Apple Says Things at WWDC

So Apple had some fun at the WWDC Keynote this year.

Siri did stand-up comedy to open.

No really, I’m excited about the new Samsung. Not the phone, the refrigerator.

I must admit, that was pretty funny.

First of all, Apple updated its notebooks. The MacBook Air finally got a speed boost, the MacBook Pro got a speed boost, and the 17″ MacBook Pro bid farewell.

Apple also announced their next generation MagBook Pro, which is almost as thin as an Air, has a retina display, and a new Magsafe Port. Great.

All of these computers have gotten upgrades to USB 3, which is nice for those people who actually have devices that can take advantage of that.

Then, our friend iOS got an update.

Finally, iOS has turn by turn navigation. Siri is available on the new iPad, and has supposedly gotten a bit better. Facebook is now integrated as much as twitter. FaceTime is available on cellular networks. Photo streams can be shared. A new app called Passbook allows you to store tickets for planes, movies, and stores. There’s also a few other things that aren’t worth mentioning.

Mac OS X Mountain Lion didn’t get anything new from what we knew already, except thatdictation will be available in any text field. For many people, this will definitely come in handy.

Some people were unhappy with the absence of an iPhone 5. But I think we should be content with iOS 6, and expect the new iPhone this fall – along with the public release of iOS 6.

I’ve been playing around with iOS 6, and so far it works well. Siri works just as expected, and the Facebook and twitter integration is also very handy.

The MacBooks that were updated are available now, but iOS will be available in fall. Mountain Lion will be available this July.

MacBook Pro

Macbook Air

iOS 6

Mountain Lion

Goodbye, Old Twitter

Image Credit: Mashable

A little while back, Twitter started to slowly roll out a new version of the Twitter web interface to their users. Reactions were mixed; some loved it, some hated it, and some really just didn’t care.

For the haters out there, there was an option to switch back to the old version. However, Twitter is going to be removing the old version of the twitter web interface over the course of the next week – not that many users will notice the change, as the majority of twitter users have already switched over.

Personally, I am indifferent to the new Twitter web interface; it’s pretty and all, has some cool effects, and nicer fonts and rounder edges. The previous Twitter interface was simply getting old, and I believed it needed a revamp – which is exactly what we got.

Users of “old Twitter” will get a message saying that they are soon going to automatically upgraded to the new version of twitter, and twitter also announced this publicly on their twitter page. It was bound to happen eventually, and I guess the day (or week) has arrived.

RockMelt

RockMelt is an attempt at making a new browser.

Unfortunately, I am not very happy with the results.

The big thing with this is social integration. There are two sidebars on each side. One shows online facebook friends that you can chat with and the other has buttons that pop up a small feed of facebook, twitter, or any other RSS feed.

This would be great, however I find it bordering a little bit from web to desktop. I feel that when I want to have a desktop social app, I get a desktop social app. When I want a web browser, I get a web browser. And often, social (facebook in particular) tends to be online. That’s fine with me. But it seems like putting a wordpress editor inside of a web browser (which is why I don’t like Flock). It’s nice how you can chat with your friends out of the blue without having facebook open but this tends to be quite a distraction seeing who’s online and everything without even clicking a button.

Other than that, RockMelt seems like a complete rip on chrome. It was built on chromium which explains why, but I feel like they don’t need 30 employees to implement a few APIs.

Indeed, rockmelt is painfully slow. If your cache is empty, Good Morning Geek takes about 15 seconds to load the background.

Unfortunately, I give this browser a 2 out of five. It has a great execution, but I feel like the idea behind it is a little bit out of place.

RockMelt is only available in private beta (you need an invite), so unfortunately you can’t try it out. However look at the gallery for some screenshots.

Cortex App

No matter what we all browse the web. That’s how you got here in the first place. And one of the most popular things to do while browsing the web is to share different web sites with other people over facebook, twitter, and even tumblr (in this case). And sometimes you will come across an article that you want to save to read a bit later. Cortex lets you do all of those, but extraordinarily quickly.

Cortex is a chrome extension, which gives it cross-platform flexibility along with a super easy installation.

Once you have installed cortex, you need to connect your accounts by clicking on the pretty circle on your menubar then clicking connect accounts.

Connect your accounts here

As you can see, it can link to twitter, facebook, tumblr, and instapaper. Each of them use their own authorization system, and if things aren’t working right then try restarting your browser or waiting a few hours then restarting your browser.

Now, you have to pick your facebook friends. Sadly, you cannot post to your news stream. But you CAN post to other people’s walls, and click pick friends to select which friends you want to be able to share with.

Once you have accounts set up, it is time to start sharing.

To share a webpage it’s pretty simple: click and hold your mouse anywhere on the webpage. You should see something like this show up around your mouse:

Now when this shows up, keep your mouse held down and hover over which service you want to share the page with. Once you are on the letter/section, let go of your mouse and the link to the webpage will be instantly shared.

For facebook however it is a little bit more complicated.

When you hover over the f, another wheel will appear that has the profile pictures of the friends you selected up here.

Now, move your mouse over which friend you want to share it with, and now you can let go.

Although it may sound like it will take a long time, here’s proof otherwise:


I made that video when I was bored. 😛

To get cortexapp, you have to go to cortexapp.com and sign up for the beta then cross your fingers that you get an email back. 🙂

[BUGGED] Favorite→RT

You may not know this, but it is possible to favorite a tweet. It’s supported in all twitter clients and the website.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to see what tweets a user has favorited (I haven’t been able to). But this service from my friend Spencer Schoeben makes it so a [yourtwitternamehere]favs account will retweet every tweet you favorite.

For this example, I will be using the TeenTechie twitter account.

Step 1

The account that will have the favorites is considered the “Primary account”. For this example, that would be TeenTechie. We need to create the favorites account that will retweet the tweets that TeenTechie (the primary account) favorites. That account should be [primaryusername]favs (TeenTechiefavs). Go to twitter and create the account.

Step 2

Go to http://spncr.me/favrt and click Sign in to Twitter at the bottom of the page.

Step 2

Frown in disappointment about the errors that occur.

🙁

Don’t worry, the problem should be fixed in a little bit. Once it is fixed, I’ll write a post that shows you how to create the account SUCCESSFULLY!.

In the meanwhile, save that [primaryusername]favs account, and while you wait, you might want to create a picture by taking the Primary account’s photo and putting a star in the bottom right (to denote the favorites account).

Thanks! I’m sure it will be fixed soon, Spencer says he’s ON IT and fixing it ASAP. Now smile in happiness for what is to come. 😀

picplz

We all have twitter accounts.

What is twitter for? It’s for sharing what you are doing right then in less than 140 characters.

picplz is similar, but it uses pictures with tags and captions instead of just text.

Sorry guys, but the app is only available on android. 🙁

So here’s how it works:

Open up the app and you are instantly greeted with the view of your phone’s camera. Tap the camera button to take a picture. If you have foursquare configured, tap the venue that you are at. You can then tap someone/something to tag them in the photo. Then you can click edit details and enter a caption and decide which services you want to post it to (twitter and foursquare). Then click post and your picture will be posted! This is great because you can see which pictures you’ve taken at different foursquare venues. Your profile will be located at picplz.com/user/username. Check mine out here!

Tweetie for Mac

Looking for a balance between the minimalistic Twitterific and the feature rich TweetDeck?

Well, you have found you match, and it’s name is Tweetie.

Tweetie is a simple yet feature rich free app for Mac. The free app is ad supported, but DON’T WORRY! The ads appear in-line with tweets, and use the same format, and don’t flash at all! The ads are provided by Fusion, and I’m sad to say that I’ve actually clicked on many of the ads because they looked interesting, and I actually bought an iPhone app that was being advertised.

Start out by looking at the interface.

Sleek, simple, stylish interface!

As you can tell, these are simply the tweets of people I follow. In the left you can click the variety of icons, that are self explanatory [but just in case, @= replies, the envelope=DMs, the magnifying glass=search].

If you look at the replies (@ symbol), you can see there is a blue dot above it. This indicates that there is a tweet in that category that I have not read. Once I have read the tweet the dot disappears.

Lets take a look at the replies tab [just click on the @ to get there].

Same sleek interface, but filtered everything but replies.

You can reply to a tweet at anytime by clicking the curvy arrow at the top right of each tweet. You can also repost (AKA retweet) a tweet by right clicking on a tweet ad clicking repost. You can set if it does ______(via @_____) OR RT @_____: _________ I prefer the RT @____:__ because it is more commonly used. You can change that in the preferences.

The DM (envelope) tab is quite interesting.

As you can tell, DMs are sorted into conversations with each tweeter (tsk-tsk) you have sent and received DMs with. Click on a user to see your conversation with them.

Almost like iChat!

You can click the big reply button in the top right to DM someone back.

The search function is also very interesting.

Search for Tweetie by entering tweetie on the previous screen and pressing return!

To search, click on the magnifying glass. In the search box that appears in the top right, enter a term (in this case it was tweetie), and press return. the box will disappear and tweets for your search will appear in the window. Visit any other tabs and come back to the search and the search term will disappear!

Another great cool feature of search is having multiple searches in different windows.

This function only available in searches.

After you open it in a new window, go back and enter another term. The window will remain with the same search terms, and you can open as many windows (which means as many searches) as you want.

Plenty of searches for popular twitter clients!

Also, did I mention you can use boolean search terms with the search (such as AND or OR)?

Wow, I almost forgot

1 to create a tween, just press Command-N. a small window will open where you can type anything. Type in a URL and press Option>Command>S to automatically shorten it. Then, just press command>return and the tweet will be off. You can also get a bookmarklet for your browser so on any page, you can click on the bookmarklet and a tweet will open with the URL in it. Cool! Also, you can even assign a global hot-key so in any app, anywhere, you can press this key sequence and the new tweet window will open, and not bring all of the other tweetie windows with it. Awesome!

Among all of these great things there are a couple of extra things that Tweetie does.

Tweetie has seamless support for multiple accounts, so you can have it look like this:

Click on the other icon to see replies, dms, etc. for that account!

Also, you can enable a small menubar icon which does one simple thing: indicate when you have unread tweets. When you have unread tweets it looks like this:

Click on the icon to show the tweetie window!

But when you have no unread tweets it looks like THIS:

Blends in fine!

I hope you enjoy tweetie, and for $20 you can disable ads, which by the way look like this:

Simple, interesting, in-line ads.

Ad-supported Download

Registration Homepage

Homepage

Double Twammy!

Yes, double whammy, but of twitter. twammy. Twitter is definitely one of the best services I have ever used. Of course it is free, and it is web-based. it is very simple: a free micro-blogging service. If you aren’t using it, then you are definitely missing out on a lot. On twitter’s homepage, this is how it describes twitter:

“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”
well if you are just to lazy to try and watch the video, I’ll explain:
Many people love to communicate with friends and family. But what are they doing? what are you doing? is one of the first questions asked by friends, family, and people you enjoy communicating with. Many times you can see what they are doing by blog posts, emails, and phone. But what about the things that people do and you never know about? you wouldn’t send, I’m mowing the lawn, and it is very tall, to someone in an email. they don’t really need to know that. But what about the people that are interested in you and do want to know that? this is where twitter comes in. You post what you are doing, and people that are “following” you see your update on their twitter homepage. You can post anything there though: just made a new blog post? post it on twitter so your followers know about it and go and visit. About to install hackintosh on your PC, and you are doing a live feed of it on ustream? post a tinyurl of the stream in a tweet to get some more viewers. Mowing the lawn? post it on twitter for your followers to know. You can follow other people you are interested in too. In fact, many celebrities have twitter such as Obama, Britanney Spears, and many others. Their “tweets” will show up on your homepage as well. Another sweet feature is replies. to reply to a tweet, just put @theirtwitterusername and it will show up as a reply. Another cool feature is that large companies setup what I like to call TweetBots because they look at every tweet looking for a keyord, usually their company name. Once when in Hawaii I tweeted, going out to dinner in lahaina somewhere, and don’t exactly know where, and guess what happened. I got a reply from Lahaina.com that said @maxswisher next time you need lahaina dinner suggestions, just come to Lahaina.com, and it appeared for me because it had the @maxswisher (my username) in front of it. All in your internet browser. But for you people that don’t like web-based much, there is something for you…
TWEETDECK!!!!
TweetDeck is by far the best twitter client for Macs and PC’s ever. On top of just tweeting, it now does many other cool things after an update: Now you can also post your facebook status! That part of it is a little bit on the buggy side given it is a brand new feature, but nonetheless it is AMAZING. You have a view in different columns, and each one can have something different. You can have one for replies to you in one, updates of your friend’s in another, and even make groups of different users for another. TweetDeck also has things like TweetShrink, which searches the words in an entered tweet and shortens them, like it will replace for with 4, etc.
It also has a URL shortener in it, so you can shorten URLs using bit.ly or tinyurl.com right in the client! You can also use TwitPic right there, and let me tell you: Wanting to find tweets with a specific word in them? easy! just click on the little magnifying glass on the top right, type in your term, and Voila! another column opens with all of the tweets for your search term. You can even have a column for Facebook friends’ status updates. Isn’t this thing amazing? Get it people!
TweetDeck Homepage*
Twitter Homepage

*Requires Adobe Air Application installer and Adobe Flash Player for download