What if Twitter got attacked and lost all the tweets? Literally all of them? Well would you be sad about all your hard work? Well then, it makes sense to backup and export all your tweets and although there is no official way of doing it; I have found the perfect explanation. The answer is Twistory.net and if you have a twitter account you have no excuse to not use this service!
Twistory is undoubtedly the missing part of the Twitter puzzle now enabling you to crawl back through the archives to words you tweeted last year! With Twistory you can very very easily, and I’m not kidding how easy the process is, export all your tweets to your computers calendar application like iCal, Outlook, Thunderbird or Google Calendar. You simply enter your Twitter name then click a link and it downloads them all to your application. Normally new tweets take about 24 hours to become available in your calendar application and I found (at least in iCal) you may have to manually refresh the Twistory feed every time you want to update them in your calendar.
Then you have an amazing presentation of all your tweets pinned down to the time and day you tweeted them. Wondering what you did last Christmas Eve? Well with a simple change of months you can click on the 24th December and see what the heck you tweeted. You did tweet on Christmas Eve right? Anyway this service is a great tool for keeping your tweets backed up, in a type of diary style and I’ve had no problems with it. You can even see your tweeting patterns how much of an increase (or decrease) in tweets you’ve made!
So if you’re a Twitter user then this is a must use service unless you are not bothered about (potentially) losing your tweets. As long as they are a bit more constructive than “I’ve just had a Coca Cola” then Twistory.net will mean something to you. Do you use another service or do you find Twistory.net satisfactory? Let us know with a comment below!
There are many many Twitter applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch and this is yet another one. However Photo Tweet doesn’t control all your Twitter mobile needs but instead takes on the image idea and that’s all it does. Is it enough for a total separate app?
Available for 59p (a lite version is available for free) all Photo Tweet is, is essentially a photo uploader for the twitgoo service. And it works exceptionally well for what it touts and I’ve had no bugs or problems running it. The only little niggle is a constant “Optimizing” message coming up everytime I boot the application which takes some valuable seconds. A great advantage is the ability for the app to automatically resend the photo if you lose connection at all and I have tested this and it works brilliantly.
However what the app is, is also it’s biggest downfall. It’s just a photo uploader. Most twitter applications for the iPhone have all of this built in and there is nothing new here. But focusing on just the images is a unique niche idea and only a handful of other apps are trying this and this is where I believe Photo Tweet should expand. From my experience there are many twitter picture hosts (twitpic,twitgoo etc.) and I think an easy option to select between these would be necessary, as I don’t feel the urge to suddenly stop using twitpic and reallocating my pictures to a new service which Photo Tweet is forcing me to. Obviously this won’t be as much of a problem if you’re already on Twitgoo but I think it immediately can turn off some users.
The ability to save a photo tweet and schedule it for upload later is apparently contained in the app according to the iTunes description but I can’t seem to find it myself. This is great for people in a hurry or if you’re a Pay as you Go customer who has no data usage and must wait for a WiFi hotspot. My apologies if this feature is there but I think a way to make it more user friendly would be to add a Save button next to the Send button when you’re writing a tweet. This way you could easily decide whether you want to send the photo tweet immediately or to save for later on.
I think the biggest opportunity for Photo Tweet to distance itself from competitors would be to offer image customisation to the market. Imagine the simple effects (B&W,Sepia,X-Ray) that are in the Mac application Photobooth and now apply them to Photo Tweet. The option to rotate or crop photos as well as adding speech bubbles on the actual image would be great! So far I haven’t seen other applications going down this route and these options could add some more fun to the photos you tweet.
So in a way Photo Tweet is a disappointment in it’s current abilities but then again it doesn’t claim to do everything and it does what it claims perfectly. Hopefully the application developer will see about further enhancing Photo Tweet to distinguish it from the countless Twitter applications out there and make it a must-have app for Twitter addicts.
This great App actually makes the locked screen on the iPhone and iPod Touch useful. It easily allows you to add a customisable calendar onto your chosen image! Wallpaper Calendar retails at £1.19, which in my opinion is slightly expensive for what it is at the moment, but it has some good features with a simple easy to use interface.
There are 3 modes:
Season Calendar- Set background changes every month
Simple Calendar- Blank backgrounds
My Calendar- (The most used mode) Use your own photos
Across all three modes you can customise and alter the appearance of the actual month display. You can decide to show up to 6 months on the page however not only does it become very hard to read them, but it also totally blocks out your photo. There are countless options to choose from with different colours and colour gradients but in all honesty the default colours are clear to see but there is always the option if you’re bored of white. Other than that it is a very simple app but it gets the job done, and easily.
The major complaint against the first version of Wallpaper Calendar was that the output was blurry thus rendering the whole idea pointless. However this has been changed in the newest version and once you’ve finished, you use the built in screenshot function (pressing the power and home button simultaneously) to capture it. Then, as you normally would, you go to your Camera roll and select it as wallpaper. I’ve found no bugs or problems in the new version and I find the interface clean and easy to use which is starting to get rare amongst apps now. If I was going to improve anything it may be the removal of the simple calendar because I think the blank background is just not useful and also maybe the inclusion of a rotation tool using finger gestures so that the calendar isn’t just straight. The reason behind this was to fit in with some photos where the calendar rotated might fit in better with the background and add a difference to the application.
So although the Wallpaper Calendar App is not a necessity, once you have it you can see its uses. I can’t remember the countless times I’ve unlocked my iPhone to go to the inbuilt calendar app just to see the date of the weekend. Now it is so much simpler and all I have to do is look at the unlock screen. Really surprised Apple haven’t added options to put text or data on the unlock screen manually but at the moment Wallpaper Calendar accomplices that need and stops wasting our valuable time!
As promised I have finished the new theme and customised it to my needs providing you with an even better experience. I have checked it all and it seems all working but if you hit any hitches please let me know. So roughly 2 weeks work on and off and here are some of the changes:
New theme
New Slideshow showing top 3 recent posts at the top of the Home page -- an easier way to see new info
My Lifestream Page -- watch all my social activities in a timeline fashion as it happens
New Twitter sidebar badge
New sidebar widgets with “My Recent Twitpics” and “My Recent Flickr photos”
New Tweet This button under every post
Ability to subscribe to a post
So I hope you enjoy it and it should make reading the blog a lot easier! Thanks for all your support!
I’ve had the Kodak Zx1 for just over a month now and with my experience with it, I thought it would be a good idea to write a review on it. This pocket HD camcorder has really been a revelation for me and what quality we can record in nowadays. If you’re interested in what comes with the Kodak Zx1 in the box I’ve done an unboxing video which you can watch here. So does the Zx1 really cover all the bases so you don’t need your Mini DV camcorder anymore?
The form factor for the Zx1 is great. As with all pocket camcorders, the Zx1 is small and fits perfectly in yourpocket, around the size of a mobile phone from a couple of years ago. It is smaller than the Kodak Zi6 and the newer Zi8 and is marketed as rugged and made for rough use as well as weatherproof. It does have a good back grip but with something like this I’d still look after it and not throw it around like a toy. Saying that, the weight is good with the 2 AA batteries installed and it feels sturdy in your hands like you are actually holding a camcorder.
The concept of a pocket camcorder isn’t really to watch it back on the device and that is why the screens are so small. At 5.1 cm diagonal length the screen is small but big enough to actually see what you’re filming. But don’t expect to watch the footage back because it doesn’t really give you a good idea what is in focus. All the ports are safe as they are covered by rubber covers. So this means the DC, AV, HDMI and SD slot. The universal tripod screw is open at the bottom of the device and is a nice extra to help stabilise the image if you need it. What I didn’t realise initially is that there is a small red LED next to the camera lens which turns on when you’re recording. Although these have been around for ages I couldn’t find a setting to turn it off which I thought was a real shame. There is also a very poor speaker at the top of the Zx1 but as I said, you won’t be playing back your videos on the device on the go.
The Zx1 does an excellent job of capturing 720p HD video and I have uploaded several HD sample clips which you can see on my Youtube channel. You can be off and recording in seconds with a quick power up and the simple red button to start/stop recording. Although I haven’t found out an easy way to see how much space is remaining; the clips seem to be very small in size, with around 12mb for a 30 second clip. Now the buttons have been made to be weather resistant but do feel slightly clunky. The worst thing about the Zx1 is it’s clumsy, strange menu and button system. There seems to be no co-herence and logically method so it takes a while to learn what each button does and if you are not technologically minded it may take a while for you to get used to it. However to be honest you only really need the power button and the start/stop recording button. While we are on the bad points let me bring up the microphone. For as great as the HD quality is, the audio is the direct opposite. With a mono small microphone you will be disappointed if you are looking for something to replace your current camcorder. I’ve found if you are far enough away from the audio source it is not too bad, but if you are right in front of the camcorder or behind it then it can be poor if you are used to decent audio. Also from my experience the Zx1 suffers from heavy wind blowing into the mic disturbing your voice so make sure you’re in cover or not facing the wind. In my opinion I will be using this for short clips which I will overlay with music and possible record audio with another source. Unlike the Zi6 and new Zi8, the Zx1 does not have a macro mode and I’ve found it has be at least 1 metre away (roughly) from the subject before it is in focus. Now for a lot of work this will be fine but if you try and video yourself (in a Myspace type shot) then you’ll find you’re probably not in focus which you won’t be able to find out before you get home. So if that is what you want it for then you will be disappointed unless you have really long arms…or a tripod.
The Zx1 captures 720p HD video at 30/60fps in the .mov format, so if you’re using a Mac (minimum requirement an earlyMacbook/Mac Mini) then you’ll be able to play them fine and edit with iMovie 08 and iMovie 09 which are the ones I tested. On the other hand if you are a Windows user you have a couple of options. Either use the supplied Kodak simple editor or convert the video file to run in Windows Movie Maker. For me this has been the best bit about the Zx1. My Canon FS100 produced .MOD files and you all know the initial trouble I had with that so I had to convert all the files before editing but now with the Zx1 I can just go straight away. Great! Less wasted time and more productive time!
So the Zx1 has been my first HD camcorder and apart from the obvious point of a camcorder with no image stabilisation, I think the Zx1 does a good job. Sorry the review may be a bit short but all the pocket camcorders share many similarities. I hope you have a look at the sample clips and make your own decisions on what you think. There is very little differences between the competition and the main one with Kodak is the adoption of the SD card allowing you to use up to 32 GB cards. I’m sure within a couple of years these small devices will rival normal camcorders apart from the optical zoom but most likely they’ll make their way into our phones and we’ll have a complete do it all device with us at all times.
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September 24th, 2009 
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What if Twitter got attacked and lost all the tweets? Literally all of them? Well would you be sad about all your hard work? Well then, it makes sense to backup and export all your tweets and although there is no official way of doing it; I have found the perfect explanation. The answer is Twistory.net and if you have a twitter account you have no excuse to not use this service!
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