Review: Tweeting with Tweetie on the iPhone
I must admit, I have been using the much talked of Twitter, which you have most likely either never heard of, or are sick of hearing about. For those who haven't heard about it, it's a "micro-blogging service", which allows you to make 140 character updates or less to your page, and follow your friends' Twitter pages.
One thing which makes Twitter a far more enjoyable service is using it when you're out and about, as it turns out life is a lot more interesting to other people when you're not in front of a computer. A lot of people send Tweets via SMS, or increasingly through apps on their phones.
The iPhone being the best phone when it comes to infrastructure for apps, there are plenty of Twittering apps on the App Store. For a long while, I was using the free version of Twitterrific (Free, App Store), but now that I'm starting to get into Twitter more I started looking for something a little bit meatier.
One of the very first apps I came across was Tweetie ($2.99, App Store, which immediately grabbed me by being 1) 7 dollars cheaper than the premium version of Twitterrific, and 2) seeing the screenshots already made the impression it was a very full featured app.
While it didn't have the unique glossy black look that an Iconfactory product may have, Tweetie may make up for what anybody feels is lacking in design with its functionality. It's important to also stress that Tweetie is not a visual slouch by any means, with its relaxed and iPhone-native interface (which you can change through its support for themes to a more iChat-like interface).
But this is article is not meant for comparing Twitterrific (of which I must admit, I have only tried the free version) to Tweetie - it's about what Tweetie can do - and it can do an awful lot.
Multiple accounts, profile viewing, search, trends, and location based searching are but a few of the treats that Tweetie has to offer Twitter users, including everything you'd expect: replies, direct messages, favourites, and of course, the Tweets themselves.
The simple things have everything thought through, allowing you to easily take and attach photos to Tweets (and automatically upload them), and then view others people's photos easily with a special picture browser. Alternatively, if a friend has attached a link to their message, you can view that with an inline browser.
You quickly find out that there is just about nothing on the Twitter website that you cannot do in Tweetie. You can look at profiles, who people are following and their own followers, and follow them yourselves. These are all fairly standard pieces of functionality which are complemented wonderfully by the functionality that power-Tweeters are after - search, trends, and the location based search.
Search is exactly what it sounds like, scanning all tweets for keywords of your choice. Trends is an interesting piece of functionality which looks for words or phrases that are being used by Twits worldwide, which can give you an interesting picture of the word on everybody's lips at any specific moment. Nearby may be the coolest of these features, presenting you with a green blinking sonar as Tweetie gets a fix on your location, showing you Tweets from within a radius of your choice.
What Tweetie gives you are ways to make more of Twitter while using your iPhone - a way of finding people around the world who are interested in the same things that you are, and getting a conversation going.
One thing which makes Twitter a far more enjoyable service is using it when you're out and about, as it turns out life is a lot more interesting to other people when you're not in front of a computer. A lot of people send Tweets via SMS, or increasingly through apps on their phones.
The iPhone being the best phone when it comes to infrastructure for apps, there are plenty of Twittering apps on the App Store. For a long while, I was using the free version of Twitterrific (Free, App Store), but now that I'm starting to get into Twitter more I started looking for something a little bit meatier.
One of the very first apps I came across was Tweetie ($2.99, App Store, which immediately grabbed me by being 1) 7 dollars cheaper than the premium version of Twitterrific, and 2) seeing the screenshots already made the impression it was a very full featured app.
While it didn't have the unique glossy black look that an Iconfactory product may have, Tweetie may make up for what anybody feels is lacking in design with its functionality. It's important to also stress that Tweetie is not a visual slouch by any means, with its relaxed and iPhone-native interface (which you can change through its support for themes to a more iChat-like interface).
But this is article is not meant for comparing Twitterrific (of which I must admit, I have only tried the free version) to Tweetie - it's about what Tweetie can do - and it can do an awful lot.
Multiple accounts, profile viewing, search, trends, and location based searching are but a few of the treats that Tweetie has to offer Twitter users, including everything you'd expect: replies, direct messages, favourites, and of course, the Tweets themselves.
The simple things have everything thought through, allowing you to easily take and attach photos to Tweets (and automatically upload them), and then view others people's photos easily with a special picture browser. Alternatively, if a friend has attached a link to their message, you can view that with an inline browser.
You quickly find out that there is just about nothing on the Twitter website that you cannot do in Tweetie. You can look at profiles, who people are following and their own followers, and follow them yourselves. These are all fairly standard pieces of functionality which are complemented wonderfully by the functionality that power-Tweeters are after - search, trends, and the location based search.
Search is exactly what it sounds like, scanning all tweets for keywords of your choice. Trends is an interesting piece of functionality which looks for words or phrases that are being used by Twits worldwide, which can give you an interesting picture of the word on everybody's lips at any specific moment. Nearby may be the coolest of these features, presenting you with a green blinking sonar as Tweetie gets a fix on your location, showing you Tweets from within a radius of your choice.
What Tweetie gives you are ways to make more of Twitter while using your iPhone - a way of finding people around the world who are interested in the same things that you are, and getting a conversation going.