Cloudy Days and Connected Nights

Recently I did a brief review of the emerging video on the 2G/3G iPhone scene and found that, while it is now possible, it was just that: possible as opposed to, for instance, pleasing, or productive.

All that changes pretty much for the better with the recent update of Qik VideoCamera (not Qik the live streaming app, but the other one). The update features up to 15 frames per second, choice of high or low resolution, brightness control, zoom (actually works!), a number of not-so amazing video effects, an audio booster for better sound, wifi sharing with a computer on the same network (through your browser), and, best of all, email sharing. Email means that you can quickly and easily post to Posterous or YouTube. Posterous still gets the video and audio out of sync for some reason, but YouTube works fine!

And the best part of all of this is: it works! Not HD, and not equal to the iPhone 3GS or Flip, but usable video, in a format and with sharing features that make it really useful.

Promised soon: more social media features…direct posting to FaceBook and Twitter, more official YouTube upload, etc., as well as direct posting to Qik itself.

So, now no one has any excuse. The app is $.99. [Note! this is NOT for the 3GS. It does not record video as well as the native app, and the zoom and brightness controls, and I assume the effects, are not available.]

Here is a sample video taken inside well after dark by artificial light. Not bad at all.

Here is a little landscape vid made outside this am at normal setting. That is a crow calling. The second vid is at full zoom.

Not too shabby for a phone that is not supposed to do video! If you are still using a 3G, like many of us, this app is your Video solution. Or at least the best one out so far.

It seems to be a day for downloading upgrades and seeing how Twitter clients are progressing. Twittelator Pro 3.0 was the first Twitter client to take advantage of the features of OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS when they were introduced last year. It was ready on launch to upload audio and video. I bought it at that point, and it was an eye-opening experience. I thought Tweetie was everything a Twitter client could be…Twittelator soon showed me a whole new range of possibilities…bookmarks, lists, saved tweets and sets of tweets, in-line image thumbs in list view, intelligent tweet counts in all views, etc, etc.: Twittelator Pro was so feature rich that it made using any lesser client seem like a huge step backward. Goodbye Tweetie. (see my first Twittelator Pro review.)

Only the advent of SimplyTweet, which had a similar feature set, a simpler UI (at least in my eyes), and PUSH! took me away from Twittelator.

Still I download every Twittelator Pro upgrade just to see how it is developing. Today version 3.6 appeared in the App Store, with one feature that I just had to try right away: TextExpander support. I have become addicted to TE in SimplyTweet, and I am of the opinion that every text based iPhone app should feature integration. It is hard to imagine how useful it is until the the 6th time you begin a tweet with “Just in case you missed it:”. Setting a TE snippet to “jicumi” allows you to type just that: “jicumi” and have it magically expanded into the whole phrase, including the “:”. I use it all the time.

With the exception of Push, Twittelator Pro has done an excellent job of keeping up with new features of the OS and Twitter. This version does both traditional Retweets (with the possibility of comments) and the new Twitter native Retweet. And Twitter native lists have replaced the custom lists in previous versions of Twittelator. The advantage of using the Twitter native lists is, of course, portability. Any app that uses Twitter native lists, including the Twitter web interface itself, can use the same lists you create on Twitter, or in another client that integrates the list features. When you switch clients, for whatever reason, you do not lose your lists. Of course there is a price. Twitter lists only collect direct tweets from users. They do not collect replies. Most custom lists in the clients that implemented them collected both. You can’t have everything.

Twittelator Pro does continue to provide an interesting an unique feature called Bookmarks. This allows you to add a user to a list you can later access from the More menu to call up all that user’s tweets with a single touch.

Another of the can haves of Twittelator is  geotagging. It supports native Twitter geo tags and does an excellent job with a built-in map view for Nearby search, which is fully integrated with an intelligent list view as well. It is one of the best Nearby search implementations I have yet seen.

Version 3.6 also includes what the creator is calling an in-line browser. Of course every Twitter client that I know of uses the OS browser calls and interface to provide a way to view links within the app. Twittelator just provides a view where you can enter your own url or go to the Google page.

When you add all these new features, and more that I have not mentioned, introduced since version 3.0, Twittelator remains one of the richest Twitter experiences on any platform.

But no push. Twittelator relies on Boxcar. I downloaded Boxcar again today and set it up for Twittelator. Nah! Not the same as the native Push integration offered by Twitbit, Echofon, TwitBird, and SimplyTweet. Not at all! Sorry. No.

Then too, Twittelator has a UI that, honestly, takes some getting used to. Considering the popularity of the app, lots of people must get used to it…but it is very different from the majority of Twitter clients…and very different, in fact, from the emerging standard interface conventions among all iPhone apps. You won’t see any swipes or tap for pop-up action menus here.

For instance, here is a screen shot of the list view, with little arrows and explanations of the controls.

Nothing wrong with that. Everything you might want to do is there…even if it is not obvious to the new user.

But it is different. In every other Twitter client I have tested on the iPhone, tapping the tweet in the list view opens the tweet in tweet view. Tapping the tweet does nothing in Twittelator. You have to tap the user name to open tweet view. In other apps tapping the avatar initiates a reply. In Twittelator it opens the profile of the user, and gives you your only access to @users within the tweet. It also allows you to do a Reply All. To initiate a normal reply (without opening the tweet view), you have to tap the time stamp…unless the tweet is itself a reply, in which case the time stamp will be in a speech bubble, and tapping it will open conversation view for the reply (leaving you without any way to directly initiate a reply of your own until you get to the conversation view).

If there are links, or #hastags in the tweet you have to  tap the attachment icon to access them. That produces a menu of the possible links for you to choose from. That is the only way to open links or #hashtags, since once you figure out how to open the tweet view, unlike every other Twitter client on the iPhone, the links are just text…most Twitter clients require you to open tweet view before the links go live. In Twittelator you can not open a link from tweet view. Links are never live. Different. Of course, the image thumbnail right in the list view is a nice touch. Contrary to all expectation, it is live: Tapping the thumbnail opens the image viewer directly.

Here, in the screen shots, you see the pop-up menu that tapping the attachment icon opens for choosing which of the possible links you you want to activate, and the tweet view with no active links at all. As you can see, a wide range of options for action on the tweet are provided. Retweet can be set to auto choose conventional (RT or Via with comment) or Twitter native retweet, to do one or the other, or to always give you a choice. The one that is missing here is quote or repost tweet, and, unlike some other clients that have a one tap copy the whole tweet, you have to use the OS selection handles and pop-up to copy the tweet for inclusion in a new tweet.

I am not making a better/worse argument here: just pointing out that Twittelator’s UI is different, and non-standard in many ways. Cryptic. It does everything you need it to do, but it takes some time to find out how to do any given thing…and some effort to remember. (There is a fairly trough instruction manual on-line and accessible from within the app). It is easy for those already in the know. Not so much for new users. You may love it and think that all Twitter clients should work this way.

I could get used to it. And the rich feature set of Twittelator makes it worthwhile. As you would expect, the longer I live with the app, the more normal it seems. But honestly, there are a growing number of clients which have all the power features of Twittelator Pro, plus a less cryptic UI , and even fully integrated push.

Still for all that, Twittelator Pro may be just your cup of Twitter Tea. It still offers features no other client offers, and has just about every feature anyone else provides. If only it did native push. I am using it as my default client, at least until SimplyTweet implements the latest Twitter native features (lists and retweet).

For more info on Twittelator go to the Stone Design web site. Or to the App Store: Twittelator Pro.

My very first Twitter client on my iPod Touch, before I even owned an iPhone, was Twitterfon, and it was the winner in my first show-down review of iPhone Twitter clients. That is way back in the day when Twitterfon was only available in a free version, and was clearly the best of the clients available for free. There were a lot of things I liked about Twitterfon, but it was soon overtaken in the features race by Tweetie, then Twitalator Pro and finally by SimplyTweet, which combined the simplicity of Tweetie with the feature set of Twitalator for what I consider to be the best tweeting experience on the iPhone.

Twitterfon Pro (in the next show-down review) was a valiant effort to regain ground. In the meantime, legal issues forced a name change: from Twitterfon to Echofon. The independent developer, working for the fun of it in his spare time, became a business with hopes of making a profit, and Echofon for the Mac and Echofon Pro for the iPhone were born.

I bought Twitterfon Pro, as you can see from the review sited above.  Echofon has one really great feature. Since the Twitterfon days, Echofon is one of the few (if not the only) Twitter client to offer active links right in the list views…user names and @s, hashtags and urls are all highlighted and live. Touch one and it opens the appropriate view directly, without opening the tweet in tweet view. This makes so much sense that I have always wondered why all the clients don’t do it that way.

I keep my copy of Twitterfon/Echofon Pro updated and install it after each update to see how it is developing. A version or so ago Echofon became only the 4th iPhone Twitter client to offer fully integrated global push. Most of the top selling Twitter apps rely on Boxcar for Push, and, as good as Boxcar is, it does not offer the functionality of true native push. Twitbit, TwitBird, and SimplyTweet all do push right (though you pay extra for it, as an in-app purchase, in TwitBird). Echofon joined that crew as soon as they offered global push, and they even offer a user adjustable sleep timeout for pushes (which not all of the others do).

Beyond that, I am happy to report that with version 3.0, Echofon has achieved a rich enough set of features so that, when combined with one of the better UIs going,  I would consider it as a alternative to SimplyTweet as my primary Twitter client. In fact it is doing that duty right now, while I wait for the next SimplyTweet update.

For one thing, Echofon is fast. It caches past tweets so it comes up with list views populated, and it only downloads the past 200 tweets or so (and provides a count). While I like SimplyTweet’s down load all since last view policy…because I like, for some bizarre reason, to know how many tweets I am not reading…it does slow ST down on launch…and I have come to realize I will never read most of those 6 hour old tweets anyway. 200 (which with my 900 tweeple is between an hour and two hours depending on the time of day) is enough. Especially if means the Echofon is up and running fast.

In other features, Echofon Pro 3.0 maintains live links in the list views, along with instant reply (just tap the avatar). It adds support for Twitter’s native lists and geotagging. The list interface is particularly robust. Anything you can do with a Twitter list, you can do from Echofon, quickly and easily.

Echofon Pro also has a feature I have not seen before anywhere: there is a search box at the top of every list view, and it allows you to search your own timeline, mentions, or DMs for whatever text occurs to you (see the screen shot above left). I was not sure how valuable it was until I actually needed to find a tweet I remembered reading and wanted to look at again. There is some power in that search box!

Echofon also has both Twitter native retweet and old-style RT (which still allows for commenting RTs). Then there is full Profile editing; conversation view of replies and DMs; thumb-nail of images in tweet view, easy user look-up in Composition view; search by username, name, or company (which I believe is actually a feature unique to Echofon); and Nearby search with map.

Unfortunately the Map nearby search is somewhat awkwardly implemented. The initial search area is way too small, at least here in semi-rural ME, and it seems to take a long time to find tweets. So far I have had to move the map off center to get it find any tweets at all. You can pinch zoom the map down to cover a larger area, but it only finds tweets on the current section of displayed map…and list view only shows those tweets already found in map view. Other clients that feature a nearby search seem to pull down a list really fast, and those that feature a map view (TwitBird for instance) have a selectable search radius, and seem to be much faster (plus the TwitBird map search graphics, with a sweeping radar effect, are just way cool!). Nearby search is not a feature I use, so for me it is not a deal-breaker…but your usage and needs may differ.

What Echofon does not do…

• provide landscape in all views (it only has it in Compose)
• display real name with tweets (come on guys, this one is so easy…either display both as SimplyTweet does, or make it user selectable as several others do)
• have TextExpander support (I use this, like all the time (latt), in SimplyTweet)
• provide an easy way to quote or repost a tweet (totally possible with copy and paste, of course, but Tweetie’s quote and SimplyTweet’s repost one touch actions have me spoiled).

Echofon Pro 3.0, with global push and a unique mix of features, including the latest Twitter native lists and geotagging, has got to be a strong contender for the best Twitter client on the iPhone, and the one Twitter client you will use everyday.

Visit Echofon for more information, or purchase on the App Store at EchofonPro. (iTunes link).

More screen shots, pretty much self explanatory.

Maybe I am like the last to discover this, and everyone else already knows it, but just in case…

I like quick easy access to my commonly used applications, but I do not like a desktop cluttered with shortcut icons, and I don’t like a quick-launch bar that is crowed with icons either. In Windows 7 it is easy to unclutter your desktop, and maintain a one click quick launch function at the same time by creating a Shortcuts folder on your desktop. When you create a new desktop shortcut icon for an application, drag it to that folder.

For truly easy access, add the Desktop Toolbar to your taskbar. Go to Control Panel. Click Taskbar and Start Menu. Click the Toolbar tab. Check Desktop.

You will now have a Desktop Toolbar on your taskbar.

When you click the little arrows below Desktop, the pop-up menus shown in the first screen shot will appear. Hover over your Shortcuts folder and the contents will appear. Click any entry and that app will open. Hay presto.

You will note that I also have iTunes checked in the Toolbar dialog. When you have iTunes running, and then minimize it, instead of an icon on the taskbar, you get a little mini player with controls. Yes you do. Works great if you are in the habit of listening to tunes as you work. Having the iTunes toolbar installed also means that Bluetooth controls on headsets will work, even if iTunes is not the active app. Win win.

And you might want to take a look at the other folders you have access to with the Desktop toolbar (click the screenshot above for a larger, easier to read view). The Desktop toolbar has become my primary way of interacting with my netbook.

One of the great disappointments of my iPhone life is how utterly bad Gmail is on Mobile Safari. For whatever reason, Gmail crashes Safari on my 3G iPhone with OS3 every time. Even when it was working, it did not work well…since the way Safari handles text entry and scrolling does not allow you to easily trim email replies using the Selection tools built into OS3.

And I never did warm to the Mail app. It works. You can actually trim emails using Selection. But it does not thread emails as Gmail does…and, like many Gmail users, threaded emails is one of the things I have really come to appreciate about Gmail.

I have been using PerfectBrowser on the iPhone for my Gmail account…and it works really well. It is fast. It preserves the functionality of mobile Gmail faithfully, and you can trim posts relatively easily. It also works well with Calendar, Tasks, Reader, etc. I have been using it for all my Google needs.

However, recently I have returned to using a newly updated MobileRSS for Reader. I like that it does not open always to the unsorted list of new items (as Reader in PerfectBrowser does, though I have tried repeatedly to teach it to open to the Feeds view). That got me wondering if anyone has published a stand-alone Gmail app since I last searched.

In the past I tried GmailApp. It really is nothing more than a dedicated browser, built on the OS browser calls, for Gmail, and works no better, or differently, than Gmail in Safari.

However, somehow I missed iGmail, now in version 3.0.1. From the review in the App store, it seems like it might have had some growing pains, but the app as now offered pretty much provides everything I had wanted in a dedicated Gmail app for the iPhone.

It is really fast. It has great navigation controls (they literally float on top of the standard mobile.gmail.com controls…see screen shots). It has an excellent composition view with a generous sized text entry box that allows relatively easy trimming of replies (and scrolls correctly as Safari does not). The built in browser handles links really well…and does just as well with Calendar and Tasks as PerfectBrowser does. It even handles Reader, though in exactly the same way as PerfectBrowser. 

The floating controls, by the way, are more than window dressing. They make up for a real lack in mobile Gmail, which in a browser requires considerable scrolling around to accomplish many actions. In iGmail the center floating reverse arrow will return you to your inbox without scrolling to the top of a long email. The forward and back arrows on the right and left will advance you the the next or previous email, and the top and bottom arrows take you to the top and bottom of your displayed inbox items, or the top or bottom of the open email, depending on what you are viewing (which is handy for reaching the reply button in an email…though there is a reply in the drop down menu next to Archive and Delete). You can hide them and reveal them using the little blue arrow at the bottom of the screen. Very slick and very useful! They work, by the way, just as well in the in-line browser.

But of course, its main attraction (and and one of the few things the iGmail developers charge for) is Push. For $4.99 you get a year of Gmail push to your iPhone. It is dead easy to set up. I have not yet decided whether I want Gmail push on my iPhone…considering the volume of mail I get in a day, and the fact that I already have push for Twitter, TWC, and FlightTrack…annnnh…not sure I want my iPhone beeping at me every two minutes for an email I may or may not want to read. Still I know it is a feature many have been looking for.

And I may actually buy a year’s subscription…if for nothing else than to support the efforts of the authors…since the app itself is free in the App Store. I can always turn Push off, or just leave the badge numbers on. (By the way, iGmail keeps an accurate count of unreads, even if you open emails from another app (Mail, Safari, or on your lap- or desktop in the browser.)

You can also install a little script on your own computer, if you have one that is on 24/7, and for a one-time charge of $2.99 set it up to handle your own push needs. This has the advantage of being a totally private solution since you do not have to share your Google password.

And finally, if you use Gmail through a dedicated url via Google Apps, iGmail has you covered. Again for a one-time charge they will set you up so iGmail works just as it does with gmail.com addresses.

The only thing it will not do, and this seems to be a limitation of how the iPhone syncs contacts since it does not work in the Apple Mail app either, is to use your contact groups for addressing group emails….groups are apparently simply not synced to the iPhone.

So, all in all, I can’t quite figure out why any Gmail user who owns an iPhone would not be using iGmail. The app itself is free. It works great. You can add Push if email push is your thing. You can use it seamlessly for accessing your Google Calendar and Tasks (or even Reader or your other Google stuff). What is not to like?

Visit the idemfactor web sit for more info.