iTwitter: Best iPhone/iPod Touch Twitter App?

After looking through all of the Twitter apps in the App Store, I had settled on Twitterific because it seemed to offer everything I was looking for and was nice to look at. The only problem is the frequent crashing when scrolling through tweets. (Follow me on Twitter)

Then along came iTwitter. I noticed it was free and grabbed it to check it out. It was love at first sight. Okay, the looks really had nothing to do with it. I fell in love with the features (e.g. Push Notifications). The UI when viewing tweets could use some improvements!

iTwitter has yet to crash since day one. It does need some more features to be at the top, but I think it could happen since the developer, NibiruTech, has a UserVoice page to see what users are looking for. It shows the developer is listening and wants to improve.

iTwitter was the first Twitter app to include Push Notifications, but this is currently limited to only iTwitter users. I did read a comment by the developer that Push Notifications for all users is being worked on. This is great news!

If iTwitter doesn’t see improvements soon, including Push Notifications for all users, I don’t think many people will switch because they are already comfortable with the app they use and the cost of purchasing a new app, currently at $2.99. Yes, I did say I got the app for free, because it was available for free for a limited time.

iTwitter has a lot of features, including features I haven’t seen in other apps. As long as the developer continues to improve, I think this app could be one of the top apps.

Current Features

• Push Notifications between iTwitter users.
• Displays the number of new tweets to read inside the app.
• Allows multiple Twitter accounts.
• Save groups and searches.
• View tweets of people nearby.
• When writing a new tweet or reply, if you typed some text and cancel, you can go back and the text will be there. Some people might find that annoying, but I don’t. This is the best feature!
• Shows the original tweet below the reply.
• If there is a link or a Twitter user (@name), when you touch the tweet, options will be displayed that allow you to reply, retweet, favorite or visit the link in the built-in browser or visit the Twitter user’s ‘profile’.
• Touching a Twitter user’s picture will display a few options and a short summary of their info. From here, you can follow or unfollow and send a direct message. Touch outside of the box and will disappear.
• Delete all read tweets.
• Mark all tweets as read.
• View users you are following or those who are following you.
• Landscape keyboard and in-line browser.
• Customize the user home screen by moving around groups, saved searches, etc.
• Cached tweets so everything loads faster.

Features I Would Like

• Automatic refreshing of tweets so I don’t have to manually refresh. Option to change the intervals of regular tweets, replies and direct messages are needed.
• Push Notification needs to work with all users, regardless of which app they are using. Because again, some people aren’t going to switch if they are happy with the one they have, which makes iTwitter users unhappy and more likely to switch to another Push Notification supporting app when one becomes available.
• Push Notifications need to display who sent the reply or direct message. Option to change whether you want to see just who sent it, who sent it and the tweet, just the tweet, or just that you received a reply or direct message.
• Remove the chat bubbles  for each tweet and just put the tweets in plain boxes, similar to Twitterific and TweetDeck. I am not a fan of the chat bubbles and they take up too much space. I would like to see more tweets in a view.
• Option to view read or unread tweets. Currently, if I read about half of them and still have the rest to read but I go to another screen and then I come back, I have to look at all the tweets I have read before I can view the unread ones.
• The app icon should display the number of new replies and direct messages that were just pushed.
• Include trending topics. Not really an important feature for me, since I don’t really care about trending topics, but a lot of people seem to.
• Replies and direct messages need their own color to separate them from regular tweets. Would be even more awesome if re-tweets could also have their own color.
• Listing of followers and following is really slow. Should be cached and updated every so often.
• List of followers needs to be fixed to allow me to view more. It currently only allows me to view around 65+.

Did you try iTwitter? If so, are you still using it?

PerfectDisk 2008 Professional Worth a Try

Having been a huge fan of Diskeeper for years, it was very hard to try another software because I was always comparing to Diskeeper. I had purchased Diskeeper and then switched over to 64-bit Vista and couldn’t run the Home version that I had purchased. I wasn’t about ready to spend even more money to buy the version that supported 64-bit.

PerfectDisk 2008 Professional supports 64-bit, so I thought it was definitely worth a try, especially when I don’t currently run anything to defragment my system. Diskeeper and PerfectDisk are almost similar in functionality. They don’t look exactly the same, but there are some features that do remind me of Diskeeper, which is a good thing because it made me feel comfortable using it.

One feature I look for in most software is the “set it and forget it”. I don’t have time to worry about my system running fast and working right, so that is a must-have feature that PerfectDisk has.

After changing a default setting, I was able to see and schedule my external USB drive to be defragmented.

The defragmentation took quite a while to complete since I modify, add and remove files almost daily on it. I found the process to be slightly slower than Diskeeper, but that could very well mean it is more thorough. Since defragmenting usually occurs when I’m not using my computer (using the idle feature), it’s not really that big of a deal. Defragmenting my main hard drive didn’t take as long even though it is slightly larger; it has a lot more free space on it.

For those of you concerned about how large of a hard drive you have, PerfectDisk does not have a size limitation like Diskeeper does. You are allowed to have multi-terabyte hard drives with PerfectDisk – no need to worry about spending more money on a version that supports larger hard drives. It also allows you to defrag with as little as 1% free space available!

PerfectDisk performs file defragmentation in a single-pass unlike other software which helps improvement of drive performance. It also does a single-pass defragmentation of free space.

PerfectDisk 2008’s patented SMARTPlacement™ optimization is paired with its exclusive single-pass defragmentation and Space Restoration Technology™ to maximize PC and laptop performance.

My favorite PerfectDisk feature is that it also defragments the hibernate file. Since using PerfectDisk, I noticed that Vista resumes from hibernation noticeably faster than it did prior to using the software.

PerfectDisk has also helped Photoshop load faster and while editing several (10-20) large images for work, I don’t notice it lagging like it used to. I have always hated opening Photoshop because of how slow it was and now I can actually enjoy using it. Diskeeper has never done this much of an improvement on my system.

PerfectDisk is easy to use for anyone, very thorough and will keep your system running smooth! I recommend trying it out. Check out the comparison charts.

I am still a huge fan of Diskeeper due to its speed, but PerfectDisk has definitely improved my system in a shorter amount of time than Diskeeper has. PerfectDisk gets my vote for the amount of improvements.

Click on screenshots below:

If you use PerfectDisk 2008 Professional or older versions, I’d love to hear what you thought of it in the comments!

Managing Time With FruitfulTime TaskManager

As a lot of you may have noticed, I haven’t written a post in about a month. This is because I’ve been so busy! I apologize and will try to stay on top of things, if I can! (One way to help me out would be if you have a suggestion for a topic, please contact me and let me know.)

I was recently notified about FruitfulTime TaskManager at a perfect time and decided to give it a try because of how many tasks I needed to get done (on time). I figured this would be a great way to share my experience and opinions of this software with all of you and get a new post out at the same time!

FruitfulTime TaskManager actually looks better than a lot of other task management applications and allows you to easily see what your progress is for any tasks. It’s also small in size and performs very quickly. Another feature that has been tempting me to buy a new thumb drive is that it is portable as well. This means it can be installed on a thumb drive so you can take it wherever!

Being that I work on projects that also involve other people, it’s helpful to see who is assigned to what, so if you have a task that is dependent on another task which is assigned to someone else, you’ll know by viewing who it is assigned to and be able to contact that person regarding the status because of the Contact Manager built-in.

I do have a few annoyances/suggestions that I want to point out, that I hope could be considered in a future version:

1. Subtasks not grouped with tasks. Instead of separating the subtasks below the task listing, I would rather see a tree listing with the subtasks below each task, so I don’t have to click on a task just to see the subtask. This would save me time.
2. Deleting subtasks. Several times I have made the mistake of clicking on a subtask to delete, only to end up clicking on ‘Delete Task’, which shouldn’t appear when a subtask is selected. If the parent task was selected, then ‘Delete Task’ should appear. I just become confused when I’m so busy and not paying attention.
3. Setting task options, like Priority, Status, Progress, etc. When changing them, I have to triple-click! I wish I only had to single-click like I do for editing the name of the task, but would even settle for double-click. But triple-clicking is going a little too far and wastes time.
4. Setting the progress of a subtask does not automatically update its task. For example, if I set a subtask to 50% (say there is only one subtask), shouldn’t the task’s progress become 50%? I don’t really want to manually set it to 50%, because again, it takes time.

Features I really like:

• Adding notes to tasks.
• Adding references to any relevant websites or files. Very useful option for me especially since the company I work for has MANY websites that I need to be able to login for QA. A lot of the time, I also need to be able to review a document, so this can save me time from having to go back through lots of files to find the document I need.
• Adding reminders. Reminders can be set to go off before the Start Date or the Due Date. For me, setting reminders before a Start Date is helpful, because sometimes I like to start projects early, rather than waiting until I actually need to start it.

Overall, I do like FruitfulTime TaskManager and will probably continue using it since I’m tired of Outlook 2007 running so slow on Vista because I have a lot of e-mails and tasks to add. I like how Outlook manages tasks, but when I have to wait forever for Outlook to load, it’s not worth my time.

If you would like to see a demo of FruitfulTime TaskManager in action, there is video on the website. Interested in trying out this wonderful (very affordable) application? Go download it!

I would really like to hear if anyone else has given FruitfulTime TaskManager a try, and what you think of it. Please leave a comment below.

Short Review of the Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000

More than a month ago, I used my tickets on Live Search Club to get a Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000. There were only two choices, the 3000 or 6000 – obviously I chose the 6000. I did already have a webcam, but my Logitech QuickCam Pro 4000 wouldn’t work with Vista.

The Logitech webcam I had is really good, almost clear video (in small resolution only though), but would still recommend for XP and earlier.

Last week the webcam arrived and of course I tried it out right away. As the instructions said, I installed the software first (which took a long time), then plugged the webcam into the USB port. Opened up the software to see how the video looked. It crashed and closed out! Something about ffdshow needed to be installed, according to Vista. The first thing I thought was: “Doesn’t everything I need come included on the CD?”

So, I installed ffdshow and the webcam software worked just fine. But, the video quality was really poor. It was like watching a station on TV that doesn’t come in very well, a lot of static. This webcam was claimed to have good video quality!

After playing with the ffdshow settings that made no difference at all, I uninstalled it. The webcam software worked fine even after uninstalling ffdshow. Weird. I looked up reviews online and eventually came across one person saying to not install from the CD, but to download the software/drivers from Microsoft and to change the USB bandwidth to a lower number.

I re-installed (just to be sure), switched the USB bandwidth to a lower number and noticed a change. But, a lower USB bandwidth number means slower video. Picture quality though for the most part is really good.

Here are some features of this webcam from the back of the box; my notes in italics:

• High Definition video (1.3 megapixels) and photos (5.0 megapixels interpolated) (Logitech webcam quality wasn’t as good)
• Wide-angle lens (Logitech webcam didn’t have this)
• 3x digital zoom (Logitech webcam has this)
• Automatic face tracking software (Logitech webcam comes with this too)
• Automatically adjust for low-light conditions for superior video quality (Not any better than the Logitech webcam)
• Read more features of the webcam on the Microsoft product page.

One thing I don’t like is if there is a light in the view of the webcam, it just makes that area completely white, rather than showing what is really there. The Logitech webcam didn’t do that.

Below is a very short clip of what the video looks like with the high definition video (1.3 megapixels) and the USB bandwidth set at 6. (Windows Media Player only, sorry.)

Link to video if you can’t view it above: Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000

I like that the webcam can sit on top of my monitor, unlike the Logitech that wasn’t designed to. I may have to put some double-sided tape on part of it so it doesn’t move when my monitor is bumped though.

Overall, I guess it’s an okay webcam. You get what you pay for right?

I don’t plan on purchasing a new webcam anytime soon, but if you know of one that has really good quality videos, I’d like to hear about it!

Image is a modified screenshot from the Microsoft product page.

Choose the Right Web Host for You

Finding out which provider is better for what you want can be hard until you’ve done some research. That can be very time consuming, right? I know I spent a lot of time thinking about switching from GoDaddy to another provider and wasn’t sure if I wanted to go with HostRocket because I didn’t really have issues with GoDaddy, just that I wanted more.

I just found out about Web Hosting Choice, which seems to help with your web hosting choice. I did notice that they recommend Host Gator, throughout the site. Makes me feel like it’s an advertisement, but I don’t know if it really is.

I love the Quick Web Host Search box on the front page. Enter in the maximum monthly cost, maximum setup fee, minimum disk space and bandwidth that you are looking for. Click Search for Hosts and browse the results of the available web hosting providers.

Most of my searches resulted in mostly just Host Gator hosting plans. I’m sure it’s because they have a variety of plans at affordable prices.

The site also has a great Learning Center to help you learn what you need to know about web hosting. For example, what is PHP or Perl? There is also a page that talks about scams that you may run into when looking for a web host. One of the scams is about providers offering unlimited bandwidth/space. My provider actually does offer me unlimited bandwidth (which, yes, I’m sure there is a limit at some point, but it doesn’t mean it’s a scam, in my opinion).

I like that it lets me select specific features that I may be looking for, example: ASP. Or select a specific web hosting provider and see the plans each one offers. Warning: the directory of providers is very long! This must have taken Web Hosting Choice a long time to build.

If I need to look for another web hosting provider, I will most likely check out Web Hosting Choice in the future, because it could save a lot of time! I only wish I knew about it when I was looking earlier last year.

Check them out if you’re looking for a new place to host your website. Hopefully it will help you in your search.

Sponsored by Web Hosting Choice