All Articles Tagged twitter client

TwitBit 2.0 Forum Review by llofte. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!

Surprisingly, nearly 3 months after iPhone 3.0’s release, there are only a few twitter applications that offer push notifications. Twitbit is one of them. Version 1.x wasn’t compelling enough for me to use as my primary client, but the latest 2.0 update is rather impressive and brings Twitbit up to par with other great Twitter clients. The design is clean and simple yet not lacking in important features.

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Tweetie 2.0 [$2.99 - iTunes link] is the second generation release of one of the iPhone’s most popular Twitter clients. According to developer Atebits, it’s also a ground-up re-write — it even has a snazzy new gray, single, cut-out bubble icon to prove it — the only thing 2.0 having in common with 1.0 being the name. I’d argue that point — they’re also both darn good Twitter clients, and they both share a price of $2.99.

That’s right. Since Apple doesn’t (yet?) provide a mechanism for upgrades (which to many developers means incentive and to many users means discount), and since in-app purchase can only add content, not replace an entire app, Atebits is packaging Tweetie 2.0 as a whole new app. And they’re charging the same price. In other words, whether you bought the first Tweetie or not, you’ll have to buy Tweetie 2.0.

Is it worth it? Let’s take a look…

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qStatus is the App Store subset of the qTweeter Jailbreak app, and Echofon is the new name for Twitterfon. Confused yet? Don’t be, we’ve got the basics on both these iPhone and iPod touch Twitter clients!

qStatus [$0.99 - iTunes link] is designed to quickly let you update your Twitter (and/or Facebook status), either with text, or by sharing your current song, a photo from the camera or library, or a video from iPhone 3GS. There’s no reading functionality, but there is the typical Gx5 attention to awesome interface detail. Unlike qTweeter for Jailbreak, of course, there’s no multitasking “swipe-down-to-tweet-from-anywhere” functionality either.

Echofon [Free - iTunes link] or Pro [$4.99 - iTunes link] is, as mentioned, the new name for Twitterfon and the new Pro version includes Push Notifications (with optional “sleep” period so it doesn’t bother you when you’re trying to get some shuteye), sync with Echofon for Firefox on the desktop (formerly Twitterfox). Non-Pro users get bug fixes and the name change.

If you get your tweet on with either, let us know how they work for you (or help me test them via @reneritchie).

Tapped into the App Store and what did I see? Twitterrific 2.1, the latest version of the grand-daddy of all iPhone (and iPod touch) Twitter clients, locked and loaded, just waiting for me!

Updates include:

• Load more button to get older tweets
• Followers and following lists in author view
• Recording, posting, and viewing videos (presumably iPhone 3GS-dependent)
• Built-in WebView now goes landscape if you want it
• Saves battery via improved location update handling
• Tap and hold menus for tweet, links, photos
• Reply and re-tweet now have tap shortcuts
• In-app email support
• Optimized for iPhone 3GS

If you’re a Twitterrific user — or you want to be — and give it a whirl, let us know how the update works for you. I’ll be testing it out for the next couple days via @reneritchie, so feel free to drop me a tweet there and help out!

Augmented reality applications, where live streaming video is overlaid with data in real-time, is coming with iPhone 3.1, and here’s a demo Twitter client to show yet another example about how this may be the next great killer app, or the next great killed-by-hype. Either way, we have only one question: is this how Skynet and the Matrix will find and terminate Twitter users first?

[via Poor Mojo]

Twitbit [$4.99 - iTunes link] is a Twitter client for the iPhone and iPod touch that provides built-in push notification for @mentions and direct messages (DMs).

For those of you still reading — those didn’t immediately jump over to grab it — what this means is you get all the functionality you’ve come to expect — reading, posting, multiple accounts, start and stop following, searching, trends, user profiles, reply chains, etc. etc. and you get any @mentions and DMs pushed straight to you without the need for an extra enabler app (which most other Twitter clients currently require).

The folks at High Order Bit were gracious enough to give us a sneak peak to try out, and I’ve been using it pretty much non-stop since. And… I’ve found all the functionality I need and then some. The push works wonderfully as well. So far, so fast.

One thing I particularly liked (but others may not) is that, when you get multiple @mentions or DMs, rather than having the latest obliterate the previous text alert (fix that by implementing a genius stacking system, will you Apple?), Twitbit collates them up. You don’t get to see the contents of the latest message, but you do get to see “X new @mentions and X new DMs” (see screenshot below). At least you have some idea of volume.

Of course, iPhone notifications being interruptive as they are, there’s still a chance something will pop up while you’re watching a movie or playing a game…

Given that limitation, more granularity as to who and what Twitbit pushes would be grand — and it’s likely forthcoming in an update — but wow are these young upstart devs and apps giving the entrenched Twitter clients a race for their functionality.

If you want an amply functioning Twitter client with built-in push notifications, take a serious look at Twitbit and let us know what you think.

Tons of screenshots after the break!

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Boxcar [$1.99 - iTunes link] is almost more enabler than app. It only does one thing, but thus far it does it very, very well — it sends Push Notifications for Twitter @mentions and Direct Messages (DMs) that then open in either Tweetie or Twitterrific.

Setup is straight forward; you log into your account through an in-app view of Twitter’s website, and authorize Boxcar. You can select whether you want Push Notification for either @mentions, DMs, or both, and which of the aforementioned apps you want to open them in (hopefully support for more options will be forthcoming, such as Tweetdeck, Birdfeed, Twittelator Pro, etc.). You can also choose to automatically tweet them a shout out.

Like all Push-enabled apps, you can exit to the iPhone Settings to turn on or off Sounds, Alert (text boxes), and/or Badges.

That’s it. Sit back and enjoy Push Notifications so you can immediately know when anyone talks to or about you on Twitter. Even when you’re watching a movie on your iPhone. Or playing a game. Or writing an SMS. Or even taking a phone call — if anyone still does that…

In other words, it works so well, you may have to learn to better manage your Twitter interruptions.

Now the crux: is a couple of bucks a lot to pay for an app that arguably only extends the usefulness of other apps that you already paid a few bucks (or more) for? Depends on how badly you want Push Notification for Twitter, whether you’re willing to wait for full-on Twitter clients to add it themselves (however long that takes), and if you realize a couple of bucks is very little, and partly going to support the developers servers that are handling the Twitter calls and passing them on to Apple’s notification servers.

I bought it without a second thought. You’ll have to weigh the value (which is more important than cost) yourselves, and let me know what you think in the comments — or @reneritchie and I’ll get it right away via push

More pics after the break!

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If the iPhone and Twitter go together like chocolate and peanut butter, then for the most part current iPhone Twitter client developers give us many variations of the peanut butter cup. Tasty confections though they may be, and each unique and delicious in their own right, at the end they still tend towards variations of the peanut butter cup.

Enter Reportage from wherecloud [$2.99 - iTunes link], which rearranges those twin flavors like nouveau cuisine, utterly deconstructed and left for you to explore.

Too obscure? Okay, rewind. Reportage bills itself as a “radio tuner” for Twitter where followers are treated like stations on the FM dial and you can tune in (or tune out) to what they’re saying, and spin the dial to move from user “station” to user “station”.

It should be noted at the beginning that Reportage isn’t a general purpose Twitter workhouse. There are tons of those already. Like Birdhouse, which models itself on a “notebook” writing experience for Twitter, Reportage has also chosen to focus on one specific concept — pseudo-”live broadcast” of the Twitter users you follow.

Keep that in mind as we go along…

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Birdfeed [$4.99 - iTunes link] bills itself as “A very nice Twitter client for your iPhone”. That’s pretty much spot on. It doesn’t try to razzle-dazzle, or focus exclusively on one element or another, but what it does do is provide a quick, clean, interface to manage your Twitter account (or accounts).

Highlighted features include the simple design, local caching of already-loaded tweets so you can keep reading when/if offline, SMS-style handling of direct messages (DMs) to help keep the conversation flow, unread @mentions (replies) and DM counters, and time stamps to indicate where you last read up to should new tweets have since been loaded.

To answer the immediate question, no support for iPhone 3.0 push notification yet. Birdfeed’s Twitter account says that feature is likely, but there’s no time-frame yet.

TwitPic and yfrong are available for image posting and tr.im for URL shortening. (Where’s the bit.ly love, and tinyurl for retro chic?) Instapaper is supported, though you have to exit the app and go to the iPhone’s Settings app to find and set it up. This makes sense given Apple’s preference for keeping Settings in Settings, and also because it’s unlikely you’ll have to do it more than once.

Great from a user experience perspective, when you get to the end of currently loaded tweets, Birdfeed automatically starts loading older ones. That’s right, no button tap required. (The default is 20 but you can change that in Settings). To get newer tweets, however, there is the perfunctory big honking — yet tastefully rendered — button at the top of the tweet list.

For users who put capital letters in their Twitter account names, there’s currently a bug those accounts to go missing from the app, but it’s known and a fix is on the way.

All in all, Birdfeed is exactly as presented — a clear, consistent, and enjoyable general purpose Twitter client with some great new ideas in a even greater UI.

More screenshots after the break!

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Chad’s excited. Why? TweekDeck for iPhone has just hit the App Store (iTunes link). Doesn’t look to be iPhone 3.0 Push Notification enabled just yet, but the hallmark feature of Twitter Groups and multiple, columnar dashboards (looks similar to tabs in Mobile Safari) are all in place. And you can “shake to refresh”.

Best of all? It’s free!

If you try it out, let us know how it works for you, and how it compares to your current favorite Twitter client.