After a good night of sleep, some Twitter users wake up and want to see what’s been happening on their feed for the past 8 hours. Open up Twittelator Pro and it loads the last 200 tweets. For some people that follow more people than others, one could have a lot more than 200 tweets from people that they’re following since they went to bed or even during a long, busy day at work. Normally I would go to my computer and open up Twitter’s website and scroll back through all of the tweets that I missed. That is just a pain though. It would be so much easier to just load more than the last 200 tweets so one can get caught up on everything.

VS

Along comes Tweetbot from Tapbots, makers of Calcbot, Weightbot, Pastebot, & Convertbot. Tapbots makes some great looking & functioning apps and this includes their latest app, Tweetbot. It was billed as a great replacement for the official Twitter iPhone app (formally Tweetie). Seeing how Tapbots already made some great apps, I decided to buy Tweetbot when it first came out and give it a good work out. Normally, I don’t buy Twitter apps, but since Tapbots has great apps, I thought it was a no-brainer. Currently, the price is $2.99 from the App Store.

After trying out Tweetbot, I did find it lacking some (what I thought) basic features and functionality that I was used to in Twittelator Pro, but it was only the first version of the app and the developers already had updates planned out. So I went back to my favorite, Twittelator Pro and patiently waited for updates to Tweetbot.

A few more updates to Tweetbot and I was very happy with the way it was progressing, but still disappointed that some functionality was not there in the app that was used to in Twittelator Pro. Another update and now Tweetbot had notifications and I was quick to get in on that, due to the limited amount available at the time. The notifications worked great, but I was still using Boxcar to get notifications from Twitter.

Recently, I’ve been getting more and more frustrated with Twittelator Pro and its inability to load more than 200 tweets after a long period of time not opening the app. I know there is the feature there, but it doesn’t work. And what’s the point of having a feature listed if it doesn’t work? I decided to use Tweetbot to catch up on tweets I missed from my friend feed and eventually just kept opening it up to view tweets on a regular basis.

The design of the app is just as nice as any of the previous apps from Tapbots. No complaint there. And I can even report spammers to Twitter in the app and TweetBot removes the spam tweet from my @mentions. It’s nice when it you can report spammers, but for some reason, that function is not working in Tweetbot. I believe that it’s probably someone on Twitter’s side that is causing it, but I have tweeted to several of Tapbots Twitter accounts with no reply from them. That’s just bad customer service and puts a big frown on my face. Andrew Stone, the developer of Twittelator, has also not replied to a few of my recent tweets to him in regard to a few issues I’ve noticed in Twittelator Pro (another big frown on my face).

After just playing with this feature again in Twittelator Pro, it just doesn’t work smoothly for me. It seems to load only a few tweets more at a time (maybe about 20-50). ARGH. That’s a lot of tapping the “More” button to load more tweets. With Tweetbot, it’s about 2 taps and I have all of my missing tweets I want to read.

For the past 2 weeks I’ve been using Tweetbot 98% of the time now and will continue to use it for now. Sometimes people jump from app to app to app to app until they find one that works the best for them. I’m usually pretty loyal to people and companies that treat me well. Both app developers have done so in the past, but sometimes just a simple little thing can cause a change. I’ll continue to have both on my iPhone, but don’t know who will eventually come out as my primary Twitter app.

Pros & Cons of both Apps

Tweetbot – Pros
• Loads more (200+) tweets more effectively.
• In-app web browser has back, forward, stop buttons.
• Notifications in app
• Removes spam tweet from @mentions after reporting spammer

Tweetbot – Cons
• No ability to use TwitLonger
• Unable to RT tweets from users set as private

Twittelator – Pros
• Displays images in the tweet
• UI for tweets – contains reply/RT, view conversation, view user
• Easy to display user’s RTs, RTs to user, RTs by user on refresh
• Ability to use TwitLonger
• Able to RT tweets from users set as private
• Webdings & emoji built into the app

Twittelator – Cons
• Unable to load more tweets than the max 200 tweets.
• Does not remove spam tweet from @mentions after reporting spammer

That was a Japanese textual emoji. It’s a text-based representation of the graphical emoji that you’ve seen before back 2 years ago when Apple refused to put those cute graphical emoji on all iPhones, except for Japanese ones. Eventually there were iPhone apps that would let you enable them on iPhone OS 2.x or 3.x. Now on iOS4 you can also get the textual versions too.

How? Just go into Settings – General – Keyboard – International Keyboards – Add New Keyboard… and add Japanese (Romanji).

Once you do that, just open any app that uses the keyboard (your favorite Twitter app, Messages, Mail, etc…) and hit the globe key at the bottom left (highlighted in red below). Hit that globe key until you see see the Japanese on the keyboard. If you already have the graphical emoji already installed, you’ll have to hit the globe key twice.

Hit the 123 key and you’ll see the ^_^ key in the bottom right (highlighted in red below).

Now you’ll see a little popup with a few textual emojis and a right pointing “More” arrow (highlighted in red below). Hit that “More” arrow.

Now you’ll see more textual emoji that you can scroll down the page to view. Just hit any one that you desire to put into your message.

When you’re done, just hit the globe key to get back to the regular English keyboard.

That’s all there is to it! Have fun! ^_^

Images from original article at Macapper.com. GREAT FIND!

After I got my iPhone 4 set up and had some time to kill, my friend & I tried out FaceTime. It’s pretty damn cool! But say you don’t have any friends available to try out FaceTime (or no friends at all)… What do you do?

Apple sent out an email on Friday informing iPhone 4 owners that they can call Apple and test out FaceTime with them! For free!

All you need to do is to call 1-888-FACETIME from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm CDT and an Apple representative will show you the basics and a few advanced tips. I haven’t tried it yet, but just to see what it’s all about might be worth it. Just remember to need to have wi-fi on.

If you’ve tried calling Apple to try out FaceTime, let us know what happened and what was talked about.

Watch Apple’s New iPhone 4 Promo Video:

So, there it is. The iPhone 4. I won’t bore you with the specs about it (you can find it on Apple’s iPhone site), but here is my take on it:

The iPhone 4 is packed with loads of great features! I was this excited too about the 3GS last year, but now I’m even MORE EXCITED than last year! HA! Just over 2 weeks away until it’s in my hands!

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.

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.

Custom trips have been talked about by many on Gowalla’s GetSatifaction.com forum and now they’re available, but their creation is only available from the web site. You can access near by trips from the app so you can do them. You can create as many as 5 trips, each including up to 20 spots. Not bad. More improvements to that will be coming also in the future. You can also create bookmarks now for your favorite spots, from the web site and from the app.

Here’s the blog post:

Today we’re thrilled to announce the launch of two new features: Trips and Bookmarks. Let’s talk about Trips first.

Until today, all Trips in Gowalla have been curated by the team at Gowalla with a little help from select friends. But our goal has always been that you would help us create these trips. And today you can. Simply login to your Gowalla account on the web, visit a spot page, then click the Add to Trip button. You’ll be able to name your trip, give it a description, add up to 20 spots of your choosing, then publish it to Gowalla. Your published trips will be viewable in the Gowalla app by your friends.

Here’s where it gets fun: We’ll be looking for unique and exciting trips created by our community to feature in Gowalla. Featured trips will be promoted based on the quality and relevancy of the trip, the number of people who have completed the trip, and will be given their own custom pin artwork that will be rewarded to those who have completed the trip.

As of today, you can create as many as 5 trips, each including up to 20 spots. As we improve the feature we’ll allow you to create more trips, order their lists of spots, and categorize them into logical groups like Pub Crawls, Nature Hikes, and the like. Also, for now, you may only complete featured trips and trips created by your friends. This is just the first step in making trips a truly key part of Gowalla’s future. We have lots more to do.

Today you can view nearby, featured and friend-created trips in Gowalla 1.4 on your iPhone by tapping the Browse button in the upper-left of the Trips tab. Our forthcoming Android and WebOS clients currently in development will also support this feature.

I’d also like to tell you a bit about bookmarks as well. Now when you visit any spot page at Gowalla.com you can bookmark that spot. You’ll be able to find all your bookmarks in Gowalla for iPhone by tapping Browse on the Spots tab. This simple feature makes it easy to find your way back to a favorite spot. Soon you’ll be able to add bookmarks from your mobile device as well.

Today’s release of Trips and Bookmarks to our community is simply a first step. There is a lot of depth here to be explored. We’re excited to hear your feedback as we continue to improve these, and other, features. Thanks for going out with Gowalla!

You can customize your SPORE Creature with over 45 unique body parts like legs, mouths, shells, and wings, plus different skins, shapes, and colors. EA Mobile says there’s over a billion possible combinations within the SPORE Creature Creator. Plus there are 20 levels across 4 different sprawling zones: Sandy Shores, Barren Desert, Dark Forest, and Icy Mountains. You will need to avoid snapping, carnivours plants, shooting urchins and more while trying to solve puzzles to complete each level. And like SPORE Origins, you will need to collect DNA to evolve. There are 5 abilities to max out to build your survival skill-set.

You can get SPORE Creatures at the App Store for $6.99.

Total iPhone sales are now at a total of 42,445,000 as of the press release today. Apple sold 8,700,000 iPhones in during fiscal Q1 of 2010. That’s up 100% unit growth over the year-ago quarter. AMAZING! That’s over 1 million more than Apple’s best iPhone selling quarter, fiscal Q4 2009, which saw 7.4 million iPhones sold.

Apple Reports First Quarter Results

CUPERTINO, California—January 25, 2010—Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2010 first quarter ended December 26, 2009. The Company posted revenue of $15.68 billion and a net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, or $3.67 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $11.88 billion and net quarterly profit of $2.26 billion, or $2.50 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 40.9 percent, up from 37.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple sold 3.36 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter, representing a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 8.7 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 100 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 21 million iPods during the quarter, representing an eight percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

During the quarter Apple elected retrospective adoption of the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s amended accounting standards* related to certain revenue recognition. Adoption of the new accounting standards significantly changes how the Company accounts for certain items, particularly sales of iPhone® and Apple TV®.

“If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”

“We are very pleased to have generated $5.8 billion in cash during the quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2010, we expect revenue in the range of about $11.0 billion to $11.4 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share in the range of about $2.06 to $2.18.”

Other worthwhile facts from Q1 of 2010:
Mac:

• 3.36 million Mac sales, beating our record by over 300,000 (up 33% from a year ago).
• About half of Macs sold were to new customers.
• Portable sales robust – up 18% year over year.

iPod:

• 21 million iPods (down 8%). Less than a year ago.
• Traditional iPods went down, but iPod touch still growing well. Revenue growth due to that.
• Share is still over 70% of U.S. MP3 players. Continues to gain share internationally.
• iTunes Store had a record quarter. Its the largest online catalog with 11 million songs. 8,000 films, 2,000 in HD.

iPhone:

• 86 countries for iPhone distribution.
• Added 17 new carriers throughout the world in the quarter.
• App Store has more than 3 billion downloads.

Retail Stores:

• 283 stores in 10 countries.
• 10 new stores opened in the quarter – including the Louvre in Paris.
• 100 remodels in the calendar year.
• $7.1 million is average revenue per store.
• 40-50 new stores in 2010. Half international.

Trading in Apple shares, which were halted earlier, has resumed. In late trading, the stock is up $5.46, or 2.7%, to $207.63.

Info from Baron’s, TechCrunch, and IntoMobile.