Carbon for Android is finally released

 Yes you are not seeing things, no you have not stumbled into an alternate reality that only Sheldon Cooper could explain. Yes I am typing this and no I’m not drunk.

Long thought to be vapourware, Carbon for Twitter has finally be released. Initial reviews have this as saying that

Its so aesthetically pleasing that no other app could beat this. Its functional, switching between accounts is a breeze and the best I’ve seen.

Click on the link below to give the app a go, just remember to give the devil a wave as he skates to work.

Carbon for Android

Two one-month App.Net (ADN) trials to give away

My posts are just like buses. Nothing comes then all of a sudden you get three at once (well within 24 hours but you catch my drift).

Checking my account on App.Net yesterday I noticed that I’ve been granted three more one-month trials. My other half has already stolen one so that means I have two left to give away. Just DM on Twitter (@Guillin) with your email address and i will fire you one your way as soon as I can.

Last time I did this, I gave the three trials away with half an hour, so get in quick to try it.

Netbot now free!

App.Net (or ADN) is a social media platform that launched in 2012. You do have to pay for it (currently $5 a month or $36 a year) however with this comes guarantees. ADN will stay developer friendly, won’t use apps and your details won’t be sold on. This sounds the opposite of another social media platform doesn’t it?

App.Net (3 One-Month free trials to give away)

I’m afraid all free trials have now been claimed.

 App.Net (or ADN) is a social media platform that was launched in August 2012, and despite the small user base (around 25,000 users at the time of writing this), I find it to be a very good platform. It’s similar to Twitter in a way of how you view the timeline and reply to users, but that is pretty much where the similarities end.

Google+ down? Update : Up Again!

Who forgot to put the money in?

(21:01 GMT) If you go to try to log into Google+ right now, you will be greeted with a very confused and broken robot with the message

Google

503. That’s an error.

There was an error. Please try again later. That’s  all we know

Now it’s very rare for anything from Google to go down and this is the first time that I’ve seen their social media platform go down. Knowing the “Big G” though I’m sure it won’t be long before it’s back up and running. (Trying it on my iPhone is also bringing up nothing).

(21:26 GMT) It would appear that the  planets have realigned as Google+ is back up and running.

Twitter apologises for betraying the trust of its users

For those who read my previous post, you will have read how Twitter banned a journalist for being critical of NBC’s Olympic coverage and for tweeting a business email of the person in charge of their coverage. It turns out that Twitter did encourage NBC to file a formal complaint. Over the last 24 hours though this has cause huge uproar on the social media side from the user base and for me it can only be seen as a victory for freedom of speech and an embarrassing climbdown for both Twitter and NBC. The full explanation from Twitter is below…

We want to take a moment to explain some of our general Trust and Safety policies and procedures, and address the specific case at hand that has unfolded over the past 48-hours (we normally don’t address matters pertaining to individual accounts for the privacy of the account, but here the relevant communications are now public).

When our Trust and Safety team receives a report from a user explaining that his/her private personally-identifiable information has been posted on Twitter, we investigate the issue and temporarily suspend the account if it is found to be violating our Guidelines & Best Practices. We make it possible for people to report posting of their private information because it may be used to harass or intimidate, and in certain circumstances may even be illegal. We have systems in place to address such behavior. 

Before the violating account is unsuspended, we ask the account holder to do two things:
we ask that they confirm that they understand our private information policy, and
we ask them to state that going forward they will follow the Twitter Terms of Service. 
Once they have confirmed this for us in their email response, their account is unsuspended. Additionally, if we receive a notice from the complainant rescinding their original complaint, the account is unsuspended.

The Trust and Safety team does not actively monitor users’ content. In all cases, whether the user is the head of a major corporation, a celebrity, or a regular user, we require a report to be filed at our abusive users webform. Not only do we need a report, but we need a report from the person whose private information has been posted, or someone who is able to legally act on their behalf. We do not proactively report or remove private information on behalf of other users, no matter who they are. 

We’ve seen a lot of commentary about whether we should have considered a corporate email address to be private information. There are many individuals who may use their work email address for a variety of personal reasons — and some may not. Our Trust and Safety team does not have insight into the use of every user’s email address, and we need a policy that we can implement across all of our users in every instance.

That said, we want to apologize for the part of this story that we did mess up. The team working closely with NBC around our Olympics partnership did proactively identify a Tweet that was in violation of the Twitter Rules and encouraged them to file a support ticket with our Trust and Safety team to report the violation, as has now been reported publicly. Our Trust and Safety team did not know that part of the story and acted on the report as they would any other.

As I stated earlier, we do not proactively report or remove content on behalf of other users no matter who they are. This behavior is not acceptable and undermines the trust our users have in us. We should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content, no matter who the user is — whether a business partner, celebrity or friend. As of earlier today, the account has been unsuspended, and we will actively work to ensure this does not happen again.

Posted by Alex Macgillivray, General Counsel – @amac

As you can see Twitter have apologized for their “mistake” but the whole incident still raises questions about how likely are Twitter to “bend” their own rules to suit business partners in the future.

Suspending For Being Critical? Why This Is Dangerous Territory for Twitter

I think that Twitter is in dangerous territory with what they’ve done over the last 24 hours. For this who don’t know they banned a harsh critic of NBC coverage of the London Olympics.

The official line for the suspension is that he tweeted the head of NBC’s personal email address and this is against the terms and conditions of Twitter. This would all be well and good apart from, from what I have seen, is that the email address wasn’t personal at all, and is his NBC business address.

What’s makes this while situation even more murky is that Twitter and NBC signed up to have a joint partnership during the Olympics. Now to me I think this is Twitter abusing its power for the sake of its own business ventures. By banning this journalist, they are trying to send a message to everyone else. The only problem is, if someone pisses a group of people off, where do these people go to complain and gather more support? That’s right. Twitter.

Now I love to Tweet, but they’ve scored a massive own goal with this and they must realise this now. Twitter needs to realise that it’s a form of communication nowadays and in my opinion it must stay fully open.

Twitter App Review – Lemma for Blackberry Playbook

The Blackberry Playbook is a nice tablet, despite it lacking some standard features (some of which are due to be rectified when OS version 2.0 is released for the Playbook). One of the things that I’m sure many people would have noticed is the distinct lack of a native Twitter app. RIM supplies a link to the mobile version of the website but it falls lacking, which is why the workaround to trick the Playbook into accessing the full Twitter website is a godsend.

Despite this it is always nice to use an app to view Twitter when on a mobile device however the Twitter apps available on the Playbook App World are either non-existent or you have to pay (for example £2 for Blaq or even a whopping £5 for Tweetbook). Thankfully a couple of days ago I stumbled across an app called Lemma. It’s free and still needs some work but on the whole it is a very good Twitter client. It received an updated on the 4th January that I thought made it warrant a highlight.

The Review

After downloading it, you are greeted to the first time start-up screen which gives you a brief introduction to Lemma, tells you what the icons on the toolbar does and informs you as to what each action that you can perform does.

Once you click on finish it takes you to the your main timeline. As you can see the timeline is simple, but the UI is clear and effective

From here you will notice the toolbar at the bottom. The first button allows you to create a tweet, the second one allows you to view your replies and direct mentions while the third one takes you back to the start-up screen that first appears when you first install the app. You will notice that to the right of each tweet there is a “diamond”. By touching the diamond you bring up the option menu for that tweet.

Each of these are pretty self-explanatory so I would go into detail about them. The final screen to show you is the screen from which you tweet from. It’s as simple as you could wish for. When you have composed your tweet and clicked “tweet” it will tell you whether or not it has successfully been sent.

Room For Improvement

 There are a number of things that I think that the developers of Lemma could improve on. Firstly the font that is used when you entering a tweet doesn’t look clear on the screen. When you’ve sent a tweet off it would be nice for the application to automatically send you back to your timeline instead of having to press the back button. Finally and this is the biggest annoyance with this app is that there is no @ auto complete. In a time when almost every app will try offer you some usernames to complete your @ with, this omission seems to be a bit too big. I know it’s a free app, but nowadays that should come as standard.

Conclusion

In my opinion Lemma for the Blackberry Playbook is a very good Twitter client, and easily the best of the two free Twitter clients that I have found for the tablet (Tweedless is the other one). The above annoyances can easily be tolerated with the exception of the lack of an @ auto complete, but if you are looking for a Twitter client for the Blackberry Playbook then Lemma is extremely good, and has a massive amount of potential. Also if you weigh in the fact that it is free then it just rises in desirability.

Rating

At the moment I would say that Lemma is a very solid 6.0-6.5 out of 10, if they can add/correct some of the current omissions/downfalls then it could quite easily jump up to 8 or 9. It really does have that much potential.

Lemma for Blackberry Playbook – FREE from the Blackberry App World

How to force the full Twitter website on tablets/other devices

Unfortunately, I have been getting reports that this no longer works on the majority of products. It would seem that Twitter have changed some settings. 😦

It’s pretty rare that I post about stuff like this but after banging my head against the mobile version of the Twitter website on the Blackberry Playbook I did some research and finally came across this solution!

So you have a shiny new tablet/mobile device and for some reason you decide you want to view the Twitter website on it. You type in the address and before you know it you are there, but there is one problem. You notice that you have been sent to the mobile version of the site with no way to access the full website. Normally with most sites there is an option at the bottom of the page to switch to the full site but it’s not available on the mobile Twitter website for some bizarre reason…

…Well fear not. By using the following address you can go to the full website and then just bookmark where the link sends you.

 http://mobile.twitter.com/settings/change_ui

(This has been confirmed to work on both the Blackberry Playbook and the iPad)

Google Plus? Yay or Nay?

Do I think Google+ can take on Facebook?

 This is just a very brief post on my quick and initial impression of Google+, the new social networking tool that I’m sure hasn’t gone unnoticed by anyone.

 So a few days ago, I finally managed to get into the supposed next big thing on the internet, Google Plus. Having heard all the hype about how this is a very strong challenger from the “Big G” certainly got my interest. If anyone knows me, it’s not big secret that I like most things that Google release. I use Chrome as my web browser, regularly use YouTube, Google Docs, Maps, Earth, Calendar, Contacts, Checkout etc etc, you name it. Oh yes and of course Android. So when I heard that they were releasing something that was gaining traction already, two thoughts entered my mind

1) Is this going to be another flop like Google Buzz was?

2) Just how successful COULD it be?

I have to say after playing with it for a few days, my honest opinion is that it has real potential. It’s extremely polished, and I have to say that right now I am totally digging it. So what is it? I won’t go into all the technical stuff, but if I had to sum it up, I’d say it’s “Facebook without all the crap and with more control of who sees your posts”

There’s no stupid games in it, and the circles ones you get used to them are absolutely brilliant. The circles are basically groups with which you assign certain people and when you have made a post on Google+ who can choose which of the circles can see it. It’s an extremely nice feature. The one thing I would like Google to implement though is when someone adds you to one of their circles, if the person adding could have the option to send a little message “Hi this is X and you know me from Y”, it would be very useful.

Is there anything else I like about Google+? Yes, like Twitter it seems to have nailed the “real-time streaming” on the head, it’s extremely fluid.

So do i think that Google+ can take on Facebook and Twitter? Whilst I can’t see Google+ taking over Facebook anytime soon, I can certainly see the executives at Facebook thinking “hang on, we’ve got genuine competition now”. Do I think it will overtake Twitter? No, and here is why. Twitter too me has its own niche in the world. It’s social networking but doesn’t aim to do what Facebook or Google+ does. It can quite happily sit there coexisting with the others. It’ll be a straight dogfight between Facebook and Google+, and as other companies will testify (Apple, Microsoft, Garmin etc), they aren’t afraid to take the big boys on.

Providing Google don’t go down the Facebook route of having game plug in’s and the like, I think that they may have finally arrived in the social networking scene with Google+