me clicking them, I can just see them right away.

There are pages and pages of icons to use in your tweets as well, but most people viewing your tweets still won’t be able to see them. You can choose 3 different colour schemes, choice between several different image uploading sites and also choose which URL shortener you prefer.

I love that it also has the red notification icons, that really is a must have feature. You can also select if you want a confirmation message before sending a DM, which I actually liked (this can be disabled though).

Some things that I don’t like about this application is that the ‘conversation style’ of the DMs are just one sided, so you see all the DMs sent to you and then click a different screen to see what you sent. I much prefer the other style where you see both, as an actual conversation. This was why I still needed my other twitter programs.

The colour themes for the interface are all pretty ugly, that is another issue with this application. When you spend a lot of time on an application, you want it to look nice.

Also, I made a subgroup – and I was really looking forward to this because it seems no other phone based application does this, but every time I went off the application and went back to it, my list was gone. Also I couldn’t see a way to edit a list once it was made. I couldn’t add to it or remove people. I could arrange my groups in order, but that doesn’t really matter.

Also I did find it a little slow to initially load. Once it is opened and in use it runs fine, but that initial start time is long.

Lastly, I didn’t like having to click in such a precise location to tweet someone. Yes, you get used of it, but I like to just tap my screen over the tweet and it launches my tweet options. With this program you have to click exactly the name and a little highlighted circle appears.

Overall, this application really pulls out all the stops to bring you all you could wish for. For all the features this application offers, and looking at the continual improvements they seem to make I think it is worth spending your money on. I would really like them to make the interface much better to look at, and alter the actual elements of functionality. You will re use this application all day long, and even if you still keep your favourite Twitter client on your phone, you will use this one for all the additional features.

Warning! If you don’t know what Twitter is, stop right now, go take a look at this movie by Common Craft to catch up, then go here to create a Twitter account. Next, head to Twitter and follow @148apps. Then, come back here and continue reading.

Tweetie is not just another Twitter client for the iPhone, it is the Twitter client for the iPhone. While there are others that are good, Tweetie is just great. Nearly perfect even. It has all of the features that the average user needs and all the features the most powerful of power users need.

Tweetie is built very solidly. While navigating through the app, you’ll see how solidly built it is. Seems that just about any app that includes an embedded browser suffers from crashing problems, and Tweetie is, unfortunately no different. But outside the embedded browser, a crash in the app is rare, if ever. Tweetie is easily an app that I use 50% of the time my iPhone is turned on.

Every feature you could need is there. Multiple account support, reply, retweet, direct message, search, trending topics, saved searches, the list goes on.

One of the most innovative user interface features in the app is the ability to swipe to reply. While looking at a tweet, you can swipe left or right to reveal some actions you can apply on that tweet. It’s a quick way to expose these options without needlessly cluttering the user interface.

Speaking of the user interface, the developer of Tweetie has done a fantastic job of creating a very iPhone-esque application here. Compared to other Twitter apps like Twinkle and Twittelator, this app just feels iPhone native. The way the app provides so many features without cluttering the UI or confusing the novice user is great.

Another cool feature is Instapaper integration. Instapaper is a service that allows you to mark web pages for later view and have them download for offline viewing on the iPhone via the Instapaper application. The integration in Tweetie allows you to quickly mark links for Instapaper download by marking links in a Twitter message. Next time you load up Instapaper, it will download the content from the marked link.

If you are a Twitter user, this is, hands down, the best Twitter client currently available. It supports all user types from beginning users to the Twitter power user with a great UI and all the features you need. Considering that 1/2 the time that my iPhone is turned on, it’s in Tweetie, I think the $2.99 I paid for this app is a steal!

Colloquy began life as an excellent open source Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client for the Mac desktop, and now the fine folks at Colloquy Project have released a mobile version to the App Store. The iPhone / iPod Touch edition is an incredibly robust application, with an eye towards making mobile IRC a pleasing experience – as well as raising the bar for usability in general.

Colloquy brings an incredible amount of IRC features to the table. When configuring your servers, you can tell Colloquy to automatically join the server and designated rooms when the app launches, as well as trigger IRC commands automatically (the majority of commands are supported). Once your servers are configured, chat rooms are housed on their own tab entitled Colloquies (nach!). Tapping on a room enters full-on chat mode, where you can type in portrait or landscape orientation. If you’re not in the room but still logged in, the Room list updates in real time with the number of messages you’ve missed, displays direct messages to your nick in red, and even shows a few lines of the current conversation! You can even stay logged into several chats across different servers. In the iPhone’s General settings, nearly every feature included in the application is configurable, including Colloquy’s unique message styles such as Notes or Bubbles.

But supporting the basics is just scratching the surface of Colloquy’s features. The software has an incredible auto-complete feature that feels like the iPhone keyboard on steroids. Type in a few letters, and Colloquy will suggest a nickname in the room, an emoticon, or an IRC command that you can quickly tap into the conversation. While in chat, messages targeted at you are highlighted for easy identification. Hell, you can even have it buzz you if you want. There’s also a built-in browser for hyperlinks (which is a killer feature since people are always posting links for you to look at), which also supports specialized commands Colloquy has baked into the app. Type “/google query” to do a Google search within the software itself, type “/wikipedia query” to search Wikipedia, and so on, including support for Amazon and basic browser commands as well. I’m giddy as a little school girl as I click through the app and marvel at what Colloquy Project has wrought here.

The negatives about Colloquy don’t really take away from the overall experience. It’d be nice to be able to block certain users if you don’t have Moderator rights to a room. Currently you can only send them a nasty message telling them to lay off, which obviously never works. A buddy list needs to be high on the priority list as well. Lastly, it would also be cool to see some kind of DCC Send or DCC Get support, that way you could download files on the go and then sync them when you get home, or send pictures straight from your camera roll.

If you’re a heavy IRC user, do not hesitate to download Colloquy. Having a nearly full-functioning IRC client in your pocket is worth the meager price you’re paying for it.

I suppose I should start this review off by admitting that I had to pull myself away from Facebook to write my review about it. Because of this app, I’m so heavily entrenched in social networking that I’m actually being antisocial in a cafe full of interesting looking people at this moment. Facebook is one of those paradoxical phenomenons that I can’t help but laugh about.

OK writing that confession has helped me pull my focus together and my impulse to go check my wall is fading – on to the review before someone comments on one of my photos!

Facebook is easily the premiere, most polished and feature rich social networking app available for iPhone. I would definitely say the same about their web app solution that was ready to go nearly as soon as the launch of the original iPhone. The initial iPhone native version was a great start, but lacked some key features that the web app had. As of the native version available today, however, the developer gang at Facebook have made an app so good that I often prefer using it over the actual “full blown” website! The app gives you access to updating your status, walls, photo uploading and tagging (for yourself and your friends), chat, searching for/adding friends, your inbox, commenting on status and photos, and plenty more. I use Facebook more than any other app, hands down.

The Facebook icon on the springboard has a badge similar to Mail or SMS that lets you know you have friend requests or messages waiting – however, since these updates can’t yet push to the iPhone in real time, the count is usually inaccurate until you refresh the app. Here’s to hoping Apple gets around to giving us that push notification service sometime soon…

The home screen puts most of the common functions of Facebook all in the same place. By default your News Feed will be displayed, Notifications and Requests appear as tabs along the top of the interface (I love being able to search for, confirm, and add friends on the go). Just below it is a slick slider of filters for your news feeds – you can skim down the view to just recents for status updates, uploaded photos, top friend additions, groups joined and more.

Unfortunately, that’s the limit of your interaction with those features of Facebook – I’d love to see future versions allow us to edit our Top Friends, create/join groups, create/attend events, and interact with Facebook Apps if possible (personally I think the Facebook Apps are a distraction on the website, so in many ways I’m relieved they aren’t in iPhone’s version). It would be awesome to see some kind of Loopt or Twitter-like location services built in to see which of your friends are around you and do things like schedule meetups. Overall, the interface is highly usable and the developers put a lot of obvious work into keeping things clean and uncrowded.

The app is free, but before you rush to the App Store I’d like to offer some words of wisdom… If you’re a just a casual Facebook user, be warned: having Facebook in the palm of your hand has the very high potential of turning you into an addict! But even if you’re already a hardcore Facebook user, this app will yield tons of social networking joy! Just remember to look up and participate in the real world occasionally, then you’re set.

Handshake does one thing, but does it well. Ok TWO things, but the main function is to send information from your Address Book on the iPhone or iPod Touch to someone else. You can also use it to send photos stored on your device.

Palm devices have been “beaming” this kind of info for many years using infra-red transceivers, and was a very popular way to transfer contact information between devices…assuming the people you met also had a Palm device. Most Desktop-based address book applications give you the ability to send a “vCard” which is a widely accepted standard for exchanging contact info. It seems like an essential function to have on the iPhone, but I suppose Apple expects that you won’t mind using the virtual keyboard. That is all well and good, but a real conversation stopper to spend a few minutes entering data.

Along comes Handshake, which adds this functionality with just a few button presses. Launching the app presents you with 3 options, after you confirm that you are who the app thinks you are so it knows which contact is you. Then it briefly connects to Skorpiotech’s servers which is necessary to convert the data to vCard format. This also facilitates trading info with other people using Handshake more quickly. You are given the options to “Send my card”, “Send other card”, and “Send a picture

Choosing “Send my card” automatically picks your own contact data to send and looks to see if there is anyone else who has connected to the server with their copy of Handshake. If they are nearby, their name will automatically show up in the list. You can then pick them and Handshake will connect to their device to ask them if they want to accept the information. On the receiving end, the user is presented with the option to look at the info, and send their own card back automatically, simply preview the info, or deny the transfer. When the data is previewed, there is a button to add the data to the Address Book. The process is pretty quick, even on the Edge network, but maybe not during MacWorld Expo.

The “Send other card” is the same except you are first presented with your Address Book list to pick another contact to send. In both cases, if the other person doesn’t have Handshake or if you want to send contact data to someone far away, there is an envelope icon in the lower left which allows you to email a vCard for them to import later. The email goes through the Skorpiotech servers, but once you have set your email info in Handshake’s preferences, it will appear to the recipient that the message came from your account. Unfortunately, since the iPhone/iPod Touch’s Address Book does not yet support vCards, this info cannot be imported from the Mail app on the device. You will have to import and sync from your desktop computer. This is an Apple issue, not a Handshake problem.

Finally, the “Send a picture” option is ideal if you are connected to another Handshake user and makes exchanging photos quicker and easier. As with the contact function, you can use the email option which also uses the Skorpiostech servers, but the advantage is that it sends a higher resolution image than the built-in, mobile Mail app. For anyone who doesn’t know, sending any photos from an iPhone or iPod Touch using the Mail app automatically reduces the size of the image to…

The app also has a “Share” button, which sends a user a link to download Handshake. The Handshake preferences offer a few handy options like a toggle to omit the transfer of content from the Notes field for the chosen contact, in case you have personal info in it that you don’t want people to have. Another option allows you to add your name and date to the Notes field of the contact you send so the recipient knows where the info came from. Useful for conventions and such.

The Pro and Free versions have identical functionality, but the Free version displays ads at the top of the main menu screen. I did not find the ads intrusive, nor did it seem to affect the performance of the app, so I’d recommend that version although paying the $2.99 would help support the developers.

There isn’t much I can find that this app needs to add. Shortly before I began this review they added the ability to email an vCard option which was my only complaint of the original, which was dependent on all users having Handshake on their device. Nothing fancy here, but the app is well done and a must have on your device if you need an easy way to exchange contact info.

Handshake Premium

Category: Social Networking
Released: 2008-11-19
Price: $2.99