As you may already know, Twitter bought the company behind the popular Tweetie and Tweetie2 clients. They wanted to have a single official Twitter client to be built on the existing features of Tweetie2. The fruits of their labor were finally realized this week, when Tweetie2 was removed from the App Store and replaced with Twitter 3.0.
The best thing about the new app is that it is now completely free, unlike the apps of the past. There are a few new bells and whistles in the new app, but overall, I haven’t found it to be all that different than Tweetie2. The app icon is prettier, but that isn’t much to write home about. Retweeting and other actions have been simplified in the new version, but I’ve found most of the changes to be quite subtle.
My only complaint is that users are still stuck with black text on a white background. The original Tweetie had an option to change the background color to black. Personally, I liked reading in that way. That option disappeared in Tweetie2, and at the time I went as far as to write the company and tell them I missed the feature. I received a reply from the company! They had said that a large number of users had written asking for that very feature to make a return. They said that it would be brought back in version 2.2, citing that they had too many important changes to make in 2.1. Now that Tweetie was bought by Twitter, that plan must have been scrapped. There is no option in version 3.0 to change the background color. Umph!
Despite that relatively minor complaint, it is still my belief that Tweetie/Twitter 3.0 is still the best Twitter client for the iPhone. I can only hope that they finally update the aging Mac desktop Twitter client, which is still stuck on version 1.2.6. Hurry up, guys!
I have to say that I have never cared for television shows that are centered around the setting of a hospital. I admit that at times these shows can be very moving, however, I generally find them to be depressing.
There have been countless hospital dramas on TV over the years. Think: St. Elsewhere, ER, House, General Hospital, Scrubs, Chicago Hope, Grey’s Anatomy, and others. Scrubs, with its particular brand of humor, is the only such show that I have been able to tolerate over the years.
I simply find that having a television signal beamed into your home that portrays someone in a hospital bed, muttering their final words, to be depressing to say the least. Let’s face it, nobody likes being at the hospital, whether you are a patient, or a visitor. A hospital is a place with a distinctly negative vibe.
The notion of willingly piping such emotional drama into your home seems ridiculous to me. I personally don’t care to watch the unfolding drama of a sick person in a bed. I don’t want to see it. It’s a downer. I’m not willing to subscribe to shows that are downers by default, period!
I bought my iPhone three months ago in mid-February. Upon purchase, I immediately bought an expensive Zagg screen cover for it, in addition to a protective shell case from Otter Box. While I thought the Zagg screen cover was highly priced at $20, I felt it was worth the value to protect my most precious toy.
I have since gone through periods of love and hate with the screen cover. After some time, when used in conjunction with my Otter Box case, the screen protector began to show air bubbles at the top and bottom edges. This problem has grown more frequent in recent weeks.
A month or two ago, Apple decided to stop carrying such screen protectors in their official Apple store. They apparently don’t want to promote the idea that you need to protect this device at all. Since that time, I’ve read many opposing viewpoints online on this issue, and I’ve never been able to reach a decisive conclusion.
A week ago, I finally grew tired of the reoccurring air bubbles in my screen cover, and ripped it off. Now I’m using it bare. I have to say that it feels much slicker and more responsive without the screen cover on top of the glass. I’m going to continue to use it this way. I put my phone in my pocket, and never put any change or keys in the same pocket. I’m very protective of my phone, and I don’t think I need a screen cover to keep it safe. Plus the screen simply looks more shiny and clear! Ditch your screen covers.
My favorite video podcast is a show called Diggnation. Diggnation is a weekly show hosted by Digg.com founder Kevin Rose and his sidekick Alex Albrecht. The two have been making the show for five years now. Although they started in 2005, I became a fan far more recently, having found out about the show sometime last year in 2009.
Kevin and Alex are usually sitting on a couch, downing beers, and talking about anything that comes to mind. Within the show, they choose various stories submitted to Digg.com and discuss them. Their banter is quite addicting. I haven’t missed a show since I first started watching it. It is hilarious.
Occasionally, Diggnation is hosted live with a studio audience. They have done shows in many places, including New York City, Austin, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and even Tokyo. I’m happy to hear they are going to try to do more live shows. I wish they would come to Raleigh, NC. I would most certainly attend!
The show is pretty geeky. If that appeals to you, you’re sure to enjoy Diggnation. Check it out their website, or their YouTube channel.
To my shock and amazement, Apple actually approved the Opera Mini web browser for the iPhone. It was such an event, I had to download it and give it a try. Let me begin by saying that I have never been a fan of Opera on any operating system. I’ve practically never heard of anyone who actually uses it. Opera’s market share is near zero. How they manage to continue development is somewhat baffling.
Opera Mini is touting faster speeds and more features over the built-in Safari browser for the iPhone. That said, I don’t see any speed improvement in my experience. As for the extra features (such as tabbed browsing), they all serve to make the Opera interface look too cluttered. There are simply too many buttons, options, bells and whistles. It looks as if they tried to cram all of the features of a desktop application into an iPhone app. For me, that strategy just doesn’t work for a mobile device. The screen real estate for the actual web page is cut in half by all of Opera’s interface clutter.
I applaud Apple for relaxing their tight grip on third-party web browsers. If you’re interested in Opera Mini, then by all means, give it a try. As for me, I’m going to stick with the ease and simplicity of Safari. Any speed increase for Opera is negated by the fact that I hardly ever use a web browser on my iPhone to begin with. On the whole, I honestly don’t see use in Opera taking off for any platform. I doubt Apple does either, which is probably why they accepted the app in the first place.
I have been tossing around the idea of starting my own podcast. Would anyone listen? Over the weekend I am going to pitch the idea to my cousin Kevin of him and I doing a joint weekly video podcast. I guess the topic could be about…I don’t know! The musings of life?
I cannot predict his reaction to my idea. I guess I’ll have to see. At the very least, it wouldn’t cost us anything to start it, and there would be the added benefit of being hammered the whole time while recording it. Sounds like a winning idea! Will he bite?
Today, Apple announced the iPhone OS version 4.0. I mistakenly thought that the product was going to be released today, but that isn’t so. It will be made available to download sometime this summer.
The highlights of the new version are multitasking and folders. Yes, actual multitasking of up to seven apps at a time, from the reports I have read. Hooray! I cheer that on, but I can’t honestly say I need multitasking on my iPhone. For iPad users, this will be a must-have.
I was hoping to hear an announcement that Verizon will be getting the iPhone later this year, but there is still no word on that, despite years of endless speculation. Maybe someday!
Geocaching has been around since the summer of 2000. As of 2010, there are now more than a million hidden caches worldwide. In early 2010, I signed up with geocaching.com. Since then, only half of all hunts were successful. Still, I don’t want to get discouraged.
Last month, I bought an iPhone 3GS. I quickly installed the Geocaching app from geocaching.com. It is terrific for locating nearby caches. In addition, I installed MotionX GPS for the iPhone which allows me to determine my exact location in a variety of formats and email the information to myself. MotionX GPS does that and much more. I highly recommend it.
With the added help of the iPhone apps, we created our very first geocache today. I have submitted our cache information to the geocaching.com website for approval. It was a lot of fun to assemble the small cache. I can’t wait until the first person finds it!
I remember mocking the idea of geocaching the first time I heard about it. Since that time, I have come around to love it. It is really a lot of fun, and a nice, free way to get out of the house and exercise outdoors. If you have a hand-held GPS, why not give it a try?
In the past, I’ve often used an ad blocker in Firefox. I’ve recently come to find that I don’t need to block all of the ads to speed up the loading of pages. The payoff comes in blocking Flash. I’ve started using a Flash blocker in Firefox and Safari, and the outcome has been a faster, more controlled browsing experience. Once Flash content is blocked, a single click on a Flash container within a page will enable it to run.
You’ll soon realize how much Flash is overused on many sites. After I started blocking Flash, the static ad images that appear on sites don’t bother me enough to continue running my ad blocker. Try it yourself.
- Flash Blocker for Firefox
- Click-to-Flash for Mac Safari
I recently discovered an awesome website that makes a terrific start page for your browser. That website is fav4.org. Simply choose your four favorite four websites, and every time you start your browser you will be presented with the big four in a beautiful display. I love it!
