I’ve been looking at connected photo frames for a while now. Until recently they have been been too closed and lacking in features. I think that the eStarling TouchConnect comes the closest I’ve seen to what I envision as the perfect digital photo frame. And the best thing is, it works, and works well with the iPhone.
This main way you will get photos and videos to this frame is via email. That’s right, email. The ingenious way that eStarling have come up with to get photos on to the frame over the network involves you connecting the frame to a GMail account and sending photos and video to display to that account. An interesting solution to how to get images to the frame. I’ve set up an account photoframetest@gmail.com — feel free to send me your (clean) photos.
Photos and Videos
Not only can you email photos, you can also mail videos right to the device from anywhere from your iPhone. Traveling and want to send the family back home some pictures or a short video (less than 20 MB)? Just email it. Give one of these frames to the grandparents and be able to send photos to them anytime from anywhere with your iPhone. A fantastic feature.
The frame will automatically download the photos and videos in the background and they will be added to the rotation on your frame. You also have the option of pulling up thumbnail screens and navigate between the photos stored in the 2 GB on board memory.
Connected Services
Connected is right in the title of this frame. And it is connected. It allows access to your photos via email as stated above, Flickr, Picasa, RSS Feeds, and even Facebook. Setting up these services is made very easy and done by either entering in your login information or utilizing the same email address you set up to send photos to the frame to activate links.
RSS Feeds
You can grab an RSS feed from one of many places to feed photos into the photo frame. A great and very flexible feature. Just search for “photo RSS” for a huge list of feeds you can use from news sources, photography sites, etc. Here’s a great one from the Boston Globe’s Big Picture feature.
Flickr
The Flickr connection allows you to authenticate with your Flickr account. Even though you need to authenticate there is no way to choose what pictures to show. Only your public pictures will show on the frame. I chose not to authenticate with Flickr as the authentication was requesting delete access. There’s no need for that and I consider it a risk, so I chose to not authenticate. You’d be better off just choosing one of the RSS feeds from Flickr and using those as it will get you the same result without needing to authenticate and giving the frame delete access.
You can get creative with the Flickr RSS feeds as well and use tags to designate which photos should show up on the frame. What I did is create a unique tag for the frame and pull the RSS feed for the photos with that tag. To do this, navigate to the Flickr page for the tag you want to use and grab the RSS feed link from the bottom of the page.
Flickr videos are not supported at this time.
Facebook
Authenticating with Facebook was pretty easy. Clicking on a link and giving the app access. The frame then quickly pulled down all of the photos I had uploaded to Facebook. Would really like the ability to grab photos friends have uploaded too.
Picasa
You have the option of signing into any Google account to authenticate with Picasa. Good if you already have an account set up and don’t want to move things to the Google account you are using for the photo frames email address. From there the photo frame pulls your latest photos. Again, with this service, I’d like some ability to designate which photos to download.
Google Calender?
That’s right, there’s also Google Calendar integration. You can authenticate to any Google Calendar and have your daily calendar shown on the screen. Did we mention this frame was connected?
Twitter Is Everywhere
Yep, now you can read and sent tweets from a photo frame. I’m not sure, can you even use Twitter from a computer anymore?
How About The Screen
The screen on this photo frame is a pretty decent 10.1 inches. The resolution isn’t that fantastic at 800×480, but good enough for most pictures viewed from more than a few inches away. The real issue is that it collects fingerprints like crazy. Keep something close by to clean those off.
On screen navigation allows you to move between photos and turn on / off the different connected features. In addition, there’s an optional sidebar that allows you show the time, date, and local weather. As the screen is 16×9, for 4×6 images, this sidebar fills in the extra space.
SD Card Support
When you insert an SD card into the frame it will switch from showing your connected photos to the photos on the card. Great for quickly showing family recent photos. Unfortunately videos on the SD card are not supported.
Overall, I think the TouchConnect frame is the most connected frame I’ve seen yet. I really appreciate all of the connection options they have provides. And while you can turn them on and off at will, all of the images blend when they are all turned on. Would be nice to be able to navigate the images from each service individually and find a way to limit what is downloaded. If you turn everything on it’s easy to have hundreds of images all at once with no way to segment them.
But, with conservative and proper set up, it can really work well.
Favit is the newest Twitter application to hit the iPhone. It’s the companion application to the web site Favstar.fm, a Twitter favorites tracker. When the app is launched and you enter your Twitter login and password, you see a simple screen with a tweet that has already been favorited many times.
You can navigate the tweets by swiping forward or backward. And nicely the app remembers the last tweet you looked at when you return. And you won’t see the same tweet twice unless you go through every one of the millions of favorited tweets.
When you are looking at a tweet, you can favorite it yourself, email it, retweet it, or add the author to your Favstar favorite authors list.
The app is a great, simple way to discover both interesting tweets and interesting people to follow. The app is simple, but it’s designed to be that way. Just a small little app to flip between a few new to you tweets to pass the time while in line at the DMV. Well, that’s what I used it for last.
Favit, by Favstar.fm
Category: Entertainment Released: 2009-12-04 Price: $29.99
There aren’t many people who don’t love Tweetie for iPhone. In mid-October of this year we saw Loren introduce to us his completely re-vamped version. Hyped to high heaven, Tweetie 2 saw a more simplistic UI, a new (coined revolutionary) way to refresh your timeline, better account management, a new tweet composing experience, custom URL endpoints, the ability to save tweets as drafts for later publishing and more. It was seen as a great step up to the original Tweetie.
But with recent changes to Twitter’s API, new service introductions, and with Tweetie 2 not having any support for these out of the box, it was clear it was in for an update, very soon. Cue, 2.1. If you happen to follow me on Twitter, you’ll probably (almost definitely) know that I’ve been closely involved in the beta-testing of Tweetie 2.1, and I have to say it’s an update well worth attention. Most notably, this version brings support for Twitter’s new ‘Lists’ feature.
If you’re not already aware, Twitter Lists are the new universal way to categorize your followers, and for them to categorize you. It’s as simple as selecting which ‘list’ you want that person to appear on. Other people following you then have the option to follow that specific list, meaning if you make a list called ‘Favorites,’ and add all your favorite Tweeters, anyone who follows that list will essentially see the best content from your followers. The Twitter list feature has become so popular in the short space of time it has been live, that people are now starting to judge ‘influence level’ on how well you are listed, and in what categories.
In Tweetie 2.1, lists are pretty much the same as they are on Twitter.com, but it’s how they’ve been implemented which makes the experience a whole lot more user-friendly. Tapping the ‘More’ tab in 2.1, you’ll now see all the ‘Lists’ you belong to, or have been added to, including the one’s you’re not even following. Choosing a list will throw you into a specialized, scrollable time line which only consist of the members of that list. Want to see the stats of a list? In the bottom left you’ll see an ‘i’ info button. Tap it, and the current list being viewed will flip over to reveal the owner of that particular list (and tapping on him or her will take you to their profile page), alongside the list’s following and follower counts. Continue reading First Look: Tweetie 2.1. Brings Twitter List Support, Among Other Trippy Stuff. »
The second coming of arguably the most popular Twitter client on the iPhone has arrived. Loren Brichter’s Tweetie 2. But what features does this version bring, and can it really compete with the original in as far as style and ease of use? The answer? Yes. Yes it can. In every way.
Whilst we have almost the entire staff looking at Tweetie 2 right now (you think we’re kidding), here’s a quick pictorial summary of what you can expect from the much-awaited application:
US iTunes Store: $2.99
UK iTunes Store: £1.79
New features include a refined interface, flick down to refresh feature, tweet drafting and much more. See the Tweetie 2 iTunes App Store page for a full list of updates. We’ll certainly have a review up on Monday after some extensive testing, but in the meantime, be sure to check after the jump for tons of screenshots.
Tweet N’Go Pro is desperately trying to be a new twitter client for folks who are light users of the service. Although it has some really great features, it just doesn’t stand up to the big boys – yet.
I’ll admit it, I’m a HUGE Tweetie fan. The brains behind it? Loren Brichter.
What was arguably the most hyped twitter client, and what now is deemed to be the twitter client choice for iPhone, of many, Tweetie has been sitting pretty for a while now. After winning an Apple Design Award in 2009 for ‘Outstanding Innovation and Design’, Tweetie has gone from strength to strength. But it hasn’t all been buttercups and roses. Lately, the word surrounding Tweetie was that it had fallen behind. It had become invisible, due to competition. It lacked the awesome’ness of this, and the necessity of that.
Today, this all changes. After teasing us for almost all of the day on Twitter, Loren finally came clean; announcing via his stream that Tweetie 2 for iPhone had been in development for some time, and that it would bring Tweetie back into the foreground again – for all of the reasons you fell in love with Tweetie 1.0.
Britcher explained that Tweetie 2 had been in beta for a few months now, and after 8 beta versions, the product originally codenamed ‘Bigbird’ throughout the beta phases was finally ready to be submitted to Apple. In fact, it has been submitted… late last night. Britcher says the final version is ready, and he’ll all being well submit the app later this week. We just have to hope Apple and it’s seemingly temperamental approval process makes Tweetie 2’s debut a quick a painless one.
So, what can you expect from this major update? Well, quite a lot actually. For starters you’ll now find threaded conversations. Just like Tweetie for Mac, you’ll be able to see just who thought your tweet was cool, what they said, and what other people said afterwards. Next? Tab bar notifications. Since the introduction of Tweetie for Mac, users of Tweetie really wanted to see this functionality comes to the iPhone. Now, it has. Saved searches. Not content with how they function now, in Tweetie 2 Britcher says saved searches will ’sync’ back up to the upcoming Tweetie for Mac 2 desktop version.
Now come’on. Be honest. Were you a fan of the compose screen? Well, you might like it a little more now. In Tweetie 2 the compose screen has been completely overhauled. Adding options for an @people picker, recent hashtags, multiple attachments manager and a “peek” gesture for when replying to a tweet.
You’ll also probably be glad to hear this version will support full landscape mode, and a load more features including: the ability to edit your own Twitter profile, vastly improved gesture shortcuts, in-app rich-text email, new-style retweet support (supposedly to support the upcoming Twitter update), the option to refresh-all on launch, TextExpander support, “read it later” integration, auto-complete recent searches, auto-complete go-to-user, improved avatar caching, inline Twitlonger, reply chain list view, preview short urls, tweet translation and the ability to block and follow from multiple accounts, at once.
There is one tiny niggle, and that is Tweetie 2 will be an entirely new app to what will now be referred to as Tweetie 1. Although, you won’t have to pay through your nose to get it. In fact, quite the opposite!
In his own words:
“Making a “2.0” could have been easy. I could have changed the version number, added video tweeting and called it a day. Other apps call that “2.0” – I think it’s lame. Tweetie 1 set a new standard for Twitter clients and iPhone apps in general. It proved that you didn’t have to sacrifice intuitiveness for functionality. Today we have iPhone OS 3.0, 3GS, and new Twitter APIs. Tweetie 2 is built from the ground up to take advantage of these fantastic new technologies.
Tweetie 2 for Mac will be a completely free upgrade. (So if you haven’t already grabbed a license, feel free to do so). On the other hand, Tweetie 2 for iPhone will be a whole new app. And while it’s arguably worth a lot more, I’m keeping the price exactly the same: $2.99.”
Hopefully if Britcher is lucky, we could see Tweetie 2 hit the App Store inside 2 weeks, but I wouldn’t hold your breath on that. All we can rest on is that it will soon be in submission, and it’s fate will rest solely in the hands of Apple. I for one, can’t wait to get my hands on this.
With the much anticipated arrival of push notifications, Twitter clients from across the App Store (and beyond) have been updated and re-polished to support this latest feature. However, times travel fast! Jeff was right when he said to me last week: “[this article] will likely be out of date within a week or so.” No fewer than three extra clients have landed onto the App Store and into our hands this week alone. We’ve dived in at the deep end to check out them all.
Why Push Notifications?
In the olden days, for instance, whenever 148 was the maximum amount of applications that you could install, if you wanted information you had to go to it. Be it the latest news or the latest tweets, the only way that you’d find out about it is if you went to the information source – a Twitter application for tweets; or a news website for breaking news. Push notifications reverses this role and the information is brought to you. You’re updated in real time about what is happening, who is tweeting you, and why the Zune is not as good as the iPod (okay, maybe not the last one). Push is practically limitless, and developers are keen to get ahead of the game.
The Clients
There are two types of clients for Twitter push notifications. Firstly, there is the fully-fledged application that has both a Twitter interface of its own and push notifications. Secondly, there are applications that leave the tweeting to the pros (eg. Tweetie / Twitterific) and a separate application is made solely for push. We’ll look at both.
Ego is the perfect app for the stat junky in everyone. Whether it be to ogle over your Google Analytics stats or your crazy amount of Twitter Followers, Ego will surely satisfy your egotistical needs.
We just got a quick look at Tweet Push from Polar Bear Farm. Chances are that the Twitter client you use on the iPhone doesn’t currently support push notifications. Tweet Push fills that gap by working with your Twitter client to let you know when you get a new direct message, mention, or if you are really in need of constant interruption, a new message from one of your contacts.
Currently, Tweet Push works with Twitterrific, Tweetie, Twittelator, and TwitterFon. When you receive a message, Tweet Push will take you straight to the twitter client you choose. One of the best features of the app is that it does not count toward the API limits that Twitter has in effect. That means that if you have a desktop client running this won’t eat into the number of calls you can make.
Tweet Push is one of the first subscription based apps in the app store. The app itself costs $0.99 and includes one month of service. Service is $0.99/month after that. Pretty reasonable considering the infrastructure needed to support this kind of app.
Sounds like an app you might like? Head on over to our Twitter stream for details, we’re giving away 25 copies of the app over the next two days.
Tweet Push - Push Notifications For Twitter
Category: Social Networking Released: 2009-07-11 Price: FREE
TweetDeck for the iPhone is definitely designed to be a companion to the desktop, everything feels similar and the usability comes easy because of the similarity.
DoGood from Mobil33t is a simple little app, well designed, and single purpose. DoGood presents you with a single task every day, a task that does a little bit of good for yourself or someone else.
Once you complete the task you can post a comment about what you did or the task itself. You can also read what other people have posted. Also available is an archive of previous task comments. Once you do the daily task you can post it to Twitter or Facebook via Safari Mobile.
See, I told you it was simple.
The app was developed by 3 Univerisity of Michigan students and is the first project of the company they started to develop iPhone apps, Mobil33t.
The app is free, so why not download it and do a little good?
The Twitpocalypse is similar to the Y2K bug. Very soon the unique identifier associated to each tweet will exceed 2,147,483,647
For some of your favorite third-party Twitter services not designed to handle such a case, the sequence will suddenly turn into negative numbers. At this point, they are very likely to malfunction or crash.
When will this happen? Check here often, and we will tell you how close we are to the Twitpocalypse.
ETA: 13 Jun 2009 at 02:11:54 AM GMT”
Hopefully your favorite Twitter app escapes the Twitpocalypse.
Even if you’re not into politics this is an invaluable tool to be in the know with local, state, and federal political figures. It is a wealth of information neatly organized and continually updated. Moreover, the developer is excited about his products and has several ideas for this app and others like it.
Twitterrific 2.0 is a well made update to the critically acclaimed, 2008 Apple Design Award winning, Twitter app. The app is definitely geared more towards the Twitter power user, but it has enough charm to delight the masses. If Iconfactory addresses just a couple of issues in the near future, Twitterrific could become my Twitter app of choice (or at least in my 3 app rotation).
Birdhouse acts as a suave addition to your favourite Twitter client. Acting as a 140 character notepad for all your pre-tweets, the app allows you to compose, save and (when ready) publish your tweets. Don’t like one? Un-publish it with a couple of taps!
This is could be a good contender for a top spot Twitter client. However even with all the amazing features, there are still some factors that will stop me using it exclusively.
Bio: Web developer by day, Mac and iPhone developer by night.
- Created iPodderX, the world’s first podcast client
- Wrote “Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Safari” prior to the SDK being released
- Loan Shark was chosen early on by Apple as a “Featured” app, and is also featured in Apple’s own “iPhone Your Life” pages.
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Finishing up our interview with August, I ask him about what it is like being an iPhone developer in the lime-light, or Celebrity Developer. He talks about how much fun it has been to break out of the traditional role from time to time, and how it has really helped out his programming business.
I also get his opinions on Apple’s filing to have jailbreaking iPhones judged illegal, what that means to the development community, and how jailbreaking is actually beneficial to the App Store and making the iPhone a popular development platform. August also tells us why he has avoided it.
Most importantly, August gives us the breaking story about the soon to be released app, YOWZA!!, and how it will change the way you shop and use your iPhone.
Listen to how August met Greg Grunberg (Matt Parkman on Heroes) on Twitter, and joined forces with Rick Yaeger from MacMerc, to create a whole new business model for an iPhone app, and how they have tackled the problems of turning your iPhone into a money-saving shopping tool! And it’s going to be FREE!
A unique application to create fantastic poems. It gives you words taken from the works of Shakespeare, Ancient Mariner, Kipling and E. A. Poe. It then adds to the mix a feed from news and Digg. This allows you to create interesting poems which uses the words of past masters mixed with current trends. Poems can then be published to Twitter or using e-mail.
Tweetie, in our opinion the king of iPhone Twitter clients, has been updated with some really great features — and some Popularity EnhancemEnts (or PEE) that users have been clamoring for.
In what is a first on any platform and an absolute dream come true to the iPhone community, Tweetie, updated tonight to version 1.2, has added two features that users have been asking to be combined into a single app since the iPhone was first released. Loren Brichter, the developer of Tweetie, has answered user demands and released a single app that has the ability to function as two of the most popular apps in the app store. Oh, and it does some Twitter stuff too.
Tweetie is a multiple account capable Twitter client that just nails the user interface. It’s a rock solid and feature packed application. The new version adds some great features like Instapaper integration, a landscape keyboard, swipe controls, block/unblock of users, and draft saving.
Tweetie is a $2.99 Twitter client that, in our opinion, is the best available on the iPhone. The best new feature has to be the new quick swipe control in the UI. You can swipe over a tweet (a twitter message), and quickly reply to, view the details of the user, or mark as a tweet as a favorite. Much quicker than the previous requirement of going to another screen to do those things.
These new features add to the already fantastic full featured interface of Tweetie. I has everything you could need, Twitter search integration, search favorites, multiple accounts, picture integration, location integration, inline web and image viewer, nearby (location services based) searches, and much more.
Oh yeah, and if you go to settings and click advanced and turn the popularity enhancement on, all of your dreams will come true and Tweetie will become the most perfect app, ever.
OneConnect is an attempt by Yahoo! to unify all of the social networks you use into one application. They have released this pretty interesting looking application to the iTunes App Store now. Downloading now…
Features:
* Get a full-featured phone book that can integrate contacts from your Yahoo! Address Book, iPhone, and your social networks (including: Bebo, Dopplr, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, hi5, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube).
* Connect with your friends via Yahoo! Messenger or SMS. Have fun with emoticons, avatars, and photos.
* See what’s happening on your favorite social networks with an at-a-glance view of status updates, photo uploads, and more.
* Find your favorite people quickly and call, message, or send an e-mail—with one tap.
I’ve been looking at connected photo frames for a while now. Until recently they have been been too closed and lacking in features. I think that the eStarling TouchConnect comes the closest I’ve seen to what I envision as the perfect digital photo frame. And the best thing is, it works, and works well with the iPhone.
- MUST HAVE
I think I’ve found my new favorite app.
In what is a first on any platform and an absolute dream come true to the iPhone community, Tweetie, updated tonight to version 1.2, has added two features that users have been asking to be combined into a single app since the iPhone was first released. Loren Brichter, the developer of Tweetie, has answered user demands and released a single app that has the ability to function as two of the most popular apps in the app store. Oh, and it does some Twitter stuff too.
:: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED :: 
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