TweetDeck iPhone Update Fail Makes the Day "Manic".

Earlier this morning, Iain Dodsworth, creator of TweetDeck, posted that the day could potentially be "manic". While he cautioned the day's updates would not be list-related, as many updates from his competitors have been over the last week, it was hinted it would not be desktop related either. That left the iPhone, as TweetDeck doesn't yet have a Web option. But the iPhone release was found buggy, was later pulled, and now the service, and its devoted followers, are once again in a holding pattern with Apple - which makes them the undesired middleman. And yes, that means the day is officially "manic".

While I doubt few would want Apple's role as moderator to completely disappear, there should be some way to quickly post point releases or bug fixes for products that have previously been approved.


The Morning Started Off Well...

But Too Many Crash Reports Prompted a Pull...

And After Resubmission, All Wait for Apple.

For whatever reason, TweetDeck's quality assurance process did not catch that the new version of the application would crash as frequently as was reported, but once it was in the wild, it proved too much to accept. The next step was to pull the update from the store, resulting in false positives from would-be downloaders, myself included, who were told it was available, but that the item had been removed.

Now, after the team thinks they scrambled the troops and got a working version ready and submitted a few hours later, they have to wait for Cupertino to agree. The new version reportedly added Facebook support, which had previously been limited to the desktop application, as well as video uploading, integrated with 12seconds.tv, a new Landscape compose mode, trending topics support, a "Nearby" option that showed when Twitter friends were close, thanks to the iPhone's built-in GPS, and the option to open new links in Safari.

But we'll still have to wait, at least until Apple agrees their bug-free version is good enough. Until then, all we have is a video of the promised new updates (See below).



So what's the solution? Is this Apple's fault for forcing a wait, or TweetDeck's for bad code?

Brizzly and Seesmic Web Get Into Twitter Lists Game

At this point, it's almost getting easier to see which popular Twitter clients have not yet added Twitter Lists support than it is to track those that have enabled support, as in the last 12 hours, both Brizzly, a product from Thing Labs, and Seesmic Web, Seesmic Desktop's sexier counterpart, have weighed in with their support for the increasingly utilized Twitter Lists functionality. Assuming TweetDeck wraps up their support shortly, as they have promised, and we hear something from Tweetie, all the majors will have reported for duty.


Brizzly Highlights Integrated Lists Support
Brizzly, having supported Web grouping from the day it was introduced, had the simpler job of converting its existing groups that you had made into Twitter lists, tapping Twitter's API. If you had existing groups, as I did, they would display both in Brizzly and Twitter's Web interface as private lists, and you could opt to update them, or delete them from either app. Like with Twitter's interface, clicking on the list shows you the updates from people you have grouped, and no more.


Seesmic Web Now Supports Lists (Click for Larger Image)
For Seesmic Web, the introduction of lists is the first time such grouping functionality has made it to their app. The company has supported groups on Seesmic Desktop for some time, and added list support on Monday, but the Web version had been lacking. Twitter's List API made the move much simpler, so this morning, Loic LeMeur's Web service turned on the functionality, showing lists you have made or subscribed to in your sidebar, below your direct messages, and above searches.

Also added to Seesmic Web is a simple Trending Topics list that echoes the top items trending on Twitter.

With the adds, both services are essentially offering users a full package when it comes to Twitter's functionality, and the decision as to which to use comes as much down to the user interface as a feature war. Should be interesting to see both what TweetDeck and Tweetie will do, as well as what Twitter has planned next to kick off another round of updates.

Listiti Watches Twitter Lists for Keywords and Alerts

Regardless of where you sit in the RSS vs. Twitter debate for information discovery, you know the power of finding out when people are discussing topics of your interest, wherever they do so - be it on blogs, blog comments, social networks or anywhere else. With the advent of new Twitter lists, smart folks are manually curating lists of fellow Twitter users who to them provide value. And if done well, the lists should be spam-free, delivering only quality. A new service called Listiti debuted today, to help monitor lists which you hand select for keywords of your choosing.

Today, I use TweetBeep to get alerted to mentions on Twitter, be it for vanity searches or for topics I find interesting. But TweetBeep scours all of Twitter, not differentiating between what is a good hit and what is a less valuable one. Listiti can, in contrast, search only a specific subset of Twitter users to find relevant data, and send it to your e-mail.


Setting up an Alert in Listiti
For example, I have set up a pair of Twitter lists that are interesting to me. One is "myfavoritegeeks" for real-world techies I've grown to know well, and the second is "toptechbloggers" which is a hand-selected list of people whose content I trust. I can use Listiti to watch this list for any time they mention pet projects I am interested in, such as "Pubsubhubbub", and get an e-mail immediately.


Acknowledging the Alert Has Been Set Up
So far, the alerts are not yet "real time", but they are set up to run hourly, so you will get an update containing all positive hits in the last hour. They promise digest modes are coming. This makes another great use for Twitter lists as a trusted source, whether you set up the list yourself or go to a friend of yours with good taste.

TweetMeme Goes Mobile for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry

TweetMeme has rapidly become the most popular and practical default engine for content authors to enable their Web sites and blogs to be forwarded on to Twitter (in the form of a Retweet). The company is now serving more than 100 million Retweet buttons across the Web each day, and is aggregating the statistics of most popular items on its Web site. Today, the company jumped forward, introducing a new capability that lets users retweet from their favorite Twitter apps - as many people, including me, do not use Twitter's standard Web interface when unchained from the laptop.

The new functionality essentially tracks if you are viewing a site through your mobile phone, be it iPhone, Android or BlackBerry, and then prompts you to select your preferred application - including those from Tweetie, Echofon and others. And if you don't yet have a mobile application on your handset, TweetMeme will provide some suggestions.

I spoke with Nick Halstead, creator of TweetMeme, this morning, and he said the new mobile functionality is yet another reason the product has stayed ahead of competition and copycats. "We want to respond by being as far ahead as we are, and creating more functionality," he said. "Not many people use mobile Twitter. When you hit the retweet button, it opens the application you have selected and it will do the retweet from there."

The new functionality will be available very soon. You can see their official post on the TweetMeme blog: Mobile Retweeting

Stalqer: A Location Sharing App for Real Friends

I have always felt my life was not interesting enough to broadcast every small update. That's a major reason why I was initially slow to embrace Twitter, and why, thus far, I have shunned application broadcasting services like BrightKite and the extremely popular at the moment Foursquare. But a new application, set to hit the Apple iTunes Store any day now, called Stalqer, has a permanent position on my iPhone, because instead of being focused on badges and contests, its aim is to connect real friends, and it can work in the background - enabling me to have it run passively as I go about my business.


Stalqer Shows Connections on a Map And I Can Message Them
Mick Johnson, creator of Stalqer, and I met a few weeks ago, and he said he felt the focus for designing such an app was not to start up contests about how often somebody could check in to a specific location, and he didn't want people to create yet another user account for his app. In fact, he felt services like FourSquare created the badges mentality to force people to "check in", as the application would not automatically do so.


My Stalqer News Feed and an Update from Mick
In contrast, Stalqer utilizes Facebook Connect to have you log in, and it can present you the last-known location of your friends on Facebook. If they are using Stalqer, these friends' locations will start to populate your News Feed and you can send them messages from within the application itself, assuming you have their e-mail addresses registered with Facebook. Stalqer also makes updating your location very simple, as you can tell it to update in the background, every time you check your e-mail. If you are in WiFi range or connected to 3G, Stalqer can update your location throughout the day, without your even having to open the app.


Background Preferences and Connections in Stalqer
Stalqer shares some similarities to Google Latitude as much as it does the more-hyped FourSquare, in that your friends' avatars display on a map. You can zoom out as much as you like, to see how your Facebook connections are strung across the globe. But it's those nearest to you that are of course the most interesting. If you peek at the screenshot in this post, you'll see fellow tech blogger Steve Gillmor at the nearby Starbucks, and Robert Scoble visiting the Cupertino Apple Campus - both close enough for a quick drive. Using Stalqer, I could send either a message and meet up.

Depending on your preferences, you can get updated via Push alerts on the iPhone if friends manually check in to a location, or if they get within a certain number of miles. And if you wanted to, Stalqer has a "Places" function, which selects from the nearest registered and known places for you to announce you have arrived. If a place doesn't exist, you can add it yourself.


Choose Registered Places In Stalqer Or Who Has Checked In
If you do utilize the "Places" functionality in Stalqer, you can see which other Facebook Friends are checked into the same place. For example, when Mick Johnson checked in to the Googleplex in Mountain View last week, I could click through and see who else was there. In fact, if I wanted, I could even check in there myself and announce I had arrived, even if that wasn't true. You decide whether that's a feature or a bug...

Don't get thrown off by the "Stalqer" name, as the app is no more invasive than many others we already use today. I wouldn't ask Stalqer to change the name. The biggest bug so far tends to be its speed. With 1,300 Facebook connections, it can be slow to get avatars and updates. I'll be very interested to see how the service holds up once it hits the iTunes Store.