Simplified

The new app has a less complicated interface than the old one, in terms of having fewer buttons across the bottom bar, and fewer interactivity options for your main stream of tweets. It makes the experience and layout cleaner, but it also irks in some regards, especially for someone like me who manages multiple Twitter accounts. That’s because the ability to switch accounts is now located unintutively behind the “Me” tab, and takes two steps to get to from the home stream instead of just one, like the old “Accounts” button did. You can switch accounts by swiping left on the Me button, too, but it seems a little hit-or-miss.

The DM button is gone from the bottom bar, having been moved to the “Me” section, but once again, it introduces more steps, not less to get there. You can swipe up on the Me button to access your DMs from any screen, however. In the case of both changes, I can only assume Twitter found the average user wasn’t using either feature very often, and so they were better off out of the way.

The change to the tweets that appear in your home screen seem unnecessary even from that perspective, however. You can no longer access a quick menu of functions for each tweet on the home screen like you could before. Now you have to tap through to the post itself to reply, retweet or favorite the tweet.

Interactions

The new Connect tab features not only @mentions, but also a new “Interactions” section that details both your conversations and tells you about new followers, much like Google+ notifications inform you of new connections, in groups divided by days. It’s a small, but welcome, addition and should mean more users can turn off email notifications of new follows and still keep on that info.

Discover

One definitely positive change is the “Discover” section. It includes the ability to search Twitter, but also introduces more information and context for #hashtags and trending stories. You can see information about each popular “Story” listed, and then tap through for tweets that mention the subject, armed beforehand with some useful information about what the story actually means. It’s a big improvement for Twitter’s trending topics, and one that should serve the service’s efforts to appeal to marketers, and average users, well.

Better overall? Depends.

Overall, I’m seeing a lot of positive reaction to the aesthetic changes made to the iOS Twitter app on Twitter, and it definitely feels truer to Twitter’s brand than the previous, mostly generic incarnation. I’ll miss the in-stream ability to interact with content, however, which for me emphasized Twitter’s prioritization of communication above all else. Plus, it still doesn’t address the issue of the notification badge count remaining at one, and there’s still not a way to mark all your DMs as read at once. Despite its failings, I’m betting for the majority of casual users, with the addition of Interactions and Discover, this will probably be considered an improvement.

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I used Skype video calling approximately three minutes after it launched (with pal and web developer Wes Bos), and it worked perfectly. Installing the plugin on my iMac required a tiny Java app download that’s virtually foolproof to use, and making and receiving calls is as simple as clicking a few buttons and confirming you want to share video.

Video chat doesn’t appeal to everyone. It works well for people who have close relationships with one another (like parents and children) and who live far enough away from each other that face-to-face interaction is rare. But when you add the complication that both parties have to install a dedicated app and have that app open and active, the pool of people who’ll actually use it are even smaller. With Facebook chat, if they’re in your network, they’re potentially available for video calling. No Skype registration, no calling people ahead of time to tell them to open the Skype client so that you can call them, since people are much more likely to be Facebook users (there’s 750 million of them, Facebook announced today) and online at any given time on that site.

Skype’s Mac client also isn’t winning over any fans in terms of its design, mainly because that design feels unnecessarily cumbersome. Facebook’s Skype integration is the opposite of that: It’s invisible, blending in with Facebook’s web presence without drawing too much attention to itself or changing the Facebook experience that users are comfortable with.

For both the above reasons, I think Facebook Video Calling will unseat Skype as the video chat option of choice for Mac users, at least when it comes to consumers. Pro users might need the advanced Skype features offered through the dedicated Mac app, but some of those might make it to Facebook eventually, too, it was suggested at today’s press conference. And things like calling out to landlines and cell phones might be better handled through Skype’s smartphone clients anyway.

Facebook still has to bring video calling to groups and mobile, but the groundwork is laid for that to happen, and while some are saying Google+ is still in the lead thanks to its Hangouts group video chat, I think that’s underestimating Facebook’s advantage in terms of its huge network size lead.

I’m seeing a lot of negative reaction to this announcement on Twitter in general, but I think it will do wonders for the adoption of video calling among less techie users. What do you think?

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People “briefed on Facebook’s plans” told the NYT that the new app, which would be introduced in the “coming weeks” for free in the App Store, would feature redesigned Facebook Chat and Facebook Groups features, along with a touchscreen interface created specifically for the iPad. The report further asserts that Mark Zuckerberg personally had a significant role in the redesign process, according to a person who works with Facebook.

The app will also supposedly take advantage of the iPad 2′s camera, allowing people to snap photos and upload them directly to Facebook albums. Photo browsing will offer full-resolution images, along with full-screen browsing, too.

That Facebook would be engaged in developing an iPad app does agree with what the company said yesterday in a brief statement regarding the Project Spartan HTML5 app store it was said to be creating. Specifically, Facebook had this to say about the website versus app debate: “We don’t expect developers to choose between HTML5 and native apps. We expect they will choose both, just as we did.”

Facebook has not provided any indication that it has been working on an iPad app since the device’s release. In fact, Zuckerberg even stated that he didn’t think the iPad was a mobile device, leading many to believe that the company thought its cross-platform website was a good enough client for the Apple tablet. The success of paid and free third-party iPad applications that plug into Facebook services, like My Pad and Friendly, seems to suggest that iPad owners feel otherwise.

Facebook declined to comment on future products when asked about the iPad application. I do think we can expect to see a native Facebook client, however, since continuing to ignore that growing segment would leave a lot of potential traffic and engagement on the table. Also, the Facebook experience on the iPad right now is pretty much defined by third parties. The social network probably isn’t crazy about potentially having part of its brand image resting in the hands of outsiders. Do you think Facebook will finally bend to user demand and introduce an iPad app, or continue to point Apple tablet owners to the web?

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Sparrow has been available in public beta for a while now, but as of Wednesday, it’s available in the Mac App Store as a proper 1.0 full version release. The polished shipping version brings with it a new price tag, so here’s what you should consider before deciding whether it’s worth your $9.99.

Is This a Twitter App?

The first thing many will notice about Sparrow is that it doesn’t really feel like Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird or any other desktop mail client for the Mac that’s come before. Instead, its developers went for a much cleaner, minimalist approach that more closely resembles the UI of recent Twitter apps like the official one and Echofon.

In fact, with the message reading pane collapsed (which is how the application opens by default), Sparrow is just like one of those apps, listing your accounts (identified by pictures of your choosing), inbox, starred items, sent folder, drafts, trash and search in a vertical toolbar on the left, and a list of email messages currently sitting in your inbox on the right. As in the iPhone or iPad mail applications, each message lists its sender, subject, the time it was received, and a brief excerpt of the body of the email. Sparrow also supports threaded conversations, so if you’ve been going back and forth with replies, a number will show you how many emails you have in that particular chain.

I really like that if I don’t expand the viewer window (which can be done using an icon in the bottom right of the Sparrow interface), I don’t have to see anything else. I can use the arrow keys to scroll through my messages, archiving, labelling, deleting and replying as necessary. If I need to dig deeper, there’s always the option to expand the message preview pane or just hit enter to see the full message, but the beauty of Sparrow is that you’ll often find it isn’t necessary. In terms of both looks and navigation, Sparrow feels like a Twitter app, which for my relatively light Gmail usage is a good thing.

Everything You Need, Unless You Need a Lot

Sparrow isn’t a power email client. None of the frills like image and attachment indexing and filtering that something like Postbox offers is available here, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If what you’re looking for is an out-of-browser experience for Gmail that’s light, fast, responsive and looks great alongside your other Mac apps, this is the client.

Maybe Sparrow’s greatest strength is the fact that it keeps everything contained. With the message preview pane expanded, you can reply to emails without ever opening a separate window. You can drag and drop attachments to the same window, quickly add labels and switch between accounts with a click or keyboard shortcut. Sparrow may not be as versatile or deep as other clients, but by reducing visual clutter and simplifying the email experience, it could help to save your sanity when dealing with an inbox avalanche.

Mail’s Misses Are Sparrow’s Gains

Sparrow does two wonderful things Mail doesn’t. It provides Growl notifications out-of-the box (provided you have Growl installed), and it provides Menu Bar access and notifications without the need for any third-party extensions. I love that Sparrow provides the option to only use a Menu Bar icon, so I can keep my dock clutter free and have the option to receive only subtle visual notifications if I’d rather turn off Growl notifications for some extensive, head-down working sessions.

Gmail for Now, Everything Else Later

For the time being, I’m happy to use Sparrow as a dedicated Gmail client, which is good because the current version of the app only supports Gmail accounts. Sparrow 1.1 will support IMAP email from a variety of sources, including Yahoo, AOL and MobileMe. Even when that support comes, I doubt I’ll ever retire Apple Mail entirely, since it works so well with MobileMe, but Sparrow will definitely be a permanent fixture for all my Gmail needs.

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I’ve used Twitterific in the past, both on the iPhone and on the Mac, and I always appreciate the attention to detail Iconfactory puts into its UI design. But the app never felt robust enough for me, especially as a user who needs more features for managing multiple accounts. However, I’m not a fan of TweetDeck, which, though powerful, frankly just seems ugly and cluttered.

There are other candidates when it comes to Mac Twitter apps, including Nambu, Kiwi and Socialite. While each offers a decent experience, they all either lack the polish I’ve come to appreciate from companies like Atebits and Iconfactory, are missing key features, or just aren’t focused enough for my purposes.

Tweetie’s questionable future means that there’s a space to fill in the Mac Twitter arena. While there’s no firm release date for Twitterific 4, Iconfactory clearly wanted to stake its claim on that spot. And it looks like a strong claim, too. The screenshot they’ve released (yes, there’s only one) shows a window that looks clean and minimalistic, but seems to have multiple account support and easy access to all your basic features.

I’d still prefer a sidebar to a dropdown for account switching, but there’s no way of saying whether or not that might simply be an option not pictured. Either way, it looks promising, and it should at least be much more current in terms of Twitter’s recent changes to its API and features.

Twitterific is a promising start, but it’d be great to see others enter the arena. The gap left by Tweetie’s long hibernation could be the means by which another up-and-coming Mac dev studio makes a name for itself. Neither Twitter nor the Mac are markets lacking in growth potential, after all.

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Early this morning, Twitter for iOS was updated as a universal app, bringing a new iPad-specific format to the existing iPhone one. Loren Birchter, the man behind the Twitter app, and Twitter itself has long heralded its arrival. So is it worth the wait?

Well, Twitter definitely has the right idea with this app at first glance. Unlike some other third-party clients I could mention, Twitter for iPad takes full advantage of the iPad’s generous screen space, and does so creatively. You won’t find the same sort of columns that Tweetdeck uses, but you will find a modular, multi-pane layout that pushes new content to the right allowing you to navigate through threads of tweets without losing the thread of where you’ve come from and how exactly you got there.

You can also use two nifty new multitouch gestures. Pinching a tweet will show you the user profile of the person who tweeted it, and pulling down with two fingers will open up a view of the entire conversation related to that tweet, if there is one. Video plays inline, or you can expand it to take up the whole screen. It also continues to load in the background if you want to keep navigating through your stream or open panes.

In terms of the differences between landscape and profile view, there really aren’t any, other than getting to see more of your history in landscape, and more of your timeline in portrait. Users of the OS X Tweetie desktop app will recognize the left-most account overview column, and it works equally well on this platform for switching between multiple Twitter profiles.

So, while some power-users might still prefer Tweetdeck’s columns, Twitter’s iPad app is a much better choice for the rest of us. It’s clean, simple, but powerful when it needs to be, and I’ve yet to run into any bugs. Plus, it’s free. This is by far the best Twitter app out there for the iPad platform.

Users who haven’t yet updated to iOS 4 on their iPhone devices might want to hold out updating for now, though, as many negative reviews in the App Store indicate that the new version crashes on iOS versions 3.1.3 and earlier. 

There’s a lot of other new features and improvements, too, including tweet geotagging, spam reporting via the official Twitter API, What the Trend explanation of trending topics, and more. Once again, Tweetie has returned to the top of the heap, in terms of both functionality and UI.

Lists can be created, edited, managed and viewed, all from within Tweetie 2 now. That means if users post links in the “@user/list” format, you’ll be able to just click on it to view said list. Your own list management and creation features are accessible via the ellipsis (…) icon. I still have yet to create any of my own lists, but testing this out with the lists of others, it seemed to be well-implemented.

New video upload and hosting options are also available. You can now select from Posterous, Mobypicture and Vid.ly, in addition to TwitVid and yFrog. Maybe best of all among the UI changes, you can now disable automatic browser rotation, which is a feature every landscape-capable app should have, speaking as someone who often browses lying down in bed or on the couch.

Lots of other smaller changes and a long list of bug fixes are also included as part of the 2.1 update. The update is free for all Tweetie 2 users, but if you haven’t yet made the leap to the newest version, the $2.99 price tag is seeming incredibly reasonable right about now.

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Twittelator Pro is the first iPhone client to use the new Lists API. Using the app, you can now create or edit your own lists, view the lists of other users, and follow or unfollow lists. It’s a nice alternative to client-based groups, and it’s especially convenient on the iPhone platform, since it makes Twitter’s information glut a little more digestible.

The update also brings some more list-centric new discovery tools, like suggestions, featured, random, and list searching so that you can explore beyond your own network. It’s actually got me looking around at lists, which is more than I’ve done since Twitter implemented the feature. As a way of finding new people to follow, or of locating good thematically grouped news sources all in one place, the search function is especially helpful.

Here’s a list of some of the other new features introduced in version 3.4:

• Reply All – Tap the user avatar next to the tweet to reply to all mentioned.
• What the Trend? – Provides an explanation for why a topic is trending.
• Search Nearby shows avatars on map pins
• Emailing a link uses the web page title as the message subject by default
• Much faster download times

Twittelator Pro sells for $4.99 in the App Store. It’s a very feature-rich piece of software, but a little too busy for my tastes. If you’re a TweetDeck desktop user, it’ll probably be more to your liking.

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Now, thanks to Grackle68k, Mac users who are still running Macintosh System 6, 7, 8 and 9 can have a dedicated Twitter client of their very own. Personally, I think the release of this app was just timed to steal the spotlight away from Seesmic for Windows. Obviously this is much bigger news!

Twitter is available to pretty much any platform, and that’s no accident. The technology behind it is relatively lightweight, with clients only really needing the ability to make API calls to be completely functional. The memory footprint of clients differs depending on what developers choose to add on the client side of things, but little is needed to make one actually functional.

That’s the idea behind Grackle68k, a labor of love for a small group of programmers who realize that there’s still quite the classic Mac enthusiast crowd out there who actually use their well-aged machines for some basic tasks in addition to just keeping them running (myself included). The program lets you tweet, but if you want it to remember who you are on each startup, you’ll have to break out the ResEdit and make a change to a resource by adding your login information. It’s an added step, true, but a fun one that should bring back memories, so hey, I’m not gonna complain.

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At first, I thought this sounded like only half an idea. There are already some great Twitter clients in the Mac software space, most of which have integrated search functions built right in, so how does Incoming! carve out a niche by offering search alone? What I found out was that depending on your Twitter habits, it might actually be the only app you need.

What it offers is a very robust search manager, well above and beyond what the average built-in Twitter search in other clients provide. You can filter results by matching exact phrases, finding any or all of multiple terms, or by exclusionary keywords (so that I can search for “Apple” but exclude “Pie,” for instance). You can even specify positive or negative attitudes (which just searches for a smiley or frowny emoticon, but it works), or specify that you want only questions.

The interface also provides lots of options for filtering your tweets and navigating between searches and trending topics. On the left, your searches appear in the sidebar, and are only removed when you click the “Remove Search” button. Below that list is a pane containing trends. Double-clicking on any trending term will automatically create a search for said term. On the right you have your list of results and the actual tweet-viewing window. You can filter results by influence, username, following/follower count, updates and date.

At no point during any of this do you log into your Twitter account or post any tweets of your own. Some users will no doubt find this bothersome, and question the app’s usefulness, but if you use Twitter for research as much as I do, the arm’s length passivity of Incoming! is just what the doctor ordered. It might also appeal to people who don’t yet want to take the Twitter plunge themselves by signing up for an account, but want access to all the content that’s available via the service, in a much more manageable package than Twitter.com’s own search page.

For those who absolutely need to reply and retweet, you still can; Incoming! just opens the native Twitter web interface to allow you to do so. The application also has some nice extras, like allowing you to export your results to a CSV database file format, providing “Translate” and “Translate All” options, and allowing you to instantly see all of the links and images your search has returned taken out of their individual tweets. It’s the closest thing to a Google for Twitter I’ve yet come across.

The software is currently in beta, which I think explains why the auto-refresh function wasn’t working for me. It’s free, so long as you only want to run three searches at once. Registration removes the search limit cap, and costs $14 while the beta is on, or $24 after that.

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With the introduction of Push Notification Services, I envisaged a world of iPhone apps that would deliver countless valuable updates as they occurred. Of course, that’s precisely what hasn’t happened. Few of the apps available in the App Store actually make use of PNS, and those that do are of dubious value. (For example, Ambiance pushes notification of new sounds added to its library. Useful? No, not particularly.)

I also imagined we’d have Push notifications in our Twitter clients by now (Atebits, I’m looking at you!) because knowing what my fellow geeks are doing right now on the other side of the world is crucially important to me. I know you understand.

One Twitter app that’s leading the way with PNS is SimplyTweet 2.0. It’s Yet Another Twitter Client, sure, but it has an impressive feature set and its developer, Hwee-Boon Yar, sat down to answer some questions about the app, including telling me what it’s like developing for the iPhone as well as sharing his experiences of being on the receiving end of Apple’s broken application approval process.

Hwee-Boon, 31, lives in sunny Singapore where he owns and runs MotionObj, a company dedicated to iPhone software development. I wanted to know why he created Yet Another Twitter Client.

“I had used the iPhone for about a year and when the App Store was announced I thought, why not give it a try? I already had a Twitter account for some time but there weren’t any Twitter clients that met my needs -– in fact, I think there were only about three Twitter apps back then.

I already knew Smalltalk and C, and the toolset and languages for developing iPhone applications is based heavily on those language. So I thought a Twitter client would be an easy way to learn the tools and to build a business on, especially since I preferred not to work for anyone else. That was the start of the App Store Gold Rush period, and I was very naive.”

There has been an explosion in Twitter clients in the last year. Isn’t the market too saturated to bring anything meaningful to the table?

“When I started, there was only a few Twitter clients, but I could see the numbers growing. I joked that Twitter apps are the new flashlights in the App Store. But Twitter clients are one of those wonderful applications that can be treated in many different ways. Some applications do very well with a clean user interface and basic functionality, some applications strive to have tons of functionality. Occasionally one will appear that tries to do something innovative.

My aim is to keep SimplyTweet’s interface simple and usable but at the same time add and enhance features, such as conversation threading, push notifications, themes and photo searching.”

Bringing together the various APIs and having them all play nicely together must have been taxing; you presumably had to combine Twitter’s API, the iPhone SDK/Frameworks and interoperability with Apple’s PNS Servers. In the words of Marge Simpson, this sounds like a hassle coupled with a burden.

“The iPhone application itself makes use of Apple’s iPhone SDK, and there are occasional bugs in there, quirks that have to be worked around. Some of the functionality used in Apple’s built-in applications [in the iPhone OS] are not made available to developers. For example, I spent a day building the trash can animation effect similar to how the trash can button in Mail animates when you delete an email –- all because that element is not made available to developers for use in their own apps. But these problems are not uncommon to most platforms.

Interfacing with Twitter can pose problems. Sometimes they make a change that requires the code in the SimplyTweet application to be updated. Here’s where the real problem is. Twitter is kind enough to give sufficient lead time for developers to make changes, usually around five days. This works when you have full publishing control over your application. Unfortunately, with the App Store, even if you make a change and immediately submit the new update, there is no guarantee it will be approved within five days. I have waited weeks, sometimes only to have an update rejected; [I] worked out a fix, then had it rejected again. Each re-submission puts you at the back of the queue again.”

So while day-to-day iPhone software development is built on rock-solid foundations, the complaints we’ve been hearing about Apple’s approval process are valid? Is the process really broken?

“In short, it’s a mess. Approvals are unpredictable and payment is hard to track. Plus we can’t charge for upgrades, but for many software developers, upgrades are a major source of income.”

Including SimplyTweet?

“SimplyTweet has been relatively unknown for a long time, but it has actually undergone more than eight upgrades. All of those were free. But making updates can often take a lot of time and currently, there is no way a developer can make money from them. Add to this the hits-based nature of the App Store and you find developers are not so keen to do upgrades. The App Store apps are relatively cheap compared to what’s available on other mobile platforms, which is great for iPhone customers, but it doesn’t foster a healthy developer ecosystem.”

Hwee-Boon thinks that this low-cost, short-run revenue model will cause the quality of applications to drop and ultimately hurt both developers and users. It’s hard to disagree. We’ve all seen apps repackaged with “Pro” suffixes to justify charging customers afresh for what is, essentially, an upgrade to an existing app. (I invite you to add your own examples of such Apps in the comments.)

So why continue to develop for the iPhone when the outcome remains so bleak?

“Despite major issues with the App store, the iPhone is still the best mobile platform at the moment. Only at the moment.”

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It’s the weekend, people, so prime your downloading finger and get ready to make good use of it as I guide you through the latest picks from the App Store.

Thanks to the release of OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS, there’s been a constant stream of Apple happenings. Before we get to the apps, let’s take a glance at the week’s news.

First up, good news and bad for the iPhone 3GS’s new video functionality. The bad news is that keen eared early adopting customers have discovered a high-pitched whining noise on their iPhone 3GS video footage.

However, the incessant whining (of the 3GS, as opposed to disgruntled amateur video makers) hasn’t stopped video uploads to YouTube, direct from the iPhone. Just six days into the device’s release and YouTube has seen a surge of 400 percent in daily mobile uploads, attributed directly to the iPhone 3GS.

With the official release of OS 3.0 also came an updated jailbreaking tool, enabling upgraded users to install non-Apple certified software on their device. I tested the jailbreak software earlier this week and, although it was surprisingly user-friendly, I couldn’t find a good reason to keep it: My iPhone now has copy/paste, tethering and more, straight out the box.

Speaking of tethering, Bryan Schuetz, one of our new arrivals at TheAppleBlog, posted a link to an excellent guide on how to activate tethering on your iPhone. I managed to test out tethering yesterday and had mixed results; it worked perfectly initially, until an hour in when I lost my data connection entirely. It makes me wonder if some carriers will be on the lookout for illegitimate tethering and throttle bandwidth accordingly.

Our own Sultan of Statistics and Maestro of Economic Mathematics, Darrell Etherington, posted news featuring a rather large and impressive number this week. Indeed, Etherington revealed that an utterly unprecedented 1 million 3GS iPhones were purchased during the first week of the device’s release.

And finally, Apple hasn’t been the only ones launching awesome, new products into the consumer nether. British dev studio UsTwo has updated MouthOff, a sound-reactive mouth toy, for iPhone. The MouthOff Signature series includes a selection of 37 weird mouths, including 12 specially commissioned mouths by artists including Jon Burgerman, Pete Fowler and, my fave, Mikko Walamies, the artist behind Rolando’s gorgeous graphics.

Check out the vid I tweeted of the app in action and, if you decide you want to get a new mouth on with MouthOff, then you can win a free promo code for the app. Simply leave a comment at the end of this post telling me why you should get your MouthOff to be in with a chance of winning.

Moving onto the picks, this week I’ve been looking at Jukebox, App Gmail, Star Defense and Taxiball.

Jukebox (99 cents)
My favorite feature back on those early iPods was the music quiz. With an ever-expanding collection of digital music, I loved to test my muso abilities with the Name That Tune-style game bundled with the iPod, courtesy of Apple. Come the release of the iPod touch and iPhone, the game was curiously absent from the new devices — despite the potential for an even-more muso-centric gaming experience. That is until now, thanks to the iPhone’s new 3.0 update, giving developers access to the music library. Jukebox is a gorgeous implementation of this old game, incorporating album artwork and custom gaming modes.

App Gmail (Free)
Apple’s own Mail for iPhone might do the job, but in the meantime, Google has been squeezing a raft of new features and improvements into its Gmail web app for iPhone. Navigational elements have been tweaked, making it easier to skim and sort messages, but the real head-turning feature is offline Gmail, via the web app. All well and good, but there’s still no dedicated app for Gmail, making accessing the web app via Safari feel a tad sloppy. App Gmail meets us halfway to solve the issue — embedding the Gmail web app within the app itself — ridding us of the Safari interface elements. It’s still not an official, dedicated app, but it’ll do the job for now and it’s free.

Star Defense ($5.99)
It may have come out earlier this month, but Star Defense is only just coming into it’s own, thanks to the iPhone OS 3.0 update. The game itself is traditional tower defense given a graphical overhaul — the game features all the usual staples of the genre — multiple towers, waves of baddies — but the 3D graphics and Mario Galaxy-esque palm-size planets make it a thrilling experience. The 3.0 update integrates ngmoco’s Plus+ network. Think of it like the iPhone’s version of Xbox Live, which means multiplayer mode, challenging your friends and gamer points. What’s more, if a friend issues you a challenge, the game sends you a push notification.

Taxiball ($2.99)
As a student, sharing a house with a bunch of messy guys, we’d settle cleaning disputes with a game of Virtua Tennis on Sega’s Dreamcast. The console, sadly, died a premature death, criminally under-appreciated for what it was and the games it offered. Aside from Virtua Tennis, one of my other favorite Dreamcast games was Crazy Taxi. For those who aren’t familiar, driving your cab against the clock, you had to race across town delivering folk where they needed to go. It was massive, thrilling, looked gorgeous, and played like GTA without the constant death or Good Fellas voiceovers. With that in mind, Taxiball replaces the taxi with a big, yellow ball and brings the game to the iPhone. It’s frantic and moreish, well worth checking out.

That’s all the picks for this week. I’ll be back in seven days with more news from the week and picks from the App Store.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

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Part of me wishes people would stop making great Twitter clients for the iPhone so that I can just pick a horse and stick to it, but another, far larger part of me is thrilled to see TweetDeck (free, iTunes link) come to the App Store. While I stopped using the desktop client in favor of Nambu, and later Tweetie for Mac, because I far prefer a native OS X app to an Adobe AIR one, I loved and deeply missed some of TweetDeck’s features, including support for custom user groups.

Which is why when TweetDeck hit the App Store, I was all over it.

Maximum Usability

With an app like this, I feel compelled to get right to the point: TweetDeck is the most usable Twitter client yet to appear on the iPhone platform. The key to that usability lies in their trademark columnar layout, which they’ve actually managed to successfully port to the iPhone version in a way that makes sense.

Once you’ve entered your Twitter credentials, you’re presented with a screen that looks a little like mobile Safari when you zoom out to choose between your multiple open tabs or pages. These are the columns in TweetDeck for iPhone. By default, there’s one for all of the people you follow, one for @ mentions and one for direct messages. To this default set, you can also add specific keyword searches, user groups and favorites.

And columns allow for the best implementation of multiple Twitter accounts I’ve ever seen. Once you’ve registered another account with the device, all you have to do is choose that username in the “Add Column” dialog. Then you can rearrange the columns however you like, and have access to multiple account streams side-by-side. Easier than both Twitterific’s Source list and Tweetie’s account switching. Maybe best of all, when you’re composing, all you have to do is click your account name to switch.

One of the neatest tricks up TweetDeck’s sleeve is the ability to move columns simply by holding your finger on any one in the zoomed-out view. The columns will then start to jiggle, just like icons on your main iPhone springboard, and you can rearrange them as necessary.

Tight Desktop Integration

Another big benefit of TweetDeck, for users of the desktop version, is the ability to sync back and forth. That means that you don’t have to set up your columns and groups all over again when you start using TweetDeck on the iPhone. All of those settings will be imported, so long as you have the latest version of TweetDeck and a TweetDeck account, which you can sign up for from the iPhone app.

Syncing is also automatic, and happens in the background. Not only that, but it’s a two-way street. If you remove a column or account on the Twitter version of the app, the change is likewise made in your Adobe AIR installation as well. That’s very handy if you use Twitter a lot for work purposes, like I do. It might even be reason enough to go back to using the desktop version.

TweetDeck on the iPhone also looks and behaves like the desktop version, so there’s relatively little ramping up to be done. It even has “Growl” notifications, though I wonder about them using that name specifically, since the people behind Growl can’t have worked on the iPhone version, right? Still, they work, and they work well, although you might find the whole interface a little too busy depending on your aesthetic tastes.

Bottom Line

Is TweetDeck my new go-to Twitter client on the iPhone? Not exactly. Thing is, when I’m using Twitter from my phone, I’d say 90 percent of the time it’s just to kill some time. For that purpose, TweetDeck is overkill, and not really as suited for quick, casual checking as, say, Tweetie or Twitterific. But if I need to find a specific tweet, or I’m using Twitter on-the-go for work or research purposes, than TweetDeck is definitely my weapon of choice.

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• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
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News of the Mac app’s imminent release came yesterday (fittingly) via atebits’ own Twitter account, linking to a brief video on the atebits web site previewing the app. The trailer reminds me a little of an Apple commercial, thanks to the look and the sexy soundtrack. What’s more impressive, though, is the functionality the preview shows off. Tweetie for the Mac already looks like a heavily favored contender for best native OS X Twitter app.

Screen grab from the preview

The interface looks simple, but powerful, with a main window for displaying tweets and a sidebar on the left for quickly accessing your tweet stream, @replies, private messages, and search. You can switch between multiple accounts on the fly, just by clicking the appropriate profile icon in the same left-hand menu.

Other features include threaded conversations, that you access just by clicking on a reply, iChat style DM exchanges, easy nested navigation at the top of the app’s interface, drag and drop image sharing, in-app twitpic viewing, built-in searching, and link sharing via a bookmarklet for your browser. I’m sure there’s plenty more, but we’ll have to wait till this upcoming Monday to find out. I know I’ve got my day cleared.

In my business, I need to keep track of logins for clients as well as for my own use. I keep all my client information in Daylite forms or notes, where it’s linked to all the other information about that client. But what if you just want to keep passwords secure? And what if you want to share those passwords between machines? Or what if you want your password manager to integrate into your web browser? Or keep that info with you on your iPhone? Well then, here are five password management solutions for the Mac that may work for you.

1Password

I have been avoiding using a password management app for a long time. I guess I was a little suspicious of them, or reluctant to trust one app with all that info. I bought 1Password last year, and now I’m a total convert. The desktop app integrates directly into Safari and Firefox, as well as other browsers like Camino and apps like NetNewsWire. The plug-ins help you to capture login information as you enter it, or generate strong passwords as you create logins online. You can also quickly fill out logins and other forms with personal information like your address and/or credit card information that you store in 1Password. This integration with Safari and Firefox is what has me sold on 1Password. It’s so easy to use that I don’t notice it and I love that I don’t have to leave the browser to pull up my passwords like I do with the other solutions.

The iPhone app syncs with the desktop over Wi-Fi as long as both devices can see each other on the same network. The iPhone app implements a browser inside the app to enable auto-fill. You can also sync javascript bookmarklets to Safari that will launch in Safari on the iPhone and auto-fill your password on sites in the native browser. While this isn’t as secure as some other choices, it does make it possible to avoid having to switch back and forth between the password app and the Safari browser on your iPhone to type in a username and password manually.

You can sync your password file between multiple Macs by using the Mac OS X Keychain and MobileMe syncing (not recommended) or by using file-based syncing with Agile Keychain format (recommended). Instructions for file-based syncing using a couple of solutions are provided on the Agile Web Solutions web site.

1Password is $39.95 for a single user license or $69.95 for a five-license family pack. The iPhone app is free. There is a Palm OS app available as well.

SplashID

SplashID has been around a long time and is very well respected in Palm and Windows Mobile circles. The desktop app for the Mac provides password generation and syncing with the SplashID iPhone app. You can create items with custom fields and set the labels as you like. Several types are provided to group and organize items. You can launch web sites from within the app and it will auto-fill the form on the page (at least with Safari). It doesn’t capture login information from the browser like 1Password does.

While I was using it, I found myself missing the Safari and Firefox plugins from 1Password. The variety of items that you can store compares favorably, but I think the interface is a little rough. The iPhone app will sync with the desktop and includes a strong password generator. If you want to sync your info between your Mac and a Windows Mobile, BlackBerry or Symbian device, this is your only choice.

SplashID Desktop can compare entries between two password databases and sync the results to both copies.

The cost for the desktop app is $20. The iPhone app is $9.99. There is a free Lite version of the iPhone app that is limited to 15 entries to try it out.

Password Wallet

Password Wallet works with your desktop and iPhone. The desktop interface is minimal and unobtrusive. Some may like the narrow window used to list items stored in the wallet file. You can also keep multiple wallet files, each with their own master password, if you have need for that feature. Clicking on a URL will open the page in the default browser and hover a window with auto-fill options over the browser. This works great for launching sites from within Password Wallet, but I still resent having to leave the browser to start that process. Seriously, once you’ve tried 1Password’s method on the desktop, there is no going back.

The Password Wallet iPhone app implements its own browser in the app to enable auto-fill. If you want to use Mobile Safari, you’ll have to switch back and forth.

The Password Wallet desktop app is $20 and the iPhone app is currently free.

Wallet 3

Wallet is one of the most polished desktop apps on the Mac. The user interface is very accessible and will look familiar to anyone who has used Address Book on the Mac. It follows the same three-column layout with large “+” buttons at the bottom of the first two columns and an edit button below the third. You can create custom folders in the first column to group entries, but an entry can only belong in one group. You can use the notes to tag entries as the search bar will look in there along with other fields.

The desktop app will auto-fill login forms for your default browser if you launch the page from within Wallet. The iPhone app syncs with the desktop app through MobileMe. If you don’t have a MobileMe account, you are out of luck for Mac-to-Mac syncing. iPhone syncing can still be accomplished over Wi-Fi.

The Wallet desktop app is $20 and the iPhone app is $3.99.

KeePassX

KeePassX is an open-source GPL project that is available for Mac, Windows and Linux. There is no iPhone app and there is no integration with web browsers on the Mac. Still, the databases are compatible between different platforms so KeyPassX is a good solution if you need to copy your password database around for access from different systems. It’s also free, which could be a huge plus for some.

1Password is for Me

1Password is definitely the best solution for my needs. It lets me capture login information in the browser itself, I don’t have to leave the browser to use auto-fill, and I can use it for web forms that need other information like my home address or credit card (I’m still not using the credit-card section; old habits, I guess). The iPhone app will do auto-fill with an embedded browser or the native Safari browser with the javascript bookmarklet (less secure but more convenient). If you need BlackBerry or Windows Mobile support, check out SplashID. Wallet works great if you have MobileMe and KeePassX is perfect for those that want to keep their password database in sync across platforms.

If you’ve been holding out for something like RoboForm on Windows, 1Password is as close as it gets — at least until RoboForm finally fills this Senior Mac Developer position they’ve had open for a while now.

For the next versions of these products, I would love to see a tagging feature so I can keep a taxonomy of tags for entries rather than just free-form notes. I would also like to to see a system where an entry can belong to multiple groups so I could file an entry under both a client name, a project, and a service provider, though tagging would accomplish the same thing.

What password management app do you use?

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A number of different email clients are available for the Mac, but a new piece of software announced at MacWorld takes a new and different approach. Postbox is a new way to manage online communication, aiming to let you spend less time managing messages and more time getting things done. Built with powerful search and organization features, finding and browsing old messages is a simple process.

A video of the application in action can be seen at a recent presentation, and gives a great overview of what the app is capable of. The system supports all manner of email accounts and formats; IMAP, POP3, SMTP, Mobile Me, Gmail, RSS and Newsgroups. The software is noted to scale well, having been tested on databases of up to 30,000 messages.

The Main Interface

The main interface consists of folders, topics and search tabs. Folders and topics are used for categorizing and managing your email, and search tabs allow you to quickly view your contacts (generated based on all the messages you’ve received), images, attachments and links. Easy searching is central to the application and is given a great deal of attention.

The detail of the interface itself is impressive, feeling very much like a native Mac app. That said, it does feel slightly cluttered at times and there is undoubtedly room for further simplification in its look and feel.

The idea of ‘topics’ adds a different slant to traditional folder organization. These operate in a similar way to tags, and messages can be set to automatically be assigned a topic depending upon their contents or who they are from.

Conversations

As with many modern mail clients, the facility exists to display email messages in conversation threads. This is done in an accurate and visually appealing way, clearly displaying the details for each message along with a summary of who is involved with the conversation.

The sidebar area in a conversation is something I could see being very useful. It collects all the information which has so far been shared in a message thread: links, addresses, images, attachments — it’s all displayed in one place. This saves a great deal of time navigating back and forth through different messages.

Searching

While both Postbox and Mail.app are fantastic at cataloguing mail message content, Postbox takes displaying search results to a new and interesting level; emphasis is placed on context. When searching for a piece of text within a message, for instance, results show the matching results with a multi sentence abstract around it. Messages retain their original thread information, and searching for images shows all the related message information.

Sharing

With full integration to web services such as Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and Delicious, sharing information received via email is remarkably simple. Right clicking a link, for instance, brings up a context menu of useful export options:

Getting content from various web services into a new message is just as simple — the sidebar lets you pull in information directly from search engines, reference sources, and social media sites. Integration with Google is present through the application, though for now there doesn’t seem to be any link to this being a revenue stream for the developers (as is the case with applications such as Firefox).

Conclusion

After trying Postbox I would seriously consider it as an alternative to the standard Mail.app shipping with OS X. It takes a step forward in terms of features, offering far greater functionality than Apple’s basic email client. That said, I do enjoy the simple interface of Mail.app and there are a number of minor bugs which will need ironing out before the release of Postbox.

Postbox is currently in Beta stage, and you’re able to register your details to be notified of new developments. This can all be done through the Postbox site.

What are your thoughts on the application. Do you feel that it will prove to be a solid competitor to Mail.app, or are people more likely to continue the gradual move towards web-based email services? I’m sure Apple will be watching the development of this application carefully, and I would not be surprised if several of the features it offers make an appearance in a future version of Mail.app.

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