twitter

HTC has tweeted that Peeps is back up and running. Actually, according to Twitter it's been up and running for a few days.

Earlier this week everything went dark due to a problem when Twitter changed their authentication protocol.  It's nice to see that the conflict wasn't too hard to resolve.  Now that everything is up and running again, we can sit back, enjoy the weekend and tweet about our favorite College football team. War Eagle!

update: Might have spoken too soon based on the first few comments.  It appears that some devices might be up and running while WinMo is still down.

With Twikini seemingly out of the picture and Windows Live not resolving their Twitter API issue, Windows Phone 7 is a little behind on the Twitter front (though lets not forget about Seesmic).

TheUnwired.net has an interesting theory, albeit lacking hard evidence, that Microsoft may be providing some type of native Twitter support after all.

This is one of those we could seriously believe Microsoft doing before the 1.0 official launch and think it is certainly a possibility.

The story goes like this: Michael Klucher, Microsoft's Lead Program Manger of the XNA Development Platform, showed off a few pictures of some Windows Phone 7 games and tweeted them to his account. The photos's EXIF data confirm a Samsung camera had taken presumably from those Samsung developer units.

The interesting part comes from the Twitter client information, which every Tweet marks to ID the originating software e.g. "Seesmic" or "Twikini". In this case, it says "To be named later" which is...well certainly odd and interesting. Even more so, it links back to www.microsoft.com (dun dun dun!)

The theory goes that Kuchner is using a beta version of a native Twitter app for Windows Phone 7. Ta-da!

Like we said, totally plausible and we hope, very true, but at this point...just lots of circumstantial evidence. Read more at The Unwired.net.

Say it ain't so!

Trinket software, developers of the extremely popular Twitter client 'Twikini' notes that their app will stop working in a few days. Worse still, there are no plans to "fix" the problem.

Evidently, Twitter is changing authentication protocol required for third party programs on August 16th, 2010 which will result in slowdowns till D-day, August 31st when the plug is finally pulled. Read more on that here.

Now most Twiiter apps will be or already have updated their authentication method to use the new protocol. But Trinket software has basically "moved on" from WM6.5+ to Windows Phone 7 (see here) and in turn, won't be delivering any updates to fix the problem.

Sorry guys, with the shape WM 6.x is in, we've moved on to other projects. Twikini will be back on WP7.

Grrrr.

In a twist, Trinket is considering making their Twikini code open-source, meaning the community can then fix the problem as well as...well keep adding things we suppose. To that idea, we say 'Yes please!' as it'd be the right thing to do (and the least) for all the loyal users who have bought the application.

Update: We just go word that MoTweets (see review) is already updated and should be fine August 16th; unfortunately TouchTwit has not been updated for the new protocol (yet); PockeTwit is currently working on an update.

Back a few months ago, when Windows Phone 7 was first announced, there was talk about how there won't be a separate, native Twitter application when launched. Instead, Microsoft talked-up their Live services which could access and pull down your Twitter feed for you.

Sure, it wasn't a direct route but if you use Live, you had a one-punch solution to social integration on WP7.

Now we're getting word that's just not the case as Twitter as changed their Terms of Service back in June (which explains why it was missing as of late) and have blocked companies like Microsoft from accessing via that method. To be clear, Microsoft is working with Twitter to come to a solution, but it seems Twitter has Redmond by the Rocky Mountain Oysters on this one and since the end of June, it hasn't be restored.

Of course there are a few of third-party solutions, including Twikini, Seesmic and even some up and coming developers who will have clients out the gate at launch--and lets be honest, when it comes to Twitter clients, the free market has made bigger, better and more fully-featured Twitter programs. The Android and iPhone software community are testimony to this approach.

On the other hand, full, native integration is pretty sweet. Can Microsoft, perhaps, pull off a last minute coding trick to get back Twitter or should the Market just have it instead? (Hint: we think Twikini and Seesmic are much better options anyways, so long as they fully integrate in the OS, including contacts).

[via Pocketnow; thanks Stephen]

Panoramic Software has released version 1.8.3 of their popular Twitter client, moTweets. This release specifically fixes a security issue identified by twitter user @mus_hi, namely that previous moTweets versions store your twitter password in an unencrypted state in the accounts.xml file. This update is highly recommended as having passwords in plain text makes them vulnerable to any number of attacks. Additionally, changing your password would also be recommended.

The update is available directly from Panoramic Software, and includes a couple of additional features. For more details, visit the moTweets product page and version history.

Looks like the 'Metro UI' thing is starting to catch on and why not? Much like how the iPhone OS can be all-blowns-up for the iPad, why not influence the desktop or browser with Microsoft's mobile UI.

Turns out Long Zheng of iStartedSomething and some pals have been working on a desktop Twitter app that looks exceptionally clean, minimalist and darn useful.

The app has been in very early stages of development, meaning they're focusing on features, not yet de-bugging and has been circulating amongst a small group of users.

Long story short, website MeuWindows figured out the URL for the download link and even bypassed the authentication...just so they could try it. Luckily Long Zheng took this as flattery and there you go.

Actually, you can now sign up for the actual beta (bottom of the page), which is expected sooner than later. We're down with that!

As we delve deeper into what current Silverlight programmers are up to in exploring Windows Phone 7, a few things are becoming evident:

• Generally speaking, they love it
• It's easy
• There's lots of development and excitement amongst the community

Case in point is this "sample" app (e.g. something someone whipped up in very little time to explore the framework): geoGallery.

geoGallery is a photo app that pulls pictures from Picasa to your device based on your current location. Pretty cool.  It's even more cool knowing that developers are turning out programs left and right so easily and enthusiastically.

Another is this Twitter app from Governor Technology. They seem to be keen on actually building this, so may be worth to keep an eye on at this very early stage. (And lets not forget Twikini's WP7 app).

We're confident in stating that WP7's development framework is going to give a huge kick in the pants to software offerings in the Marketplace. In other words, we haven't seen this much interest from developers since the iPhone and Android SDK days.

Check out the video of geoGallery in action and how it all works from Silverlight developer Levente Mihály. And Levente? Go ahead and submit that to the Marketplace, kthxbai!

It seems as if the Twitter-client wars have simmered down a little bit (remember when we had updates like every few weeks?), but the biggies are still dropping some changes.

In this case, TouchTwit has updated to v1.6 (the author has been busy with civil service) and there are some nice new features and fixes:

• New notification for "new followers"
• New notification for "unfollows"
• Some Theme-bugs fixed
• Lesser memory ussage
• Lesser cpu ussage
• Scrolling bugs on 1Ghz processors fixed
• More->Following was modified
• And a lot of small bugs are fixed too

Overall it seems to work quite well, although we find the background vs. foreground sync option a bit confusing and limited (only 1 hour in background?).

Still, you can't beat the graphics and that scrolling all for a very fair $1.99.  Updates can be found in the Windows Marketplace.