Yesterday Panoramic Software quietly released their new Twitter application, moTweets.  As the name implies this is an application for Windows Mobile/Phone devices.

moTweets allows you to Twitter on the go while utilizing the powerful features of your Windows Mobile phone. Users will be able to upload photos taken from their device’s camera or post their location using the built in GPS. Other notable features include: support for multiple Twitter accounts, custom skins, a finger pressable interface and integration with TinyURL!™.
Using its Windows Mobile advertising engine, Panoramic Software Inc. delivers moTweets as a free, ad-supported application. A paid version is also available without advertising.

Thanks to Patrick @ Panoramic Software I received a beta copy of moTweets about three weeks ago.  The final version was released yesterday, and has already been updated to version 1.1.  Testing this one has been a great process and a privilege to have input into what feels like an application that has been personalised to my needs.

I realise that Twitter is a take it or leave it service for a lot of people, and whether you use it for a selective instant messaging service, or are utilising it as a super RSS feed, interspersed with bouts of conversation, humour and just plain interesting stuff, there are probably three things I think a good Twitter application needs to do well. The major function of twitter is quick communication, in a short/concise language format. Twitter exploits three functions that make it work effectively, status update, reply, and retweet. So an application needs to let you skim and update the timeline quickly and with ease, reply to a message in as few steps as possible, and retweet in as few steps as possible. With those things in mind let’s see how moTweets works and fulfils the identified criteria.

Installation

moTweets comes with the typical windows .cab install, and a desktop install option. I tested both, and they were flawless. The app works equally as well installed to a storage card as on device, and with a footprint of only 600 Kb, as of the latest update, it still has a favourable impact on space. The impact on device RAM is minimal as well, using 1700 Kb of Ram.

That sort of memory usage is very consistent, and it’s nothing to have it running with a browser open, [Opera Beta 9.7] so you can read links people are posting in real time. That’s a win there as well, and much more like a desktop experience.

Options

As with any application that utilises your mobile’s data connection, you really want to be able to limit or delimit at will depending on your budget, and data plan.  As well as meeting your Twittering needs,  moTweets offers a good selection of setting and controls  for all of your Tweeting needs.

The penultimate/most important setting for the whole application is the auto refresh. I have it set to one minute in the screen shot above, but that’s while I’m using it connected to a PC, and updating through activesync. You are offerd a wide range of options though.

You can even turn auto updates off, which allows you to manually refresh at will.  Also notable, the auto refresh does not apply if the backlight has turned off on your device, or if moTweets is in the background.

moTweets supports English, Spanish and French, and comes with two preinstalled skins. You can see the sleek blue skin above, and the grey skin below. I’m sure some of the more adept of you out there will be adding your own skins to moTweets in no time

Two  of the more contentious settings, that I thought should by default be off, were device notifications of updates via sound and vibrate. Why is it that people imagine the sound of a tweet to be a shrill high pitched sound, that will make you jump out of your boots?  Other than this annoyance factor, these options both consume extra battery power, thus, inadvertently reducing your device’s operating time.

Other options let you allow how many tweets you download, whether you see a screen name or full name, the size of the timeline view and most important for the finger friendly interface, the quick buttons.

Usability

MoTweets is optimised for touch screen devices, but is completely D-Pad friendly as well. It has a comprehensive multi level menu system, that takes a bit of getting around and time to get used to. For instance the word balloon in the top left reveals these options.

The tweet balloon allows you to add a picture from your devices camera, a picture from a file, shorten a link or post your location.

The timeline option top right is the key to all of your Twitter info, at one touch,

Other options allow you to organize Tweets by:

• Featured
• top
• trending posters
• public
• general timeline of everyone on Twitter
• mentions, every time your user name is mentioned in a tweet
• favourites, things you read that you wanted to remember
• inbox, direct messages you have received or sent
• people you are following and your followers.

All pretty simple, really.

It become second nature after a while, and there are sub menus that offer other options from the main screen using the finger friendly interface. A double tap on any post will bring up a sub menu offering you all of the options available to the elements in that post.

So a single post that has lots of links in it is fully covered in one sub menu, this really cuts down on search times. This is like TweetDeck for Windows Mobile, sans the filtering, and the memory problems.

Conclusion

Although there seem to be a lot of features, and it might seem a bit complicated moTweets really does what I want from a Twitter application, all from its front page. That’s where the quick buttons come in. Panoramic have gone all out to give a really sensitive kinetic scrolling feature, that doesn’t scroll, meaning you can swipe as fast or as slow as you like. When it gets to the top, or the end of the latest update there is no more. No revolving scrolling to take you back to updates you downloaded fifteen minutes ago that you have already viewed. You get a great application that is stable, and is usable from one interface without pulling out a stylus.

The Rt, @ and Favourite buttons, are all finger friendly and allow for one touch access to these functions, without leaving your timeline view. Let’s face it, that is all that I want from a good Twitter app, and moTweets offers so much more, I’m delighted, surprised and happy to have been part of the development of this app [the whinging beta tester]. If you aren’t into Twitter, you need to have a look at this application, just to experience some of the great interface things Panoramic have done, on the finger friendly side. If you are into Twitter, this is a value add that you shouldn’t miss out on.

moTweets is available for free with advertisements included

Premium is available for A$3.99, a fair price I think

Check out Panoramic Software Inc Here

Yesterday I was talking about the idea that all good mobile apps which handle your important data, really need a Cloud portal, easing management, and synchronisation. Managing mobile applications from a computer, is significantly a lot less complicated and quicker than entering data through a mobile interface.


YomoMedia have come up with a unique solution for feeding your daily RSS appetite.  Their service, melds an online portal, that let’s you manage the feeds that go to your mobile, and a Windows Phone application, that syncs with the online portal. Managing things from a computer is always easier. Although the online version of YomoMedia is not exactly a conventional RSS reader, the combination of both, WinMo and Online, is actually a nice revelation.

One thing I’ll say here, before I start looking at the app, is that I mucked up on the configuration of the mobile application, and that the support I have received from Yomo has been phenomenal, I’m already sold on the application, but there are personable, friendly people behind it, It just gets better.

A quick glimpse/opinion of YomoMedia’s [Yomo] offering shows a well developed web application, meshed with a Windows Mobile [Phone ] client. That delivers an integrated Cloud/Device Client application that really works. SO it’s an RSS reader for Windows Phone, it offers an infinitely configurable interface from your PC as well. That makes Yomo, potentially, the template for all good mobile device applications. What I find the most interesting with Yomo, is that they have bypassed the desktop client, and that the online portal, doesn’t serve you the full online content, but gives you a permalink to the full article, opening in a new tab or window, depending on what browser you are using, and opens the original article from the source site.

The most interesting aspect of Yomo is that, you can configure the mobile settings from the online portal, and that they update immediately as you change the config. The opposite also applies! Somehow that seems like cloud exclusivity, not application exclusivity.

Even though the mobile configuration on the web application, looks quite simple, it elevates on the mobile application. The mobile settings are much more important, for your hip pocket. Therefore, a bit more complicated. Obviously, the more you update your feeds on the mobile, the more you are utilising your data plan, and that costs money, unless you have an unlimited account.

Another point I would make here, is that Yomo handles podcasts and vidcasts as well. I  will load them straight from the client application, rendering any third party media players you have obsolete. I haven’t tried out the video as much as audio, but both function well, as always bandwidth is a major concern. Make sure you know what you are being charged for data and your plan limits! The main application settings though, can alleviate most of your monetary worries!

The main application settings, really allow you to own the way Yomo performs. I really think Yomo have well thought out, and made the settings for the mobile application user friendly. Sometimes you can have multiple settings options, that are not reader friendly, choosing the right generic, understandable language in a settings tab, takes a lot of the guess work out of setting up an application.
As for reading feeds in the app itself. Flawless! I should extend reading to listening and watch.

Now Yomo’s catch phrase is “feed your phone”, the most crucial aspect of this online/mobile device, symbiotic application. YomoMedia comes loaded by default, with a bunch of preset feeds in different categories. You can as I did, import your feeds from another reader, as an OPML file.

Exactly what I did, brought my Google reader feeds over, and how i feed my phone, I select the feeds I want to see in Yomo on the phone.

What’s happening here is that you can bring feeds from any source, as an OPML file to YomoMedia, and selectively add feeds to the mobile application, as you wish by checking a box.

You can even send a SMS link from the online app to your phone to download the client app. Nice touch! I’ve rambled on about the interoperability a lot, and haven’t really shown you how nice the mobile client is. By default Yomo opens on the all tab,

See that band of bundles at the top there, that is finger friendly and swipable. Actually it’s really sensitive, a gentle swipe, can be like spinning a chocolate wheel, where it stops no one knows. The UI though is very finger friendly, and it is really easy to navigate with a naked one, sans stylus.

It’s also D pad compatible, so if you don’t like those greasy fingerprints on your device screen, you are accommodated. Selecting any news item will open the article from the source site in Yomo, So even you mobile browser is circumvented.

The way Yomo have used a combination of services, and delivered a complete RSS portal, that does it all in one place, one application, on your mobile, is really an innovation.

I’m really impressed by the crossover between platforms, and the consistency of performance, that YomoMedia is displaying. I’ve had great support via @yomomedia on twitter, and all in all I am finding Yomo a really useful and innovative application that I’m going to keep using!

Check out and download the WinPho app here

[note: any of  the PC screen shots can be clicked on to view a larger image]

I’ve been meaning to post on this for a while, and it’s probably double pronged. When I got my EEEPC 1000H, little did I know that it would become my primary PC. I suppose lot’s of people see netbooks as underpowered, good for one thing devices. On the other hand, if I mentioned a server, most tech heads would picture, imagine, some sort of hyper powered computer, or computers, all linked together, serving data to the internets. What if I say to you, you can run your netbook as a server?

So just some background info, I’ve been blogging for a while, and I set up a couple of sites[free] to archive the stuff I was doing on JAMM and to be able to post things that were, out of the realm of the coverage here at JAMM. Let’s face it, I like lot’s of weird stuff that can’t be categorised here. Although I’ve managed to work some of it in, in my “Now This is Mobile Tech” series. By chance a Twitter friend offered me some server space, so I could self host a blog.

Obviously I chose WordPress as a platform, because that is the editing,admin interface I’m most familiar with, [that’s what JAMM runs on] but administering a blog/website, and creating a look and feel, for your online, personal space, is a bit more complicated than I, and probably many of you think. Although I’m still pretty chuffed at re-writing, for the first time,a plug-in yesterday, I still think it’s a great idea to have a test blog/site, but how to conserve limited server storage and bandwidth? Serve your test site locally’

I spent a lot of time finding a way to host my site locally so that I don’t get things wrong online, and XAMPP was the solution.

Essentially, what this means is that I am running a virtual server on my netbook!

XAMPP is a very easy to install Apache Distribution for Linux, Solaris, Windows and Mac OS X. The package includes the Apache web server, MySQL, PHP, Perl, a FTP server and phpMyAdmin.

XAMPP works with many different blogging platforms, well it will work with any platform that supports the Os’s and programming languages mentioned above. The experience, is something else, and a  bit surreal! You can open your PHP admin page, and your Blog in a browser, any browser, and view the work you have been doing. A great way to preview content, and site design.

Most importantly, this is a mobile solution, that does not require a high powered computer, me and my EEE can run this happily on battery!

Netbooks are actually becoming preferred mobile devices, ease of transport, ease of input, and visual, large enough screen for most of us to be happy. [the first place you go blind is in the eyes] but a lot of people discount the power that a lot of these so called mini devices offer. There’s actually a lot you can do with a netbook.

I’ve posted before about a super sized iPod, The idea of Apple putting out a netbook, or UMPC sized device that runs on the iPhone OS, is of course, attractive to a lot of us. There has been a lot of scuttlebutt on the intertubes today, focusing on an article from of all places, the Financial Times.

The main news is that apple are trying to increase sales of Album content rather than songs, singular. Apparently there is greater financial benefit in that? Speculation that this will also be an eReader killer, is included in the same article.

As always, at least the rumour is consistent, the device is said to have, any thing from a seven to ten inch touch screen. have wi-fi, and a touch screen.

“It’s going to be fabulous for watching movies,” said one entertainment executive.
”The new touch-sensitive device Apple is working on will have a screen that may be up to 10 inches diagonally.”

As always, information like this should be taken with a grain of, neigh, a tower of salt. The most highlighted fact from the post, is that we will be seeing this new device, in less than two months.

Whilst I’d like to see that happen, I some how question the employment of creative writers at the Financial Times.

AT&T acquired what was thought exclusive rights to the iPhone, and up until now those rights have stuck. Whether Apple have recognised that releasing the device on other networks will give them more market share, or just want to leverage a wider market base in the US.You’d have to live under a rock, to have not seen the rumours of the iPhone coming to Verizon.

So AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, has let what seems like a rather submissive, comment, add some fervour to the rumour mill, that is grinding a Verizon Apple alliance, into Apple pie in the near future.

“there will be a day when you are not exclusive with the iPhone”

Let’s face it, it had to, has to happen eventually, if you don’t market a device on all available networks, eventually it limits the units you can move.

No where else in the world, was network exclusivity applied to the iPhone. So it seems inevitable that Apple should, by now want to spread the love!

Will the iPhone un attach itself from it’s foster parent?

Source:

EnGadget

Verizon and Apple