Tapulous, the developers of the highly popular Tap Tap Revenge game for the iPhone and iPod touch, released a native, location aware Twitter client for the iPhone tonight. Twinkle (iTunes link) already existed as a native application on jail broken iPhones before, but Apple only added it to the official iTunes store tonight. While there are some oddities in the way Twinkle works, the location awareness makes it a worthwhile addition to the ever growing pool of Twitter clients.
Twinkle is a very capable Twitter client in its own right, and while it isn't quite as fully featured as Twitterific, it does have some features Twitterific doesn't have, including the ability to follow new users right from the application.
Unlike Twitterific, though, Twinkle does not have a built-in browser, so clicking on a URL closes the application and takes you to Safari instead.
You can also attach a picture to your own messages, but doing so crashed my phone twice in a row before it finally worked. Once it worked, the picture was uploaded to Tapulous' Twinkle page and added to the tweet as a link shortened by snipurl. Twinkle users don't have to click on the URL, but can see the picture right in the application.
One limitation of Twinkle, however, is that it is only aware of other Twinkle users in your vicinity and does not display tweets from 'regular' Twitter users in the location aware part of the app. As such, the application will only become really useful once more people start using it as their default client.
One more Twinkle only feature is, strangely, your profile picture. For some reason, the location aware part of Twinkle does not display your regular Twitter profile picture. Instead, you have to set one specifically for Twinkle.
Besides that the user interface could be a bit snappier at times, Twinkle is a very cool addition to the growing pool of iPhone Twitter clients. It's also a great way to discover local Twitter users you might not have been following yet.
The authors also clearly have a sense of humor: when Twitter fails to respond to its update requests, the app displays a little warning sign with a whale tail in it.
Comments
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excellent that this has come to the new iPhone, one of my favorite apps on my old phone
Posted by: Duncan Riley
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July 17, 2008 11:10 PM
and with Twitter down - at least Twinkle is still up and running
Posted by: Frederic
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July 17, 2008 11:15 PM
One of my faves on jailbroken V1 as well - and looking great in this new version
Posted by: Patrick Jordan
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July 17, 2008 11:32 PM
I'd bet that twinkle is trying to be more then simply a twitter client. Notice how you can use twinkle without syncing a twitter account. I'd bet that they are aiming to grab a lot of non-twitter users who are suddenly interested in that kind of communication model now that's so easy over the iphone and location aware. They may be serious competition for other location aware social networks, such as loopt. From what I gather, tapulous wants to eventually connect all their applications within a broader mobile social network, and it looks like twinkle could be the beginnings of that.
Posted by: Gabe Ragland | July 18, 2008 1:46 AM
More about iPhone apps: http://liviux.byethost15.com/tag/iphone-3g-apps/
Posted by: LiviuX | July 18, 2008 2:25 AM
Frederic, I think that Twinkle's service is location-tracking rather than location-aware.
What's the difference?
Location-awareness service has an inference engine (rule-based/expert system) so the device itself becomes self-aware of its location, which it then acts autonomously (independent of its owner) on its own as a response by inferring information from its knowledge based regarding certain actions to take.
On the other hand, Location-tracking just receives an input of where others are (location of those devices which are subscribed to the service) , so it tracks the nearness of others but don't infer anything at all. It just alerts you to the nearness of other devices, similar to your Mozilla Thunderbird email program, which gives you a beep sound on the arrival of a new email. Your locally installed Thunderbird doesn't do any inference at all on the incoming email (spam filter - but that is not what context-awareness is about). Thunderbird just checks/tracks if there is new email and that's it.
In brief, Location-tracking is dumb (no inference) while Location-awareness is intelligent (uses inference engine).
Posted by: Falafulu Fisi | July 18, 2008 7:12 AM
In my humble opinion, Twinkle's location awareness (and "nearby" screen, are what make this a killer app. I've met lots of my neighbors and folks who work near me, because of this, and it's the first time in my life I've found a social networking site useful in the real world.
Posted by: Hank Graham | August 9, 2008 2:28 PM