Tweetings, Reviewed: One Of The Best, Most Customizable Twitter Clients for Android Today

Tweetings, Reviewed: One Of The Best, Most Customizable Twitter Clients for Android Today

Twitter is loud. It is noisy, messy, fast, and random. But it can also be wonderfully human, inspiring, informative, and rewarding. It all depends on how you use it. Who you follow makes a big difference, but also your interface to the service – the client you use. Twitter is what’s known as a “mobile-first” service, built from the ground up for use on the go. So having a good Twitter client on your smartphone can make a world of difference – and today, I’d like to show you one such client. Meet Tweetings, a $3.19 Twitter client which is worth every penny.

The Power to Transform

Check out these two Twitter apps:

Okay, I lied. That’s just one app – Tweetings, in two different configurations. But really, I wouldn’t find it hard to believe these are two different apps. Just about everything is different, from the color scheme, to the fonts, to the tabs (!), to the image sizes, to the way user avatars are displayed (or not). I didn’t even tweak every setting possible for this quick demo – you can even change the timestamp format if you want. This just gives you a quick sense of how customizable Tweetings is. I’ve been a longtime user of Falcon Pro, going so far as to call it the perfect way to stay on top of Twitter. And Falcon really is exceptional – but it’s not as customizable as Tweetings.

Reading Your Timeline

You will likely spend the bulk of your time in Tweetings perusing your carefully-crafted timeline. If yours is a bit empty, we have some great recommendations for people you should follow, from inspiring entrepreneurs to video game personalities to a bunch of official accounts. Don’t overdo it, though: It’s all too easy to end up with a timeline that’s too full to keep up with (which is when you need to start using Twitter lists).

Once you have enough going on in your timeline, it could look like either one of these:

To the left you can see what Tweetings calls my List Timeline, while to the right is my Media Timeline, singling out tweets with attached images. This makes for a very visual way to flick through Twitter, and is an interesting way to filter your feed and get a feel for the general sentiment on a topic. It could be useful for monitoring Tweets related to live events – if people are tweeting images from an event happening right now, you would effectively get a constantly updating visual feed.

Here’s another view of the Media Timeline, along with a zoomed-in image:

The zoomed-in image keeps the image in context by overlaying the tweet at the bottom, and also makes it easy to save the image, share it, open it in a browser, or go back to browsing your timeline. Both effective and quick to use.

You can also tap a tweet to further interact with it:

Tapping into a tweet actually opens a multi-pane view, with several features you swipe through. Top-left you can see the tweet itself with a couple of stats (retweets, favorites), and a way to reply, retweet, or star it. Swipe one screen over, and you get a readable, mobile-optimized view of whatever link was tweeted. Swipe again, and you get a screen showing replies (not shown above).

If you’d like to interact with a tweet without going into the View Tweet screen, simply long-press it (this can be configured… naturally):

To the left you can see the long-press tweet menu, while to the right you can see an individual user’s page, and that user’s menu. One interesting feature is the ability to set a color per user – when set, you get a distinctive (if narrow) colored bar next to that user’s tweets, so they stand out better on your timeline.

Included Widgets

If you’d like to keep tabs on Twitter happenings without having to open your client, Tweetings comes with three different widgets:

On the top, you can see the 4×1 widget, which doesn’t display any information. It is just a way to quickly tweet or get to specific parts of the app. Then there’s the linear timeline list – a sort of mini-client that lives on your homescreen. Finally, the “tweet stack” is the fanciest of all, and lets you swipe through individual tweets. As you swipe forward, more tweets are revealed, and the front-most one “falls” off the stack. This is not a natural interaction for Android, but the effect is is interesting.

Tweeting and Scheduling

Even when it comes to tweeting (something you probably do less often than reading), Tweetings introduces some innovations:

The most interesting thing above is the Schedule Tweet option. You actually get two Schedule features: One is for deferring the tweet using Tweeting’s own internal timer, and the other is for Buffer, a service for scheduling tweets. To the right you can see the internal scheduling feature in action. There’s a slight bug you can’t see in a static screenshot: When you scroll the minute clock down (i.e, 2:16), it actually jumps ahead to 2:30. Not terrible, but a surprising behavior (2:16 is right there, you scroll to it, and find yourself at 2:30).

Settings, Endless Settings

The flip-side of this intense customization is of course the endless stacks of settings pages you have to navigate to customize everything. Some users may not like that, but me – this is what I do for fun (really). Here’s just a sampling of the configuration screens):

As you can see, most settings are clearly explained, some with as many as four lines of text. That’s a big help when it comes to an app with so many settings.

One setting that’s worth mentioning is Tweeting’s ability to cleverly switch the theme based on the time of day:

You get a bright theme during the day, and a dark theme at night. You get to set the hours, naturally (some apps would assume what “night” means, but Tweetings seems to shun such assumptions).

Make It Your Own

If you’re just getting started with Twitter, Tweetings is not the client you need. But if you appreciate the sheer power of customization, and switch from client to client in search of the one that will just work like it’s supposed to work – Tweetings is a godsend. This is simply one of the absolute best Twitter clients out there today, period.

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Is Your Carrier Slowing Down Your Unlimited Data Connection? How To Avoid Data Throttling

Is Your Carrier Slowing Down Your Unlimited Data Connection? How To Avoid Data Throttling

Almost every major mobile carrier in the world implements data throttling for clients with unlimited data plans. Data throttling is the technique used by data carriers to limit bandwidth. To the end user, this means agonizingly slow connection speeds.

If you are on an unlimited plan that’s throttled once you exceed certain limits or you have a data cap, as most people do, this article offers practical advice on how to avoid throttling.

Why Do Carriers Throttle Bandwidth, Am I Affected & Is It Legal?

A broadband speed test will usually alert you to the possibility that you are being throttled. Carriers do this to prevent one individual or a few people clogging up the network. When a few users generate a massive load on the network, the result is slow speeds for everyone. This is the justification for data caps.

Despite this seemingly clear logic, data throttling remains a sensitive and controversial issue. On the one hand, you have data carriers trying to keep their networks fast, and on the other you have data users who want to do whatever they please with their data plan. After all, why shouldn’t you get what you paid for?

The problem has been that mobile data carriers engage in false advertising. When customers buy unlimited data plans, they are rarely told that the contract includes a ‘fair usage’ policy. This policy is usually buried in illegible fine print on the website or printed marketing material. Often, the word ‘unlimited’ has an asterisk next to it with a corresponding footnote that merely states, “terms and conditions apply”. Most customers learn about the fair usage policy when their download speeds drop to a crawl.

False advertising is a serious concern worldwide and several mobile phone companies are now finding themselves on the wrong end of the law. For example, in 2012, AT&T was hauled to a small claims court by Matt Spaccarelli in Simi Valley, California. While awarding Matt $850, the judge noted that it was unfair for AT&T to limit data usage after selling an unlimited plan. Subsequently, AT&T announced that they were discontinuing their unlimited data plan.

Monitor Your Data Usage

One of the easiest ways to avoid being throttled is to keenly monitor your data usage. To start with, find out exactly how much your data plan provides. Depending on your location, this will range from 1 to 3GB. Armed with this information, several mobile apps can help you monitor your data usage.

Android 4.0 and above already features a data usage monitor offering several ways to track data usage. For example, it can give you a predicted usage based on the previous month’s usage. It even recommends a daily data cap. This gives you a fairly good idea of how much music you can stream and how many YouTube videos you can watch during the month.  But in case your device is running a lower version of Android, the following free apps in Play Store are great; Onavo Count, 3G watchdog and My Data Manager.

Apple iOS also offers a way, albeit not very useful, to monitor your data usage by going to ->Settings ->General -> Usage  -> Cellular Usage. Reset the statistics at the beginning of your billing period and then monitor your usage during the month. For more intelligent data stats, you need a free data usage app such as DataMonitor (requires Jailbreak) or Onavo Count.

Use Wi-Fi

Avoid using the data carrier’s network any time you can use your own home network or office network. It not only helps conserve your data, but it is also more reliable since you are unlikely to hit a dead zone in one section of your home.  Also, make it a habit to update all smartphone apps over Wi-Fi.

Minimize Streaming Services

YouTube, Netflix, Pandora, and other streaming services hog data. You can easily exhaust your data plan and find yourself throttled within the first few days of your billing period. If you have kids, you have to be very careful what they do on your mobile device when you don’t have Wi-Fi. These days, smartphones and tablet computers double up as kid boredom destroyers. Many popular Android & iOS games are bandwidth intensive. For example, games with detailed 3D graphics are bulky to download while games that rely on an active Internet connection to play use up loads of data. As a rule of thumb, avoid games that require you to interact and play with other people online.

Data Compression

Data compression is quickly becoming the method of choice to reduce bandwidth usage and generally speed up the Internet. This method works by sending an optimized version of content across the network. The latest Chrome browsers for Android (Ice Cream Sandwich) and iOS use data compression technology to reduce  data usage and improve mobile web browsing. Google hosted proxy servers, aptly named SPDY (pronounced Speedy), optimize content before delivering it to your mobile device. To activate data compression go to  ”Settings -> Bandwidth Management -> Reduce data usage”. Only HTTP requests are routed via SPDY, secure connections are still routed directly to your mobile device. Google’s internal testing shows that the feature can decrease data usage by over 50% and significantly improve page loading times.

There are also several mobile apps that use similar methods to compress data. Onavo Extend, compresses your data by up to 500%. It is available for both Android (ICS) and iOS. Opera Browser for Android comes with an “Off Road” mode that uses cloud compression technology to reduce data usage and improve browsing speed.

Root Your Android Device, Modify the ROM & Delete the “Throttle Services” Files

Some data carriers rely on certain configurations in Android devices to cap data. These can be changed to scuttle throttling. When most of us think of data limitation, we think of it as occurring from the carrier’s side. This isn’t always the case; client-side data capping is more common than most of us believe. Deleting the “throttle services” files can work if the carrier is using client side data capping methods. In the US, T-Mobile & AT&T no longer use client side methods so this will not work there.

It may come as a surprise to learn that phone manufacturers occasionally work with carriers to make data capping easier. For example, in the US, AT&T had originally disabled HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access) on the HTC Inspire 4G and Atrix 4G before enabling it in April 2011.

VPN

A VPN service can help you evade throttling if your carrier only throttles peer-to-peer traffic. Encrypting your data prevents your carrier from seeing the contents of your traffic. The network can still see that you are moving large amounts of data, but they have no way of telling what kind of data it is. Take note that this may not work if your carrier has a data cap irrespective of the type of data. Hotspot Shield is an excellent free VPN app available on both Google Play and the App Store.

Conclusion

These tips should help you avoid being throttled. However, many people become victims of data limitation as a result of false advertising. Protect yourself by reading the marketing material from your mobile network keenly. Be particularly vigilant to read the small print to find out the upper limit at which the network starts to throttle your data.

Have you been a victim of throttling in the past? How do you manage your data usage? Let us know in the comments.

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Google Translate Android App Makes Translated Conversations Simpler

Google Translate Android App Makes Translated Conversations Simpler

The latest update to the Google Translate app on Android makes translation simpler and faster. The Google Translate app could be the “universal translator” you were looking for to break all linguistic barriers while travel hopping. It already supports more than 70 languages. It now gets a sleek new look and gesture support. More importantly, you can now have a translated back and forth conversation by catching the foreign language with a press on the microphone icon. Gesture support helps you switch between the translations with a turn of the screen.

Product Manager Mathew Gabba says now you can have a fully translated back-and-forth conversation “with very little work”. Additional language support also comes to the handwriting recognition feature – now, write in Hebrew, Javanese, and Esperanto on your device screen and have them translated on the fly. The camera translation feature is also bolstered with support for Malay and Ukranian. You can take a photo of written text (e.g. a signpost) and translate the highlighted words.

Google Translate removes some of the worries of travelling to a strange new country. It may not be able to translate everything faithfully, but at least you know that it can handle critical translations like signs, menus, directions etc. The enhanced translated conversations should also help to ride over some of the language obstacles.

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