Twitter just made a great addition to their Search API: Twitter Trends!

This method allows you to see the hot topics of discussion across the entire Twitterverse.  This is a neat way to keep up on breaking news, technology trends, political sentiments, or the latest Internet meme that everyone's tweeting about.

When I hear about some fresh news or tech rumor, I do a quick Twitter search before I go to any news website; it's a great way to find a wealth of links to pertinent content across the Web.

I've added the Twitter Trends method to both the iPhone and the Web version of iTweet.net.  I think it will become a fun way to keep up on current events, and to entertain myself when I'm stuck in line at the bank.    Enjoy!

Leave comments on this blog, or let's talk on Twitter or Facebook.

Technorati Tags: itweet, itweet.net, twitter, iphone, trends, api, colby palmer

Today I'm releasing a major upgrade to iTweet, an interface for Twitter that is one of my pet projects.  This is a double release: a hugely improved iPhone Web app, and an all-new interface for any Web browser.

Click here to give the new iTweet a try!

Beginning with the iPhone app, there are some key features to note:

• Tap user pictures to toggle bio information. This section allows you to see a user's location, bio, and URL.  There are quick links to send a DM, view extended profile, turn notifications on/off, block, and follow/unfollow.
• "In reply to" links allow you to see the tweet a person was replying to, without loading a new page.
  
• Built-in search and hashtags via the Twitter Search API.
  
• Monitor your remaining API requests using the number in the "refresh" button.
  
• Update (and check) your location from the Settings menu.
  
• Change your notifications device, get more detailed API usage info, set hashtags preferences, and more from the Settings menu.
  
• Vastly improved speed in loading all timelines.
  

As before, a basic rule of thumb with iTweet goes: tap the avatar to see a person's profile, tap the username to see a person's tweets.

There is also a contact form on the About page, please use this for feature requests and bug reports!  (It sends messages directly to my email so you will get a quick response, especially if you're following me and I can DM you.)   <3


The Web interface has all the same features as the above, but adds some more information that doesn't fit on a tiny iPhone screen:

• Detailed user info and API limit info available at top right.
  
• Speed Tweet mode! Hitting the "Return" key from the text-entry field will send your tweet, more like an IM client than the Twitter website. Give it a try! I love it... if you don't you can turn that feature off using the Settings menu.
  
• Really simple method for sending DM's, I use this one all the time too.
  

Known issues and limitations:

• Character counter on the iPhone version still slows down typing. This is the biggest problem with the app, by my own reckoning and others' as well. I've tried many, many different methods of doing this. We're talking HOURS of experimentation! Basically I find that inspecting a textarea just kills MobileSafari's performance, especially in a Web page that has a lot of other elements in it.  I'm open to suggestions, as always. I've pared it down to 3 simple lines of Javascript and I don't think it can be any lighter than that.
  
• User profile pages are missing information for most users. Also profile information such as "last update" are running behind something like 5-18 hours.  This is due to a bug in the Twitter API which I have reported here. I will post an update when this is fixed. This will allow some very cool functions to be brought back to the Web version especially!
  

Happy iTweeting! I'm always interested in your feedback, you can contact me here.

Leave comments on this blog, or let's talk on Twitter or Facebook.

Technorati Tags: itweet, iphone, twitter, api, iphone app, colby palmer

I've added Twitter search and #hashtag search to iTweet.net's iPhone interface.  I did it before I took off for Macworld last week, so I could see who was talking about what.  Unfortunately, this didn't quite work out as apparently we Twitterbugs got a little excited with Macworld fever and crashed Twitter right down.  The API didn't become usable till about 24 hours later!

I started tracking "macworld" that morning and my IM sounded like I'd won a jackpot! I had to turn it off 'cause it was way too distracting.

Anyway, #hashtag support is in as well, #hashtagged words are green.  Click them to see an archive of words with that tag.  For now I've decided to strip the preceding # off of the tagged word to make the system totally legible.



I made the search button in the menu BRIGHT RED just to beat you over the head with it for now.

Search is provided by the Terraminds Twitter Search API.

Tags: itweet, twitter, iphone, hashtags, terraminds, twittersearch, colby palmer

I got an Airport Express unit for Christmas, yippee!  Finally the massive wealth of songs on my iMac are flying through the air and spilling gloriously from the speakers in my living room.  It's awesome!  Although setup was a little funky with my aging wireless router, once I got it working I was amazed at how simple iTunes makes it to switch between speakers via AirTunes, and how nice the music quality is.

Especially cool is that, with one stationery and two laptop computers in the apartment, it's simple to control the flow of the music via shared libraries.  Keeping a laptop in the dining room, for instance, makes it easier to play DJ without going to the office on the other side of the apartment when a track needs skipping.

But even BETTER, I'm using Remote Buddy on my iPhone to control the tunes.  I can use it to change AirTunes speakers from my office to the living room easily, and navigate through my playlists to find what I want to hear.  Then it offers a simple remote-control interface to control the song or volume.  This app is almost freaky because you can operate all kinds of apps via a set of custom menus, or log right on and control your desktop computer via screensharing!  (I typed this sentence into the Flock blog editor on my iMac using my iPhone!)

There are a number of apps with custom menus. These ones caught my eye as being especially useful:

• DVD Player


• Front Row


• GarageBand


• Google Earth (I tried this one, it rocks)


• iPhoto


• iTunes


• Keynote


• Miro


• Photo Booth


• PowerPoint


• VLC Media Player

---

I'm going to have lots of fun with this!  I think now I have a great reason to put an Apple Mini in the living room for watching movies and photos and touring Google Earth.

I live in an apartment so I don't want to go crazy wiring it, but I imagine you could control your house lights, security system, gate buzzer, garage door etc. from your iPhone as well.  I'd love to hear from anyone who has done something like that!  Now if I could only program the iPhone to change diapers, I'd be all set.

Tags: iphone, remotebuddy, apple, airport express, itunes, airtunes

In my last post I wrote about mobile application design and how form should disappear in the face of function.  The implementation of MobileSafari on the iPhone comes so very close to giving developers a toolkit to accomplish this with pizazz, but there are a couple issues holding it back from its full potential:

The "dev kit" that Apple offers doesn't allow access to the phone's features.
This was covered in my last post. Lack of access to the camera, microphone, speaker, alerts etc. hinder iPhone apps from being fully effective.

MobileSafari's support for Web standards is subpar.  The implementation of the Web standards that Apple touted as an application development platform are disappointing.  Javascript behavior is slow and unreliable, and even some CSS properties do not behave according to the Web standards that Apple touted as the future of the iPhone.

This may have come as a surprise to Apple.  As far as I know they have never said outright that the Safari browser and its Mobile counterpart can behave like two different animals, but as someone who spends a lot of time with both, I know it to be true.  This is something that I had considered worth overlooking for a while as the platform was improved on; but rather than fixing the current problems and bringing MobileSafari up to speed with JavaScript handling, iframe display, and the rest, Apple seems to be applying Band-Aid fixes instead, by using custom CSS and Javascript events that work around existing limitations.

At the VON conference this fall, I heard the claim that Apple never second-guesses themselves, that every move is planned well in advance.  While I don't doubt that this is true, this claim was accompanied by the assertion that Apple never makes a mistake.  That the 3rd-party SDK later release was intentional. That the sucky Safari SDK was never intended to be the "real" platform for the iPhone.  Even that the $100 early-adopter rebate was all planned from the beginning.

I don't really agree with this stance; I obsessively read everything iPhone-related that I could get my hands on for MONTHS, and I follow Apple pretty closely.  While it's true that they haven't taken many false steps since Jobs came back on board with the launch of the original iMac and the iPod, there have been a few recent products that weren't exactly flops, but I'm sure they didn't go the way Apple planned them to.

Part of the reason I would hate to think that Apple made no mistakes is this: if the whole Safari SDK - price drop/refund - 3rd-party app saga was all part of some grand scheme on Apple's part, that would qualify in my book as majorly planned obsolescence.  More than I'm comfortable with, in fact.  Especially as a Web developer - so what, was Apple just messing with my mind?  I don't my (imaginary) type of relationship with Steve Jobs is Walt Disney exactly, but I don't think it's Ike Turner either.

The idea that everything Mac is orchestrated perfectly from on high might work somehow...except for the fact that some things with the iPhone haven't gone as initially (publicly) planned.  And the planned obsolescence angle just doesn't fit the company's profile.  Sure, tech stuff (and especially gadgets) improves in leaps and bounds.  I spend thousands of dollars every year chasing the newest carrot that technology dangles in front of me; I'm a total sucker for that.  But I think this is just a little too off-track to be intentional.  Apple has been plenty cool about people hacking their iPhones, and I don't doubt that they are working as hard as possible to achieve maximum development AND maximum profit at the same time.  So I disagree that the whole thing was planned from the start; I'm chalking it up to "bumps in the road" that will one day lead us to the modern mobile Internet that I envision.

I am, of course, interested in your opinion.  Do YOU think the whole iPhone timeline has been completely engineered?  Let's talk about it in the comments of this post.

This is the second part of a series of posts, starting with the present and leading us into the future of the mobile Web. Stay tuned.
Next up: Integration of mobile app platforms...

Tags: iPhone, mobile, web apps, apple, colby+palmer, sdk, javascript, css, mobile+safari, safari