Tweetdeck had a whopping 36,000 beta testers prior to this launch in an effort to make sure the app worked without fail.

What is interesting about the release, is that this particular version of Tweetdeck happens to be the most recent version of the app that has not even been tested for iPad’s or iPhone’s yet. Usually, it comes to the iPad and iPhone first.

Here is a great video on YouTube showing off the new Tweetdeck 1.0 for Android:

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Tweetdeck Officially Launches for Android

If you searched through the App Store lately you should have noticed that there is a diverse selection of Twitter clients to choose from. That is no wonder, as the App Store now holds over 13,000 applications. Twitter clients come with different flavours and philosophies. To declare any one as the king of the iPhone twittersphere would be to presumptuous. Nevertheless, in the list below you might find the perfect tool for your Twitter needs. Here is every list item under 140 characters for better readability for us tweeples.

• Twittelator – (Free) Good groups concept for viewing different timelines. Twittelator Pro (4,99) with many more features.
• Summizer – (2,99) Advanced search capabilities. Configure search terms and then get the results in the future with just one tap.
• Tweetie – (2,99) Huge feature set. Recommended by John Gruber from Daring Fireball fame.
• Twitterrific – (Free) Ads on top of the timeline. Twitterrific Premium (7,99) with even more features. Very nice user interface.
• Tweetsville – (3,99) Has also a good feature set. Supports TwitPic.
• Twittervision – (Free) Impressive world view. Tweets get displayed on a world map. Double tap on a tweet to translate it into your language.
• NatsuLion – (Free) Clear design with separate views for different timelines (user, sent and unread). Uses accelerometer to hide tab bar.
• Tweeter – (Free) The most minimalist Twitter client. Post tweets and that’s it. Source code available.
• TwitterFon – (Free) Developer asks for a donation. TwitterFon is licensed under GPLv2. You can download source code from an svn repository.
• Twinkle – (Free) One of the most popular Twitter clients.
• iTweets – (0,99) There are free clients which offer more features, but if you need just the basic features this might be for you.

There are also some hybrid applications, which do have built-in Twitter support. If you are using other social networks along with Twitter you might be interested in these two:

• Nambu – (4,99) Supports Twitter, Identi.ca, Ping.fm and FriendFeed.
• Ziibii – (Free) Blends Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and your favorite web content.

Because there are many different flavours of Twitter clients in the App Store, you alone can decide which one best suits your needs. However, I consider some features essential for every tweeter:

• Compose tweets, direct messages, retweets and follow-ups.
• Compose tweets with photos and URLs.
• View public timelines, users’ timelines and, location based timelines.
• Visit links provided in tweets from within the application.
• Explore the twittersphere with location based and date based searches.
• View profiles and follow other tweeters.

To be honest with you, I haven’t attained the goal I had when I started this article. Actually I wanted to find the perfect Twitter client for you and present you with the reason why it is the best one. I haven’t found the best Twitter client. What I have found, though, is an awesome collection of tools which address different needs. Have I found the perfect Twitter client for my needs? Yes, I have, it is in the list above.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Find the Best Twitter iPhone Client for Your Needs

Twitter can control your Mac. Today Danny Hinckley from Maciverse (follow him @dhinckley) explains how to do it.

One of the best things about Twitter is its adaptability to the tools we use in our everyday lives. In addition to its increased use with cell phones, Twitter is also very useful for performing tasks on your computer, especially when you’re away from it.

Now you can use Twitter to have your Mac send you important files, turn off your computer to keep your power bill low, send an email with the date of your Mother in Law’s birthday, and many other functions you perform when you do not have access to your Mac.

With some initial setup you can have your Mac ready to provide you with the information you need away from the computer and on the go.

Setup your Mac for Twitter Control

To be able to control your Mac with Twitter you’ll need to follow these steps:

1. Setup your twitter account with your cell phone details so that you can update your status on the go, or use Twitter applications like Twitterific on your iPhone.
2. Create preset tasks with Apple’s Automator application. This will allow your computer to perform actions that you may need your Mac to do when you’re away from it. Save these as apple scripts. A number of sample Automator actions can be found at Maciverse.com
3. Setup rules in Mail to execute the created Apple Script when certain new messages or RSS feed updates are received from Twitter.

After you’ve followed these three steps you’ll be ready to perform tasks by updating your Twitter Status. When your computer receives email messages or RSS Feed updates from your twitter account it will check them for key words that you assigned in your Mail rules.

You can test the process from either Twitter.com or if you’ve already setup your cell phone with Twitter, send a status update that includes the keyword text designated in your Mail rule.

Once the message is sent through twitter, Mail will receive an email or RSS update that should trigger the rule you created to perform an Automated task. Watch as your computer acts on its own, all triggered from your twitter status update.

Conclusion

Customize various Automator workflows to instruct your Mac on different actions you’d like it to run while you’re away. Be sure to create a separate script and a rule for each process you’d like your Mac to run when it receives instructions from you via Twitter.

The combination of Twitter status updates and your computer acting on them can be very useful or used for fun. Be sure to check out our complete instructions for how to build an automated task that will take a picture using your iSite camera and send the results to your email address when it receives key words via twitter.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



How to Control Your Mac Via Twitter

Here’s a quick list of 5 that have enhanced my own use of Twitter this year and why:

1. TweetDeck

TweetDeck has become my primary Desktop Twitter client over the last 6 months of the year and has quite literally changed the way that I Tweet on a number of levels.

One of the biggest impacts that it has had is in the way that it builds ‘groups’ into my twitter workflow. This has helped me immensely to manage the noise that is associated with following and being followed by thousands of people.

Groups enable you to select any number of Twitter users to follow in a special window. This means that if you miss their twees in the ‘all tweets’ timeline you are likely to see their tweets in the group you’ve set up.

Also powerful in TweetDeck is the ‘Search’ feature which enables you to track keywords and who is using them right from within your Twitter Client.

I’m also a big user of TwitScoop so having the ability to have it included in a window within the client is handy too.

I guess as I think about it – the reason I like TweetDeck is that it enables me to use a variety of tools that could be accessed by a variety of services – all within the one client. I’m not constantly having to run to a search tool, logging into TwitScoop, checking individuals twitter pages – it’s all happening on my desktop in the one application.

I also love that it can be run quite effectively in a single column view or opened up to a more comprehensive one across the full screen.

The fact that TweetDeck is still only at version 0.20b excites me – there’s obviously a lot more to come!

TweetDeck is my Twitter application of the year!

2. Twitterlator Pro

Another massive change in my use of Twitter mid year was when I started using the iPhone as my primary mobile phone. I’d been looking forward to this for a long time (Australia only got the iPhone with the new 3G version.

Being able to Tweet from the road, local cafe, while waiting for the Train, at the football…. etc was quite a new experience and so I needed an iPhone Twitter client that was up for the job.

I tested them all – starting with the free applications and then progressing to the paid ones. I settled on Twitterlator Pro (itunes url) for a number of reasons.

Perhaps the biggest reason was the ‘replies’ page. Again – my biggest challenge with Twitter is that I am following a lot of people – so to follow the timeline for everyone that I follow is just not practical. When on my iPhone I tend to live more in the ‘replies’ section and Twitterlator Pro has one of the best of these.

I also love that you can manage multiple Twitter accounts from the one application, that you can see Twitpic pictures within messages, that it has a ‘nearby’ feature to find out who is twittering close by – etc. Many of these features can be found within other iPhone Twitter clients but for me Twitterlator Pro simply ‘fits’ with my Twitter workflow.

Note – there is a notable up and coming iPhone Twitter client that could just take the place of Twitterlator Pro.

In the last month or so Tweetsville (itunes url) was launched and while I’m hooked on Twitterlator Pro Tweetsville (website) has been getting more and more of my iPhone Twittering attention because – well, its got most of the features that I use on Twitterlator Pro but just seems more intuitive.

It’s in its early versions so still has room to improve but I suspect will become my #1 iPhone application in 2009 – the only reason I didn’t name it in my main list is because I’ve been using Twitterlator Pro for six months and so it’s really been more useful to me this year than the one month I’ve had with Tweetsville.

3. TwitterBar

I almost overlooked this application when planning this list – simply because it’s become such a part of my Twitter workflow that it has almost become invisible.

TwitterBar is a Firefox Add-on that allows me to share links on twitter from the address bar of Firefox.

As I’m surfing – if I find a site that I like and want to share all I do is simply add a few words that I want to include with the link to the address bar (before or after the URL) and then click a tiny little grey button to the right of the address bar. Doing this posts the URL and my message to Twitter.

If I’m not sure if I have enough characters left I hover the cursor over this little grey button and it tells me how many I have left.

There are other tools for sharing URLS on Twitter and I’ve tested many of them – but this little add-on is quick, easy, quick and unobtrusive…. and I use it 10-20 times a day!

4. TwitterFeed

I know some on Twitter don’t like tools that automatically post links from blogs – but…. well I’m a blogger and my Twittering centers around blogging. Add to that that most of my followers are online when I’m asleep because I live in Australian and I needed a tool that would do what TwitterFeed does.

In short – TwitterFeed checks the RSS feeds to my blogs every hour (you can change this frequency) and if something new has appeared in the feed it takes the link and tweets it for me. It allows me to customize the tweets so I can add a little message (“New from TwiTip:” for example) so followers know what the link is.

There are options for what is shown (you can show the title, title and description and description only) and you can even filter your tweets by keywords (so that only some links get posted).

TwitterFeed offers you a range of URL shortening services – I use Tweetburner (twurl) which allows me to go to Tweetburner and check what links are being clicked on most (handy to know as a blogger interested in tracking what posts are connecting with readers most).

Again – there are other tools out there including some good WordPress plugins that do it from your blog – but I use TwitterFeed because…. well it works (99% of the time).

5. TwitScoop

This is another tool that I’m constantly looking at (more than I realize). As mentioned above – I use it largely because it is built into TweetDeck but do use the actual site too.

There are a number of things that I use it for including:

1. It’s my newspaper in the morning – one of the first things I do in the morning is to check TwitScoop to see what is ‘hot’. I’m amazed how much news I find through it over my morning coffee.

2. As a blogger is is a fantastic tool for watching for hot trends and topics that are being discussion right now. A number of times I’ve been able to break stories simply by watching what is ‘buzzing now’.

3. Conferences – it’s also quite useful when you’re at a conference, listening to a speaker or tracking a live event to see what people are saying about it.

Other tools that I’ve been using:

There must be hundreds of Twitter Applications and Tools available now so the above 5 just scratch the surface. I’d love to hear your own Top 5 list in comments below.

Before you do – here’s a few others that I use from time to time.

• TweetBurner – as mentioned above, I use this to shorten urls and track what gets clicked on (TwitClicks is another of these).
• Twhirl – I used this a lot at the start of the year and still do on occassion – but TweetDeck has taken it over.
• Tweetlater – I only use it occassionally but it is useful if you need to set a Tweet to go off later.
• MrTweet – everyone’s been raving about this new service lately – it recommends people for you to follow based upon your network.
• TweetBeep – free twitter alerts for keywords
• TweetScan – another alerts tool
• TweetStats – interesting stats on your twitter useage

OK – so it’s over to you – what are your Top 5 Twitter Applications and Tools for 2008?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



5 Twitter Applications and Tools that Made Me a Better Twitter User in 2008

Twitterific is the most popular Twitter client application for the Mac. It is simple, has a clean interface, and is easy and intuitive to use. It has some tradeoffs for this simplicity, as we will see. Twitterific can be used free of charge without limitation, but advertisements are displayed once per hour. If you pay the IconFactory $14.95 US, ads are removed. Twitterific is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, as well.

The Twitterific screen is completely resizable, and is usable even at its smallest widths and heights. It is possible to go into full screen mode with a keyboard shortcut. The white-on-black appearance may not be very eye-friendly to everyone.

As seen in the screenshot, replies and direct messages are a different color. Twitter errors are shown inline as a yellow box if you have configured your preferences to show them. If you are using the freeware version of Twitterific, advertisements are shown inline as well. Tweets that have been read are dimmed.

All of Twitterific’s options are available at the click of your mouse when a tweet is highlighted — user tools, replying to a tweet, and the person’s website. Buttons for going to your Twitter home page, preferences and refreshing are at the bottom left, next to the tweet entry area.

Twitterific has an extensive set of keyboard shortcuts that make using it even faster. There are only a couple actions that are keyboard only, and these are the standard Mac screen shortcuts such as command-W to close the screen.

The user tools are accessed by clicking on the gear symbol when a tweet is highlighted. As shown in the screenshot, most Twitterific actions are available from this one menu. Keyboard shortcuts are listed as a learning aid.

Here’s where some of Twitterific’s shortcomings become apparent. There is no way to easily retweet a message in Twitterific. You have to cut and paste, which is not that much of a pain, but something that would be easy to add to the program.

There are several important features that are missing in Twitterific that are common in other clients such as TweetDeck, iTweet, and Twhirl. There is no shortening of URL’s within the program, nor is there an interface with TwitPic, TwitScoop or similar programs or URL’s — however, Twitterific can update your status in iChat, Adium, or Skype when you post a tweet. Although you can favorite a tweet, you can’t display favorites, friends, followers, or a list of replies and direct messages. There is no grouping of people as there is in TweetDeck.

One of the strong points of Twitterific is its configurability. The preferences window has tabs for Tweets, Window, and System. Among the things that can be configured are:

• Download tweets from the public timeline or just the people you follow
• Refresh times from never to every hour
• Window transparency, shadow, font size, whether it is a normal window or floats above others, and whether it pops up on new tweets
• Expand or collapse tweets. Collapsing presents the tweets as a list. When you click on one, it expands.
• Automatically start Twitterific on login
• After posting a tweet, update status in iChat, Adium, and/or Skype
• Behavior when new tweets come in: keep the same view, most recent tweets, or last tweet selected
• Automatic login with last account used

You can also change the notification sound to four different bird twitters. Personally, I found them loud and intrusive, so I found a more polite bird sound and inserted it into the program. Let me know if you want to know how I did it!

The “Help” button is a disappointment: It only takes you to the IconFactory’s Twitterific page. I suppose they think that Twitterific is easy enough that help is not needed!

One of the things I have found most convenient about Twitterific is the ability to keep the same view when new tweets come in. That makes reviewing those hundreds of overnight tweets simple and easy.

Memory and CPU usage

This is an important consideration if you are using a Mac with limited resources. Twitterific’s memory footprint is quite small, and it uses a low amount of virtual memory. It uses very little CPU time except when checking for new tweets and making its notification sound. It plays very well with older Macs.

In comparison with TweetDeck (read our review of TweetDeck), Twitterific uses less than one-third of the memory, two-thirds of the virtual memory, and only 5 percent of the CPU time. Compared with Twirl, it uses half the memory, two-thirds of the virtual memory and only 10 percent of the CPU time.

AppleScript

Twitterific is unique among the Mac Twitter clients in that it supports AppleScript. For those that might not know, AppleScript is Mac OS X’s built-in scripting language. Twitterific’s support of AppleScript is pretty basic, just enough to send a tweet. But that means that you can write scripts that will send a tweet while using any other program.

Conclusion

Twitterific, for all its omissions, is as easy to like as it is to use. Although I have used other clients extensively, I keep coming back to Twitterific for its simplicity and its light load on my older Mac. It has many endearing features, mostly connected to its ease of use and configurability. It also has some annoying “features,” and some missing pieces that I hope will be fixed in the upcoming 3.2 version.

Pro’s of Twitterific

• Simple, clean interface
• Easy to use, intuitive
• Fast, no lag on redrawing images
• Flexible configuration
• Multiple accounts
• Small memory and CPU footprint
• Works well with older Macs and those with limited resources
• Replies and direct messages are in a different color
• Screen easily resized and is usable at any size

Cons of Twitterific

• No grouping or any way to just display favorites, replies, direct messages, friends, or followers
• No search function
• No retweet without cutting and pasting
• Loud and annoying notification sounds
• No interface with a URL shortener, TwitPic, etc.
• White on black screen may not suit everybody’s eyes

Have you used Twitterific as a Twitter Client? What is your opinion and user experience of it?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitterific Review

• A new paid iPhone Twitter Ap with real potential was released this week – Tweetsville. My initial impressions are very positive – it rivals Twitterlator Pro.
• Bloomberg reports on the future business model of Twitter.
• TechCrunch reports on the release of ‘Twinger’ (private alpha) – Build your own Twitter with Twinger
• Business Week writes on Twitter alternatives – Building a Better Twitter
• Some users trying to upload background and avatar images are having error messages – Twitter is on the case (lets hope they get it fixed soon)

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Speed Tweeting [14 November 2008]