Posts tagged with: iphone

Here's a bookmarklet to help you tweet links to Web pages from your iPhone using iTweet.net and bit.ly:



Post Link via iTweet



Adding and using this bookmarklet is simple.  Just drag the above link into your Safari bookmarks and sync your iPhone to transfer the bookmarklet to your iPhone.



Then, from any Web page that you would like to post on Twitter, just go to your Bookmarks, locate the "Post via iTweet" bookmarklet and select it.  A new web page will be opened to http://itweet.net, the link will be shortened using bit.ly, and placed in the Post field ready for tweeting.



I thought about putting the original page's title into the tweet as well, but then I realized I would usually rather make up my own caption. However if the general consensus is that adding the page title to the tweet would be more useful, I can make that change - leave your opinion in the comments here, or email me, or contact me on Twitter.



Thanks to Matt Teske for providing the motivation to make this bookmarklet - I will definitely find it useful and I hope you will too.  :-)

itweet twitter bitly link...

iTweet.net user John Haydon made this fantastic "How To" video called Setting Up And Using iTweet.Net and posted it on his blog, CorporateDollar.org.  Nice work John!





The response to iTweet 2's web interface has been truly extraordinary and now WAY surpasses usage of the original iPhone interface.  It is so wonderful to see a larger user community developing and producing great stuff like this video.  Thanks everyone!

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

Technorati tags: itweet, twitter, video, iphone, howto, diy, web app

I've made a couple additions and modifications to iTweet this week, they are lots of fun and add some great functionality!



In the Web interface I've added Statistics to your profile in the top right - so you can see at a glance your number of updates, favorites, following and followers. This updates itself as you tweet, fave and follow.  There is also an "Appearance" preference in the Settings menu - you can keep the default iTweet look OR import your Twitter profile's appearance - background image, font colors, sidebar color and everything!



If you are wondering "where did the nifty follow/notifications/block buttons go?", I have moved them all to the Profile pages to make better use of the API and make these methods more intuitive.  The old method assumed whether you were following a person or not based on the timeline they were found in; this was a little confusing and inconvenient, so I've moved it to the Profile page.  Here the page can tell (via the Twitter API call) whether you are following that person or not, and present the correct options depending on that status.



There's also an "is so-and-so following me?" button so you can see...

The Surfin' Safari blog announced SquirrelFish today, a new javascript interpreter for WebKit that is 1.6 times faster than the current interpreter. This is incredible, as Safari is already a super-fast browser, but as John Gruber points out in Daring Fireball, it may mean improved JavaScript support for the iPhone. If you've read much of this blog, you already know my opinion about the whole "JavaScript on the iPhone really sucks" thing. I was recently reminded of this when translating some jQuery/JSONscripting from the Web to the iPhone. What ran as a fairly simple and speedy app on the Web became unusable on the iPhone, and I had to strip out tons of code to get even basic functions up to speed. Keep your fingers crossed that SquirrelFish makes it to the iPhone, and soon! I'm not sure if its release so close to the WWDC conference means it won't be making it to the upgraded "iPhone 2" that everyone is expecting to be announced, or if an iPhone software update will be released after the new iPhones hit the market. The sooner the better! The creators of SquirrelFish say this is just the beginning...

I recently had a client ask me to adjust her site to be iPhone-compatible.  The navigation of this site uses Flash to apply a cosmetic animation on the text, so her site wasn't navigable via iPhone or any other non-Flash equipped device. At first I thought I would advise her to forget about the slight effect that the Flash provided and change to a non-animated, but fully accessible navigation system.  But I knew she really liked this small detail of the site, so I thought I would try another way. ...are you using swfObject to embed your Flash content, anyway? Because you probably should be.  swfObject is an  XHTML-valid javascript  method of displaying Flash content without using unwieldy tags.  The script will fill any old

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 got an Airport Express unit for Christmas, yippee!  Finally the massive wealth of songs on my iMac are flying through the air and spilling gloriously from the speakers in my living room.  It's awesome!  Although setup was a little funky with my aging wireless router, once I got it working I was amazed at how simple iTunes makes it to switch between speakers via AirTunes, and how nice the music quality is. Especially cool is that, with one stationery and two laptop computers in the apartment, it's simple to control the flow of the music via shared libraries.  Keeping a laptop in the dining room, for instance, makes it easier to play DJ without going to the office on the other side of the apartment when a track needs skipping. But even BETTER, I'm using Remote Buddy on my iPhone to control the tunes.  I can use it to change AirTunesspeakers from my office to the living room easily, and navigate through my playlists to find what I want to hear. Then it offers a simple remote-control interface to control the song or volume. This app is almost freaky because you can operate all kinds of apps via...

The January 2008 issue of iProng Magazine just came out and I am featured in an interview about iTweet, the Twitter UI for the iPhone (and now the desktop) that is my pet project.  iProng is an iPod- and iPhone-centric website, magazine, and podcast that is headed up by Bill Palmer (no relation, I swear!). iProng's tagline is "Voice of the iPod Generation" and this really describes the focus of their collective efforts well.  The magazine and podcasts feature Mac-geek interests such as Macworld Expo articles, interviews with Web/iPhone developers like Joe Hewitt (and, um, me I guess), coverage of PodCamp, BlogWorld Expo and VON events, and also cultural interests like album/concert reviews, interviews with musicians like Silverchair, Rebecca Loebe and Internet darling Matthew Ebel, features about yoga podcasting, iPod games and more.  There's a little something for everyone. iProng has a main website where you can contact them for information, read reviews and find out where they are appearing at events.  You can find the magazines available for download here.  They are also provided in an iPhone-friendly format here(nice touch!) I've been listening to the podcasts for a while and I'll vouch that...

This is part of a series of posts about the Apple iPhone and the future of the mobile Web. With regard to the upcoming release of an iPhone SDK for native, third-party apps: keep in mind that Web apps are growing in popularity and functionality.  Many predict web apps will one day render the desktop tower more or less obsolete.  As apps like Google Mail/Reader/Docs/Calendar, Basecamp, Todoist and the rest become more ubiquitous, online file storage like .Mac and box.net become cheaper/easier/faster, and bandwidth pipes become less of an issue, the day will come when files and applications are all run online, and users log in through a thin client OR EVEN A MOBILE DEVICE to establish their identity and to operate the data and applications.  Google is banking on this.  You can bet that Microsoft is working to create Web-app versions of their software.  Apple seemed to be on the same page with the original, abandoned Safari SDK, and with the Google Maps and Search integration on the iPhone. What happened? Some have suggested that the problems involved got too complicated just to fix them instead of working around them. I don't know if that's true, but...

In my last post I wrote about mobile application design and how form should disappear in the face of function.  The implementation of MobileSafari on the iPhone comes so very close to giving developers a toolkit to accomplish this with pizazz, but there are a couple issues holding it back from its full potential:

The "dev kit" that Apple offers doesn't allow access to the phone's features. This was covered in my last post. Lack of access to the camera, microphone, speaker, alerts etc. hinder iPhone apps from being fully effective. MobileSafari's support for Web standards is subpar.  The implementation of the Web standards that Apple touted as an application development platform are disappointing.  Javascript behavior is slow and unreliable, and even some CSS properties do not behave according to the Web standards that Apple touted as the future of the iPhone.

This may have come as a surprise to Apple.As far as I know they have never said outright that the Safari browser and its Mobile counterpart can behave like two different animals, but as someone who spends a lot of time with both, I know it to be true. This is something that I had considered worth...

When I imagine a "digital lifestyle", it is long on "lifestyle" and short on "digital". I picture a level of integration between tech (iPhone, home computer, web applications and services), life (home, family, travel, friends) and the digital tracings of my life (photos, video, music, design, blog/microblog/ tumblelog) that allows me to enjoy what I'm doing without thinking about transferring from real life to digital.  It just happens, at least it does in my mind's eye. The advent of the iPhone had made it seem like the "digital lifestyle" was ready to integrate in this way.  Unfortunately, the actual product and process has fallen short of this mark. Apple's announcement that they are releasing a "real" iPhone SDK for native third-party applications is good news for the iPhone.  Applications so far, whether they were Safari Web apps or hacked native apps, have been restricted to a fairly primitive set of features. The main reason for this: no integration with the features that should make the iPhone a mobile wonder: camera, microphone, speaker, accelerometer on the hardware side, and Address Book, Calculator and Clock on the software side.

A good mobile app should be as transparent as...