When the iTunes App Store launched late June, one of the first applications I downloaded to my iPod touch with the 2.0 software update was Twitterrific [opens iTunes]. I use Twitterrific desktop app on my Mac and have always loved the clean simplicity of it. I downloaded the free version on the iPhone as there were some problems with the scrolling (not like butter) and I wanted to see what other apps would eventually come to the app store for twitter. 

Since then I’ve downloaded Twinkle, Tweetsville and Tweetie [all links open iTunes]. I wasn’t too keen on Twinkle thanks to it bugging me relentlessly to broadcast my location, but also because it’s not a dedicated twitter client. So, when I was out and about I’d have random people sending me messages through Twinkle who seemed to want to “hook up” with me - people who weren’t on twitter. I decided to give that up and move back to good ol’ reliable Twitterrific.

Then the buzz was all about Tweetsville. The UI was clean and iPhone-like (although a little plain and boring in my opinion) and the search/trends was an attractive feature. But this turned out to be the most sluggish app of all, taking an age to download tweets even over wi-fi. I paid £2.39 for it and have never regretted an App Store purchase more than this. After less than a week of using Tweetsville I was removing it from my iPhone. When you mention this on twitter then you get a barrage of recommendations of another really great app, but that’s what they said about Tweetsville. However, after seeing Stephen Fry commend Tweetie recently then I thought I’d give it a go - and at just £1.79 then it’s not too bad.

Tweetie is by far the best application for twitter on the iPhone that I’ve used, although I do have one negative which I’ll mention in a moment. Downloading tweets is extremely quick on opening the application - within 2-3 seconds…and that’s over 3G! It has a very attractive iChat-like UI and boasts features such as the ability to view twitter trends and perform custom searches which is something that Twitterrific doesn’t have. You can also follow and unfollow people directly through the app which is great.

Now for the negative that stops this short of getting a 10/10 from me: the image uploading to Twitpic. Tweetie compresses the image so that it strips it’s quality and uploads it showing as being posted from twitpic (in your timeline) and the image is in landscape mode. In Twitterrific when you upload an image to twitpic it isn’t compressed and shows that it’s been posted via Twitterrific in your timeline and the image is also posted in portrait mode as intended. Here’s an example…

Image posted to twitpic through Tweetie
Image posted to twitpic through Twitterrific

Same image but horribly compressed and rotated via Tweetie. If they work on this image posting method then I will use Tweetie full-time, no question. Until then I’ll be switching between Tweetie for tweets and Twitterrific for image uploads.

Edit: Tweetie 1.1 update [available today] fixes the upload issue and now posts in portrait along with ‘from Tweetie‘ in the timeline instead of ‘from twitpic‘. See the comments for more.

I don’t think there’s anyone, anywhere that is as shy as I am. I tell that to people online and they don’t believe me as I have carved out an online life of being the Administrator of a busy message forum for nearly 6 years. That consists of me taking the lead, organising things (and people) so what’s a shy and retiring girl like me doing something that? Ah, I just love the internet for allowing me to be outgoing and nobody would guess until I blurt it out…like now.

A couple of months ago I found a celebrity on Twitter - Robert Llewellyn who played Kryten in British sitcom Red Dwarf. I love Robert Llewellyn. I can’t say I am a big Red Dwarf fan, but I am a big fan of Scrapheap Challenge - a show he presented for many years. I followed him and a couple of times he asked the Twitterverse a question. A question I could answer. But what did I do? I ran away. What if he personally replied to me saying thanks? I couldn’t take that chance so I sat quietly while I watched his other followers/my contacts answer him. I was so angry with myself for bottling it. He’s a normal down-to-earth bloke, no airs and graces so why was I putting him on this pedestal that he would no doubt be very embarrassed about? Because he’s on the telly, silly.

Since then I have actually got over that and have recently replied to a few of his tweets. I didn’t panic, I didn’t break out into a cold sweat and I didn’t prepare to hide under the desk if he replied (which he didn’t, btw). But wow, I have faced something head-on that has plagued me for 35 years and it’s all thanks to Twitter.

Just as I was feeling smug about overcoming that hurdle I found out that another British legend was now on Twitter, the gentleman that is Stephen Fry. I followed him on Friday and yesterday he started to follow me back. What a lovely man who seems to be following just about everyone who’s following him. I have had a bit of a soft spot for Stephen since watching his open and honest documentary about Bipolar Disorder a couple of years ago. As someone who has a Bipolar partner, it was invaluable viewing at a time when I was desperate to understand more about the illness. I thank Stephen for being so candid and open, particularly during those times when the last thing he wanted was to be followed around by a camera crew.

So, whether I will actually personally reply to @stephenfry is quite another matter, I have only just recovered from replying to @bobbyllew afterall!!

So, which celebrities* have you discovered on Twitter?

*Real celebrities from the Acting/TV/Music world, not internet celebrities nonebrities.

If you are a Twitter user then you’re probably frustrated with the service thesedays and fed up with seeing the Fail Whale page that tells you that there’s just “too many tweets”. The API requests has also been lowered from the standard 70 per hour to just 20 which means if you’re using a desktop Twitter client like Twitterrific then you are buggered unless you lower the auto refresh from every 3 minutes to every 15 minutes to avoid the dreaded yellow triangle.

The official Twitter Status page often seems a bit casual as if they are shrugging and saying “So the site is down again, so what?”. Nothing much seems to change - goes from running fine then oops, everything has gone pear shaped again. Personally I prefer the Fake Twitter Status. It’s given me a good laugh this afternoon, especially this more recent one at the time of writing…

You’re totally going to laugh about this one.  Somebody tripped over the power cable in our new offices and through some kind of “Butterfly Effect” kind of thing, the entire website went down.  Go figure.

I’m looking forward to the day when the official Twitter status page is as open and as frank as the fake one!

It seems like every week I’m discovering new social sites and signing up to them to give them a trial run as I’m always up for trying new things so I can give my opinion (yes, I’ve tried Facebore. Verdict: Zzzzzz) Yesterday it was the turn of Plurk which is a micro-blogging site where you give short 140 character updates.

The site design is nice - bright and fun looking, although I think the “share your emo-ness” is a bit lame and I did wonder if this was going to be aimed towards the 12-16y/misery-teenage-types. The timeline is a bit weird to keep on top of. When I log onto the site a little message comes up to say there’s XX updates…and I never catch up or read what’s been posted as there’s often a lot going on. If there was a Plurk desktop client for Mac then that may make life easier to keep on top of things. I’m not keen on the Karma rating - that’s not something that interests me at all and to be honest I can only see that encouraging people to post for the sake of posting, so they reach new levels and get more emoticons.

Anyway, I’ll be looking in on it every now and again to witness it’s growth - feel free to Plurk me.