Daily Bits

Mobile

Official Twitter App for iPhone Goes Live, and It’s Good

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So finally, the official Twitter app has landed on the iPhone, following earlier release for the BlackBerry and Android devices. In case you forgot, Twitter app for iPhone is actually a “refurbished” version of the previously available Tweetie app. I didn’t get to use Tweetie before so I couldn’t really say whether this official Twitter version is better than Tweetie. But what I can say is that Twiiter app for iPhone has loads of goodies and you won’t have a hard time liking and using it from this day on.

So, what’s new and what’s hot with the  official Twitter app for iPhone? To be honest it’s probably the same as other previously released third-party Twitter apps. You get to post tweets, read timeline, retweets, see your lists, attach photos from your camera, send DMs, search Twitter and a plethora of other usual Twitter features and functionality.

One feature of the app worth noting is support for multiple Twitter accounts. And the interface for switching from one account to another is quite intuitive. Given then small screen real estate of the iPhone, I’m not expecting the app to support multi-columns. Although TweetDeck has done an easier interface for scrolling through your multiple accounts and it was quite good. I’m actually looking forward to the iPad version of  this apps and hoping that the two column format will be carried out quite well.

Another notable feature of Twitter app for iPhone is that you can now search and browser Twitter.com even if you haven’t signed up for a Twitter account yet. Wait how could you not, still?

Overall, the official Twitter app for iPhone is a very good app. It might not be the best among the currently available Twitter apps for iPhone but it is certainly among those above average.

So, have you downloaded Twitter for iPhone? How do you find it so far? Share with us you experience using Twitter app for iPhone by leaving a comment below.

Kindle App for Android to Let You Buy Books In the App

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With Amazon Kindle apps already available to major platforms – PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry, the only one left for now is an Android app.  Well, Android fans, your wait will soon be over as Amazon is launching its Kindle App for Android phones. In fact, it’s already slated for a summer release.

Guess what’s so different about the Kindle App for Android? Something which the iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry apps won’t let you do. Yes, you guess it right, the app will let you buy books directly right in the app itself. Other Kindle apps kicks you out of the app whenever you want to score an ebooks from the Kindle Bookstore.

This is of course, over and above all the other great features that you’d love from other Kindle apps including access to your Kindle books even if you don’t have your Kindle with you, automatic synchronization of the last page you read and annotations between devices through Amazon’s Whispersync, text size adjustment, bookmarks, portrait or landscape reading and tap to flick through ebook pages.

Amazon tells us:

“Kindle for Android is the perfect companion application for Kindle and Kindle DX owners, and is also a great way for customers to enjoy over 540,000 books in the Kindle Store even if they don’t yet have a Kindle,” said Jay Marine, director, Amazon Kindle. “We think customers are going to love the convenience and simplicity of having instant access to a massive selection of books from Amazon on their Droid, Nexus, Incredible and many more Android devices.”

Kindle for App would certainly be a good addition to Android phones’ stable of useful apps. With the high-resolution display  and large screens of most Android phones, ebook reading would certainly be a pleasure plus of course the convenience of buying ebooks you fancy right away.

What’s Taking Facebook too Long to Release an iPad App?

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It’s been more than a month since iPad was released into the wild. Published reports say that Apple has already sold around 300,000+ iPad units since it first became available. Stocks from Apple Stores are depleting so fast. International release is about to happen on May 28. This means that iPad is slowly getting into the hands of many users. So, in due time and if Apple managed to cope up with the demand, the iPad is on its way to millions of fans, who are most probably Facebook users as well.

Now, why is it taking too long for Facebook to release a native iPad app? In case the Facebook folks are not aware of, the iPad is meant for content consumption, as they say. And if there’s one social networking site where users can consumer content and information from – it’s in Facebook.

But of course, you can always say that iPad users can always visit Facebook.com using the Safari browser on their precious iPad. But that’s not the best way to consume content, especially real-time updating contents from Facebook on an iPad. The iPad content consumption is best experienced through the apps.

Alright, I am blabbering here now. I just want a native Facebook app for iPad. I’m tired of using third-party social lifestreaming apps for iPad that has Facebook as one of the accounts supported. They don’t give justice to the real Facebook experience. I want the official Facebook app for iPad. I’m sure, other iPad users want this as well.

In case you can’t wait no more and don’t want the Safari browser route, here are some third-party lifestreaming apps that let you access your Facebook account and do several native Facebook activities on your iPad:

Five Useful BlackBerry Apps for Moms on Mother’s Day

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Thinking of giving your mom a bouquet of flowers on Mother’s Day?  Forget it. Your mom is not going to use it and will most probably just let it  wither away, especially if your mom is a BlackBerry user. Come to think of it, why not just give her some useful apps that she can enjoy using on her BlackBerry device.

We’ve scoured the BlackBerry App World in search of the most useful app that moms who use BlackBerry will appreciate and enjoy and we’ve found these five apps.

1. Viigo


This BlackBerry app will help your Mom keep tabs of what her family is into and what she is into herself.   This app will provide your Mom with every information that every member of the family is interested into. Be it sports, fashion, recipes and more, all she has to do is tell Viigo and the app will deliver up-to-date information whenever, wherever. (Download link) [Read more…] about Five Useful BlackBerry Apps for Moms on Mother’s Day

Survey Says: Smartphones are Being Used for Travel

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Today’s smartphone will not be called as such if  it isn’t smart enough to perform day-to-day functions that affects our lives. One proof? – the plethora of mobile applications available on various platforms. These mobile apps vary from the most useful to the most absurd ones. One  app which smartphones are supposed to come in handy is for travel purposes.

There are various travel-related apps available on various smartphone platforms. But are these applications being maximized by users? Compete’s analysis of available data shows that indeed, smartphones are being used for travel purposes. The bad news is, the usage is not significant enough, leaving more room for, growth perhaps?

Compete’s study utilized behavioraly targeted surveys that asked smartphone users whether they use their smartphones for travel research and booking.  Surprisingly, 69% of the respondents to Compete’s survey said that they do not use their smartphone’s for travel purposes and 78% said they don’t use smartphones for travel booking as well.

Quite interestingly, the survey also revealed that respondents see their smartphone’s usage more for post-travel bookings. These pertain to following up room availability, check-in time and other travel-related activities that you need to do.

The survey thus revealed that smartphones are not replacement tool but rather additional tools that aid users in their travel-related needs. And smartphone’s usage to follow-up bookings and other travel-related purposes are still growing despite the relatively low usage.

The fact is smartphones can be used in various ways that we can possibly imagine. And one of these is for travel bookings and other related information.

via Compete

Firefox aka Fennec for Android Looks Good, Saves Web Pages to PDF Too

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Although it is just a “pre-alpha” build you can see outright that Mozilla’s browser for Android phones nicknamed – Fennec or Firefox for Android has the makings of a pretty good if not great mobile phone browser.  One of Fennec’s developer’s slipped out some details about Fennec for Android and while it’s full of precautionary statements, I went ahead and installed the browser on my Nexus One.

The download and installation process went well without any hitch. Right after installing, I immediately fired up the browser – puff!  My phone’s screen goes blank. So, I rebooted my phone and fired up Fennec again.  Then there it was, rendering the startup page for Fennec on my Nexus One’s screen. I immediately type it some sites and noticed how fast the pages loaded up considering that it was still a “pre-alpha” release.

Now for some key features of Fennec or Firefox for Android that we should all look forward to:

Saving web pages into PDF – This is something that caught immediately caught my attention. This would come in handy for some offline reading of pages later on.

Tab Browsing History – You’d see this pop out from the left-most side of your screen. A pretty neat way of saving your browsing history and accessing them again later on.

Weave Sync – This looks like a pretty interesting feature. It will let you share bookmarks, browsing history, tabs and password between your Fennec on your mobile phone and Firefox on your desktop.

Some bugs

Fennec for Android is still buggy at this stage and that’s pretty understandable since it is just a pre-alpha release. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t use and evaluate how good it is right now.

One thing that I noticed that the browser lacks and which I hope the developers will work on before the public release are pinch-to-zoom and +- controls for zooming on web pages.

Overall, Fennec for Android is a promising mobile browser that could give Opera Mini and the others a good competition.

To download Firefox for Android pre-alpha release, scan the QR below.