December 20th, 2009
It’s been a long time coming, but I’m excited to announce that Twaddle 0.2 is nearly here. I now consider 0.2 to be feature complete and am now going through the process of final testing before I release it. I’m hoping to have 0.2 released in time for Christmas (if only so I can lounge about and play computer games instead of coding), but can’t promise anything.
A partial list of features, to whet your appetite, include;
- A revamped interface
- Viewing mentions
- Sending, receiving and viewing direct messages
- Speed improvements
- Better UTF8 support
Tags: 0.2, news
Posted in Blog | No Comments »
October 13th, 2009
I’d hoped to have a 0.2 of Twaddle out by now, unfortunately that’s not been the case.
First off, I recently moved house which took a fair amount of time and effort to get packed / unpacked and have DSL connected at my new place. In addition to this I’ve had a few Uni assignments which took away even more time. In amongst all this my computer chair broke… I’ve purchased a new chair which won’t arrive for another 4 – 8 weeks. The dining chair I’m using in the mean time places a lot of strain on my back meaning I can only code for short periods of time.
Secondly, I’ve put a lot of work into making Twaddle a lot faster. On my HTC Touch Pro rotating the screen redraws virtually straight away and Twaddle continues to be responsive throughout the whole process. A vastly improved algorithm for laying out tweets (50 tweets get laid out in ~150ms on my phone) as well as moving non-visible layouts to a background process ensures Twaddle remains responsive throughout rotations. I’m still working on improving the speed of performing updates.
Long story short: 0.2 won’t be released as soon as I’d hoped as I’m putting a lot of work into it to ensure it far eclipses previous versions of Twaddle.
Tags: 0.2, news
Posted in Blog | 4 Comments »
September 13th, 2009
Today the 1000th person authorised Twaddle to communicate with the Twitter.com servers on their behalf. To coincide with this great milestone I’ve decided to release Twaddle 0.1.4. This is a minor release (and hopefully the last in the 0.1 line before I release 0.2) which includes the following features;
- Fixed problems sending Tweets with non-ASCII characters
- Fixed uninstall issues
- Fixed resending tweets
- Handle Twitter.com failures better
You can obtain this version in multiple ways;
Finally, if you have Microsoft Tag Reader (visit gettag.mobi on your phone’s browser) installed on your phone you can scan the tag below.
Tags: 0.1.4, news
Posted in Download | 8 Comments »
August 26th, 2009
CJ Lippstreu over at PocketNow.com has features Twaddle. You can read the article over at the site. PocketNow being rather popular caused a bit of a surge in the number of downloads, followers and authentications for Twaddle.
As a result we now have over 300 users! Unfortunately, due to my recent house move (and lack of broadband) I don’t have any updated pictures to post as a “Thanks guys!”
Tags: news
Posted in Blog | 3 Comments »
August 16th, 2009
Earlier today Twaddle Twaddle ticked over to 200 users. Not too shabby at all. Considering that I’ve had some things going on in my personal life that have prevented me from working on, or evangelising, Twaddle as much as I’d like.
In the same spirit as the 100 user milestone I present a screenshot previewing 0.2.
0.2 Preview – Received Direct Messages
As I anticipated in the previous post I’ve moved the icon bar to the bottom of the application. I find this is much more finger friendly as you can navigate without obscuring the screen. Additionally you can see the list of Direct Messages my test account has received (as well as the icon of the sender and your icon as an overlay).
Someone commented in my previous post about the icons used in Twaddle: Yes, they suck. I’m not developer not an artist. If anyone is interested in providing icons / colour advice, please get in contact with me. I’d love to hear from you.
Tags: 0.2, news
Posted in Blog, Screenshot | 6 Comments »
July 29th, 2009
In the last 8 hours the 100th user allowed Twaddle to communicate with Twitter on their behalf. It’s good to see people are finding Twaddle useful.
As my gift on this milestone I present… a screenshot from the 0.2 version of Twaddle.
0.2 Preview – New navigation and @Replies
In this screenshot we can see two new features of 0.2: First of all is the new navigation control. This is a bar of icons displayed along the top of the screen in the same vein as Microsoft’s Facebook application. I’m thinking I’ll move it to the bottom of the screen so there’s less distance for your finger to travel to get to it. Additionally the graphics used here are placeholder images – if anyone wants to volunteer to provide design services for Twaddle I’d love to hear from you. When you change which section of Twaddle you view you’ll get a textual overlay to indicate what you’re now viewing – in this screenshot I’m viewing my @Replies. The second feature, you may have picked up on, is the @Replies. In this view you can see several tweets people have targeted at me (I do apologise to those who are pictured)
Anyway, if you have any feedback, suggestions, criticisms or problems, please let me know and I’ll do my best to address your issues.
Tags: 0.2, news
Posted in Blog, Screenshot | 6 Comments »
July 27th, 2009
It’s that time again – a new build is out. 0.13 is a minor update that fixes a few crashing issues that may have caused some issues. Additionally downloading your friends avatars requires far less CPU usage which gives much better responsiveness (especially noticeable when downloading many new avatars at once).
Finally I’ve introduced AppToDate support – you can grab AppToDate from http://www.apptodate.org/get. For those that don’t know AppToDate is a simple – but effective – application for making sure you have the latest version of applications on your Windows Mobile device.
You can grab the newest version in several ways;
Alternatively you can always visit http://get.twaddle.mobi in your phone’s browser to download the most current version of Twaddle at any given time.
Finally, if you have Microsoft Tag Reader (visit gettag.mobi on your phone’s browser) installed on your phone you can scan the tag below.
Tags: 0.1.3, news
Posted in Download | 4 Comments »
July 26th, 2009
I’ve just created the new domain get.twaddle.mobi. Visiting http://get.twaddle.mobi in your phones browser will download the latest release of Twaddle straight to your phone for easy installation.
The release that’s downloaded will be kept in sync with the latest stable version of Twaddle.
Tags: sitenews
Posted in Blog | 6 Comments »
July 22nd, 2009
It is with much chagrin that I announce 0.1.2 of Twaddle. This minor release includes a greatly optimised code path for retrieving your friends list – this is particularly noticeable when you manually refresh the list. The new version updates my friends list in ~10 seconds (most of which is spent waiting for Twitter.com and parsing the XML response) compared to 0.1.1’s ~60 seconds. These saved 50 seconds represent time your Pocket PC could be going back to sleep – essential for good battery life.
Secondly, this release will not crash when one of your friends’ most recent update is an @reply to someone with protected updates that you do not have access to.
As with last time there’s two available download mechanisms;
Alternatively, if you have Microsoft Tag Reader (visit gettag.mobi on your phone’s browser) installed on your phone you can scan the tag below.
Tags: 0.1.2, news
Posted in Download | No Comments »
July 22nd, 2009
It’s funny, you test an application for several weeks and determine there’s no major bugs and go ahead and release it. Then on the day of release you experience a crashing bug didn’t occur previously resulting in egg on your face. Basically, when Twaddle gets updates from Twitter it looks at the list of tweets for any @replies. If it finds an @reply it checks who the target is and proceeds to download their information (if Twaddle does not already have it). Once this is done it can proceed to download that user’s avatar and create the schmick little overlays that you see in the various Twaddle views. Unfortunately there’s a slight problem… if an @reply is directed at a user who protects their updates, and you do not have access to those updates, Twaddle flails it’s arms in the air and crashes. Not cool, not cool all. Now that I’ve experienced the problem and know what it is I can fix it.
I also noticed that obtaining your friends list took way longer than it should. This will also be rectified in the next point release (0.1.2). As a result of this fix the first time you use 0.1.2 – or newer – you may notice that Twaddle takes a bit longer than usual to start up due to an update to the database used to store information. The upside of this is that Twaddle should update a lot quicker, resulting in better battery life, and generally a better user experience.
Expect the new version today or tomorrow.
Tags: 0.1.1, 0.1.2, news
Posted in Blog | No Comments »
