Luxuryluke Rt @atebits: Problems With Tweetie For Mac

As I write this, I’m sitting on a stationary train. In a station. The rail app on my phone tells me it’s the train I want. But the signs on the platform are totally blank. And the guy in uniform on the train doing the uncoupling says he doesn’t know where it’s going.

So, do I believe what the app tells me? Rather than embark on an exercise in Bayesian conditional probability, it’s making me think about that phrase “digital by default”.

Because I’m still not entirely sure I know what it means. Or, even if I do, that I’m seeing it used consistently. And this experience with the phone app right now is a good reflection of what I think it should mean: that a service has been built, first and foremost, so that its delivery in digital channels is the way that it works best.

–that information in the digital channel is “the truth”. –that if the train is switched to another platform, the digital channel will be the first to reflect this. –that train staff will be looking at their own digital devices for information before they look at platform signs, or paper print-outs of departures, or get on the internal intercom to the driver. That, to me, is digital by default. An underpinning design principle that the service is supposed to be like this. Not, as has so often been the case, with digital features as a sort of awkward bolt-on after the fact. I pointed out to a member of station staff a few weeks ago, who tried to stop me, that I was going through the gates to platform 10 because this device in my hand was telling me my train would be there.

And I trusted it, at least enough to wait there. He looked in incomprehension at this device. It wasn’t part of the script.

The situation was the very opposite of “digital by default”. So, apart from this nice, rosy, optimistic definition, what else have I seen it used to mean? Well – sadly, sometimes as the Mr Nasty of channel-shift enthusiasts: the reason why counter services will be closed, the hammer that will force people to abandon their Luddite ways, the only real means of forcing out cash savings in this techno-progressive world we were told so much about. And if people don’t want to shift, then tough. They won’t have the option. Default, innit?

Ok, if they’re really incapable, because of disability or crap connectivity, there’ll be some sort of stop-gap. A bolt-on, if you like. After the fact. Now, does that sound somewhat familiar? Or, for a third flavour, how about Mr Nasty’s gentler cousin: the service redesign that still has the closure of non-digital channels at its heart, but attempts to do so by attraction to a better, digital alternative, rather than brute imposition?

The interpretation you hear is connected to the source you hear it from, I guess. These versions all have different political palatability, and provoke different passions in different audiences. So which do you i) think it really means now? And ii) which one would you like it to mean? A – a fundamental design principle from the ground up B – channel shift by imposition and removal of choice C – channel shift by being more attractive than non-digital Your answers, below, if you please. It’s happened to me. And to lots of people I know.

It might have happened to you. (A hundred anecdotes make evidence, naturally. See for yourself. It’s real-time.) You find out one day that you’re not following someone you know you used to follow. And you’re dead sure you didn’t do it yourself. Either you or they have spotted the omission on a list, or they’ve tried to send a DM and failed. They might let you know about it.

They might not. The relationship gets reinstated. Or it doesn’t. Life goes on. So is this cock-up or conspiracy? A bug in the system that lets people slip through the cracks like this?

I don’t think it’s a bug at all, but a feature. A piece of very clever social design. Real relationships aren’t binary.

They’re analogue. You can like someone not at all, a bit, or a lot. That can change from day to day – sometimes from hour to hour. Independently of how much you like them there are other factors involved like distance and frequency of contact. You might adore each other but only communicate once a year.

Social networks can (so far) only provide the palest echo of this rich texture. You’re either someone’s Facebook friend, or you’re not. Twitter’s a bit more subtle in its branding of the relationship, but we’re humans. We’re tempted to attach emotional significance to everything to some degree. You mustn’t like me any more.

I don’t enjoy this experience much. Best keep away from it.

And to those who do the unfollowing and reap more than they bargained for, this brings its own problems. People will interpret the same fact in countless different ways. We don’t all operate according to the same textbook of emotional responses (mercifully). So if you’re a savvy social designer, you want to design out the sadness and badness where you can.

You want to keep your community happy. You want to keep your community there. So you need loopholes. And you quietly introduce a random unfollow ‘bug’. Just a small one. Perhaps 0.1% of relationships ‘accidentally’ broken in a month. Not enough to reduce confidence in the integrity of the system.

But enough to offer a face-saver to the unfollower. And a hope-giver to the unfollowed. As with social networks, it’s all about the feelings. Black and white?

(Actually, the real reason is because they’ve blocked and unblocked you. The social equivalent of an untraceable poison–now take the hint and piss off out of their life.).

Yes, nice easy question. Should be a short post. One of the debates that stuck in my mind at the came from a session hosted. Ostensibly about the ‘UK snow’. and what that had meant for the likes of local authorities in delivering services and information. At least that’s what I think it was about.

One can never quite tell with unconferences. The difficult issue of managing information in disrupted conditions. One of my favourite subjects, be it weather, strikes, train disruptions or pandemics.

“How to tell people about school closures” is an excellent example. Why’s it so difficult? Here’s a little list: It’s a highly localised decision. It’s taken by the headteacher of a school, often at short notice. What if they’re stuck in snow, or can’t communicate their decision to anyone? We’re talking about disruption here, remember? It’s highly time critical: if the information is to be useful it has to be delivered in the very tight window between decision and parents’ departure for school (or rearrangement of childcare, or whatever) and almost by definition this will be outside normal working hours.

There are no obligations or penalties associated with how well it’s done. (There may be a motivating of absence, but I consider that secondary to the actual information process, so am discounting it from this analysis.) There is no consistent, expected place to find the information. In some areas schools brief local authorities, in others local authorities brief local radio, there are numerous instances of online information, but little in the way of standardised approach. Kids are involved. Kids who may just have a conflict of interest were there to be any opportunity to game the information.

Just possibly. A variety of tools are used to try and get the message out: from notifications that are actively sent to parents (by SMS, email or phone) – so-called information ‘push’; to information made available for consumption (by web, radio or pinned to the school gates) – the ‘pull’ side. Some parents and schools have developed cascade networks, formal or informal, to pass on the message. Others haven’t. Do we have any plus sides?

Well, the only one of note is that snow closure is usually predicted, to a greater or lesser extent. Something I suspect that fuels even more ire when information management fails. Surely, we cry, they must have know this might happen? Why weren’t they prepared? Accustomed behaviours are highly personal. Parents have become used to a particular information channel, be it the radio or the web, and any changes to that will cause even more confusion, at least at first. All complex stuff – did someone say that public service information management was easy?

But where the GovCamp discussion got most interesting was when we tackled the nub of the problem – the overarching philosophy of whether it was worth trying to centralise information at all in such circumstances. Even at the highest level, opinion is divided between attempting to centralise so that information can all be consumed in one place, and ensuring that it is maintained as locally as possible to guarantee its speed and accuracy. For there are classic trade-offs in this decision. There is no unequivocal ‘right’ answer. Get it to a central point of consumption (or data feed that can be consumed elsewhere) by whatever communications protocols and brute force pressures you can: advantage – easy to find; disadvantage – very difficult to make foolproof, prone to error. Or keep it distributed, and make it easier for people to get closer to the source of the decision to get the most accurate picture: advantage – saves money, fast-when-it-works, accurate; disadvantage – hit-and-miss, accessibility, findability. The list of challenges above should make it clear why this is far from the trivial information management problem that some might assume.

One chap in the GovCamp session maintained that all it would take would be a firm hand of authority to be laid on headteachers to comply (“or else their school would be assumed to be open”). I fear that view represents a hopelessly outdated approach to getting things done that actually work. I’ll come off the fence. I think the answer to a problem like this doesn’t lie in ever more sophisticated linking and aggregation. Building big central solutions, even with a grass-roots crowdsourcing component, probably isn’t going to work. Instead, my experience and my gut are combining to suggest that local is the place for this information. Ubiquitously local – on school sites, via SMS, on the radio, via local authorities.

Keeping them in step is the challenge: but a challenge that’s more worthy of effort than building elaborate information pipelines and monumental repositories.if you’re wondering why this phrasing is used, – which might also show why I’m so interested in it. I was wrapped up in the on Saturday (and the prospect of having to smuggle my SLR past the Googleguards twice more than I had to filled me with no joy) so I didn’t get to the “” gathering in Trafalgar Square. Well, it wasn’t a flashmob, given its several-week notice, and it all seemed far too polite to be a demonstration:) I had been much moved by before the PHNAT event on why he wasn’t going. Precis: if we all behaved with more civility, there would be far less tension between police and public, including photographers. Though I think there are numerous illustrations, including “” histories, which show that maybe politeness isn’t always enough, it did make me think more about information gathering and the purpose behind it. Which in a way relates back to some of the things we touched on at the Barcamp. Example – there’s a certain government department (which shall remain nameless) that has a different reception desk policy from most of the others.

It routinely asks visitors to show some ID. Now, given I am: a) a fully paid-up member of the awkward squad; b) Inquisitive about What Will Happen If?; c) a zealous activist for privacy rights (take your pick), my answer to this question is: Oh, I’m terribly sorry, I don’t seem to have anything on me at the moment.

No, sorry, not even that. To which the automated response is: ok, in you go, but next time (This ritual has been enacted on my last nine visits there, by the way.) For it is a ritual.

There is no function to the data request. It is a matter of form.

A matter of belief, if you like: we do this to make each other believe that we’ve noted a process, and that diligence has been done. In short, this type of information (non-)exchange is really about feelings, more than form. And very likely nothing to do with function. And because the receptionist has reached an acceptable level of feeling – they asked, and then gave a suitable admonition – and because I have as well – I think the data request is meaningless and toothless – we go on our separate ways, content that honour has been satisfied. It’s the same when the.

This is a human exchange, first and foremost (and perhaps entirely). Do we really believe he’s going to get that data into a findable format so that a sensible risk assessment can be carried out based on the collated movements of that student? No, of course not. He wants to feel he’s done his job. Or that he’s in control.

Or in the worst excess, that he’s been shown the right ‘attitude’. It is what might refer to as a “weak tell”. Eyewitnesses (including current and former police) often speak of situations escalating because ‘attitude’ was being shown. Of course I don’t dismiss the value of ‘feelings’ – good and bad – in genuine security decisions; it’s these weaker senses of it that I’m targeting here. So, something to think about perhaps, the next time you are asked for any personal information, no matter how trivial it may seem. What function is really being served?

Is it all really about feelings? It’s b) by the way. Experiment to learn, always Hell, I refused to give any personal details (other than necessary for payment) when buying a sofa last week; it worries me that through the routine gathering of marketing information we have largely eroded the general public’s concept of sensible privacy practice, but that’s for another post.

It’s easy to see why projects fail. Why ‘open goals’ are so often missed trying to improve public services with new technologies. What’s been happening in recent months?: generated 30+ ideas in one day for better use of public information to transform public services, many backed up by working prototypes.: yet more ideas, and real code, from 15-18 year olds. Barcamps, and many other initiatives: creativity, inspiration, passion, and even solutions. The daily activities of hundreds of developers, policy enthusiasts, data specialists, lobbyists and real service users to make things better. And through things like the proposal for a Rewired State-type event within government, we’ll no doubt see that the public sector already has many committed people with the skills to do amazing things with technology, processes and information. Ideas and talent aren’t the issue, evidently.

Yet how many of these ideas are actually crossing the seemingly vast divide to become ‘production’ public services? We have a few ideas about why this might be the case: not enough will to change; would it scale?; procurement never works like that in practice; sure, you can design smart new services but can you sustain them? And so on And perhaps we’re right. We’re probably on the right track with some of these.

But we don’t really know. And until we do know, we’re poorly armed to take on the systemic issues that really stand in the way of public service innovation.

Only by having a well-structured agenda can the things that really need to change, be changed. What we experience might be the consequences of perfectly rational decisions. Rational decisions that at a detailed level make perfect sense. But when combined into complex systems, such as those that procure and operate public services, can have very irrational consequences. But we don’t really know.

So how do we get to know? Here’s a proposal. Hardwired State?. What it is A small number of great ideas are taken on by a panel.

Over a few weeks the panel meet regularly, virtually if necessary, and agree a series of steps which would, in theory, bring these ideas to life as real public services. A small team follow this direction, and simulate the progress of this idea as it becomes a service.

Any actual actions or financial commitments are simulations, but the decisions, and decision-makers involved, along the way are all real. All progress is documented. As, perhaps more interestingly, are any blockages. Who’s on the panel? A minister, a senior civil servant, a journalist, an executive from a public services supplier, a developer, a community worker and an independent information management professional. Facilitated very carefully, and with some clear rules. Rules Money is no barrier to progress.

This is a simulation exercise. But it all gets counted along the way. (Realistically, there will be some real costs involved even as a simulation.

Questions of suppliers in particular will sometimes need funding to get an answer. This funding needs to be available, and recorded.) Decisions are real: if something is agreed to, it’s agreed to as it if were actually going to be implemented, at a level of authority which would be required to do so, for real. Behaviours: this is a potentially hard-hitting exercise. But it is intended to show systemic issues, not to show up individuals. Respect for the skills, talents and experience of all involved in designing and delivering public services will be upheld throughout.

This is “fantasy project management”, if you will. A one-off exercise to really demonstrate the art of the possible. And to inform an agenda for change that will unlock so much of the potential shown in the initiatives already mentioned.

What could possibly go wrong? Of course, early 2010 probably isn’t the time to do something like this. Other priorities may occupy the attention of the movers and shakers who’d have to get behind this. But it’s an illustration of one way in which we could get away from generating innovative ideas that don’t actually go anywhere. And take a whole-life look at the real implementation issues that have to be tackled to make a difference in the real world. What do you think? Should we try it?.The question mark is intentional, and fair.

The outcomes of this exercise are not prejudged. The title is inspired by (that serves as an excellent metaphor for making technology change happen in government).

It’s almost as if the state has hardwired itself. Firstly, it’s not about fixing one iPhone app. Sure, Tweetie was my favourite iPhone Twitter client. But there are others. And that’s the point of the apps ecosystem: if you don’t like one any more, you go and find another one.

I’d paid for it, but it’s not the three quid either that makes it important. Go back to an original, pure concept of Twitter. A great big cloud of 140 character tweets.

You can do anything you like with those characters. And those tweets; using a range of Twitter clients (note: all, apart from Twitter’s own web client at Twitter.com, are independent products). The clients help you filter down the bits of the cloud that you want to see. Add some conventions: that a word preceded by @ is a user name, and a word preceded by # is a way of labelling content that can then be easily linked together.

Importantly, these conventions could have been generated from the user community. Other conventions, like the use of the slash ‘/’ (as in /via) – are in their infancy.

With a little ingenuity, other character-based syntax conventions could emerge: ^zipcode, to make up an example. If the convention is picked up and adopted, great. That’s evolution.

Everyone’s happy. In time those client applications can be tweaked to get greater value out of the convention (just as most now automatically return search results based on clicking a hashtag). Twitter does of course do more than just host a big cloud of tweets.

They save you the bother of creating a register in your own client application of the users from whom you are interested in seeing tweets. Though this is theoretically possible, it would be a pain each time you changed client (or switched from PC to mobile device) having to synchronise those lists. So Twitter helps you, by running some basic user registration functions, including the ability to create a record of those you follow.

Because these registered user identities live within Twitter’s domain, they can also support some other functions, like direct messaging, blocking and so on. And lately, they can be assembled into ‘lists’, which also live alongside your profile, in Twitterland. And the last thing that Twitter do is make pretty much all of the above information freely available to be sucked out and interpreted by these aforementioned client applications, through an API (a way of easily getting information out of Twitterland to do clever things with it). The last big rumble in the Twungle was when Twitter tweaked the API so that instead of being able to see all tweets emanating from a user, you’d only see their @replies if you were also following the user they were @replying to. Although this definitely makes for a neater way of seeing content, there were some benefits to occasionally viewing an entirely unfiltered stream of information (such as a serendipitous comment from someone you followed to someone you’d never heard of, which might prompt a conversation with them).

Yada yada yada. Some, like me, argued that this was a violation of the ‘purity’ of the information; it would be perfectly easy for your client application to make that @reply filtering choice for you, assuming it could be supplied with the “whole picture”; but Twitter decided to take away that choice. The whole argument was captured on the hashtag #fixreplies. Taking away choice = bad, IMHO. But never before did Twitter cross the line into specifying what format those 140 characters might take (other than some forays into metadata – already used in any case for datestamps, client application identifiers, and so on – and latterly for geocoding).

But the way the core 140 characters worked? No, that was up to you.

If you wanted to put RT at the start of your tweets, good on ya. That’s changed with the new RT feature.: (as reposted by – Tweetie’s makers). Yes, another play on cleaning up your stream – as with #fixreplies. But what’s all this stuff about ‘dictating’ etiquette?

What happened to the evolutionary adoption of things that worked? Surely if a long stream of identical tweets was annoying, client applications would evolve that could suppress these at the client. Even I could code that And if they weren’t identical?

Well, that would be because people put in little personal comments along the way with their RTs. So you’d lose those, obviously. (Or have to throw them away depending on how you tuned your duplicate tweet suppression on the client.) So perhaps this is all a bit of misdirection. Instead of focusing on just how helpful the new RT format is, try working out for yourself what’s really behind new RTs. It shouldn’t take long. And the fact that hooey like that post from gets bandied about, instead of the honest answer about Twitter’s move into content shaping (and it won’t be the last one), is why I felt strongly about #fixtweetie., and why this has become a blog post. So, did you get there?

Hear the jingling dollars? And as – we can’t overlook that Twitter is a business. Of course they can impose content parameters and design controls if they want. If we don’t like it we can all go back to, erm, Facebook and MSN.

Or the Next Big Thing (am working on thathe he). I’d just ask for a little more transparency about all this – saying “it’s a nicer experience” doesn’t really cut it for me. What do you think?.a hashtag I began in order to argue that client apps should allow the user as much choice as possible in the formatting of their tweets, so that etiquette could continue to evolve, rather than be imposed. Promised much, delivered a bit of it. Where did it go wrong, Mistress Mac? Was it your huge screen that wasn’t really, pin-sharp graphics that seemed to blur the more I looked at them, ever-so-unexpected crashes when you promised you wouldn’t, wilful absence of a delete key or my shock at realising just how much the rest of the world hated you as well? You were gorgeous though, even if far, far heavier than you should be.

It’s been a while (over 15 years) since I flirted with your sort. I’d expected the operating system to have changed. But not always for the better, huh? The dock is clever, but how am I really supposed to use stacks? Why do some applications produce a lurking icon that’s-sort-of-like-a-disc that I have to ‘eject’ (but others don’t)?

You Macfans are grinning here, thinking, Windowsdinosaurboy, you have to accept some things Are. Of course I do, but I had such high expectations Expectations like the not-crashing thing. Three on day one, two on day two, the most spectacular finishing with a jump-jet take-off noise and the fan hitting a coloratura E flat before I strangled the power off. I’m not a jealous man, far from it; in fact your failure to talk to other devices when I actually wanted you to was just plain embarrassing. The one feature that would have meant I could live (sort of) within a native Mac environment would have been PDA synchronisation. Business critical this one.

Can it be done? This was the surreal bit where I picked below the gloss and found myself back in 1987 groping around for bits of shareware and half-baked garage apps from A Bloke In Wisconsin who swears he’s finally cracked how to get Lynx or Lion or whatever to speak in code to Windows Mobile. But not Leopard, yet, oh no, we haven’t got the, erm, sorted, the, er, we’re waiting for more info from Apple, mutter shuffle refund. One bit of freeware actually managed to get my PDA contacts into the Mac address book – all but one of them, anyway. Unfortunately it was supposed to do iCal as well, but could only cope with going in one direction (and that wasn’t the device-to-Mac route which might even have satisfied me as a back-up). Apple themselves. Flawed Geniuses.

That shop/zoo/theme-park in Regent St. Having beaten a way through the spotty backpackers to find similar-breed-but-in-black-T-shirt, I asked what seemed to me simple questions. “This is what I need” “Will this work with this?” “And this software I think too, and it all has to work together or I’ll bring it back: how wonderful that you give me 14 days to get it right, at no risk.” “What do you mean, not the software?

It’s the whole set-up I need to check out. Oh, ok, yeah, sure I understand, you trust me, but not completely. Yeah, that’s fine. Tell you what I’ll buy the software then, get free trial versions if I can to test it all out, but if it’s good then I’ll open my shrink wraps and I won’t have to come back to the zoo again.” At which point I asked for some pornography. Well, you’d think I had judging by the look on the face of my Genius. What I’d actually said was “Ok, so can I also buy a copy of Windows then so I can install that if Parallels seems to be working out?”.

I cannot get that here. I cannot buy porn here, I cannot buy narcotics Class A, B nor C here, I cannot buy an Olympic-size swimming pool here, and I most certainly cannot buy a copy of the most popular operating system in the world from here. It’s a computer shop for heaven’s sake. What was I thinking? C’mon guys – the war is over. You have your market, Bill has his.

You’re fashionable, he’s functional. You Aren’t Really In Competition With Each Other. Sell his software. Take a margin on it.

Don’t be so proud. Perhaps even think about licensing some of your own stuff?

Sell those little white apple stickers as well and let your wannabee designer/musician/artist types use it to cover up the letters “IBM” on their £400 laptop that is just as quick, just as useful, oh and about half the weight (ranting aside, I’m rational, I know PCs are cheaper and just as quick, but I still came into your shop. Repeat: you are not in competition). And some other little tips for Apple if they’re remotely serious about having anything called customer-centric strategy. Sticking a little plug-in to Safari to play the most common embedded media files wouldn’t really be that hard would it? I’m even prepared to wait for a ported iPlayer if that’s a better way overall for the BBC to spend my licence fee. But to get “Game Over” when trying to watch a tiny video clip on the BBC News site? Put the delete key in.

Just above backspace, where that rather less useful Eject button lives at the moment. Buy Missing Sync or PocketMac Pro. Make one of them work. Make a fortune out of a robust PDA-to-Mac product. Or just put it into the operating system. (I’ll probably get another one before very long though. Let’s see if there’s anything behind this new MacBook Pro launch rumour first).

So I mustn't see friends in the contacts list until they update they're status either? And from the looks of it I can't clear the tweets either? Yeah, not sure what happens here. Has been a bit dodgy (or not intuitive) for me in the past. When I go to remove someone from the list of people I am following it only offers the option of following the person – not removing them.

So it's perhaps a bit dicey around adding/removing people you follow. I tend to manage most of that via twitter.com and just read/post via twitterfon – except if I'm out and about and wanting to add someone via a search. The new iTwitter is very very good. I've deleted Tweetie. I got my iPhone 3GS a week ago and automatically paid for Tweetie as generally that seemed to be the best thing going 'round, plus I needed to view multiple accounts.

However, I'm already annoyed that it doesn't have a Group feature, which I'm used to with Nambu on my Macbook. After Lord Ultra's remark above have just checked out iTwitter and it says that it can do multiple accounts AND groups AND landscape keyboard, so iTwitter looks a lot more functional than Tweetie. I'm off to grab a copy of iTwitter now. Wish I'd known about it before I paid for Tweetie.

Still, I guess it's not bad throwing developers of any persuasion a few of my hard earned dollars. So long as I'm not doing it every week!;-). Ok I figured out why we might never seen true twitter push. Itwitter has done it in a really smart way but of course with limitations. When u first setup you twitter account with itwitter it adds you to their database as a user. Now when you send a DM or @ to someone through itwitter it immediately verifies if the receipient is a itwitter user or not by looking through their DB and if the username is found it pushes straight away to the users iphone.

Smart as this creates not much of a load at all on the itwitter server as it doesn't need to continuously check the twitter network for mentions or replies of it's users. This explains why we'll never seen twitter push to all clients from them. Twitterfon Pro has announced that they will also support push but I believe it will operate in the same way as itwitter and only be among twitterfon pro users. The apps you see that poll the twitter network do so every x minutes and then they push it to you if something is found. Most do their checking every 5 or so minutes as I believe twitter restricts the amount of times a user can refresh their accounts to reduce cpu load and bandwidth. So unless the twitter API is updated and creates some easier updating methods we're stuck with twitter app x to twitter app x push. Well, after my earlier response to Lord Ultra's remarks, I had a quick look online for a review of iTwitter and saw a review with Twitterific's Premium version and they seemed on par.

Does anyone here have anything further to add? I worked out last night that Tweetie has a landscape keyboard option in its settings, but the grouping and multiple accounts is what I'm really after. EDIT: Just found a nice blog that runs through several Twitter apps – has helped make my mind up for iTwitter due to group management – have posted the link to credit the blogger. I actually do like iTwitter, but its slow.

Although it caches the tweets, I seem to be drawn back to Twitterrific. There is something about that UI thats appealing to me.

The thing is every app has its good and bad and it really depends on what you want to use it for. If you like grouping, then itwitter and twittelator pro standout. If you like speed then its Birdfeed and Tweetie. Seems like you can't have power and speed at the same time. Just doesn't work that way, but i have to admit, Andrew Stone has done some amazing things with his app, just wished it'd cache the tweets. Gareth I'm updating my blog with your comments and doing a deeplink back to this thread cos your observations on the twitter api are spot on.

I could see a Twitter client offering full push for the moment by a.) following what I mentioned above about client to client push and b.) by polling the server every x secs looking for replies, Dm's by other clients. The first client to actually offer this including push badge updates for updates in timeline (eg someone u follow posts a tweet n u get a badge update suggesting unread tweet) will be th3 wiNN3r. They'll never explain how they get it to work but just having full push will sell.

I'm not a hardcore Twitter by any means but I believe the network can lag at times and result in replies or dm's not arriving once they've been sent. I tried today with itwitter. I setup mine n my girlfriend's account on the iPhone client. I sent myself a reply n got a push almost instantenously. It wasn't formatted very well.

It basically showed the message but not the senders name. No badge update. In any case I went into my account and lo n behold the message wasn't there. I logged in to tweetie on e mac but it wasn't there as well. 15min later it appeared. This is probably one example of where client to client push can and will fail and polling the Twitter network would work out better.

If it doesn't appear in the timeline no push. Essentially the Twitter network has to be setup to do most of the work.

As tweets are made their servers have to verify the client used and if there is a push connection between them and the client server. If so push entire message to client server which then simply pushes notification to clients iPhone. Well, have had iTwitter for 24hrs and love it more than Tweetie. The group function and flexible keyboard orientation that moves with the phone (i.e. Not either portrait or landscape as with Tweetie) have sold it for me. But it really appears that it's your own personal app preference and what you're trying to do.

I only have 2 personal Twitter accounts, but I think if I was a heavy user I probably would've gone Twitterific Premium from all accounts seems to be a bigger workhorse, but for the moment, I'm very happy to iTwitter. And there's a Mac Echofon desktop app coming up in 2-3 weeks which will seamlessly sync the unread tweets, so you don't have to read them twice! This is good because currently the twitter network is unable to distinguish between read/unread tweets.

This is why current push iphone twitter clients have their badge numbers reset each time new tweets come. Only the client remembers what's been read or hasn't. To test this out delete your current app and re-install it.

All tweets are marked unread once again. In order for tweets to be marked read permanently and synced between phone & computer your tweets have to be stored on a 3rd parties server which sets the appropriate status flag on the tweets which both iphone app and desktop can read and reflect to the user accordingly. Correction guys Tweetie 2.0 does not have push notification.

There are reports online (such as ) that Tweetie 2.0 does have push notifications. There's also drafts manager, live filtering, push notifications (down to the specific user level) and this is killer—the ability to link up people you follow to contacts in your Address Book, plus a dropdown to pick people to @reply. Do you have a source that suggests that this is incorrect? The original blog post doesn't mention them, but I'm sure I've read other reviews that do. Do you have a source that suggests that this is incorrect?

The original blog post doesn't mention them, but I'm sure I've read other reviews that do. The few review sites that said it had push notification have made a retraction. Only Gizmodo hasn't. The dev replies to every other question except this one regarding push. I feel push is included but he has meant for it to be a surprise (like how landscape mode was to facebook 3.0) which certain sites have leaked against his approval. (To beta test tweetie 2.0 aka bigbird an NDA had to be signed!) He had to re-submit the app for some code changes so the wait begins again. Well, Tweetie 2 definitely doesn't have push notifications.

I have read at least one suggestion that there is some form of SMS push, but I can't see how that works (and it may not work in Australia, for all I know). There actually is a notification setting somewhere on the user profile pages, but setting it doesn't seem to do anything.

Otherwise, it's a great Twitter client. I paid for Tweetie 1, and am happy with my purchase of Tweetie 2 as well. Well worth the $4 or whatever it cost, especially if you're a heavy Twitter user. But I'm considering getting Boxcar now for push notifications. Any recommendations for or against (I presume it doesn't quite work with Tweetie 2 yet, but imagine it will eventually). Tried out tweetie 2.

I find it amazing how reviews all say that tweetie/tweetie2 is the best twitter app. I think it's good, BUT i dont think it beats twittelator Pro. Because I have a jailbroken iphone, i've tested out all the paid twitter apps. I think the endless functions of twittelator Pro end up ruling over tweetie. Two things I love about twittelator that isn't in tweetie; 1.

Thumbnails of picture links in tweets (so you can have a quick look and not necessarily open up the link) 2. Unread count (when you read tweets in twittelator, it'll say how many unread tweets. As you scroll and read tweets, it'll automatically update. Furthermore, it's saved even if you leave the app, so you can download the tweets, read a few, and you'll know where you left off when you come back to read the rest). I paid for Tweetie 1, and am happy with my purchase of Tweetie 2 as well. Well worth the $4 or whatever it cost, especially if you're a heavy Twitter user. But I'm considering getting Boxcar now for push notifications.

Any recommendations for or against (I presume it doesn't quite work with Tweetie 2 yet, but imagine it will eventually). Tweetie 2 works fine with BoxCar, but what you have to do is remove the original Tweetie from your iPhone so it redirects to the correct app. Tweetie 2 plus Boxcar push notification = Perfect solution, recommended.

I was using TweetDeck previously and only recently moved to Tweetie 2.0. TBH, I really don't know why this is worth $4. Don't get me wrong, it's a smooth application but it doesn't do anything besides video tweeting that TweetDeck didn't do. Not to mention that TweetDeck let me make a column for people I was especially interested in as opposed to the one-column method of Tweetie.

I'll continue to use it simply because it was $4 but I may make the move back to TweetDeck depending on how things go. Well, I'm a convert. I didn't think it would happen but it did. I've been a long time user of twitterrific premium and have decided to try out 2.1.

Let me say I did try tweetie v1 a while ago and sticking to twitterrific premium wasn't a hard decision but with 2.1, oh my the features are awesome. It's a lot faster then v1 than I can remember and as a quick impression, it isn't as buggy as twitterrific. I mean twitterrific already felt fast but tweetie 2.1 now takes the cake for performance. The ability to edit profile is cool, saving searches that sync's with your twitter page on your PC's browser, the reporting of spam, lists, and the awesome (but freakish) nearby feature is cool! Tweetie 2.1 just made it to my home page and twitterrific just got uninstalled.

The things that I loved about twitterrific is it's intuitive design and performance. Tweetie have definitely added a fair bit of feature and optimised the usability and they are enough reasons for me to make a move. Twitterrific will have to release a major upgrade with equal amount of features if I were to go back. Man this is sexy. I've been checking AppShopper every day recently, very happy to find SimplyTweet is free today. 12 month anniversary so it's free rather than $5. Thanks for the heads-up.

I downloaded it to have a look and see what all the fuss has been about – and while I see how it could appeal to some, I really didn't like it at all. Kind of looked like a Twitter client for people scared of Twitter:-D I went right back into Tweetie 2 with its butter-smooth interface, and felt like all was right with the world again:) Tweetie 2 – it's awesome! Ohhhh yes, indeed it is!

Is it just me or is Tweetie 2 and TwitBird very similar to one another? - The pulldown and release to refresh - The radar effect and lists of nearby tweets And a few other things. They are both quite good but I wish I could mash them together. Twitbird highlights any new tweets, Tweetie 2 doesn't - Tweetie 2's icons at the bottom are more useful and you can easily at a glance see if there are new messages.

I like the Twitbird @ reply how is shows it in smaller text under your reply. In Twitbird, finding people seems easier than in Tweetie. Tweetie 2 has video support etc.

Now I am just rambling on:). Just bought Tweetie 2. Two criticisms.

Default font is 15pt, but it gives you options for 13pt to 20pt. Wouldn't mind fonts down to 10pt, think I'll have to email Support. And I love Twitteriffic's really small font setting where it just show's the username without the user's picture. The other thing I really want is not only support for twitter lists, which Tweetie 2 does have, but the ability to quickly flick between them.

That is something I like in Tweetdeck. I know, I know, Tweetdeck has proprietary groups rather than Twitter Lists, which is annoying, but I hear Tweetdeck will support Twitter Lists very shortly.

Couple points I want to make 1. The adoption rate for Twitter in Australia seems to be relatively low. For a country that tends to pride itself on early adoption and IT-savviness, collectively we have been very slow to get on the Twitter bandwagon. Many tend to dismiss it out of hand.

I have had my Twitter account for some time, but I must admit until I really got into it, I wasn't sure what Twitter was or what to do with it. Thanks to Twitter, this morning I was alerted that bjango's new game Kapowie was free for a limited time. This has not been the first time that Twitter has saved me some money. I think it's very worthwhile to follow iPhone developers on Twitter. While I may have saved money, I have a habit of buying Twitter clients.

Although I usually wait for them to go cheap or free, so it's not so bad. I do notice that has never been discounted:(. I do not agree that the 140 character limit ' severely compromises' the usefulness of Twitter. You are not meant to write essays, if you frequently approach 140 characters then you are doing it wrong. Those people that would use Twitter if it were 'better' simply do not understand what Twitter is or how it should be used.

Some examples of how I used Twitter today - was alerted that bjango's new game Kapowie had gone free for a limited time - searched for an answer to whether Myki Money expires - alerted about some train cancellations - read a police report about an arson attack at my friend's daughter's school - read about Google relaxing of censoring searches in China etc etc. This is result of 2 days of research and usage of various apps: TwitBird: Seems to be best of the bunch although the push does not work for most people.

Tweetie 2: Does not mark new tweets. TweetDeck: Does not support lists. Echofon: Seems to have caching issues. Specifically, I unfollow someone but their tweets still display in Home despite numerous restarts and refreshes. Twitterrific: Does not support lists. Twittelator: Very customisable but I couldn't get it to visually show new tweets.

I didn't find Tweetie 2 to be any better then the rest. The interface seems to be quite similar to the rest.

I have no idea why people love this so much. I use Tweetie 2 on my iPhone, happy for the most part, not happy with lack of retweet functionality as found on some other apps.

But my question is how do I keep up with so many tweets? I don;t really understand how it all works, with APIs or whatever, but if I don't check 2-3 times a day, how come I will have a gap of a few hours with missing tweets? What if I didn't check at all for 3 days?

I would want to go back and spend the time and skim through them, but I don't think I can do that in Tweetie. I think I need to use an rss feed, probably on my PC. Any suggestions on how to not miss any tweets?

Luxuryluke Rt @atebits: Problems With Tweetie For Mac Free

I use Tweetie 2 on my iPhone, happy for the most part, not happy with lack of retweet functionality as found on some other apps. What lack of functionality?

Retweets (REAL retweets as supported by the Twitter server) are supported. If you really MUST do the old-style retweet and risk cutting off the end of the tweet or making such a mess of it with all the 'RT @blah RT @blat' stuff and your own added commentary that the reader has to decipher and separate from the original tweet, then you can. 'Quote Tweet'.

If I don't check 2-3 times a day, how come I will have a gap of a few hours with missing tweets? What if I didn't check at all for 3 days? You're obviously following a huge number of feeds, or some very very active ones. This isn't Tweetie's fault. What lack of functionality? Retweets (REAL retweets as supported by the Twitter server) are supported.

If you really MUST do the old-style retweet and risk cutting off the end of the tweet or making such a mess of it with all the 'RT @blah RT @blat' stuff and your own added commentary that the reader has to decipher and separate from the original tweet, then you can. 'Quote Tweet'. While Tweetie is currently my client of choice, I must admit that Twittelator has A LOT of nice extra features that many clients don't have. But I'll stick with Tweetie for now. Never tried that!

Maybe I should have RTFM. I have twittelator pro on my iphone. I have a question about loading tweets.

If i check my iphone twittelator when i wake up and read through tweets from overnight, there is well over 200 i need to read. The problem is-it only loads the first 200 tweets which is usually from the last 5 hours-then it jumps to0 tweets from say 8 hrs ago-there is no tweets from between those times.

I was just wondering if any twittelator experts could help me sort it out? I have the phone set to load 200 tweets. Here is a pic to illustrate issue. Seems like there's a bit of a backlash going on though.

Check out #quickbar A.bit. of a backlash? Have a look at the App Store reviews page, where it's plummeted from five stars to one and a half inside a day. Epic, epic fail by Twitter. BTW, most of the other so-called 'new' features were already in the app (and in Tweetie 2) – they've just made them more obvious.

I strongly recommend those who have previously done an App Store review for Twitter (or Tweetie 2), head there on your iPhone and edit your review and star rating. Echofon looks good to me. Yeah, having tried Hootsuite, Echofon and a new one called TwitterLister (meh, it's okay) I think I'm going to buy Echofon. At least, unlike Tweetie 2, they won't sell out to a corporation and let them spray ads all over an app I PAID for. How is everyone's profile picture fitting in the box? I see all the people I am following has the profile picture fits perfectly in that profile picture square.

For me, my profile does not fit perfectly but with a small margin. I use the same profile picture in my FB account and the picture is perfect there too.

I am talking about the FB and Twitter app for the iPhone. If I look at my profile picture in Twitter from my desktop, the picture fits perfectly. Is there a setting in Twitter App to fir the profile picture prooerly? Was a big fan of the official twitter app until 3.3 but switched to Echofon Pro and couldn't be happier! Has all the features I need and use daily (only have to check my twitter profile to see how much I use it lol) Much better now that they have the same 'drag down' method to refresh your streams too. Tried Osfoora but found it has issues still with picture uploading, plus a lack of push for mentions & DM's kills it for me – prefer not to have to use Boxcar purely because it gets bogged down from time to time and you get no notifications. Will stick with Echofon Pro for now, has the ability to post direct to Flickr which is another plus, so hopefully any updates don't ruin it!

Was a big fan of the official twitter app until 3.3 but switched to Echofon Pro and couldn't be happier! Likewise, gladly handed over the $6 to get the 'pro' version without ads – see, Echofon gives you a choice.

Twitter's app does not (and yes, I paid for what became the Twitter app). The ONLY complaint I have about Echofon so far is that the timeline can't display real names, only the Twitter account name. Twitter updated their app today, but no surprise you can't turn off the quickbar; Twitter has already plainly stated that it is not going away and you will not be able to turn it off, end of story.by putting a single box at the top of the timeline for an ad or trending topic?

Tweetie 2 was the pinnacle of elegant, efficient and user-focused iPhone app design. IT won awards. The 'quickbar' is not only ugly and of zero interest content-wise, it's always in your face when you touch the top of the screen to scroll to the top, to remind you that one of the best interfaces ever seen on the iPhone has been tagged with an ad. And one day, it might be a great big McDonalds banner ad you see up there. I repeat, I paid for this app. I do not want ads.

If they'd just offered the option of turning the quickbar off if you were a Tweetie 2 purchaser, everyone would have been happy. And it IS possible: I got unlimited Shazam music IDs because I was a user before they went to a paid model, and they could identify that from my iPhone's ID.bump. Not sure if there's any other more recent Twitter app threads but I'm currently using Tweetbot and whilst I like it I am being tempted by Twittelator Neue with an introductory price of $1.99. It seems like its trying to compete with Tweetbot with a fancy UI that includes the ability to see a small preview pane between each tweet for anyone displaying image links which is pretty cool for when you're not sure if you want to bother tapping on it or not Before Tweetbot I was using Twittelator Pro which was pretty good so I know I can expect tweaks to make their new app even better.

Luxuryluke Rt @atebits: Problems With Tweetie For Mac Download

Is anyone using Twittelator Neue atm? I hate complainers when sites/social networks change their inteface, just look when Facebook does it on the web.

Luxuryluke Rt @atebits: Problems With Tweetie For Macbook Pro

But I went to Tweetbok this morning. One of my main uses for Twitter was sending links to Instapaper, and they made is four taps from a tweet, plus you have to begin to load the page you want to send. It's horrible in comparison to where they were with SwipePaperclip.

It looks nice, but really, they need to restore the swipe. I am going to use Tweetbot for a while, I bought it when it came out but the official client was always pretty great. Now I'm back to TweetBot.

Just grabbed Tweetbot and up until now have just used the Twitter app on iPhone & iPad. Primary reason getting Tweetbot is so I can do some 'list management' as the native Twitter app or mobile.twitter.com on the ipad doesn't let you add remove people to lists. So the theory at the moment is to add the news outlets to my 'news' list and then unfollow a fair few of them so that I have less clutter in my main feed as you don't need to follow someone to have them in a list. Then depending on what device I am using if I want to read the news, tech, melbourne, photography etc I can just open up the relevant list.

Now to test if this theory is effective in practice.