by aaron on August 14, 2011
Of all of the social networking services out there, I like twitter the most. It’s the only one that I constantly use. One of the annoying things about twitter is that when you use two different devices you always have to scroll up to the most recent tweets. Somehow this concept has escaped the folks at twitter. I don’t understand why but it has.
Now, a developer is looking to change this. Manton Reece of Riverfold Software has developed a service called Tweet Marker that will sync your twitter timeline and you’ll always be up to date no matter which device you’re on.
Right now only twitterific from Icon Factory is using the service. I seriously thought about buying the app for all of my devices so I would always be in sync. For the time being I have decided against that since I like the apps that I’m using and have purchased. However it will be interesting to see how many other developers of twitter apps out there will use Tweet Marker in their applications. I know that I’ve already made the suggestion to Tapbots, the maker of Tweetbot (my favorite twitter app for the iPhone). If you want to see this service (and independent twitter clients stay around) I’d suggest making support for Tweet Marker a feature request.
I finally did it. I took the plunge and decided to jailbreak my iPhone. I guess that I should take a step back and explain why I did this so close to a iPhone OS 4.0 release which would have some of the features that I’m looking for.
I think that the main thing I’ve been looking for is usefulness of the lock screen. As it stands now, you don’t really see anything on the lock screen aside from being told if the battery is charging (if you are plugged in) or nothing at all. As far as I know this is something that won’t be updated in OS 4.0. When you jailbreak your iPhone that changes with an application called lockinfo.
Lockinfo gives you the ability to see notifications, emails, SMS messages and a lot more all from the lock screen. This is really useful for me because I can see anything that is going on at a quick glance. There is even a plug in that will allow you to see the latest twitter updates in your time line. Lockinfo costs $4.99, I’m still on my trial but I will buying it when that is over. It’s worth it.
The other app that you won’t be seeing in OS 4.0 (We’re really waiting for AT&T to get off its behind for this) is the ability to tether your iPhone and use its 3G connection with your laptop. There are several ways to go about getting this done with a jail broken iPhone but the easiest is using an application called MyWi. I don’t need to have the connectivity all the time but when I do need it it’s nice to have when you’re in a pinch. MyWi is a paid app (with a 10 day trial) and costs $9.99. I have not installed it yet but it looks good.
Now let’s talk about what we will have in OS 4.0, namely multitasking and fast app switching. I think that aside from a unified inbox in the Mail application this has been the most popular feature request for the OS. To get the multitasking and fast application switching you need to install two applications. Backgrounder and Proswitcher, both applications are free. Backgrounder gives you the ability for multitasking but it’s Proswitcher that really makes this work. It gives you the ability to look at the open apps in a view that is similar to web OS. All you have to do is just swipe to the left or right to get to the open app of your choice.
As you see there is also a badge on the lower left corner to indicate which apps are running in the background.
One thing to remember with running apps in the background, the more that you run the faster your battery will be drained.
I’m only one day into using my jail broken phone but so far so good.