think differently big

WriteRoom.iPhone 2.1 and TextExpander

I’ve been using WriteRoom since getting it on a previous promotion and I can tell you that it is one of the best writing apps. I have also tried TextExpander for saving on typing, but I would strongly recommend Apple to consider it as an app allowed to be run in the background to finally be able to take full advantage of its power.

To celebrate the integration of WriteRoom.iPhone with TextExpander, Hog Bay Software and SmileOnMyMac are both offering a special 48-hour sale on WriteRoom.iPhone and TextExpander touch. Until September 30 at 12 noon Pacific Time, WriteRoom.iPhone and TextExpander will be only $1.99 each, a 60% discount off the regular price of $4.99 each.

—hogbaysoftware

Frustrations with the iPhone Google Reader

I don’t know if I’m qualifying myself as a heavy reader, but I usually go through a few hundred news on a daily basis. I’ve been using Google Reader for a long time to manage all my not-so-dead RSS subscriptions. Even if most of the time I’m using a “fluid” version on my laptop, there are times when I’d really love to use it on my iPhone.

You know I love my iPhone. Unfortunately each time I’m using the mobile version of Google Reader my frustration growth exponentially with the time I spend using it. It is not because it is a bad application. In fact I think it is the best available for now and it has the potential of remaining the best.

The iPhone Google Reader version is missing quite a few critical features that are making it extremely unusable. And I’m not referring to any new features, but to those existing in the web application for a while. So, lets take them one by one.

Mark as Read/Unread

There is currently no easy way to mark an item as read or unread. The only way to mark a news item as read is to open it up. And to mark it as unread, you have to scroll to the bottom of the news and figure out how to click on that small check box reading Mark as unread.

I don’t think I’ll have to tell you how unproductive that feels when you have to do it over and over again.

The Google Reader team decided that instead of placing the Mark as read/unread close to the title, that space shoudl be used for placing the Star action. Now, I might not be an usability expert, but why would I need the Star functionality close to the title, when supposedly Starring means that I read the article and found it interesting?

Fixing this issue would be quite easy and would suppose replacing the Star action with Mark as Read/Unread. The Star action could be moved either to the other side of the title (GMail style) or at the bottom of the post. This UI change will be consistent with both other applications’ UI and other Google mobile apps.

Tagging

Tagging is completely missing from the iPhone Google Reader version. Over the years of Google Reader usage I have built a large and consistent tag cloud (it’s hard to say how many tags there are in my cloud, but I’d estimate the number somewhere between 100-200). Now, this missing feature makes the mobile version almost unusable for me. Each time I’m reading an article that I’d like to tag, I have to either make a mental note or to use the star option in order to remember to revisit the article.

Google has already built tagging support in their mobile version (see GMail tags). I must confess that in my case simply having a text area similar to the one available for the Note action would be more than enough. Not having any tagging support is purely unpleasant, unproductive and frustrating.

Snippet preview

Google Reader uses the following rule for displaying unopened items: Title (optionally author name) plus the first line of text. As far as I can say snippet preview functionality is a meant to offer you a bit of information about the content so you can quickly decide if you want to continue reading or not.

Unfortunately on a mobile device, one line of text is most of the time equivalent with 4-6 words., so good luck figuring out if you really want to read or not the article. While I agree that displaying a full paragraph would clutter the interface, I’m pretty sure that 3 rows of text would be much more useful than the 4-6 words.

There are a few other things that I’d missing, but I’ll keep this post focused only on the major problems, hoping that the Google Reader team will make the mobile version usable and productive very soon.

Twitter iPhone Apps Round-Up

Is there any connection between geeks and social networks? I don’t know and I’m not gonna try to answer this question. At least not in this post. What I’ll try to figure out instead is what iPhone apps are there for those geeks of us using Twitter (in case you don’t know what Twitter is, you can jump to any other posts from the iPhone apps for geeks series).

Twitter is growing exponentially lately. And while most probably none of us is Ashton Kutcher, Oprah or Arnold Schwarzenegger so that we cannot live without our fans, we still might find the service useful and so we’d like to have it on our iPhones.

So what Twitter iPhone apps are there? Well, if you master the AppStore search you’ll be able to find a ton of apps, ranging from very basic to all-the-features-you-can-imagine ones. So, while I’m not planning to look at all of them, I came up with 3 different categories to group these apps.

Basic apps

I have used a pretty wide definition of what a basic app would be and basically included here some apps that are useful only for very specific use cases.

Mobile Twitter

Twitter.com has a mobile version that is offering all functionality available on the main site. The only reason for using the mobile version would be that it is free, it minimizes the bandwidth requirements (there aren’t any avatars and basically everything in there is pure text) and it offers access to most of the site functions. Not to mention that as you’d expected its usage is free.

TwitAndRun

This is an app that provides a very simple way to post your twits. There’s no access to your timeline, friends or anything else. The whole app consists of a single screen with an input area and a button. TwitAndRun is free.

JustUpdate

This is another push-only Twitter iPhone app. The feature that makes it an interesting option is that it is aware of your friend list and so you can send out responses or direct messages without having to remember your friends’ screen names. JustUpdate app is free too.

Feature-rich apps

Even if most of the Twitter iPhone apps are competing in the number and the complexity of the features they support, there is one particular feature I was looking for: groups (i.e. the possibility to place your friends in different groups and see their twits separately).

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a free iPhone app that provides most of the functionality available in the well-established desktop version. The app is extremely usable and it even has a mechanism to synchronize the group definitions on your iPhone app and the its desktop version.

Unfortunately, there is one major drawback of using TweetDeck: it is basically draining off my iPhone battery. I don’t have a clear result, but it’s my impression that TweetDeck will just kill your iPhone in 1-2 hours of usage.

The other 3 iPhone Twitter apps that support groups are: SimplyTweet (€3.99), Twittelator Pro (€3.99), TwitterBox (€1.59).

Unfortunately their free versions do not support this feature so I couldn’t get a feel on how they are behaving. Anyways, just for reference here is a short description of their feature sets:

Twittelator Pro

• Video/Audio twits
• Unlimited drafts and offline tweeting
• Create sub groups of friends
• Multiple accounts support
• Built-in browser to view links, movies, audio
• Proximity tweeters (geolocation)
• Advanced searching (saving included)

SimplyTweet

• Push notification (for mentions and direct messages): this is a unique feature among the other apps
• Themes
• Browsable conversations
• Groups (including people that you are not following)
• Multiple accounts support
• Searches and saved searches
• Proximity search (geolocation)
• Draft twits and Tweetshrink support
• Photo support (including a built-in photo viewer)
• Posterous/TwitPic/yfrog/TwitrPix/img.ly/Instapaper support

TwitterBox

• Create unlimited boxed (groups) and customize the L&F (names/icons)
• Interactive unread count
• Use as many accounts as you want
• Dozens of client settings
• Search
• Add searches as filter criteria
• Watch Twitter trends
• Add/view/save pictures
• Follow/Unfollow
• User details

Elegant apps

I have come up with this category because I know there are a couple of Twitter iPhone apps that are providing not only the complete feature set, but are competing on elegance and speed. The names I’ve heard the most that seem to fit in this category are: Twitteriffic, Tweetie and TwitterFon. Even if both Twitteriffic and TwitterFon are offering a free version, these are missing most of the goodies so I don’t have much to say about them.

In any case, if somebody is willing to provide me with codes for any of these I’d be happy to test them out.

If you have any insights about any of these apps please do share them with me. Other readers will definitely appreciate any additional information.

Make sure you are checking the other app reviews and categories covered in the iPhone apps for geeks series.