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 started experimenting with the Terraminds Twitter search API last night and wired it into iTweet, my Twitter UI.  Originally my intent had been to add the capability of searching #hashtags, as a way of better indexing my own tweets.  After I spent a while with it and I was happy with the tagging implementation, I realized that I could also add a simple search box to the interface and it would be useful on a different level.

Now you can do a quick search to mine the Twitterverse for anything you want, in the same place you do your Twittering from.  Enjoy.

You can also embed groupings into your Twitterstream by employing the use of #hashtags.  These links will appear in green, and clicking them will lead you to a search page for that term.  iTweet also "cleans" the pound sign from your search tag to make a nicer-looking, easier to read Tweet.  (But yes, it still counts in your allotted total of 140 characters.) Easy, right?

What's the big difference between the two methods (tagging and searching)?  The system of tagging is a more specific way of tracking and contextualizing conversations on Twitter; people are embedding the tags purposefully, to create ad hoc channels or groupings. What TerraMinds does is different, it's a generalized search engine for the Twitter service.  You can read more about #hashtags in my blog and at the Twitter Fan Wiki.  Stowe Boyd and Chris Messina were early proponents of the idea and they have written about it at length as well.

Hashtags.org also has a great service for employing hashtags.  Why am I using Terraminds for #hashtags then?  Users must be following the @hashtags Twitter user in order to have their tweets scanned and registered by the hashtags.org service.  At the time of this writing there are only about 620 users following @hashtags, so IMO this service doesn't really permeate the Twitterverse enough to establish ubiquity (yet).  For this reason, I recommend following @hashtags on Twitter.  I would prefer to use the hashtags.org service until Twitter adds this feature natively; unfortunately at this time I don't feel like hashtags.org is widespread enough to add it to iTweet without confusing a ton of people.  (I also do not know if they support 3rd-party services via an API.)

The development of iTweet has been very fun due to feedback from you, the users...so let me know what you think.  Get in there and try to break that sucker, as I know you will. 

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

Cross-pollinate social networks?  Sure!  Join the iTweet Facebook group.

Note: iTweet.net's browser interface currently works great in Firefox and Safari. I will debug it for the evil Internet Explorer as soon as possible.  I will also be adding the search and tagging functions to the iPhone version as soon as possible.

Tags: iTweet, twitter, hashtags, search, terraminds, tagging, webdev, social+media