E-Paper
Mobile networking
The big trend of the year was ‘twittering’ and ‘poking’ your friends directly from the cellphone. Here are some of the apps that help you do so.
The big trend of the year was ‘twittering’ and ‘poking’ your friends directly from the cellphone. Here are some of the apps that help you do so.
You know that you can access the mobile versions of most social networking sites on your smartphone by simply adding an ‘m’ before the site’s domain name. But that’s just one way. You also have a variety of native mobile applications that not only offer a much better browsing experience but also integrate the sites with your regular phone features (like the address book). Here are a few of them.
Many phones, many sites
Gravity: This is a popular, powerful Twitter client for Nokia S60 smartphones. With Gravity, you can manage multiple Twitter accounts, save links from tweets to your Delicious account and post pictures to any Twitter-friendly photo sharing site. It also supports retweets, direct messages, favourites, etc. A 10-day trial version can be downloaded from the Ovi Store.
Snaptu: This is an all-in-one application that lets you manage your Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Google Picasa accounts from your mobile phone. Snaptu’s Twitter application provides all the basic Twitter functionality — status updates, direct messages, @replies — while its Facebook component lets you update statuses and read and write messages using Facebook email. Snaptu works on any Java-enabled mobile phone.
Nimbuzz — While Nimbuzz is primarily an instant messaging and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) client for Skype, Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger, you may also use it to interact with your Facebook friends using Facebook Chat. The mobile app for Nimbuzz is free and available for most mobile phones. It also has Twitter.
Dabr — Dabr is not as much a mobile app to Twitter as it’s a mobile interface. The best aspect about Dabr is that it will auto-convert picture URLs (like TwitPic) into thumbnails so you can view images directly in your Twitter timeline without having to click anywhere. And since Dabr is a mobile web client, you can use it from just about any mobile phone.
Facebook Mobile — This is the official Facebook app that integrates with your phone and lets you upload pictures directly to your Facebook account. The mobile app is available as a free download for BlackBerry, Nokia, Windows Mobile and iPhone. If you have a touchscreen mobile phone, you can access the touch-optimised version at touch.facebook.com.
For your BlackBerry only
TwitterBerry: With TwitterBerry, you can take a picture with your BlackBerry and post it on to Twitter via TwitPic or yfrog. The app will recognise #hashtags in the tweets and a notification icon will show you the number of new messages in your Twitter timeline.
UberTwitter: UberTwitter automatically updates your location based on cell tower information (like Google Latitude) even if your BlackBerry doesn’t support GPS. The latest beta of UberTwitter also includes support for Twitter Lists.
For S60 and the iPhone
Tweets60: Tweets60 is a native Twitter client for Nokia S60 smartphones available in both free and pro versions. This application is primarily for users who want to update their own status as well as follow what others are saying on Twitter. The pro version allows you to post images to TwitPic and follow search terms on Twitter.
Tweetdeck: You can use Tweetdeck on your iPhone to manage both Facebook and your multiple Twitter accounts. The app will automatically sync with TweetDeck Desktop, so if you have created any custom search columns on the desktop, they’ll also become available inside the mobile app (and vice-versa). Just shake your phone to check if there are any updates.
Tweetie: This $3 app (Rs 140) has a very impressive UI. There’s an offline mode so you can do things such as reading past tweets, following new people, replying to tweets, etc even without a data connection. You also get a bookmarklet for Safari that lets you post links directly to Twitter via the Tweetie app.
Amit writes a technology blog at www.labnol.org
