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Reviews / Social Networking
Tweetbot_for_iPad

Tweetbot for iPad Has It All!

 

There are LOTS of Twitter clients out there for iOS and I must admit that I switch up on a regular basis. It's not that I'm that picky, it's just that I usually can't find a single client that does everything I want the way I want it to. So I end up going back and forth between the official Twitter Client, the native iOS Twitter support and Echofon Pro on my iPad. Although I have Tweetbot on my iPhone, I never really saw enough of an advantage in it to make it my default Twitter client and therefore I rarely used it. Lately I've been using Twitter on my iPhone and Echofon Pro on my iPad. That changed yesterday when Tapbots released Tweetbot for iPad. They seemed to have nailed it! I went through it looking for all the features that I like:

  • Auto refresh
  • Retweet with comment
  • Bit.ly Pro support
  • Instapaper Support
  • Images in-line
  • Good "List" support
  • Translate Tweets
  • Easy Conversation Viewing
  • Multiple Twitter Account Support
  • Choose your favorite Video and Pic service
  • and most importantly a GREAT UI that makes it easy to access the features above without too many taps

It's that last bullet point that will probably keep me using Tweetbot on my iPad. Sure the other clients have the above features (with the exception of Twitter now only supporting their own URL shortening!), but it's the UI (user interface) that's going to ultimately decide my favorite Twitter client.  What I really like about Tweetbot is the gestures. For example a Triple tap gives you reply choices. Swipe to the left to see the conversation. A single tap reveals the most common options for a selected tweet. Tap and hold on an Avatar to see options for that Twitter user. Tap and hold on the tweet to Send the Tweet to Instapaper (or the service you choose), Copy it, email it and yes TRANSLATE IT!

They even got the startup experience right! The first time I launched the App it offered to bring in the Twitter accounts that I already had setup in iOS 5. Yeah! Also they show you some helpful tips to get you going on the App.

Granted I've only been using this App for a day, but I can't think of anything they missed. Well I do have to ding them on one thing. It would have been nice to see this as a Universal App instead of charging both iPhone and iPad users separately. Also even though these things aren't important to me, they may be to you: I don't see support for the newly designed Twitter interface that offers "Discover" and "Connect'. You can of course see your Mentions and New Followers, but not in the same window. I could care less about this, but it is something that the official Twitter client offers. Otherwise if you're looking for a new great Twitter client for iPad, this is it.

P.S. Hey Tapbots, will ConvertBot ever see some iPad love? Also I really wish you guys could do what you did for Twitter, for Google+ too!

Follow me on Twitter!

You can get Tweetbot for iPad for $2.99 here from the iTunes

One more thing… Yes the iPhone/iPod touch version got updated to 2.0 with many of the features that kept me away from using it in the past and the ones that make me love the iPad version. It may be a win-win for me here using the same UI on both platforms!

You can get Tweetbot for iPhone/iPod touch for $2.99 here from the iTunes

Reviews / Social Networking
blogsy

Blogsy lets me blog from my iPad

In addition to writing App reviews here, I blog on my Tech Blog and for my Mac User's Group Blog. Most of the time I blog from my MacBook Pro, but I'm finding that I can do more and more with just using my iPad. All of my blogs use the WordPress engine and while I've used the official WordPress App, I find it lacking in several areas for formatting my posts the way I like. I'm especially picky when it comes image placement. Until now my favorite iPad blogging App had been BlogPress and while BlogPress is a GREAT APP, I'm actually blown away by the capabilities of Blogsy. Blogsy offers a slew of editing and formatting features that make me feel as if I'm editing using the native WordPress interface. While this could just as easily be achieved in the Safari browser, where Blogsy becomes the clear winner is when it comes to inserting media such as images and videos. As you would expect you can import media from your iPad Camera Roll or Albums. All of the blogging apps do this. However, Blogsy takes it up several notches by letting you drag and drop images and videos from your online sharing sites such as Flickr, Picasa, and even YouTube. Yes you can drag and drop YouTube videos into your posts! Sweet!

HTML Editing and more

While Blogsy offers a nice graphical user interface (UI) for editing your blog posts, if there there is ever anything you need to insert into the HTML directly you can access it with the tap of a button. If you need to look something up or grab a link for you post, there's no need to leave the App as it has a web browser built-in. Blogsy supports WordPress, Blogger, Posterous, TypePad, MovableType, Drupal and Joomla. It also includes TextExpander support. 

 

The Bottom Line

While Blogsy does offer very impressive editing and image handling features there is one thing keeping me from being able to use this App 100% of the time. I haven't been able to find a way to use the custom fields and other features of my WordPress template while in Blogsy. For example, I would have been able to write this post in Blogsy and bring in the images, but I would have still needed to complete the post in a browser in order to add things like the Featured image and to fill out the details panel at the bottom of this post. These are custom fields in my WordPress template that don't show up in Blogsy (or at least I haven't found them). Even with that being the case I could use Blogsy to do the bulk of the work while on the go and finish the few little details that Blogsy couldn't do either on my computer or in Safari on the iPad. 

You can get Blogsy for iPad for $4.99 here from the iTunes

Reviews
iNet_Pro

I’m my own Network Administrator, therefore I use iNet Pro

I have a fairly large network at home of both wired and wireless devices. Some use DHCP and some have static IP addresses. Some have utilities that enable you to easily locate these devices, some don't. Luckily for me there's a great App called iNet Pro that let's me see my entire network at a glance. It shows me the various devices I have online and more importantly what IP address they are currently using. I can see many of these graphically because if the App knows what the device is it shows a nice icon for it. It can also show you some nice info about the iOS device you're running the App on such as the External IP Address and UUID. For devices such as Servers or computers that you may unknowingly opened ports on that could be hacked into, it will show you which ports are open on any particular device. The App even shows you what services are running too as well as useful information such as the MAC address, model number and model identifier. Great when you're trying to figure out if you have the latest generation AirPort Base Station or other gear. The App is fast, has a great UI, provides a wealth of useful information and is a must for anyone with more than a few devices on their network.

You can get iNet Pro for $5.99 here from the iTunes

Reviews / Utilities
Contact_Sync_for_Google_GMail

Contact Sync for Google GMail

While Apple does a pretty good job in allowing you to setup your Google GMail account on your iOS Device very easily, the one glaring omission is bringing your Google Contacts over. (granted there is a work around in that you can setup your Google account using the Exchange setup) I recently had two different friends that switched to the iPhone from either Android or Blackberry devices and their first question to me was, "How do I get my Google Contacts over?" In one case it was easy enough to do via a Blackberry to Google App and then syncing those contacts to their Address Book onto their Mac and then of course to their iPhone. However, in the other case my friend doesn't own a computer. Their iOS devices are their only computing devices. This is where the Contact Sync for Google GMail App came in and worked perfectly. In iOS you setup a GMail account natively in the OS, but when it comes to your contacts there is no built-in way to bring them over (still scratching my head on that one). Contact Sync for Google GMail is an App that you install on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad and then simply sign in to your Google Account with it. This will bring your contacts over into the native Contacts app and make them accessible to iCloud as well.

Sync in either direction or both

The great thing about this App is that you can either use it as a one-time sync or you can use it as an ongoing way of keeping your iOS device contacts in sync with your Google Contacts. While I do have a computer and only use Google Contacts for Google Voice, I love the option of a ONEWAY sync from my Contact to Google. Mac OS X offers a native Address Book to Google "sync", but I've had it screw up one too many times to the point that I turned it off.  Having a oneway option means that my iOS Contacts will always be the master set and only update Google when I choose to. After turning my friend on to this App I decided to try it myself. I was floored by how fast it did the sync of my 1400+ contacts. It did everything PERFECTLY. It brought over the groups, names, numbers, addresses, birthdays, and even the contact photos. I'm extremely happy with the performance.

There's nothing else to say! If you need to sync your iOS Contacts to Google or your Google Contacts to iOS or both, this is the Best App!

You can get Contact Sync for Google GMail for $2.99 here from the iTunes

Productivity / Reviews
splashIDsafe

SplashID Safe for iPhone

Earlier today I review the SplashID Key Safe hardware based USB thumb drive for storing your passwords and other sensitive files (see the review here). It was during the review process that I quickly learned that they also have an iOS version of their App. Many of you may already be familiar with 1Password Pro as it has been one of my favorite Apps for a long time. SplashID Keysafe for iPhone is very similar in that it allows you to securely (via encryption) store your passwords, credit card numbers, bank accounts, web logins, software serial numbers and just about anything else that you want to keep under lock and key. With that being said there are some differences. The 1st difference is one that I really like. You can lock the App with a Password or Pin as you would expect, but you can also lock with a custom Pattern (see the image below). There are 9 pins and using your finger you draw a pattern connecting the dots. That's how you unlock the App going forward. It's much easier than having to key in a secure password containing letters, numbers and symbols. The app is also a bit more visually appealing offering nice icons for the various categories. However, the biggest difference is that it allows direct wireless syncing with the hardware key. This has it's advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that your data is never sitting on someone's cloud that could be hacked. The downside is that it's on you to then make sure that your data is backed up.

Use it stand alone

Although the App syncs with the desktop versions and the Key Safe App, you don't have to have any other software or hardware to use this App. The App can work in a stand alone fashion and you can simply use it to store all your passwords safely. Once you have your web logins entered you can actually use the Apps in-app browser to bring up the site you want to access and the user name and password will be inserted if possible and if not will at least be display on the bar above the page in the app.

 

The Bottom Line

You should not be using the same "easy to remember" password on all of your sites. I know that having a single password makes life easy, but it also puts you at great risk that if someone figures out that password they can keep trying it on other sites to do more damage. The answer is different passwords on each site you log into and more importantly passwords that are strong containing letters, numbers and symbols. Since these more secure passwords are harder to remember an App like SplashID Safe comes in very handy!

You can get it here for $9.99 from the iTunes

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