Wednesday, April 27, 2011

New Twitter version for Android


The official Twitter application for Android, which has a fair amount of bugs, has been fixed with a new update. Twitter version 2.0.2 adds a lot of new functionality.

The application now adds much needed search improvements including tabbed search display and search history controls.

Twicca is a fast, free, full-featured Twitter client for Android that proves iOS doesn’t have a complete lock on beautifully designed apps.The app has been in beta since last year, even though it works flawlessly. Many people have never heard of it because all information for the app was in Japanese at first. It wasn’t until the Android Market entry for twicca was translated to English that people outside Japan began downloading it in droves.

It now uses a more secure SSL connection for data transfer between the device and the network. Besides, an all improved data management system allows the smartphone to save crucial storage space.

All this and some design changes make the application more friendly to the eye while utilising the available space in a much better way. Now users will also be able to open links embedded in the tweets directly from where they are without having to copy and paste it in the browser for opening.

twicca is a quick and nimble Twitter client that has all the main features that we expect these days, but the main draw to the app is the interface. It’s not only gorgeous, but highly efficient since the whole thing is based around quick readability and colour labels. Users can tag each account they follow with one of 10 colours, which makes scrolling quickly through the main feed more efficient (since you can ignore certain colours if you’re short on time).

Aside from the look and feel of the app, something else that sets it apart from other Twitter clients on Android is its ability to use plug-ins. Users who like their Twitter client to be as minimal as possible can keep the app the way it is, while others can install tiny, unobtrusive plug-ins. Plug-ins for twicca range from adding the ability to upload photos to popular image hosts like Twitpic or Flickr, to enabling the app to post updates to Facebook or Tumblr. It can post images on its own with a plug-in, but uses yfrog by default.

Already available in the app are the usual features like URL shortening, viewing Trending Topics or local trends, reporting or blocking accounts, multiple methods of retweeting, @name autocompletion, lists, Twitter Search and geo-tagging. Users can manage their own profile directly from the app as well, to include uploading a new profile picture. Nearly every popular image hosting service is viewable in the feed without leaving the app, too.

There are only a couple of limitations that stick out with twicca. One is that the app can only handle one account, so a lot of power users will probably want to stick to something like TweetDeck. The other is the widget, since there’s only one size available, and it doesn’t show tweets. On the other hand, the widget is extremely useful because it doesn’t show tweets — it provides quick access to different functions of the app instead.

twicca is a free Twitter client for devices running Android 1.6 or newer, and is available at the Android Market.

No comments:

Post a Comment