What’s the solution to Apple’s stinginess about Google getting an official Google Voice app on the iPhone App Store? A webapp that has about all the functionality, but usable on any HTML5-capable smartphone.

The webapp mimics the functionality of hitting up Google Voice on your desktop. You can make calls, send texts, listen to voicemails, change your settings and access your contacts all from your phone’s browser. It syncs up with your Google account’s contact list—not your iPhone’s contact list—so you’ll have to make sure to sync your contacts to Google first. The Pre however, if you already have your GV account as one of your contacts, should have a more transparent process.

Unlike the Google Voice app now, which calls your phone first and then connects the other party, you actually dial out directly into the Google Voice service, which then hooks you up with who you’re trying to reach. It’s going to be like the 406 numbers that Google Voice users are used to using for shortcuts to their contacts, but possibly not 406, since Google has a pool of numbers they are using.
Google also tells us that you can add dialing credits directly from the phone if you want to make overseas calls, saving you the trouble of having to get on a computer.

All in all, the experience is solid and fluid, mimicking an iPhone app as best as possible on a web interface. If we had any gripes, it would be that when you’re texting someone from your contacts list, it only grabs the phone number and doesn’t display the name after it. Also, that you can’t text multiple recipients. But calling from your contact list is fluid and takes only one more step than regular dialing from your iPhone.

It’s not as good as a native app, but it’s more than adequate. [Google Voice]

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A MacAttapp Featured App!

AirPhones is the next-generation solution to wireless headphones.

Now use your iPhone or iPod Touch to listen to any audio from your computer via Wi-Fi.

Experience DVD’s, desktop TV, web videos & radio, audio books, shared iTunes playlists and podcasts; from across the room, throughout the office or around the house.

AirPhones for people with ears.

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This a repost from my friends at Apple iPhone Apps.com
I love this app and highly recommend it to anyone Tweeting on an iPhone!

Overview

For Twitterholics out there who feel the need — the need to tweet from their iPhone, there are numerous offerings available. There is one, however, that is raising the bar for Twitter clients (of all varieties) that brings the Twitter experience to your iPhone in a sleek, compact package. From Stone Design comes Twittelator Pro ($4.99USD). With Twittelator Pro, provided you are connected to the Internet, you can now tweet from anywhere. From the commuter train. From your favorite bookstore or diner. You can even tweet while you’re driving. Not that I’ve ever done that before.

(Stop looking at me like that.)

Twittelator Pro brings all that you would expect from a Twitter client straight to your iPhone, and even outperforms some Twitter applications built for your desktop.

Features

Multiple Personalitweets

Twittelator Pro offers a feature that I wish I saw in more Twitter desktop clients. This app allows you to set up multiple accounts. Now you might be wondering why anyone would have more than one Twitter account, but I actually manage two, at present. While the professional in me can be found writing up TwitReviews, offering TwitAdvice, and giving podcasting tips on @ITStudios, there is the other account —@TeeMonster — where I swim in snark-infested waters and share why I think Aliens: The Director’s Cut is better than the theatrical release, why the ending of Battlestar Galacticaworked for me, and when my next episode of MicroBrewedwill be going live. I tend to float effortlessly from client to client on my desktop, but switching accounts on the iPhone was clumsy. I would have to log out of one client and then launch another, or access a client’s Preferences and log in that way. Twittelator Pro allows you to input as many accounts as you like, and with only a few taps you are working under the profile of your choice.

It’s just Like Being There!

It looks and feels like Twitter. Avatars are present. Profiles are easily accessed with a single tap. (More on that later.) Various viewing options (Friends, @Replies, DMs) are all available in a toolbar underneath the main interface. Twittelator Pro offers all the options (and more) you would find in a desktop client. When composing a tweet or an @Reply, additional options include GoogleMaps to give your current location and TwitPic to send photos from your phone to your network. Another bonus of desktop Twitter clients (such as TweetDeck, Twhirl, Destroy Twitter, et. al.) that Twittelator Pro offers is the ability to retrieve tweets automatically, unlike other iPhone-Twitter clients that offer only “Manual Refresh” options. Twittelator Pro also features access to Twitter Search, a Nearby search for locally-based users, Trends search, Favorites…

So far, it is as if you have never left your desktop client of choice.

A New Angle on Tweeting

Once you have purchased and installed Twittelator Pro, enter the “Compose Tweet” mode and then turn your iPhone to one side. Doesn’t matter which side you turn to, go on and see what happens. Oh, and make sure you have a good grip on your iPhone when you do.

Pretty cool, huh? Built directly into the interface, you can now compose tweets with a Landscape Oriented Keypad, making tweet composition that much easier.

And How Would You Like Your Tweet?

In either Portrait or Landscape, you can change the tweet from a Reply to a Private Message by tapping on the user name in the lower left corner of the tweet field. In the main interface, you simply tap on a user name and you can access the following options:

• Reply
• Send a Private Tweet (DM)
• Retweet
• Email Tweet
• Copy Tweet (and then paste it in to a new tweet with Twittelator’s Paste feature)
• Favorite a tweet
• Copy a link

Instead of cutting corners and limiting your choices as many iPhone-Twitter clients tend to do, Twittelator Pro offers the same options (and even a few more) of the most popular desktop clients.

Breakdown

The Good:

With all the great features that Twittelator Pro has to offer, the main reason I find it the best Twitter client for the iPhone out there can be summed up here. First, the application hits all the visual and interactive perks you would expect and need in a Twitter client, and in an iPhone app. The interface is deliciously ingenious and intuitive. For example, if you want to track a conversation, simply touch the speech bubble to the right of a tweet. This pulls up all previous tweets related to the original tweet people were replying to. When you see a tweet with a thumbnail of a photograph, tap the featured image and you immediately jump to TwitPic. If you tap a tweet’s avatar once, you view the details of that user, or other users featured in the tweet. Once in the user details, a single tap of the avatar brings up a more detailed version of their profile picture. The paper clip (signifying an attached URL) opens included links. Twittelator’s interface is like listening to George Gershwin’sRhapsody in Blue: It just flows.

Another reason Twittelator Pro is the “must have” Twitter client for your iPhone is Subgroups, a powerful attribute similar to one of Twitter’s most popular desktop clients, TweetDeck. With Subgroups (found under “More” in Twittelator’s options), you can now organize followers into custom groups. After you tap the Subgroups option, you either tap the “Add Subgroup” icon (the plus sign) to create a new group, or tap on the “Edit” option (the blue-white icon) of a pre-existing group to add to it. Simply scroll through your network and add the people you wish.

The Bad

This may seem like a real nit-picky detail, but the way I am notified on new tweets could use a tweak. Just a little one. This application blows me over so hard that I’m a little surprised this got overlooked. If you offer me a choice in interface themes, I’d like a choice of audio notifications, too. (The nostalgic aspect of me misses the Twitterific chirp.)

And that’s really my only hang up with Twittelator Pro, the app I refer to as “the TweetDeck of mobile Twitter”. The more I play with it, the more love it. For the investment, you cannot beat it. you can always give Twittelator a test spin with the Lite version, but you should take a look at what features are available between the Lite version and the Pro version. My recommendation is cut to the chase and pick up Pro. It is money well spent on iTunes, and time well spent in getting to know this application.

Verdict

Twittelator Pro is not a good Twitter client for the iPhone. Twittelator Pro is a good Twitter client, period. I rank it right up there with the Adobe AIR-powered powerhouses of TweetDeck and Twhirl, and recommend without hesitation or reservation this application to any iPhone user connected to Twitter. If you are already suffering a Twitaddiction, I hate to be the enabler here but this is not going to help you curtail, in any way, your fix for followers. You will have to rely on your own sound judgment and etiquette to make certain you are not tweeting within mixed company and appearing like some rude tech geek immersed in their iPhone. Their shiny, sleek iPhone. Their powerful, Twitter-configured, beautiful, sexy iPhone…

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Found this post on TheAppleBlog.com by David Appleyard

Working on the web constantly I continue to track stats on a regular basis. Here are some great tools that are going to help me stay in tune with all my sites.

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As someone who manages a few different web sites and Twitter accounts, I do find that it’s easy to waste a decent chunk of time checking all their various statistics. I often browse to the different websites from my iPhone, logging into each account sequentially to view the latest number of visitors or news feed subscribers.

Enter Ego, a new statistics tracking application for the iPhone. It provides one central location to check web statistics that matter to you, supporting Feedburner, Mint, and Twitter. Authentication is handled automatically once you’ve set the accounts up, and a decent range of statistics are offered through a minimal and simple user interface.

Adding and Managing Accounts

The whole point of Ego is to eliminate needlessly logging in and out of several different web sites and accounts. Therefore, there’s inevitably going to be a reasonable amount of setting up required to add all these accounts in the first place. Clicking the settings icon after opening the application allows you to add and edit accounts.

Ego supports as many widgets of each type as you want, color coding them to make it easy to see which widgets represent which service you’re tracking. Three services are currently supported, and I’ll go into further detail about each shortly. After adding an account you’re able to drag to re-order it in the dashboard screen, ensuring the important stats are displayed and loaded first.

Mint

Mint is a simple statistics tracking tool for websites which you can install on your own server. Unlike Google Analytics, it’s a commercial stats package which costs $30 per site. If you’re already running Mint, you need to install the ‘Ego Helper Pepper‘ to allow the iPhone application to connect to the stats system. Unfortunately, you’re also out of luck if you’re running an older version of Mint — version 2.0 or higher is required.

Manage your Mint stats

By default, the Mint widget displays the number of page views and unique visitors your site has received today. Tapping on a widget will cause it to cycle through the number of visits so far this hour, this week, this month, and a total count of all visitors received to date.

This system of displaying information saves valuable space on your iPhone screen, and doesn’t require drilling down into, and back up from, additional views.

Twitter

The second service supported is Twitter, which requires your Twitter ID and password to set up.

Twitter followers and following stats

The default widget displays (arguably) the most important statistic — the total number of followers you have. Tapping it will alter the view to show the number of people you’re following, and the number of updates which you’ve sent to the service. Also shown is the most recent tweet that has been posted to your account.

FeedBurner

The final service that can be tracked is FeedBurner, a tool for managing and reporting RSS feed information. Setting up FeedBurner requires you to enable the ‘Awareness API’ found in your account settings — without this, Ego won’t be able to retrieve any data.

FeedBurner reader count and trend

This is the simplest widget, displaying only the current number of subscribers to your feed and (when tapped) the number of subscribers you’ve gained or lost since yesterday.

Future Versions

Many would agree that support for Google Analytics — fast becoming the most popular statistic tracking tool — is a big requirement. Fortunately, the developers note that:

We built Ego with a very flexible framework for adding support for other services. Coming in version 1.1: Google Analytics support!

I’m sure that this won’t satisfy everyone, and it’ll be interesting to see whether the developers choose to cater for every request they receive, or keep the application focused on a narrow selection of services. They’re taking requests, so if there is a particular stat you’d like to be able to track, you can email the developers via the Ego site.

Conclusion

For me, this simple app will save a huge amount of time and annoyance. Having all my statistics in once place means I’m likely to check them more often, but it’ll be far quicker to do so. Support for additional services is necessary, and I’m sure future upgrades will add greater flexibility.

I’m particularly fond of the user interface, and the way that tapping to change the information displayed makes the app even easier to use. Not being required to drill down to see further information saves time, but consequently limits the actual data which can be displayed.

It would be useful to see trend information (as displayed in FeedBurner) for the other widgets. I’m aware that data depends upon what is available from the service API, but I expect this would be feasible with Mint. Trend data is always useful — more so than a single figure.

If you manage a web site and are a statistic junkie, spending $1.99 on this app will be a fantastic investment.

Written on March 13, 2009 by David Appleyard

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