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TweetDeck App Fully Optimized for the iPad

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With the large screen real-estate that the iPad offers, I wasn’t really quite surprised that the first adopters among application developers would be those with mobile Twitter client apps. If you checked the iTunes iPad App Store right now, you’d find several Twitter apps for the iPad – both new and old ones ported to the new platform. One of these Twitter apps which happens to be also my favorite on mobile phones is TweetDeck.

Thankfully, the TweetDeck folks didn’t just ported their mobile TweetDeck app to the iPad platform but build a new application instead. In fact they’ve build two new interfaces – for portrait and landscape modes. TweetDeck for iPad also takes full use of the device’s multi-gesture features.

Feature-wise, TweetDeck for iPad lets you do practically everything that you can with its mobile phone versions. The app lets you fully manage all your Twitter accounts, check web pages from within TweetDeck, use columns to manage your real-time feed, sync your data with the desktop and iphone client, iPad gesture based navigation, geolocation data and map interface, and of course all the basic Twitter functions such as composing tweets, retweeting and sending DMs.

And guess what? TweetDeck for iPad is a free download. Get it from the iTunes iPad App Store once you received your iPad.

Or watch this video showing the TweetDeck for iPad in action.

WordPress for iPhone 2.3 Now Supports Geotagging for WordPress.com Blogs

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WordPress has just released version 2.3 of its mobile application for iPhone. Biggest new feature is geotagging support for WordPress.com hosted blogs via a very intuitive interface. This means that you can now add geographic location to each and every post that you are going to publish on your WordPress.com blog.

Unfortunately for self-hosted WordPress blog, the feature is not activated yet. But you can still geotag your posts and it will be saved, possibly for display later on when a plugin to provide geotagging display is enabled for self-hosted WordPress blogs.

In addition to geotagging feature, the new WordPress for iPhone app also comes with a couple of improvements on user interface.  The bug on “more” tag was fixed and it now allows you to load more posts and pages in excess of the default number  of posts allowed as specified in your blog settings.

Incidentally, the WordPress for iPhone folks are excited to report that in only months since they have released the app, it now has 250,000 download, up from the mere 20,000 downloads it got in November 2009. Quite an achievement indeed, although if only all of the WordPress.com bloggers have their iPhone and iPod Touch and will do mobile blogging, then that number would shoot up some more.

Anyway, the new WordPress for iPhone app version 2.3 was supposed to be available here. But I have no luck in finding it from both my country’s Apps Store nor at the U.S. App Store. Did you get it?

GoDaddy Will Stop Selling .CN Domains

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Looks like Google has gained an unexpected ally with its China boycott. Domain name registration and web hosting company GoDaddy.com has announced that it will  stop selling .CN domains.

According to the GoDaddy announcement, courtesy of the Search Engine Journal:

“We didn’t want to act as an agent of the Chinese government,” Jones said. “We can’t let them be strong and us be weak all the time. We just have to stop it, and then we’ll start offering .CN domain names again,” said Christine Jones, general counsel for Go Daddy.

This is in response to Chinese policies requiring every website owner to submit photographs, business information and individually signed forms including their physical address, email address and telephone numbers when registering a new .CN domain. These data will be forwarded to the China Internet Information Center (CNNIC), a quasi-governmental agency. GoDaddy does not usually require this information from its billions of domain registrants asking only name, address, telephone number and e-mail address before they register a domain.

According to Ms. Jones,   China was the first government to retroactively seek additional verification and documentation of registrants.  The Chinese government is implementing those policies to stop individual Chinese owned websites from getting attacked by spam.

Interestingly, Jones said that while Chinese domain name have been recently attacked most frequently, those sites however are mostly those “deemed not appropriate” for Beijing. Particularly sites containing information about  the Tiananmen Square uprising or human rights.

It would be interesting to see how this issue will unfold in the coming days. Will China feel the pressure from Google, GoDaddy and perhaps other Internet players and relax their internet policy a bit?

Facebook Tightens Policy on Photo Tagging, Feed Sharing

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In a possible move to contain the growing complaints of members who consistently receive unwanted photo tagging notices and news feeds that they are receiving, Facebook is updating its policies on these features.

First, the new policy on policy tagging states – “You can tag a photo only with the express consent of the user on whose behalf you are doing the tagging, and must only tag images when the tag accurately labels what is depicted in the image.”

In short, you can no longer tag your friends and other Facebook members on photo collages, avatars and other images which are being used for marketing purposes, just to get their attention and hope that they clicked on your campaign materials.

On news feed publishing, the new Facebook policy states – “You must not publish a Feed story unless a user has explicitly indicated an intention to share that content, by clicking a button or checking a box that clearly explains their content will be shared.”

This policy aims to put a stop on reports that some apps are forcing their Facebook members to extend permissions to publish news feeds on their walls. This will give other application developers a good chance at getting more followers and users the legit way – that is because they’ve gained the Facebook members’ trust.

And finally, you can no longer publish the same Feed story to more than one friend’s Wall at a time. This is to avoid spamming of Facebook members stream with feed stories that do not interest them.

Facebook will enforce punishments and suspensions of account on a case to case basis if anybody is proven guilty of violating these policies.

So there, hope these new policies help reduce the noise level in your Facebook content streams.

Digg Unloads Widget, Buttons Generator and Soon an iPhone App

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As if telling us that they are still up and running, the folks at Digg has been sending out noisemakers one after another.  Digg has just released the buttons and widget generators while a native iPhone app is in the pipeline.

The New Digg iPhone Application

The new Digg native iPhone app is not yet announced but Mashable was able to obtain some insider info as well as screenshots to prove that the Digg iPhone app is indeed in the works.  The app would support browsing of popular, upcoming and recent stories across all topics in Digg.com. It will also let you Digg and bury stories right within the app. Plus an option to navigate through comments and related stories. The Digg iPhone app is slated for release anytime now in the Apps Store.

Digg Buttons and Widget Generators

The new Digg buttons and widget generators on the other are now both available. What these online tools allow you to do is to create and customize Digg buttons that you can incorporate to your blogs/sites seamlessly.  Digg is releasing these online tools in preparation for the launch of the redesigned Digg.

But aside from letting you create Digg buttons easily, the buttons that you will create and incorporate in your websites now boasts of  new features such as dynamic display of live Digg count, faster load time, customizable look and feel and more.

The Digg widgets also gets some other new features including more customization options, tabs and columns, thumbnails, fallback content and more.

You can try creating your Digg buttons here, or the Digg Widgets here.

WordPress for BlackBerry Updated to 1.1 with Geotagging, Notifications and More Features

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When I first tried WordPress for BlackBerry app, I was pretty amazed at how it simply gets the job done. I mean despite its simplistic approach to a mobile application, that is minus all the fancy interface, it’s really commendable that the app works fast. Perfect for mobile blogging.

And guess what, making  WordPress for BlackBerry even more efficient are some new cool features that extend the app’s blogging functionality. WordPress for BlackBerry 1.1 is now out and it’s really loaded with great new features including the following:

  • Comment Notifications
  • Geotagging of Posts
  • Improved UI interaction on Touch devices
  • introduction of Touch Gestures:
    Sliding a finger to the left or right quickly on the Comment screen displays the next or previous comment.
  • Photo Resizing improvements with user defined dimensions
  • New File Browser with thumbnails support
  • Overall enhancements to the speed and stability of the app

I was going to point out its greatest features but then as I was scrolling through the list, all new features are very important in making the app a great mobile blogging app. But yeah, the comment notifications is a much needed feature. While the geotagging of posts makes the app at par with the current location-aware feature of most mobile apps.

Wait, there’s more. The app also now supports several languages including English, Italian, Finnish, French, Indonesian, German, and Portugese.

You can snag the WordPress for BlackBerry 1.1 from the BlackBerry App World. It’s free to have, download, install and use.  Or you may fire up the old app from your BlackBerry and you will be prompted to update to the new version.