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I’ve had my new BlackBerry Curve 8900 for a little over one week now. Two reasons that I broke down and got this thing in the first place were email and Twitter. I’ve managed to get email pretty well dialed in although I am still interested in maybe fully syncing with Outlook. Getting a Twitter app that meets my needs has been surprisingly challenging. Everything cool seems to be written for the iPhone. Or so I thought. Here are four Twitter clients for the BlackBerry that I have looked at: Better read this entire post because I saved the best for last!!
TwitterBerry: As I understand it, this was probably the original defacto standard for the BlackBerry. It is likely a stable platform. However, the interface reminds me of a screen shot from the original IBM PC back in 1981. Sorry, but not cool. I want a more “polished” look. Delete (smile).
UberTwitter: This is a very very nice app and I ran with it for the first week. At the time, I was having problems that were related to Google Mobile App or UberTwitter or both. I pretty much narrowed it down to the Google App and, take this advice from me, if you have a Curve 8900, you had better wait. Looking at various forums, the latest version of this just flat does not work on this BlackBerry. Use it four to five times and you will be visiting “screen freeze city”. “Battery pull time” although I did find a nice little utility called “QuickPull” that does a soft reboot without having to physically pull the battery. I thought that by not using the Google Mobile App my problems would all be solved. Close but no cigar.
For whatever reason, when I want to look at “replies”, @ messages directed at me, UberTwitter chugs and chugs and never seems to finish indexing. It is either very slow or it is getting hung up somewhere. If I exit out of that function, my updates no longer want to send. Maybe I just need to allow it more time. Patience is not one of my virtues. Also, and I have not been able to figure out how to get around this, when you log on to UberTwitter it takes you back to the last Tweet viewed and you can start reviewing up from there. If you monitor Tweets fairly closely, that might be a desirable feature. I don’t. It might be hours between Twitter checks for me and it might then take me 10 minutes to scroll up to the top. Annoying. I want it to work like TweetDeck where the latest message is on top and I can scroll down if I want to. Still, thousands of folks do swear by UberTwitter and it certainly is worth your look.
I then Googled and Googled and Googled looking for other alternatives and with surprisingly little success. By chance I ran across an article I had saved sometime back about a new product called…….
TweetCaster: Now, this looks nice. Real nice. I would strongly suggest you look at it. And, it handles multiple accounts. However, once again in reading forums, it appears that it might not work so well for me as, I believe, it wants to load a custom screen theme to your BlackBerry and I happen to be a T-Mobile customer and with the MyFaves plan. TweetCaster wants to load icons for a number of functions right on your main screen. Once again, while for some that might be nice. I did see where it did cause an error for others using my phone and MyFaves. Well, I also just did not like the look from the screen shots I saw. However, this same article also mentioned an app called …..
SocialScope: My friends, this app is da’ BOMB! Sweet interface. BlackBerry shortcuts. Multiple accounts. Twitter and FaceBook for both posting and monitoring. Fast. If it wore a skirt, I’d marry it (smile)! And, there is much more to it. Here’s the deal. This app is in “private beta” testing and by invitation only. You go to their site and indicate your interest in trying the product out. You will get an email thanking you for your interest and advising you off the backlog but maybe expect something in about 2 weeks that will tell you how to upload the program. Mine came back in less than 12 hours as did a friend of mine, Brandon Wright. I am told that you should not attempt to activate this app without your specific personal passcode that they supply you with. It will crash. And, sorry Storm users, no soup for you. Does not work on the Storm. However, for us mere mortals, we be in hog heaven (smile). You really have to check this out!
Finally, as I go to post this, Twitter is down from a “denial of service attack”. Use this link to get a Twitter Status Report at any time. Here is how it looks in my TwitterGadget that I use on my iGoogle home page ….. Dead birdie (smile)
Thanks for visiting!
Craig
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- Sneak Peek: SocialScope Combines Twitter and Facebook on BlackBerry (mashable.com)
- UberTwitter Now the Most Popular Twitter Client for BlackBerry (mashable.com)
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- Download of the Day: TwitterBerry 0.9.1 (geeksugar.com)
- 6 Best Twitter Clients for Blackberry (bloggingot.com)
- Walking through BlackBerry Twitter client BBTweet (bbgeeks.com)
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- Google Mobile for Blackberry Adds Search by Voice, My Location (lifehacker.com)
- Mobile Devices From Google – GoogleMobile.Blogspot.com (killerstartups.com)
Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. NetWorks! Boise Valley is a business to business networking organization for the most serious sales and marketing professionals only.
