It’s been coming for a while, and Twitter have now killed off standard authentication, moving to the OAuth standard. Which is pretty much “ho hum” worthy for most Twitter users. It only becomes a concern if you are an admin of a website with Twitter integration, or an app developer, but most would be well informed of the changes, and would have accommodated them.
Fortunately, developers have known about our transition to OAuth since last December, so they’ve had time to update their apps. And many apps, including Echofon, TweetDeck, Twitterrific, Seesmic, and Twitter for Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry, are already using OAuth. We appreciate the work and time that developers have invested in this update in order to keep you safe.
Everyone knew full well that this change was coming, but today, the first day of Spring/Autumn, depending on which hemisphere you are in, if you are using Twitter incorporated in the Sense UI on a HTC Device, whether Windows Mobile or Android, it’s not working!
In Froyo [Android 2.2], the latest release of the OS, not officially released on many devices other than the Nexus One and Desire, this renders HTC Peep, and the Friend Stream application, unable to update Twitter feeds at all.
From what we’re hearing it seems that the new Twitter authentication system (OAuth) has stopped Peep and Friendstream from logging in. People seem to be getting “Incorrect username / password” with the timeline stopping, login attempts hanging or a message stating “Address forbidden from accessing Twitter server” via CoolSmartPhone
So it’s probably time to look at some alternatives, for WinMo there’s MoTweets, PockeTwit and Twikini, when Peep stopped working for me today, I had to find a good replacement…
Read On
Post written by Peter Murphy on
September 1, 2010
in
Android,HTC,windows mobile
Trolling around the Android Market, and looking for good free applications, noticeably you are steered to the highest rated software. That goes for paid software as well, are those ratings credible? or reputable though. Not to malign the opinions of other users, but is it possible to rig the ratings? Danny Lam over at Mobility Digest today made a good point about marketplace software, which covers all device OS’s, prompted by the approach Microsoft are taking to the Windows Phone 7 marketplace.
It’s a long post but the gist of it is in the concluding paragraph,
The trial option was a great idea, but Microsoft can’t stop there. Do they expect customers to try every app before buying one? I guess they could, but who has the time nowadays? My amazing solution is so simple it will blow your minds, and quite frankly I’m bewildered, as to why no one has thought of it before. Microsoft should add a sorting filter for try/buy ratio. Yes, I know I’m a geek and some people don’t get ratios or whatever, but can you imagine how useful that would be? User reviews and ratings are bias and don’t really tell you much unless you read each review and that’s time consuming. Having someone rate a product is meaningless since each person rates differently. But having a try/buy ratio at our disposal, we can immediately see how many people preferred to buy a product and how many decided to pass it up. In addition I think they should add a filter to weed out apps with fewer than “x” number of buyers so you can limit your search to less risky options.
It makes a lot of sense to rate paid applications, by how often they are purchased. Free apps offer a different kettle of fish, rate them by download? continued use via update stats or, user rating? So what standard is unequivocal, across all platforms at the moment, user rating! If you wanted to look at stats in general, iAppstore has over 150,000, close to 50,000 in the android market. Not gonna find numbers for RIM, Palm or WinMo, that make much difference. A simple, across the board rating system for all applications would be nice, but it’s akin to a fairy tale. As we wait for WP7 to actually launch, it would be nice, altruistic, to think that Danny’s idea would be taken up by MS, as a forward thinking approach to WinPho 7, you can sell more if you tell people what others are buying.
It’s ‘pie in the sky’ thinking, no matter what stats you show people, from what source, it’s all based on most popular/used. Whatever rating system is applied in whatever app store, will dictate the popularity of those apps on each platform. If it works well, people will rate it well, whether paid or free. Popularity is the only key factor, “if people buy it they will come”. So I end raping a popular quote from a well known movie, any sort of stats, from any online application market are, at the moment user/download driven, what makes an app a good app? If it meets your needs.
Post written by Peter Murphy on
August 30, 2010
in
Android,Apple,BlackBerry,Palm,opinion,windows mobile,windows phone
This is only relevant for Android users that have rooted their devices, or are playing around with a hacked version of Android, be it booting from WinMo or on an official Android device. When you are mucking around with an expensive device, you want to make sure you can revert to a working system state easily.
That’s where Titanium Backup comes in, from the home of hacking, XDA Developers, you can selectively backup your data, in different ways. It works really well, I can testify to that, as I just restored an older version of Android, after a bad update. Some things to note with this application though, it will not work if your SD card is mounted as a drive. It can’t access the SD card in your device, same as in Windows Mobile, if the device is working as an external drive.
If you are changing ROM versions or builds often, copy the Titanium Backup folder to your PC after every backup, so that you can keep your current system and application settings, with every build you try.
There’s a full tutorial for using the app here, it’s available from the Android Market as well, there’s a free, and donate version. The donation version offers more features of course.
Best backup action I’ve found for rooted Android at this point, free of course. Let Me know if you recommend another in the comments!
Download the ,apk file here
Post written by Peter Murphy on
August 25, 2010
in
Android,windows mobile
So I’ve recently been dual booting my HD2 between Windows Mobile and Android 2.2, and the major issue I have had with Android is getting my PIM data across. I can’t use Google AppSync cause I don’t have a recent enough version of Outlook, so I’ve been looking for a way to easily transition my info between the two OS’s. Most of the top rated outlook sync apps in the Android market, seem to have very poor ratings, or PC/Mac side desktop clients that cost up to $40 US. Not an option for most people if it’s a one time operation, obviously once your info is in Google’s cloud, your Android has access to it.
When I heard about Sprite Migrate, I had to try it, and not just because it’s free, it offered me the only practical solution I could find. The app consists of a Windows Mobile Client, a desktop app and an Android client, that let you transition from Windows Mobile to Android in three easy steps…
Read On
Post written by Peter Murphy on
August 16, 2010
in
Android,windows mobile
It’s been coming for a while, and Twitter have now killed off standard authentication, moving to the OAuth standard. Which is pretty much “ho hum” worthy for most Twitter users. It only becomes a concern if you are an admin of a website with Twitter integration, or an app developer, but most would be well informed of the changes, and would have accommodated them.
