Boxcar is a nearly-flawless notification app for Facebook, email, and Twitter, and I love. What else is there to say?

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.

Tweetie 2, a first look

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.

Tweetie 2.0 for iPhone Is On Its Way!

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.

Twitter and Push Notifications – The Big One

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.

Click to see full comparison chart (300kb)

Full rundown of the Twitter apps after the break.
Continue reading Twitter and Push Notifications – The Big One »

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.

Tweet Push, a Twitter Push Solution Released by Polar Bear Farm

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.

An App to Help Make the World a Better Place, DoGood

I think I’ve found my new favorite app.

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?

DoGood

Category: Lifestyle
Released: 2009-08-11
Price: FREE

Twitpocalypse

News of the day, brought to you by twitpocalypse.com.

“Twitpocalypse is not yet upon us.

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.

If you are a twitter user then this may finally be ‘The One’. If you aren’t a Twitter user, it’s time you logged on. This app rocks them all.

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.

Tweetie is, without compare when it comes to Twitter clients. Every feature is well thought out, well placed, and well implemented.

App Store Insider: August Trometer Part 2

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!

Here is a little taste from Greg himself.

Enjoy!

You can check out August’s digital book, Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Safari on your Kindle from Amazon, or buy it in PDF format here.

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 1.2 Released – Did Someone Step on a Duck?

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.

Tweetie

Our Rating: :: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Category: Social Networking
Released: 2008-11-11
Price: $2.99

Summizer is a Twitter trend spotting and search application

Sketches is an amazingly useful and fun application!

Yahoo! Brings OneConnect Native App to iPhone OS

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.

[ Read More @ Yahoo! ]