Twittelator for iPad - Crossover Review with Bird House Rules

And we're back, with another crossover review with Bird House Rules. This week we're looking at Twittelator for iPad from the folks at Stone Design, aka Big Stone Phone. Twittelator is the last of our "old favorites", being a popular iPhone Twitter client in the past. The folks at Stone Design have been building interesting tools for a while now, and they definitely take a fresh approach to things. While there are free and paid versions of their iPhone Twittelator client, if you want it on the iPad, you'll need to pay $4.99 for the privilege. Twittelator has long been one of Tee's favorite clients on the iPhone, and is still one of his favorites on the iPad. Let me show you why.

#FollowFriday - @AdagioTeas: Sellers of fine Tea and Teaware, with a twist!

Do you like Tea? I love tea. A few years ago I got back into drinking tea on a fairly regular basis. If you like good tea, you don’t want to be picking up the run of the mill teabags that one usually finds in the grocery store. In fact, if you’re passionate about tea, you don’t want to pick up teabags at all. For the purest, most vibrant flavor in your tea, you want to go with loose tea. This is the traditional form of tea used by the the English. Your tea is kept in tins, or some other air-tight container so that it remains fresh. The amount of tea is measured out with a teaspoon (hence the name) and placed into a pot of boiling water to steep. When the tea has steeped, the tea leaves are either strained out as it is poured, or some sort of mesh insert is removed from the pot. When I rediscovered tea, I also discovered @AdagioTeas, an online supplier of quality teas and teaware. If you’re not familiar with the variety of teas, you’ll be surprised at their offerings. In addition to the typical black tea, and the popular green tea, Adagio carries flavored black teas, chai (a type of spiced tea), decaffinated tea, oolong tea, white tea, herbal tea, and rooibos or red tea. And those are classes of tea, each with an assortment of different flavors. Add to that Adagio's selection of teaware which ranges from traditional, to practical, to innovative. If you’re just brewing up one cup, or a whole pot, they have teaware specifically designed for loose tea and easy ways for separating the tea from the leaves. They even have an automatic drip teamaker!

#followFriday - @GailCarriger: New York Times Bestselling Steampunk Author, Tea Fanatic.

Little is known about @GailCarriger's origins other than that she was raised in obscurity by an expatriate Brit and an incurable curmudgeon. And we only know that because that is what she tells us. Corroborating documentation is mysteriously missing. Or we didn't bother to go look. One or the other.

Personal Stamp: Cirque du Soleil's OVO

Due to Tee's trip down under to attend WorldCon, and my busy schedule of late, Tee and I decided to postpone the next chapter of our series on Twitter clients for iPad for another two weeks.  We realize that this has been a long time on a single topic and that folks would probably like a break. I had planned to slot in another review here, but in the past two weeks I haven't had the time to get anything else ready. But I didn't want to leave my reader's hanging, so as a sort of intermission in the Bird House Rules series, I'm offering up this Personal Stamp recommendation. Which also has an intermission of its own.

#FollowFriday - @V_Momma: Voice Artist, Writer, Podcaster.

This week I'd like to introduce you to Veronica Giguere, aka @V_Momma, a voice artist, and podcaster. Veronica is the producer, voice, and a contributing writer to the 2010 Parsec Award Finalist podcast The Secret World Chronicles, an epic saga by Mercedes Lackey, Dennis Lee, and Cody Martin, and created by Mercedes Lackey and Steve Libbey. The Secret World Chronicles is set in a world where superheros have become part of everyday life since World War II. The podcast is now into Book 3 of the story and seems to be going strong. Veronica does a dramatic read of each story, voicing all of the characters herself. You can find out about Veronica's other projects at her website, Voices by Veronica.

First Look: Zoom H1 Handy Recorder Unboxing

One of the products that I'm looking at for a future review is the Zoom H1 Handy Recorder that was just released in August and sold out almost immediately! I finally got a hold of mine after having my pre-order shipped, canceled, and then back-ordered. So I figured that I'd do an unboxing video to demonstrate how easy the Zoom is to set up and get using out of the box. At least that was what they told me. Actually Zoom has a very good reputation for portable audio and the H2 and H4 models are very respectable portable recorders.

September Poll: To Ping, or not to Ping?

August's poll asked your opinion on the podcast series of review that I've been doing in conjunction with Tee Morris and Bird House Rules. We didn't get quite the number of votes that I'd hoped for but I'm glad that folks were willing to stand up and be counted.

Nine people responded in the poll. Three of them said they were enjoying the series and were looking forward to the rest of it. Glad to hear that. I hope it lives up to your expectations.

#FollowFriday - @Michbek: Author, Podcaster, and Twitter's Queen of Snark.

If you've ever talked to @Michbek, you'd remember it. She is one of those people with an incredibly sharp, cutting wit. You've got to be on your toes to hold your own. @Michbek is also the author of the Regency-era historical romance Trapping a Duchess, and a writer of erotica. The podcast version of Trapping a Duchess is available on her site, and at Podiobooks.com. She is also a fan of flash fiction and has been known to compose stories on her Twitter stream. And she has been known to write a guest story for Erotica a la carte.