April 2010 Archives
Apr15

Opera Mini for iPhone

Posted at 6:34 AM • No Comments

Opera Mini was approved and released a few days ago. I stumbled upon this quick review of it by another iPhone user and it sums up exactly how I feel too:

  1. Wow, this thing is fast! It’s faster than Flash! (no pun intended)
  2. I like these little tab thingies. Very cool.
  3. I also like the thumbnails on the home page (what they call Speed Dial).
  4. Crap. There are tons of CSS issues and right off the bat, we’ve become enemies.
  5. What is that nasty blue border that surrounds links when I click on them?
  6. Filling out forms feels so weird. They completely did away with the native UI.
  7. Red bar at the top, all the time… annoying.
  8. What’s the difference between a bookmark and a saved page?
  9. Mobile View? Really, Opera? I’m already on a mobile device.
  10. Sigh. Is it just me or is the UI sloppy? Or maybe I’m just used to Apple’s UI perfection.
  11. Nothing left to say. Sorry, Opera.

Opera Mini is fast, but it has issues with rendering CSS and I’m not too crazy about the user interface it has. Some things just don’t make much sense as to why it was done in the app. I think Opera Mini still needs a lot of fixing before overpowering Safari from the iPhone. I’m quite happy with Safari for now.

Apr13

Events in Gowalla

Posted at 10:57 PM • No Comments

Gowalla posted on their blog earlier today about an upcoming feature to their app: Events. Oh yes! You can create event spots for all kinds of different types of events and invite people to it so they can check in & add photos to it. It’s not mentioned if you can drop items at the event spots or not.

The blog post is below:

People and places are at the core of Gowalla. Today, we’re adding something pretty great that is a big part of people and places: Events!

Now you can create a spot in Gowalla for the events in your life. It couldn’t be simpler.

  • Grab your friends and Gowalla and head to wherever the fun is happening.
  • Create a spot for the occasion.
  • Choose the category Events, then the type of event. Pick from Birthday Party, Concert, Meet Up, Watch Party (Lost, anyone?), Wedding, and more!
  • Check in, add comments and post photos.

You and your friends will have a stamp in your passport to mark the event and a page that includes all of your comments and photos. Get enough people involved and your event might become a Hot Spot in your area. Plus, the spot will automatically expire 12 hours later. Don’t worry, you’ll still have the stamp and the page, it just won’t show up in Nearby Spots.

Events are one more reason to go out with Gowalla. We’re excited to get this into your hands. Thanks for making Gowalla awesome!

It’s a pretty neat idea, but I still see the possible misuse of the new feature by groups of users. When a legitimate event is created, I can see some users creating their own event spots for the event, instead of using the one that’s already created. A duplicate. You know how much I love duplicate spots, my Gowalla friends. Maybe it doesn’t really matter. I think we’ll know more once the feature is live. Hopefully only invited guests can check into these event spots.

The nice thing, if they do abuse it, the spot will never be seen again in 12 hours after it’s created. You’re list of nearby spots won’t be cluttered with loads of crappy spots from users creating their own private events. In 12 hours, POOF! All gone!

Apr11

CNN.com Screws Up Tweetie Sale

Posted at 6:05 PM • No Comments

How bad can a news organization screw up? It appears that CNN just has again. For reporting on the story of the sale of Atebits’ Tweetie iPhone app to Twitter, CNN.com gets a screenshot of tweetie.com, which has nothing to do with Tweetie app developer Atebits whose URL is http://www.atebits.com.

Oh, CNN. When will you get competent people that will make sure they get the correct info? How about double checking your stories before publishing them?

CNN #FAIL on reporting Tweetie Sale

I’d like to thank @majorh for tweeting this out & bringing it to my attention.

Apr10

Twitter Buys Tweetie

Posted at 5:51 PM • No Comments

If you haven’t heard yet, Twitter has bought Atebits, the company behind the popular Tweetie iPhone app and Mac desktop application. Twitter plans on making the app their official iPhone app, renaming it “Twitter for iPhone” and making it free (currently $2.99 for the App Store). The story has been making big news around Mac, iPhone, social media, and tech sites since the news broke last night. You can read all of those articles on your own and get the gist of the entire thing.

Tweetie 2 - To be Twitter for iPhone

I haven’t used Tweetie for the iPhone yet, but I have played around with the Mac version. It didn’t like it, although the design of the user interface is nice. I prefer using TweetDeck on the Mac. As for the iPhone, I’ve been using Twittelator Pro for almost 2 years now. I bought the Pro version on a recommendation of a good friend and I was not disappointed. Twittelator Pro was definitely worth the $4.99! I’ve recommended many time over the past 2 years. When Tweetie came out, I didn’t buy it. And when Tweetie 2 came out, I didn’t buy that either. Now that Twitter is going to re-release a new rebranded version of it, I’m willing to at least try it out. I wasn’t going to spend the $2.99 to try it out. I’m quite happy with my Twitterlator Pro. I’ve been very unsatisfied with all other Twitter apps for the iPhone and to blow $2.99 on something I don’t even like using on the Mac just make sense to me. I wasn’t thrilled with TweetDeck for the iPhone, although, as mentioned earlier, I do like it on my desktop.

I think Twitter is making a move to make it’s name more well known and making their own official apps for mobile devices, having already done so for Blackberry devices. I believe it’s a smart move on their part, but I don’t like Tweetie. I am glad that they didn’t buy Twittelator. I wonder what device they’ll do next – Android, Palm, Windows Phone?

This purchase by Twitter is very interesting nonetheless and I’ll be watching for the new Twitter for iPhone app for it’s release to see if it’s popularity continues. And I might even try it out. If you’re like me and wanting to try out Tweetie, just wait.

If you want more info directly from Twitter on all of this, they’ve created a Twitter account (DUH! Of course!) for you to follow called @TwitterMobile.

Apr9

John Lydon on Red Eye

Posted at 2:59 PM • No Comments

From Fox News’ Red Eye show on 04/09/2010. John talks about the death of Malcolm McLaren and the Public Image Limited reunion & North American tour.

Apr8

PiL on Jimmy Kimmel

Posted at 9:37 PM • No Comments

I’m not going to say stupid shit like some other blogger did as to why John Lydon from Public Image Limited didn’t get the chance to do his interview with Jimmy Kimmel during the regular airing of the show on 04/07/2010. (To the blogger: Where did you pull that excuse from? Lydon was on Jimmy Kimmel already being interviewed on stage during the show’s normal airing with the Sex Pistols.) So they talked after the band performed (2 clips below the 2 songs)

“Rise”

“This Is Not A Love Song”

Here are 2 clips from the interview:

Apr1

Got Ollie?

Posted at 3:53 PM • No Comments

Gowalla & The Icon Factory are teaming up to give Gowalla users a new item to collect. And of course it’s the mascot of The Icon Factory’s Twitterific Twitter app, Ollie. Just check into your closest Apple Store in the U.S. to find your very own Ollie, but be quick! You will only be able to find Ollie until April 6, 2010! And there are only 10,000 of them!!!

Gowalla - Ollie Item
I got mine!

Twittelator Pro & Gowalla need to hook up! I love Twittelator Pro!