Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

Twikini 2.1 has been released. 2.0 was released last week but I held off on posting about it because it had adopted the new Twitter Retweet method. Twikini 2.1 now gives you the choice to use the new method or the old "RT" method. Many people, myself included, aren't a fan of the new method.

2.x has also added the ability to geotag your tweets. Unfortunately it still retains the bug where long tweets require you to tap on them to see the full text. It is a free upgrade to 1.x owners. There is a free trial and you can pick up the app for $4.95 if you like it.

"We're all lost without our phones. So this holiday season, we're giving away three brand new Windows® phones from Verizon & AT&T for tweets that share your most embarrassing lost phone story. How creative can you be in under 140 characters?"

Running until December 10th, the "Lost Without My Phone" giveaway is simple to enter - just follow and send a tweet to @windowsphone explaining your most embarrassing lost phone story. Fitting that into 140 characters will be quite a challenge, but three Windows phones are on the line, so go for it!

TouchTwit is a new Twitter app coming to WinMo devices soon. Chris Leckness at Mobility Site has a video. As Chris suggests, this could give Twikini a run for its money. There is no word on pricing yet. It should arrive in the Windows Marketplace for Mobile store soon. Hopefully, it will also appear on a website for download so the remaining 99.9% of us without WinMo 6.5 can take a look too.

PanoramicSoft has released a Twitter client for Windows Mobile. It is free, but claims to be "ad supported." It requires a touch screen so only WinMo Professional devices are allowed. Key features include:

• Support for multiple Twitter accounts
• Ability to upload pics from your camera or photo album
• GPS support to post your location

There is yet another Twitter client for Windows Mobile phones. This one is called Twaddle and it is free. Just a few of the features it has include:

• All the normal Twitter stuff, like viewing your timelime, retweeting, @replies, etc.
• Geotagging your tweets and viewing Google maps of other geotagged tweets.
• Local cashing of tweets

If you've been looking for a WinMo client or aren't happy with your current client for Twitter, check this one out.

Twikini has beet tweaked yet again. Current enhancements include:

• An "I'm here" feature that uses your current GPS location and adds a Google map URL to your tweet.
• Improved TwitPic functionality that allows you to open the image in your browser or Twikini. Now if only people would use TwitPic instead of other services.
• GPS actions can be canceled if initialization is taking too long.

There are some miscellaneous bug fixes too. It is a free upgrade for all Twikini 1.x owners.

Update: 1.4 has just been released. No functional improvements, but language support for German, Dutch, Italian and Danish have been added.

"Twikini offers a powerful and efficient way to use Twitter on your phone. It conveniently updates your favorite feeds in the background, and leverages the camera, GPS, media, touch screen, keyboard, graphics and storage capabilities of your device. Our goal is to make Twikini the best designed Twitter app for Windows devices in the world."

If you're doing the Twitter thing, you know it's all about having a good software client. Sure, you can use the mobile Twitter Web site, but that gets you only the basics. Twikini brings with it a bunch of great features, including the ability to post your GPS location or coordinates, and the ability to interact with Twitter in all the ways that matter: direct messages, replies, etc. Best of all, Twikini is nice and cheap - only $4.95 USD, and you get another Trinket Software application thrown in, such as the awesome PowerSMS (a really great app). It's realy great to see fresh new developers embracing the Windows Mobile platform and bringing quality applications to the table - nice work Trinket Software!

Twikini released 1.0 recently and before I could post on it, 1.1 has been released. The svelte Twitter app for Windows Mobile phones now supports Direct Messages, multiple accounts, the ability to view the public timeline, faster refreshes and a quicker startup time. And for those that were using 1.0, the Exit menu item has been returned in 1.1

Twikini works on all Windows Mobile devices version 5 and higher. The prices can be found here, which range from free to $9.95 depending on usage.

"For the record, Windows Mobile 6.5 is DONE... complete... looks really good IOHO and every bit functional. ping us if u want to know more."

There you have it - straight from the developers mouths... or tweets. Windows Mobile 6.5 is done. Stick a fork in it because it is good to go. Now all we have to do is wait around for one of hardware manufacturers to bestow one of these brand spanking new devices on us. Hopefully we will not have to wait too long.

"Twikini offers a powerful and efficient way to use Twitter on your phone. It conveniently updates your favorite feeds in the background, and leverages the camera, GPS, media, touch screen, keyboard, graphics and storage capabilities of your device."

It is in public beta right now. It claims to be fast, and first impressions is that it is, something I've found other WinMo Twitter clients aren't at all. In fact, it is so fast, I have just uninstalled one of my other Twitter clients that took forever to launch and refresh the screen and statuses of my friends. It is a paltry 75KB download and works on all Windows Mobile 5 and higher devices, both Standard and Pro.

It has other features like TwitPic integration, post updates on location via GPS, tweet your current song details from WMP and more. Check it out. Did I mention it was fast?

ceSnipURL is a free utility to convert long URLs into short URLs, which comes in handy for sites like Twitter and Facebook where you have a very limited number of characters to update your status. It automatically uses URLs from the clipboard and once converted, puts them back on the clipboard so you can paste them into your app.

I know a lot of Twitter clients for the Windows Mobile already do this, but some of us prefer to use SMS and PIE for our twitter needs, so this allows us a quick way to shorten URLs before posting. I cannot tell from the site if this works on Standard or not. The screenshot is of a Pro (touch-screen) device. If anyone with a Standard device tries this, let us know how it works.

"fring is a mobile internet community and communication service that allows friends to connect, share experiences and enhance their online communities together. Using your handset′s internet connection, you can interact with friends on all your favourite social networks including Skype®, MSN Messenger®, Google Talk, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo! and AIM®. You can listen to music with your Last.fm friends, check out what each other are up to on Facebook, receive alerts of new Google Mail and tailor make your very own fring by adding more cool experiences from fringAdd-ons."

I'm not a fring user myself, but if you are, the newly-added support for Twitter might be exactly what you've been waiting for. Any fring users out there? What do you think of the product/service?

Twitter has blown up over the last year. With the increasing amount of celebrities that are now joining the social network it is hard to keep track of who is real and who isn't. Jesse Bearden of Phoenix, Arizona was having a discussion with his friend Sean about one of the more popular Twitter real life celebrities, Shaquille O'Neal. Jesse not being convinced that @The_Real_Shaq was really the real Shaq decided they should head down to a local dinner where Shaq said he was grabbing a bite to eat over Twitter. Once they got to the restaurant not only did they find out that it was indeed the real Most Dominant Ever blowing up the Twitter scene, they also learned that he is probably one of the coolest celebrities ever. Shaquille not only invited them to come over and sit with him and take a few pictures, in which he encouraged them to upload to their websites, but he also took some time to talk technology with them and showed off his Google Android device and even took one of the guy’s devices and asked "What's this got? Windows Mobile?" Sure this isn't the most eventful Windows Mobile news ever, but it is fun to see that not only are there cool celebrities out there, that they even know their gadgets and tech. Once more Twitter pulls through in bringing people together and giving us another good story to tell.

"The Windows Mobile Developer Team is giving away free games to some cool WM games over at their Twitter account. Follow them here : http://www.twitter.com/wmdev. Some games that they’re giving away are Guitar Hero 3, Texas Hold’em and more."

Yep, that is right. You did not misread the heading. The Windows Mobile development team is now utilizing Twitter to give away registration codes for some of Windows Mobile hottest games. The single use codes are first come first serve and you can snatch them up by following the Windows Mobile Dev team on Twitter at @wmdev.

I was just notified of a new Twitter application for Windows Mobile called Twitula. There is one other mobile twitter app that I am aware of but it never worked right for me and resorted to updating via SMS and reading posts via Pocket IE. I am glad to see there is another app to pick from.



It has a nice look and feel, with features such as following your friends or the public timeline, seeing what messages were directed at you with the "d" command and seeing who you follow or who follows you. It is missing a few things I'd like to see though, like a scroll bar or ability to page up/down (right now it scrolls one line at a time), or the ability to see messages sent to you via the @ command. and the ability to hit the OK/Cancel buttons with soft keys. But all that said, this looks very promising, enough so that for now, I am using it instead of my SMS/PIE combo. It is free and can be downloaded as a CAB installer directly to your device from the link above.