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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...

I started experimenting with the Terraminds Twitter search API last night and wired it into iTweet, my Twitter UI.  Originally my intent had been to add the capability of searching #hashtags, as a way of better indexing my own tweets.  After I spent a while with it and I was happy with the tagging implementation, I realized that I could also add a simple search box to the interface and it would be useful on a different level. Now you can do a quick search to mine the Twitterverse for anything you want, in the same place you do your Twittering from.  Enjoy. You can also embed groupings into your Twitterstream by employing the use of #hashtags.  These links will appear in green, and clicking them will lead you to a search page for that term. iTweet also "cleans" the pound sign from your search tag to make a nicer-looking, easier to read Tweet. (But yes, it still counts in your allotted total of 140 characters.) Easy, right? What's the big difference between the two methods (tagging and searching)? The system of tagging is a more specific way of tracking and contextualizing conversations on Twitter; people are...

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...