Panoramic Software has recently released moTweets 1.0.1 to the JAMM Store.  moTweets, a Twitter client developed for the Windows Mobile Professional platform, provides support for multiple user accounts, the ability to take pictures using your phone’s camera and upload them directly, complete with GPS tags and a finger friendly user interface.

A free trial is available for download here.  You can also register the full version for $3.49 through September 30, when the price returns to $3.99.

While visiting the JAMM Store, be sure to check out the rest of the new and updated software for Windows Mobile Professional.  Links to the product pages are below.

New Software

• Ringtone Expressions v1.0
• Ringtone Expressions Monthly Subscription v1.0
• Mytopia – Texas Hold’em Live v1.34.16
• Mytopia – Bingo Island Live v1.29.16
• moTweets – The Premiere Twitter App – New! v1.0.1
• Sideline v1.0

Updated Software

• SmartCaddie Pro with GPS v2.7
• Drinking Cooking and Shopping Suite v5.01
• SBSH GoNews Touch v1.1.2
• GRemote Pro v1.1.3
• eDrinksMixn Deluxe v5.01
• Panoramic BlackJack v1.1.1
• Panoramic Contacts Genius v1.8.9
• Historia v3.1.3
• ActivePrint Professional v7.03

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

Here’s an interesting one for BB users: if you’re looking to expand your media awareness on a certain topic, Twitter is one of the best modern hot spots for discussion. One of the cool things about it is that it’s pretty easily searchable, and you don’t even need a Twitter account to take advantage of all the information being tweeted around. Twitterlerts takes advantage of this by automatically searching for tweet topics you’d like to be alerted to. Just type in the key words and the app will ding you when a new tweet is found — from there you can view it or share it with friends or co-workers in a quick e-mail.

If you’re interested. Twitterlerts is available from Electric Pockets for $4.99, and there’s also a free trial on Blackberry App World.

Do you Twitter?  Are you a Twit with your Tweets?  I’ll be honest here and tell you that I really don’t Twitter.  Sure, I have an account, and have tried to understand it, but it just never did much for me.  That being said, I do understand that millions of people out there send what must be billions and billions (sorry, Carl Sagan) of Tweets on Twitter every day (does this make anyone else think of a little yellow canary from Looney Tunes?) 

Well, if you are on the Palm Pre, then you are going to want to check out Tweed, the only Twitter currently available for the Palm Pre.  And I have to say that I was pretty impressed by how well this one works.  Once you log in, you will obviously be faced with your current Twitter feed.  That would be the home screen. 

From here, you can read the posts in your feed or write a new post.   You can even add your location to a new status update using Google maps, a new photo, or other url.

Additionally, you can just tap on any entry in your feed to mark that person as a favorite, reply to them in your own status update, retweet their tweet, or just mark the entry for future use. 

I was pretty impressed to find almost every Twitter tool you would expect to find in Twitter, including Direct messages, Trending Topics, and plenty more.  I do not really use Twitter these days, but if I did, I cannot really find anything I would want to do which is not included here. 

More often than not, lately, the big phone providers, are focusing on the latest online trend, Social Media. Sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, brought everyone an online portal, on which to share their thoughts, feelings,absurdities and emotions. The popularity of these services, and the myriad of others that seem to appear on a daily basis, Is driving device manufacturers to include native applications to access these services.

Nokia are the latest on this bandwagon

The fact that phone makers are picking up on the whole self promotion, social media wave is not surprising. I wonder though, is this something that all mobile phone users want or need.

Admittedly I’m a twitter user, and I find it a useful tool, occasionally. I follow a whole heap of web sites that provide pertinent Windows Mobile information, that I might use, some what like a RSS reading application. Sometimes though I wonder, shouldn’t use of these services be a personal choice, and not an included service on a mobile phone, that you inadvertently use without prior knowledge of what the service is, or does, or leaves you open to?

Creating a profile on any social media network, leaves you open to as many whack jobs, self promoters, sales people and genuine people as you can handle. Filtering that combination of input, is well above the average level of work, and time that most people have in a day online. A lot of people get sucked into affiliate services that let them automate their Twitter accounts, and get lot’s of followers, as a marketing tool. Lot’s of people hook up with the same add ons and get spammed, and get no value from their social networking accounts.

So seeing this press release today from Nokia, this post is my reaction, and action.

What I wonder is

• do these apps, and their inclusion value add to the device?
• does the inclusion of these native apps, value add to the social media site?
• Should people not have the choice to install these apps themselves?
• Should device manufacturers assume that these are apps that people want?

I’d like to see your opinions and views here, but I’ll state mine, to start you off.

I can get a multitude of free third party apps to access all of these services, I would like to control what software I have included on any new phone I get, there is only one third party social media app I’m interested in, and I want a phone with as little service provider customisation as I can get!

Some how, the idea that a phone OS would work flawlessly, seems to be secondary to picking up on what’s hot online, is this actually what mobile device marketing has come to?

Seriously, crack me a comment below, if you think differently!