Some time ago I read on Adam Jackson’s Website that he had ten Twitter-accounts. Now in a world where most people say “Wtf is that, anyway? I don’t need no f***ing Twitter-account,” I said to myself, “what the heck could one need ten of them for?”

Now as time went by, I understood that Twitter can not only be useful for companies to do some effective marketing or for university departments to tell their students about schedules and office hours. You can even use it for research. And I think that is what I’ll be going to examine in my M.A.-thesis. Right now I administrate nine Twitter-accounts, though only two or three of them are in daily use.

Those of you who use Twitter know that it’s not only a shorter text message you send to everyone who wants to read it. A lot of features allow Tweets to be more than that. You can add pictures, URLs (even very long ones if you use a URL shortening service), tags and even information about your or anyone’s location.

You can use multiple accounts if you want to seperate private Tweets from business Tweets, bilateral from multilateral communication, jokes from more serious things, and so on. Maybe you know someone who wants to have a Twitter-account to spread news about products or their blog and don’t want to look after it by themselves, so you do it. There are even tools for remote controlling your computer via Twitter that you can use by logging your computer at home into a seperate account.

Now you may ask youself: What’s that got to do with breaking the camel’s back? I just went too far by setting up Twitter-accounts for our cats, Yoda and Chewbacca. Maybe you want to follow them, they’re actually kind of COOL.

If you have a Mac and an iPhone, you might have thought about removing your Apple Remote or even your Mouse from the desk and replacing it by an iPhone App that can do the same. You have quite many choices: Search the App Store for “Remote” and you get tens of results, from Mocha VNC through Jaadu to AirMouse, RemotePad, Touchpad Elite etc. and they all offer basically the same set of features. The only difference seems to be the price and the related “Special-Feature”. For example, with the full version of Jaadu VNC (19,99€) you get access to your screen while controlling your Mac so you don’t have to actually sit in front of your Display. But is this feature worth an extra charge of, say, 17 Euros? Especially if you can have nearly the same functionality by choosing RemoteTap or MochaVNC which don’t charge you more than 5€.

AirMouse offers Mouse control by making use of the iPhone’s Accelerometer so you can point at the screen to move the pointer. This is a fun feature but no one needs it because it’s way easier to use the touch pad.

Long story put short: I don’t think there is still a niche for developers for pushing out remote apps, except they provide unique functionality of special Apps like Media Center Software or are exceptionally great designed. The latter applies to both Keymote and TouchPad which therefore are my today’s recommendations.

This includes, for example, the transition from one screen to another, as well as finding and designing an icon that simply suits your application’s functionality. Or, more abstractly, an icon that suits the app’s name and integrates well with the iPhone GUI.

So here are the iPhone App icons which are, in my opinion, the most beautiful and integrative ones (I have all of them on my first home screen):

Tweetie 2

This is the best example for a well-designed icon. It has the characteristic Twitter speech bubble that looks like it’s been welded out of a metal sheet and is not overloaded with text, colors or multiple objects. Just a speech bubble and a metal-like, concave surface. Simply great.
 

Byline

The Byline icon integrates with the iPhone UI very well and shows on the front what you’ll get inside: A newspaper-mount that holds a newspaper. The title consists of the text “RSS” and the RSS icon while the dark background has a metal-like frame. Really beautiful!
 

Things

The main advantage of this icon is that it not only fits beautifully into the iPhone UI, but it’s a perfect companion to the icon of the matching Mac application. It shows a stylized 2D-Version of the blue 3D inbox from Things for Mac with a check in it. The only difference is the view from above, while the Mac-App’s icon is shown in front view.
 

Zoom Lens

Some developers of camera apps tell you that their app is what the integrated camera app should be. Although Zoom Lens can’t keep this promise, I think its icon is what the iPhone camera app’s icon should be. The lens is slightly bigger and bears beautiful reflections in multiple colors. It just looks more like a real Camera Lens.
 

Birdfeed

Given the name of this beautiful Twitter app, this icon is truly ingenious. It looks like a wooden box to keep your birdfeed in, with a Twitter speech bubble-shaped hole on the front. It thus not only matches the app’s name but also the connection to ornithological terminology that is characteristic of most Twitter-Tools.
 

Birdhouse

What to say about this one? Like with Birdfeed, the icon of Birdhouse is a perfectly designed match to the app’s name (where you keep your birds and Tweets) as well as its purpose and app genre. I’m in your Birdhouse composing your Tweets!
 

1. No Themes.

I loved Tweetie 1’s dark theme because it made the whole app look more of a piece. Now we have only the white theme which combines a light background for every screen you are in with dark menu bars on top and bottom. Tweetie: I find your lack of dark theme disturbing.

2. Per-Tweet Geotagging.

This is really a nice idea. Geotags are generated in the very moment you choose to include them in you Tweet. Problem is: you get rather long Google-URLs that leave little space for what you want to say. So you have to shorten the link manually. Tweetie 1 did this automatically, so what was done in 1 go back then now has to be done in 2 steps. Unnecessary.

3. Double-Tap-to-mark-as-read

In Direct Message view, you can double-tap the icon in the bottom menubar and select “mark all as read”. Fantastic if you get many DMs or if you already read most of them from another Twitter Client on your Mac. But why doesn’t this work with mentions (which I get disproportionally more of) and your timeline ? I simply don’t get it.

Well, these are my strongest points of criticism. Atebits: Straighten it out, add Push Notifications, and you get 5 stars! Because apart from the aforementioned, Tweetie 2 is really the best Twitter App in the App Store. And another bar has been raised: Tweetie 2 has the most beautiful App-Icon I have ever seen.

I wrote about the lacking Google Reader support in NetNewsWire for iPhone in August, when already three weeks had passed since NNW’s switch. Now – after additional five weeks – NetNewsWire for iPhone 2.0 has hit the App Store. And it now syncs with Google Reader.

Those who use NetNewsWire on their Mac (and i’d recommend everyone to do so because in my opinion it’s the best choice) can now use NNW for iPhone and sync between both again. But there are a few downsides, too.

First thing is, NNW for iPhone is no longer free. You can download a “free”, ad-supported version, but the the ad-free version (iTunes-Links) now costs an introductory price of 1,59€ (1,99US$) which will rise to 3,99€ (apparently 4,99US$) from the beginning of October.

Secondly, it comes with only basic functionality. You can read your subscribed feeds, they will be synced, and you can see them in the groups that you organized them into on your Mac. But you cannot add new feeds or delete ones you don’t read anymore. And if you want to or have to read your feeds offline, there is no possibility to save the images from your articles because you have to be online for that.

A special problem I have is, if you just update the version which was already installed on your iPhone, the icon will show a badge with the unread count from your last sync because there is no such function in the new version. So I recommend you to delete the old one and then “fresh” install NNW 2.0.

Surprisingly, there is one useful feature which other feed readers don’t have: you can choose the feeds which will be displayed by NNW on your phone so you can hide those which you only want to read on your Mac. This is a way to stay more organized and only get the articles that are worth reading when you’re on the way… The integration of Instapaper should be mentioned, so you can save truly important items for offline reading.

Altogether, NNW for iPhone 2.0 does what you’d expect from it in a clear and unobtrusive UI. If you want more functionality from a mobile feed reader, including the possibility to add or delete items and feeds, save pictures and several themes to match your personal preference, you should consider NewsStand or MobileRSS, which are available on the App Store, too.

Aus gegebenem Anlass ist dieser Beitrag ausnahmsweise in deutscher Sprache verfasst.

Als politisch interessierter Mensch macht man sich so seine Gedanken über die beiden Kreuzchen, die nächste Woche Sonntag auf den Wahlzettel gesetzt werden wollen. Der aktuelle Bundestagswahlkampf wird oft als “lahm” bezeichnet und, klar, bei den Auftritten der beiden “großen” KanzlerkandidatInnen können ohnehin nicht alle Themenbereiche angesprochen werden – vor allem nicht abschließend, und vor allem nicht alle Bereiche, die der jüngeren Generation von Wählern wichtig sind.

Nun bin ich jemand, der sich nicht nur studiumsbedingt sehr viel mit Politik auseinandersetzt, und weiß, dass viele der Inhalte der etablierten Parteien sich überschneiden und die Unterschiede, die von den SpitzenkandidatInnen propagiert werden, meist nur sehr klein sind. Meine politische Einstellung soll nicht Thema dieses Beitrags sein, aber soviel sei gesagt: Meiner Meinung nach stimmt an den Inhalten der Öffentlichkeitsarbeit zumindest der CDU, der SPD und der FDP vor allem eines: Die Vorwürfe, die sie den jeweils anderen Parteien machen.

Ein Blick in den Wahl-O-Mat, der anhand von 38 Fragen zu verschiedenen Themenbereichen dem Wähler helfen möchte, seine politische Einstellung mit der der zur Bundestagswahl antretenden Parteien zu vergleichen, hat vielen meiner Bekannten überraschende Ergebnisse geliefert. Solche, die sich selbst als Grünen-Wähler sehen würden, fanden die meisten Übereinstimmungen zur Rentnerpartei, SPD-Wähler (und das geschieht vermutlich um ein Vielfaches öfter) fanden sich bei den Grünen oder der Linkspartei wieder.

Als eine direkte Wahlempfehlung lassen sich die Ergebnisse des Wahl-O-Mats zwar nicht bewerten. Sehr wohl aber sind die Fragen sehr ausgewogen ausgewählt und bieten bei etwas intensiverer Beschäftigung eine gute Ausgangsposition für alle die, die nicht eine bestimmte Partei ankreuzen möchten, weil sie die “immer gewählt” haben.
Die Ergebnisse können sich dabei verändern, wenn man sich in der Ergebnisübersicht die einzelnen Antworten der Parteien einmal anschaut. Beispielsweise mag man mit einer Partei der gleichen Meinung sein, die Begründung ist aber eine völlig andere. Oder aber man versteht plötzlich, warum die überprüfte Partei nicht der gleichen Meinung war, wie man selbst.

Der langen Rede kurzer Sinn: Als ich mich ausgiebig und in mehreren Durchgängen mit dem Wahl-O-Mat beschäftigt habe, blieben für mich nur wenige Alternativen. Und die einzige Partei, die auch nach der Lektüre der einzelnen Begründungen meine Vorstellungen überwiegend teilt, ist die Piratenpartei. Auch wenn die Hauptbereiche der Piraten sich nicht in der Außen- oder Wirtschaftspolitik wiederfinden, so sind sie doch nicht nur für Internetnerds relevant: Freiheit und Transparenz.

Die Piratenpartei setzt sich dafür ein, dass das Handeln des Staates transparent für die Bürger ist, die ihn bilden. Sie fordert den freien Zugang zu Bildung und Informationen und ist gegen die staatliche Überwachung, die gerade im Zeitalter der elektronischen Kommunikation – also jetzt – den Alltag und die persönliche Freiheit aller Bürger bedroht. Informationelle Selbstbestimmung und die Wahrung der in der Verfassung verankerten Bürgerrechte stehen im Fokus der Arbeit der Piratenpartei. Darüber hinaus verstehen sich die Piraten bewusst nicht als Vollspektrumspartei, sondern setzen sich dort ein, wo es zurzeit starke Probleme gibt und ergänzen gerade da, wo es in den großen Parteien stark hapert. Natürlich lässt sich das vollständige Programm hier nicht abschließend vorstellen und/oder diskutieren, mir persönlich hat bei der Meinungsbildung das Internetangebot der Piraten und die individuellen Antworten auf die Fragen des Wahl-O-Mats sehr geholfen.

Gregor Gysi hat im Wahlkampf zur diesjährigen Europawahl in seiner Rede am Berliner Alexanderplatz gesagt: “Wenn sie die Linke wählen, verändern sie die anderen Parteien!” Ich bin mir sicher, dass dies noch mehr für die Piratenpartei gilt und daher meine offizielle Wahlempfehlung: Wählt am 27. September die Piraten!

Due to many scandals ranging from monetary to sexual issues in the last years, now the time had come for the people to express their concern about the LDP’s ability to govern a country as affected by the global financial crisis as the USA. The biggest opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), didn’t have big problems to turn around the majority, gaining only 10 seats less than the LDP had won in the last elections four years ago.

Looks like now there is time for Change in Japan, too. As Barack Obama, who has often been promoted as a model for the former japanese opposition leader Ozawa, always says: Yes, we can! Good luck to the future Premier, Hatoyama Yukio.

A few weeks ago, a new version of NetNewsWire for Mac was pushed out, discontinuing the company’s own synchronization service and switching to Google Reader Sync.

For me, this was the beginning of a major problem. First, the new NetNewsWire had no Clippings any more (which I tend to use quite often). Second, I somehow had to rearrange my Feed groups because I had never used Google Reader before. But these “issues” were fixed soon after the first update.

Now another Problem emerged. Regarding what was called the only feature of NetNewsWire for iPhone that (besides its name) made it look like belonging to its Big Brother on the Mac, namely the ability to sync with NewsGator, has been kind of removed because NetNewsWire on the Mac now syncs with Google. And for three weeks now, the iPhone Version still lacks an Update which includes Google Reader Sync, making the App show thousands of unread Feeds though I’ve already read them on my Mac and though making it nearly useless.

So, NewsGator, if it was really necessary to switch over to Google Reader Sync, please make NetNewsWire for iPhone do the same.