Silicone Valley Insider:
Janis Krums from Sarasota, Florida posts the first photo of U.S. Airways flight 1549 on Twitter from his iPhone.
We’ve discussed before how, quality not withstanding, the iPhone is Flickr’s most popular camera. We’ve also seen the reach and immediacy of Twitter report and engage with news around the world faster and from more perspectives than traditional corporate news machines have ever been able to do. What happens when these new media devices and networks meet? Maybe what was discussed in Leo Laporte’s Macworld 2009 feature presentation.
Paradigms shift. It happened with telegraph, with radio, with television, with satellite… is it happening again with the iPhone and Twitter?
In case you haven’t read it already, our editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn, has an outstanding article up at sibling-site WMExperts highlighting his top 5 reasons Twitter is better than SMS (and vice versa).
There’s a lot of intertube fuss about SMS lately, as a recent New York Times article once again shone the spotlight on the disgustingly dirty price gouging (and potential fixing) that goes on when it comes to SMS rates in North America. Basically, SMS (at 160 bytes/characters) is ridiculously cheap for the carriers to transmit, no matter what the scale, and yet the prices have doubled from $0.10 to $0.20 on many networks over the last few years. Voice, by contrast, involves much more data and is much more “expensive” in terms of infrastructure costs. North Americans will pay ludicrous sums of money for “cheap” SMS but not for “expensive” voice, so the carriers take advantage.
Dieter points out that the cost, community, compatibility, control, and context of Twitter give it a clear advantage of SMS, even as the discoverability, dilution of quality, dropping 20 characters, downtime, and potential delays in notification (outside the US) make it still far from perfect.
Flaws and all, Dieter is moving towards Twitter (@backlon) and away from SMS. Am I going to do the same? I already have (@reneritchie) and without really considering it. But here’s the thing — I have considered that not only should I not have to consider it, I don’t think any iPhone user should. (Or any @theiphoneblog follower either!)
Read the rest of this entry »
It’s been awhile since we’ve heard anything from Pinger, creators of a service that allows you to trade voicemails like they were emails. Their previous offering was interesting but not ultimately useful for most people. Their new offering, a clever iPhone application (iTunes link) that combines a social media aggregator, a dialer, and an IM client is interesting and likely useful for most people. For me, it addresses my #1 gripe about the iPhone. It’s also free.
Read on for a review!
Read the rest of this entry »
Last week the way to qualify for our new contest, the Ultimate iPhone Accessory Pack give-away was to join our new Facebook Page. Thanks to everyone who did so, and we’re proud to announce last week’s qualifier was Tara Bennett! Congratulations Tara! For qualifying, you’ll receive a 15% off coupon for TiPb iPhone Store, and are entered for a chance to win the prize pack which now consists of:
Want another chance to qualify for entry? Just follow us — @theiphoneblog — on Twitter and send us an @reply!
Sorry, TiPb lovers in the UK. Actually, sorry TiPb lovers everywhere except the US, Canada, and India: you can’t really follow us on Twitter anymore — at least via SMS. See, Twitter can’t pay those international SMS fees anymore:
In a statement, the company said that when you send one message to Twitter and they send it to ten followers, the users haven’t been charged ten times – and Twitter picked up the costs.
The good news is that Twitter does intend on restoring service with new, country-specific short codes that don’t cost quite as much. In the meantime, best head on over to the App Store and download your favorite Twitter App. Oh, and stick to using it over WiFi, we can’t be held responsible for your data charges for the 2000 (but not 2001) people you’re following. Yeah, as much as we love to complain about AT&T, unlimited data is nice.
Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, oh how I love thee. Now I can really love thee with Twitterrific for the iPhone! If you are a fan of the very popular microblogging service Twitter, you are in for a rare treat with Twitterrific for iPhone from The Icon Factory! This application comes in two flavors: a free version with a very unobtrusive banner at the top or a paid version for $10 with no banner advertising and an extra theme.
Read the rest of this entry »
Do you microblog, A.K.A. Twitter? Tired of using SMS for sending your tweets? Are you looking for another way to interact with Twitter on the go? Look no further than Hahlo. Hahlo is Dean J. Robinson’s latest creation; Hahlo is an optimized interface for Twitter using Twitter’s own API’s. This free web app has just reached version 3. So what does Hahlo do for you that SMS doesn’t? Read on to find out!
Read the rest of this entry »
