Kontenkonfiguration & Einrichtung

Kontenkonfiguration geht einfach und zügig voran, sobald man alle benötigten Credentials eingegeben und Erlaubnisse erteilt hat, kann man bereits loslegen.

Nur eine Kleinigkeit ist mir dabei aufgefallen: ich wünschte mir mobile UI bei den Authorisierungsformularseiten für Twitter oder Facebook, da man vor allem bei Facebook einige Erlaubnisse hintereinander vergeben muss und das Webformat performt nicht besonders gut im mobilen Browser. Jedenfalls ist die Kontenkonfiguartion in zwei Minuten erledigt und beinhaltet keine negativen Überraschungen.

Was Multiaccounts betrifft, kann man pro Netzwerk nur ein Account konfigurieren, wenn man also zwei (ein Berufs- und ein Privat-) Account hat, was nicht selten der Fall ist, kann man nur eines davon einsetzen.

Timeline, Mentions, DMs, Favoriten

Timeline sieht sauber, übersichtlich und aufgeräumt aus, sehr gut gemacht ist die Netzwerk-Umschaltleiste oberhalb der Timeline, in der man jedes der vorhandenen Netzwerke allein oder alle kombiniert auswählen kann.

Fokus liegt bei Vodafone Update richtigerweise an der Nachricht selbst, die dazugehörigen Infos, wie Netzwerk, Kommentaranzahl, Gefälltmir-Anzahl oder Favorit- / Bookmarkkennzeichnung ist sehr schön untuitiv mit Icons gelöst. So bekommt man alle nötigen Infos auf einen Blick zur Verfügung gestellt, oder dabei in der Infoflut verloren zu gehen. Ein weiteres Highlight ist das sogenannte Zebrahighlighting, das mithilfe von einfacher farblicher Hervorhebung die Orientation im Nachrichtenstrom wesentlich erleichtert.

Ebenfalls schön integriert sind die Favoriten- und Retweetangaben in der Nachricht selbst.

Design, UI & Werkzeuge

Die Werkzeugleiste unten ist ebenfalls schlau gelöst, es wäre nicht genung platz da um für jedes der Nezwerke die notwendigen Tools einzublenden, also wird logischerweise auf Mentions, Mitteilungen und Suche fokussiert und die restlichen Werkzeuge sind unter Mehr aufgehoben. So hat man die am häufigsten genutzten Tools immer zu Verfügung und alle weiteren sind lediglich einen Mehrklick entfernt.

Noch mehr: Trends, Konten, Profilsuche, Umgebung

Unter “Mehr” verstecken sich Favoriten, Trends, Konten, Profilsuche, Meine Tweets, Mein Profil, und Umgebung. Zu den Highlights gehören die Umgebungsradiusoption, Trends und Profilsuche.

Was die “Mehr-Seite” betrifft, da möchte ich einen Usabilityfehler anmerken: Meiner Meinung nach gehört der ‘Zurückbutton’ definitiv nicht in der gleichen Fashion wie die restlichen Werkzeugicons dazu, sondern getrennt und sichtbar abgelöst. Es ist nicht eines der Werkzeuge in der Liste unter Weitere Aktionen, es ist nur der “Cancel / Save / Back – Button”. Es gehört nicht hin.

Layout, Design; Profilseiten, Browser

Design und Layout sind sauber und farblich angenehm und zugleich übersichtlich gestaltet. Alle Komponenten sing gut ausgewogen, was sicher einer der Gründe für die gute Performance ist, trotz fünf unterschiedlicher Nezwerkabfragen zugleich. Besonders elegant sind die Profilseiten gelöst, allerdings könnte ich mir da bessere Integraton mit weiteren anschließenden Diensten wie Favrd, Tweeteorits, TweetBlocker, Instapaper, u.s.w. vorstellen können. Ein Werkzeug fehlt da wesentlich und zwar ein Draft- oder Notesmanager.

Sehr gut gelungen finde ich auch die Anpassung des Facebook-Updateformats für den mobilen Client, inklusive von “Gefällt mir”- und Kommentarintegration, sowohl in der Nachricht selbst als auch in der Timeline, mithilfe von dynamisch upgedateten Icons.

Wünsche, Ideen und Anregungen für künftige Clientversionen

• Multiaccounts: Mehrere Konten innerhalb eines Netzwerks einrichten zu können.
• Draft- / Notesmanager: Nicht gesendete Nachrichten sollten aufbewahrt werden können.
• 3rd party services: Die Integration von MySpace oder LinkedIn ist fein, wobei ich das sterbende MySpace nicht mehr einbinden würde und stattdessen andere Dienste zur Auswahl stellen würde, wie z.B. YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Posterous, TwitVid oder Tweetshrink. Ebenfalls praktisch wäre die URL-Shortener-Auswahlmöglichkeit, sodaß man bei Bedarf z.B. auch einen eigenen Linkkürzer einbinden kann. Noch mehr Inspiration für breitere Anschlussdienstlandschaft findet man in meinem Artikel über Top 15 iPhone Twitter Clients for 2010.
• Schriftgrößeneinstellung: Die Schriftgröße ist im mobilen Web eine der wichtigsten Usabilitymerkmalen und daher wäre es super, wenn man diese den eigenen Bedürfnissen anpassen könnte.
• Scheduled Tweets: Ist ein sehr praktisches aber seltenes Feature und diese Option würde Vodafone Update sicher helfen, sich noch besser aus der Masser der unzähligen iPhone-Clients abzuheben.
• Browser-Bookmarklet: Es wäre sehr praktisch, könnte man beim Lesen im Browser direkt den URL der gelesenen Seite automatisch in den Client zu übertragen, ohne es dabei selbst kopieren und zwischenspeichern zu müssen.
• Webfeeds-Einbindung: Ebenfalls praktisch wäre die Möglichkeit eigene oder fremde Webfeeds einbinden zu können, sodaß man sich auch noch den Feedreader sparen kann.
• Push-Notifications: Das wäre das Nonplusultra-Feature um in der heutigen Infoflut die Übersicht zu behalten.

Fazit

Vodafone Update ist ein einfacher, untuitiv-bedienbarer, eleganter, performanter und kostenloser Multinetzwerkclient für Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn und TwitPic. Mit dieser Lösung kann man statt fünf unterschiedlicher Standalone-Clients einen einzigen für alle Zwecke einsetzen. Eine sehr praktische, zeitgemäße und zukunftsorientierte Lösung.

MEIN PRÄDIKAT: Meine Gratulation und Empfehlung!

Vodafone Update gibt es auch für Android, BlackBerry, Nokia und weitere Java-fähigen Geräte. Hier geht es zu der Vodafone Update Fanpage auf Facebook.

Well. I do respect everyone’s beliefs as long as they do not limit the same right of all others.

But in this case I’m not ready to discuss anything with people running websites such as ‘godhatesfags’, ‘godhatesindia’ or ‘jewskilledjesus’, especially not as long as they call all their friggin’ unbelievable prejudices a religion or whatsoever. I am also not going to link their pages after reading all the incoherent, violent, dishonest and largely fake stuff in the past few days, as it is a waste of time by all means.

And yes, I am aware of the fact, that more than half of the Phelps family are lawyers (just as Fred was until he was disbarred), so I do expect my restraining order to be sentenced on a stake shortly.

So with these words I state my solidarity with Twitter and as of today, I also declare myself to be yet another doomed fag, zionist freak and Obama’s antichrist agent. I just hope, there is enough of your hate remaining so I get my deserved punishment.

I am very happy that we do not have to live in a world of thuggish preached hate-bullhist and state this in public to keep our world furthermore free of harmful duds as these peeps are.

Let me quote you (dear WBC-Folks) just one more time: “Oh well, it sucks to be you. Amen.”

Read more about the upcoming WBC Twitter-Picket at NBC BayArea, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable or even Wikipedia.

There are many iPhone Twitter clients on the market right now and every day new ones arrive. I’ve prepared a field-test of the clients I’ve used over the past two years, based on my experiences with them, compiled into reviews, comparison chart, findings and ratings. I did focus especially on performance, ease of use, good integration, reliability and at least somewhat intuitive, usable and appealing design.

On top of that, if you leave a comment on this article mentioning at least one of your preferred iPhone / iPod touch twitter-clients, you get one vote in my contest to win one of three 15$ iTunes Gift Cards. Read more at the end of this article.

Clients in comparison: Birdfeed, Echofon (aka Twitterfon), HootSuite, iTweets, SimplyTweet, TweetDeck, Tweetery, Tweeterena Pro, Tweetie, TweetPocket, TwitBird Pro, Twit Pro, Twittelator, Twitterrific, ZiiBii.

Key defining factors: Price, Design, Reliability, Performance, Usability, 3rd Party Service Integration, Multiple Accounts, Facebook Connect, Push Notifications, Video Support.

Just before we get started: this is a test done by myself based on my experiences with each one of these clients compiled into subjective findings and ratings. There may be some features I overlooked, didn’t mention, forgot or even plain misunderstood. And I do know I compare free and paid apps in one place, but these are the clients I’ve tried out over my two years on Twitter, so that’s it.

Ok, let’s start

1. with client reviews and screenshots,
2. followed by the comparison chart
3. and over all ratings
4. and finished by a contest for you to win three 15$ iTunes Gift Cards.

Enjoy.

Client Reviews & Screenshots

Tweetie is in my opinion the best and my very favorite iPhone twitter-client. It has everything you can ever imagine. It is very fast, reliable, clean, well-designed and easy to use. Features I love the most are Draft Manager, 3rd party services variety, great usability, customization options and the great intuitive and yet mighty interface design. If you are a heavy twitter user, just get Tweetie and you’ll be happy. In the near feature I hope for Push Notifications, Themes and Facebook Integration to make Tweetie even better.

TweetDeck would be my first choice, if there wasn’t Tweetie. It has a unique design with configurable columns and several themes, facebook integration and synchronisation with the TweetDeck desktop-client. The app is fast and reliable with intuitive interface. I love the informative popups and the tools in the tweet-interface. TweetDeck is the best choice for a free client without ads. I wished it had an URL-Shortener, Draft Manager and more 3rd party service options. Anyway, an amazing free iPhone Twitter Client.

TwitBird Pro is a fast, flexible and rich featured iPhone twitter-client. It offers everything you’d expect from a good twitter client. Especially the clean arranged dashboard, customizable themes, music- & voice-tweets make the difference. The Tweet-Tool-Popups and integrated Music-Tweets are outstanding. It has Push Notifications as well, but per default TwitBird Pro – User to User only. The global Push Notifications package cost as much as the app itself. Anyway, great iPhone Twitter client with lots of potential.

SimplyTweet is a very performant and reliable application with all necessary features such as URL-Shortener, Text-Shortener, conversation tree-view and rich 3rd party service integration and some specialties as Push-Notifications, Browser-Bookmarklet and Notes-Manager on top of that. I only wished for Facebook-Integration in the future. I don’t really like the design-style a lot, but the feature that really counts for me is the Push Notification. I love that. All in all a amazing iPhone twitter-client with bookmarklet, push-notifications, draft-manager & more.

HootSuite is a very special iPhone twitter-client, with Features like no other. There is no other client with integrated scheduled tweets, tweeted links-charts and multi-recipient tweet-delivery. Very well done is also the user-profile interface with the very nice tab-structure and all usually needed tools right at one’s hand there. Scheduled tweets, track-statistics and the team workflow are really outstanding and hard to replace by other twitter-clients. If you’re not missing any other 3rd party services than ow.ly and hootsuite, HootSuite is the right client for you.

Twittelator offers in the free version of the client all the necessary tools, and there are even more of them in the Pro-Version there. It’s one of the heavy rich-featured clients, just like Twitterrific, so one could get really confused. Very unique is the Tweet-Interface, with integrated services ready to use and some special features, such as integrated Special-Chars set for instance. I do like the extensive 3rd party service integration, the google-maps integration and the browser bookmarklet. Twittelator is one of the very best free iPhone twitter-clients with no ads.

Twitterrific in the free version is the most rich-featured iPhone twitter-client out there, even though there are not even all Twitterrific Premium features enabled. It’s so heavy featured, that it get’s confusing and takes a lot of time to get used to that. What I really love about Twitterrific is the use of colors in the design, especially the colored tabs in the tweet-interface are really outstanding and beautiful on top of that. It offers all usual features, plus a browser bookmarklet, themes, URL-Shortener, GEO and more. Very well done are the general bottom-toolbar and the tweet-tools architecture. It’s a great free client with ads and the Premium-Version must be powerful indeed.

Tweeterena Pro is a perfomant and reliable client with good usability. On top of the usual features a good twitter-client should have, Tweeterena Pro offers posting to Facebook, browser-bookmarklet, URL-Shortener, full client caching, translator, themes and a draft-manager as well. I only wished for a better 3rd party integration and video support not just for 3GS. These days Tweeterena becomes 1 year old and there is already a new Project called ‘Eagle’ in development as a new client, just like Tweetie 2 did. I only hope they’re not going to cash one more time for the app. Anyway, happy birthday to you and good luck with the Eagle-Project!

Echofon, also known as Twitterfon is one of the very first rich-featured and usable iPhone twitter-clients there was, in the meantime available in two versions: free & pro. The free version offers basically all the necessary tools a twitterer needs, but there are some features it had before – as multi-accounts – disabled in the free version. There were no ads in the original Twitterfon-Version, but since the update to Echofon, only the Pro-Version is ad-free. All in all a great free iPhone Twitter Client with ads.

Tweetery is a simple twitter-client in a dark elegant design fashion with good usability, but with poor 3rd party integration and many missing necessary tools just as URL-Shortener, note- or draft-manager, video-support, GEO-Support or a bookmarklet. The only outstanding feature I can think of is the ‘Mute-User option’. The look & feel is good, but functionwise the client is not finished yet. Other than that is Tweetery a nice but basic iPhone Twitter Client with potential for the future.

Birdfeed is in my opinion the most well-designed, clean and elegant iPhone twitter-client ever, with all the usually needed tools and one neat dashboard, draft-manager, browser bookmarklet and infinite scrolling on top of that. The 3rd party service integration is good as well, but there is a serious problem with the performance there, what does the best design of the world count, if every screen takes minutes to load. I love the design and the features, but I really hate the waiting. I still hope for a fix, since I purchased the client back then for $4.99.

TweetPocket is yet another nice twitter client for just $0.99 with good usability and reliability but the performance is rather poor. It offers some 3rd party integration, some kind of a dashboard and music-tweets as well. Well done are the user-profile pages and the tweet-interface with URL-Shortener, photo-tweet, hashtag- & music-tweet-integration. I do miss more colors in this client and better performance. Way to go would be Facebook-Integration, videotweet-integration, a draft-manager and a browser bookmarklet.

ZiiBii is not just a twitter-client like all the others, it’s a river of configurable streams integrated with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Yahoo and capable of fetching any other configured webfeeds. The combination of sources is unique and so is the interface, but I wasn’t able to get used to it and it felt confusing and somewhat strange to use. There is a potential to develop this client for better usability and bigger use-case variety. Interesting and unique approach with somewhat half-baked solution yet.

TwitPro is another basic low-budget iPhone Twitter Client solution with multiple accounts, facebook-upload and video-support, but poor performance and poor 3rd party integration. The focus on Trending Topics (Twitter in Real-Time in 9 predefined categories) is in my opinion really overstated and the configurable tab-interface didn’t work for me at all. Nice outstanding features are the offline-mode and battery-life optimization. Other than that it’s a simple straight-forward basic twitter-client for just $0.99.

iTweets offers one more unique approach to a twitter-client. There are no tabs, no columns and no pages. All Tweets are displayed in one stream with customizable colored diferentiation for mentions, DM’s or favorites. The most special features, like no other client has, are the “Tap Commands”.. Single tap for built-in web view, double tap for reply, tripple tap for favorit toggle. The client remembers the last viewed tweet too. Apart from these amazing features, the interface feels confusing and if you’re following more than 20 people you’ll be lost in your own timeline most of the time.

Top 15 iPhone twitter-clients for 2010. Comparison overview table.

My final results out of the iPhone twitter-clients I’ve used until now.

Best Paid iPhone Twitter Clients: Tweetie, SimplyTweet & TwitBird Pro.
Best Free iPhone Twitter Clients with no ads: TweetDeck & Twittelator.
Best Free iPhone Twitter Clients with ads: Twitterrific & Echofon.

CONTEST! Leave a comment to Win one of three 15$ iTunes Gift Cards

Write down at least 1 (up to 3) of your favorite iPhone twitter-client(s) in a comment on this article and get a vote in the draw for one of three 15$ iTunes Gift Cards. Feel free to present why the client of your choice is the best one for you.

If you write an article about this contest on your blog you get three votes in the contest, trackback counts.

All comments on this article before Friday, February 12th 2010 midnight (CET – Central European Time) get one vote in the contest. Every article about this contest before this date gets three votes in the contest. The draw itself will be done by my cats and monitored by my wife on February, 13th 2010, so you can get your iTunes Gift Card for Valentine

Contest-Rules (Terms & Conditions)

1. Please comment just once, every email gets one vote max.
2. If you write an article on this contest on your blog, you get three votes in the contest. Trackback counts.
3. The prize is one out of three 15$ iTunes Gift Cards. There will be three winners drawn and every one of them gets one 15$ iTunes Gift Card.
4. There is no refund of any other kind for your win, especially not in any monetary way.
5. I reserve myself the right to change the rules of this contest and to limit the duration of this contest. For more see the iTunes Store Gift Certificates and Allowances Terms.

So don’t hesitate and get your 15$ iTunes Gift Card for free here. Good luck & Spread the word please!

Superstory dieser Woche: Von Google’s & unserer Zukunft. Denkanstoß & Lesebefehl.

“Pete logs onto his desktop computer. It’s a “dumb” netbook built by Google and called Google Chrome Superbook 5, with a fast startup time of 0.3 seconds, the point at which the Google engineers figured further optimizations were not useful, in terms of limitations of human perception. The mouse next to the computer is also made by Google. It includes some technical wizardry that Pete was happy to wait for when he ordered it online in the Google web store: the mouse automatically logs him into his Google account based on his fingerprint, skin color and more, falling back to a password prompt if anything’s off…”

Built By Google >>

Social Networking auf japanisch: Alles mobil!

“According to a recent study conducted by Mobile Marketing Data Labo on 4,000 social network users in Japan, 75.4% of the respondents claimed that they access social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter via their mobile phone (and not from their PC). What’s more shocking is that a mere 2% said they visit it from their PC (and not their mobile phone). Meanwhile, 22.2% access from both PC and mobile phone…”

Japanese Social Networking – It’s all mobile >>

Datenschutz àla Facebook? Evolution, Revolution oder nur einfach komplett daneben?

“Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience yesterday that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private as it was for years until the company changed dramatically in December…”

Facebook’s Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy is Over >>

Skype + Panasonic + LG == Wird Skype unsere Wohnzimmer erobern?

“The service, which includes free video calls between Skype members, will compete with consumer video conference services being developed by bigger companies such as networking giant Cisco Systems Inc and Polycom Inc, which plans to develop consumer video services with International Business Machines Corp. Skype, a former eBay unit, said both LG and Panasonic will have high-definition TVs supporting its service around mid-year…”

Skype to offer video service on LG, Panasonic TVs >>

Comparison Chart: Nexus One vs. Palm vs. Droid vs. iPhone

“The biggest difference is total cost of ownership, and Nexus One wins big there over iPhone and Droid because T-Mobile’s plans. Overall, it seems just about impossible to pick a winner just off the specs, but here’s a look at how the device’s stack up…”

Comparison chart: Nexus One vs. Palm vs. Droid vs. iPhone

Arbeitswelt: Twitter als Qualifikation und Ausschlußkriterium

“Die amerikanische Multimediakette Best Buy suchte im Sommer dieses Jahres einen Experten für das Marketing über neue Medien. Er sollte einen Universitätsabschluss haben, vier Jahre Jahre Führungserfahrung – und 250 Follower auf Twitter. Damit ist die Zahl der Abonnenten gemeint, die den Kanal des Bewerbers auf dem sozialen Netzwerk verfolgen und dessen bis zu 140 Zeichen langen Texte regelmäßig lesen…”

Twitter als Qualifikation, Einstellungsvoraussetzung 250 Follower

Das Jahr 2010 sorgt für IT-Probleme: y2k10

“Nach den Jahr-2010-Fehlern in SpamAssassin und vielen deutschen EC- und Kreditkarten gibt es weitere Meldungen über Schwierigkeiten mit Produkten aufgrund des Jahreswechsels. Auch in Australien gab es beispielsweise Probleme beim Bezahlen mit (Debit-)Karten in Geschäften, weil die Terminals aufgrund eines Programmierfehlers annahmen, dass das Jahr 2016 erreicht sei und demzufolge die eingesteckten Karten abgelaufen seien…”

Das Jahr 2010 sorgt für IT-Probleme: y2k10