Ultimate Twitter Client

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Over the past 4+ years Twitter has transform to become one of the most popular social network/research/marketing/communication tool available. The latter is arguable as it depends on how one uses the service.
Using Twitter for business or personal purpose is equated to using tools like: email, IM, SMS (mobile texting), telephone conversation and face-to-face meeting. Due to the significance Twitter plays in our modern technological life, a striving 3rd party client ecology has develop. Part of this development is due to the openness and foresights of the Twitter founders, to release an API for the service at the beginning.

This Twitter API allows third party developers to create clients with many more features than Twitter’s simple web site. These clients come in two favors: web based services or native OS clients. Although many of these clients have more features, not all are able to present them in a logical or usable way in one application. One iPhone native client that fail badly is TweetStacks. Fortunately, the only way you can learn about this application now, is to read my review of the app.

For web based Twitter services they further split into two general types: for personal and business/multi-accounts use.

The following is a list of these clients in no particular order.

Native OS Twitter Clients:

  • EchoFon (iPhone)
  • EchoFon for Mac (OS X)
  • SimpleTweet (iPhone)
  • Seesmic Desktop (Adobe AIR)
  • Seesmic for Android (Android)
  • TweetDeck Desktop (Adobe AIR)
  • TweetBird (iPhone)
  • Tweetie (iPhone)
  • Tweetie for Mac (OS X)
  • Twitterberry (Blackberry)
  • Twitterific (iPhone)
  • Twitterific for (Android)
  • Tweetbot (iPhone/iPad) 

Web Base Twitter Clients:

  • Seesmic Web
  • Twitter.com

Multi User Twitter Client:

  • CoTweet
  • Houtsuite

Review: L5 Remote for iPhone

The iPhone has always been a great platform for developers to innovate and invent new uses for the device. Recently L5 Technology did just that with their L5 Remote hardware dongle + iPhone app [iTunes App Store link].

The L5 Remote is an universal remote control. It comes in two parts: a hardware IR dongle attached to the iPhone (3G/3GS)/iPod Touch Dock Connector, and an iPhone app. The hardware dongle cost USD49.95 + shipping and the L5 Remote iPhone app is free from the iPhone App Store.

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Review: HoloToy for iPhone/iPad

I to come to aware of the iPhone/iPad app, HoloToy [iTunes link]. It is classified as Entertainment in the iTunes App Store.

There are a total of ten (10) screens: Fish Tank, Scarab Attack, HoloBall, HoloBot, Cornell Box, The Impossible Triangle, Planet Earth, The Moon, Mars, Jupiter. I guess the developer will refer to these as “toys”. Only two of the ten screens are games: “Scarab Attack” and “HoloBall”, the rest are 3D images where the user can change the point of view by tilting the iPhone or iPad, or animate the object in some way by tapping the screen.

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Twitter BUYS Tweetie

The very popular iPhone app, Tweetie by Atebits (the Loren Brichter’s company) has been purchased by Twitter, the service it’s a client for.

Twitter decided to buy instead of recreate its own mobile client, so it settled on Tweetie. It rename the app to “Twitter for iPhone” and then make it free in the iTunes App Store.

Loren Brichter will join Twitter as a key member of their mobile team.

This has been confirmed by Evan William, one of the founder of Twitter, on their blog.

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Foursquare 1.7 for iPhone Available NOW

The much talked about new version of Foursquare for iPhone 1.6 was accidentally made available in the Apple iTunes App Store over the weekend and then pulled immediately, with Foursquare saying that their system was not ready. As a result all versions of Foursquare for iPhone were removed from the App Store until Tuesday when they re-released the previous versions as v1.6.1, which is higher than the version that was released on the weekend.

This morning (HK time) Foursquare again relaunched the new version as v1.7. Below are the side by side comparisons of what’s different between the old and new versions, looking at the revised UI designs.

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What’s the Fuzz with Buzz

If you are into technology or if you use Gmail you will have noticed Google launched Buzz several weeks ago. Google this time took a different approach of launching its products/features. Buzz was not released with an “Alpha” or “Beta” badge, instead it was released as a “finished” product.

Normally Google releases a product with many features and slaps a “Beta” label on it, like they did with Gmail. Then slowly releases new features or refines existing ones. Ineffect recuiting its users as testers pubilcally.

This time Google released a product that does very little but what features it has are very solid. Although, some of the initial decisions Google made regarding Buzz are questionable. Abnormally Google reacts very quickly on complains and refines the product based on these feedbacks almost over night. I believe Google’s ability to accomplish such agile development methodology is the result of hiring seasoned individuals from the social network community (people like Chris Messina and others) specifically for the development of Buzz and social features in other products within Google’s suite of applications/services.

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Review: TimeSqueeze on iPhone

I was made aware of InfoXenter‘s recent released iPhone application called “TimeSqueeze”. It is a simple app; like any iPhone app should that focuses on performing one task and do it well, in this case the task is creating time-lapsed videos/photography on the iPhone 3G or 3GS running OS 3.1.2 or later. At the moment it does not support the iPod Touch.

After displaying its title page the user is brought into the Main screen of the application where it awaits the creation of a time-lapsed video.

On the Main screen you will find several controls in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. The first icon will begin the recording of the video, before the second icon is a bar that controls digital zooming that is enabled during video recording. The second icon will bring up a Project List containing the recorded time-lapsed videos. Lastly is the Setting icon that brings up the speed up slider, which allows the adjustment of the amount the resulting time-lapsed video is sped up.

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Review: goFerry on iPhone

goFerry is a Free application created by a Hong Kong investment company, SINO Dynamic Solutions Limited, but own and operated by a Malaysian travel company called AsiaTravelMart. I will go into why this is important later in this review.

The vendor refers to its application as the first iPhone application to allow mobile purchases of ferry tickets between Hong Kong and Macau on one of the three companies: TurboJet, Cotai and New First, which it does.

The steps for purchasing tickets are quite straight forward. They are as follow:

  1. Choose whether you like to purchase a one-way or round trip ticket.
  2. Choose the date of your departure.
  3. Choose the terminal to depart from.
  4. Continue reading “Review: goFerry on iPhone”