Osfoora HD, for Twitter - Crossover Review with Bird House Rules

[Tee has informed me that his work is sending him on a business trip this week, and he's been unable to complete the final edits for the podcast in time to launch along with the review. I've included the links to the audio with this article, but I'm afraid that it may take as much as a week before there is anything on the other side of the link. Tee asked that I go ahead with the final article, so I hope you enjoy the review. - Editor]

Welcome back to the final installment of our series with Bird House Rules. We've finally made it to our last Twitter client for iPad. This one is another newcomer to the App store, but we think they've done just about everything right. My friends, I give you Osfoora HD, for Twitter by Said M. Marouf. The name may seem a bit strange, but there is a reason for it. We'll get back to that later. Osfoora sells for $3.99, and to us, that seems like money well spent. Version 1.1.2 has a huge list of features. One of the surprising things about Osfoora HD is that it actually works as well in portrait mode as it does in landscape. The developer really put a lot of thought and effort into this client, and it shows. On top of that, he also developed and supports Osfoora for the iPhone, a separate code base. And he's just a lone developer, working on his own. Said, our hat is off to you. In many ways, you've done more on your own than many large companies have done with a team of programmers. Respect, sir!

TweetTime for iPad - Crossover Review with Bird House Rules

Welcome back to another installment of the crossover series with Bird House Rules. We're almost done with looking at Twitter clients for iPad. This week we'll be looking at a client that is a relative newcomer to the App store, TweetTime for iPad by Dong-Wook Kim. TweetTime for iPad is a $2.99 purchase in the app store and is currently up to version 1.3.4. As is typical for applications for the iPad, landscape mode is more useful at illustrating the capabilities of the product than Portrait mode, so once again you'll be seeing a lot of Landscape pictures here.

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.

TweetDeck for iPad - Crossover Review with Bird House Rules

This is the third in the series of reviews with Tee Morris from the Bird House Rules podcast. We have been looking at Twitter clients for the iPad. Tee and I sat down and recorded audio for the Bird House Rules podcast, and I'm posting a companion reviews here. I encourage all my readers to also check out the audio from the podcast. You don't need an iPod to listen to the podcast, just something that can play an MP3 file. I hope you're enjoying this series as much as we're enjoy bringing it to you.

Echofon Pro for Twitter - Crossover Review with Bird House Rules

Welcome to the second in the series of reviews with Tee Morris from the Bird House Rules podcast. In this series we are looking at Twitter clients for the iPad. Tee and I sat down and recorded audio for the Bird House Rules podcast, and I'm posting a companion review here. I encourage all my readers to also check out the audio from the podcast. You don't need an iPod to listen to the podcast, just something that can play an MP3 file. I hope you've enjoying this series as much as we enjoy bringing it to you.

Last time we looked at Tweet Flow. This time we're looking at Echofon Pro for Twitter. Echofon is one of a group of Twitter apps that we tend to think of as old familiar favorites. In Echofon's case this is because it started out as Twitterfon, a Twitter client for the Mac and the iPhone. If you're familiar with Echofon on any of these platforms, then you have a good idea what you'll see on the iPad. But with Echofon Pro, they've re-vamped things to take advantage of the iPad's screen space. Echofon was written by Naan Studio, Inc, and is available from the App Store for $4.99. Echofon Pro is a plus app, meaning that it will work on the iPhone as well as the iPad, but most of the functions we'll be talking about only exist on the iPad. Echofon is a full-featured Twitter client aimed at handling just about anything you might want to do on Twitter. We believe that it comes pretty darn close.

The first place where Echofon moves past Tweet Flow is in its ability to handle multiple Twitter accounts. You can set up as many accounts as you like, Echofon will let you switch between them at will. Admittedly, you can only view tweets associated with one account at a time, but very few clients will allow you to look at tweets from multiple accounts at the same time.

As you would expect, Echofon handles both landscape and portrait views. Portrait may be better when you're just reading what is in your stream as it lets you see more tweets at one time, but to see more of what Echofon can do, we're pretty much going to concentrate on the Landscape views.

Same tweets, just a more expanded menu bar on the left side. The Home section naturally shows you all of the tweets in your Twitter stream. The tweets are automatically updated every one, two, or three minutes according to how you've updated your settings. By default, it updates every minute. You can turn off auto-updating if you like, or refresh by tapping the refresh icon in the upper right corner.

Naturally, Echofon will show you your Mentions, Direct messages, and Favorites. Unlike Tweet Flow, Echofon also handles Twitter Lists, both lists you've created and ones that include your account. You can also create and save searches and check on trends in the tweets in your local area, across the country, or across the world. This is a fully featured app, so we won't be doing a complete walkthrough like we did with Tweet Flow. We'll just be looking at a few of the highlights.

One of the strengths of Echofon has always been its ability to track a reply back to the tweet that prompted the reply and to pull up the related tweets in the conversation. You'll notice in the above screen shot that all the tweets have an icon on the right of two overlapping conversation bubbles. That is the button for tracking back the rest of the conversation.

When you click the button, Echofon pops up a windowlet and shows the conversation so far as a chat window. Tweets are ordered with the oldest first and the more recent below. Not only does Echofon detect the tweet replied to, it finds any other tweets associated with the conversation in question and displays them. This includes comments from third parties, and any other comments made after the tweet whose button you clicked. While many other clients also supply this kind of conversation tracking, Echofon seems to have one of the best algorithms out there for  selecting the relevant tweets.

Direct messages are organized according to the sending account. This way you can see just the exchanges you've had with a particular person and not have to sort them out from a list of unrelated direct messages.

Another thing that Echofon does that most clients do not do is show you all of your followers the same way that Twitter does. Most clients will list everyone that you're following or that is following you, but they will alphabetize the list. While this is conventient if you are looking up a particular person, it is less useful if you're looking for the last five people who followed you. On the users tab, Echofon presents users order by time, with the most recent followers on top.

Tap the compose icon in the upper right corner, and Echofon slides up the keyboard and the compose windowlet.

The compose screen is pretty straightforward, but there are a couple cool features built into the compose screen. If you want to add a mention to someone to your tweet, either because you've got multiple people in the conversation or because you're starting a message to someone that isn't a reply to anything previous, click the icon of the two silhouettes in the top left and a windowlet will pop down to display the people you are following in an alphabetical list and with a search window so you can search for a particular person.

The other nifty tool that Echofon has is the way it allows you to select pictures. If you want to share a photo from your iPad with your friends, tap on the camera icon in the lower left corner of the compose window. Echofon will first present you with a list of all your different collections of photos on the iPad, albums, the main library, people and places. Then once you select a collection, it will show you a matrix of all the pictures in that collection.

At this point, most clients make you select a photo from this view. Just tap it and that is the photo you've selected. Echofon takes this one further. Select a photo from this matrix and Echofon gives you a view of the photo, not just the thumbnail.

If you've got several similar pictures, you can look at each one and make sure you've selected the right one. The picture doesn't get added to your message until you click the Use button in the upper right corner. The camera icon becomes a thumbnail of the picture you selected until you finish composing your tweet. You can even tap it again and change the photo selected or clear the photo altogether. The photo doesn't get uploaded to your chosen hosting service until you click send.

Unfortunately, Echofon will only let you put one photo into a tweet at a time. But hopefully some future update will allow you to post multiple photos.

When your photo, or someone else's, shows up in the tweet stream, in addition to the URL in the text of the tweet, you'll also see a thumbnail of your tweet off to the right.

Tap the thumbnail, and Echofon opens a larger windowlet and displays the picture for you. In the bottom left is a button that lets you save the image, and in the bottom right is a button to let you go to the page the image is being displayed from. The icon of this latter button is rather poorly chosen as a speech bubble. I wouldn't think that clicking on a speech bubble would take me to a web page, but that is what it does. Otherwise, it is a nice way to handle pictures.

As nice as Echofon is in many ways, it does have some rather unintuitive features. It has settings for the application overall, and settings that are particular for each Twitter account. These account specific settings tend to be buried, making them difficult to access.

Another odd thing is that when you tap on a tweet to select it, Echofon puts up a very helpful context menu with options.

The odd thing is that the last option is "More". Tap more and you get some additional options, but no way to get back to the first group of options. And why do you need two menus of options when there is plenty of screen space to list them all? This may be a holdover from earlier iPhone versions of the application. We shall watch eagerly to see if it is addressed in future versions.

While Echofon may have a few quirks and stumbling blocks, it is an excellent Twitter client. For some folks, it may be just what the doctor ordered. For quite a while it was my favorite Twitter client. And it may take that place again. But next week, we'll be talking about one of Tee's favorities. If you listened to the podcast, I'll bet you can already guess what it is! See you in two weeks for the next in the series.

  Bird House Rules - Episode #13: Review of Echofon (with Nifty Tech Blog) [16:06m]: Download

Tweet Flow - Crossover Review with Bird House Rules

A while back, I did a review of Twitter along with the help of my friend and Twitter maven, Tee Morris. Well, now we're back to do it again. This time we're looking at Twitter clients. Specifically, clients for the iPad. Last time it was an interview. Now we have another special treat. This review is the first of a series of crossovers with Tee's Bird House Rules podcast. So along with each review you also get a chance to listen to Tee and I talk about each client in a special episode of Bird Bird House Rules. The content is different, so be sure to take time to listen to the audio in addition to reading this review.

And first up is Tweet Flow. Note that this is Tweet Flow for the iPad written by Presslite (www.presslite.com), not TweetFlow written by Darragh Moriarty for the iPhone, which is completely different and not covered here.. You'll know you've got the right one because Tweet Flow is free from the App store. Tweet Flow is a simple, basic, no frills client for Twitter that manages to be elegant in its simplicity. This is a great client for an iPad owner starting out with Twitter.

Tweet Flow only handles one Twitter account, but if that is all you have, it delivers reliable service. So, let's take a look. When you open Tweet Flow for the first time, it greets you with the following settings screen.

And as far as settings go, this is it. Pretty much nothing else. Enter your Twitter logon and password, and decide if you want sounds or not. We'll come back to what "Classic scroll" means in a bit. Touch Save, and you're off.

One of the features of Tweet Flow is the way it displays the tweets. The most recent tweets are displayed at the top, with older tweets spaced down underneath it, getting smaller as they are older. You can scroll up and down through this list, and the tweets will get larger as they move to the top of the screen. If you go back to Settings and turn on Classic Scroll, all the tweets will show at the same size as the top tweet. But where is the fun in that?

Edit: This made it into the podcast, but somehow I left it out of the review. Tweet Flow auto-updates your tweets every three minutes. There is no manual update, there is no setting to adjust it. It is hard-coded. There is, however, a way you can trick Tweet Flow into updating early. When you change screens, Tweet Flow re-loads the tweets for that screen. And it even works if you change to the screen that you're already on. So if you want to refresh your Home screen, just tap Home, or tap the Tweet Flow logo in the Upper Left and wait while it reloads. The downside to this three minute update is that sometimes the update will catch you in the middle of doing something. This has caused me to loose a tweet being composed, and some other unpredictable things depending on which screen I was on. Nothing majorly problematic, just quirky. And now, back to the review, already in progress.

Since there isn't much to see in Tweet Flow, it is easy to give you a quick tour. You've seen the Home screen, and before that, the Settings screen, so let's just work on down the list and check out the My Profile screen next.

Here on your profile page you've got a large version of your Twitter avatar, and some stats on your account. Your tweets are shown in a green background, just as they are in the regular tweetstream. This handy color coding helps you keep track of things in the main screen. You'll also notice the background has changed. Tweet Flow downloads the background from your Twitter profile and displays it as the page's background, although with a slight greenish tint. My profile background is a bit more yellow. Next stop, Public replies.

This page features replies from other people back to you. Also known as @mentions. These are color coded brown and also show up as brown in the main tweetstream. So far very consistent and predictable.

The Direct msg screen shows you your private direct messages from other Twitter users. These have a simple white text on a black background like the regular tweetstream. And the Favorites screen is much the same, except that it displays the tweets that you've previously marked as Favorites. So let's jump back the Home screen and dig a little deeper this time.

One thing you may notice is Tweet Flow's default background, with the sky and the clouds. This display actually changes during the day. I took these screen shots in the morning, so it shows the sun low to the ground. As the day progresses, the sun rises. When it becomes night, the sun turns into a moon! It is like they built a clock into the background.

Tap in the white bar at the top of the screen and the keyboard appears and you can type in your tweet. Tap the Tweet button in the top right corner to send it on its way. The Done button on the keyboard is a little deceptive, as it doesn't send the tweet, as you might expect, but instead makes the keyboard go away. Just a little quirk.

If you tap on one of the tweets in your stream, you get a pop-up window that looks like this.

You can tap on the white area to select all or part of the tweet, which can be useful for quoting or ReTweeting. The buttons along the bottom of the pop up give you access to the other basic functions: The Profile of the author, ReTweeting the tweet, making a Public reply, adding to your favorites, or sending a Direct Message to the author. Tap on the Profile button, or the name bar at the top of the window and you'll be taken to the profile of the person who wrote the tweet you were looking at.

This looks much like the screen for your profile. Again, the background from the person's Twitter page is downloaded and displayed as the screen's background. Just this time without the colored tint. If the person is using the default background, it uses Tweet Flow's own default background. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to go from this back to the original tweet you were on.

You'll notice that the second tweet on this screen has a sizable image in it. This is another nifty feature of Tweet Flow. When someone tweets a link to an image on Twitpic or one of the other image services for Twitter, it displays a thumbnail of the image. Tap the tweet to see the detail, and again, you'll see the thumbnail.

If the tweet actually contains links to multiple images, you'll see each of the thumbnails that will fit in the space. Now, you'd think that if you tapped on the thumbnail, you'd be taken to a large version of the picture. But it doesn't work like that. You have to tap on the link to open it in an internal browser.

This is a real browser. you can click links and dig down as far as you'd like. Buttons at the top will let you go back and forth, or just close the browser and return to your twitter stream.

Tap on a tweet, and try the ReTweet button this time. You'll be greeted by a pop-up window asking which style of ReTweet you want to use.

The old ReTweet will put the text in your tweet bar and pop up the keyboard so you can add your own comment to the ReTweet in the space that is left. The official ReTweet will add the selected tweet to your stream so your followers can see it.

Public Reply will put the person's name in your tweet bar and let you type your reply. Message brings up a separate message window so you can send a Direct Message. Add Favorite will put the selected Tweet into your Favorites, but oddly enough, there is no way to remove a Favorite from your list. Possibly an oversight?

And that is pretty much it for Tweet Flow. The only thing really left to mention is that it works in Portrait mode as well as Landscape mode.

Tweet Flow is a good, basic Twitter client. It is elegant in its simplicity. If this is the kind of thing you're looking for on your iPad, it is worth giving a look. And it is worth giving a listen to the Crossover episode of Bird House Rules and finding out what Tee and I had to say about Tweet Flow. Or go ahead and subscribe to Bird House Rules. But come back in two weeks to see the next client we'll be looking at.

    Bird House Rules - Episode #12: Review of Tweet Flow (with Nifty Tech Blog) [16:06m]: Download