I have tried many different twitter clients on the iPhone and iPad. Although there are some highly rated ones out there for the iPad, nothing comes close to Twitepad. It is refreshing in how it does things differently to achieve things nobody has yet to. (This review is based on v1.2 but on 07Jul2010 v1.3 was released Twitepad blog.)

Twitepad Timeline & browser (click to enlarge)If you click on a link within your timeline, you still keep your timeline displayed and the in-app browser displays the page. Where this gets even more amazing is that you can click on as many links in your timeline as you want and they ALL go to the browser as thumbnails. Tap on any thumbnail to read that page, close it or just tap on another thumbnail. If the thumbnails are blocking your view, click on the downward arrow in the center at the bottom to hide them then reveal again when needed.

Twitepad showing 3 coumnsIn the default view, just drag the timeline to the right and your mentions column appears…drag again and see your direct message column as well. There is an alternative theme you can load with “narrow” columns that shows one column at a time with the other column names shown as tabs up the left side. You can slide the columns back into hiding with your finger or delete them from view.

Tap double-line to retrieve missing tweets TwitepadHow many times have you not been able to check your tweets for awhile and by the time you try, you just get the latest 200. Some apps have an option to view more but you can’t even remember how far back to check since all your previously received tweets are NOT saved. Two more things that Twitepad does that I have not seen in other apps are: 1. all your tweets are kept unless you purge the cache yourself in the settings; 2. a double-line is displayed wherever tweets are missing, and a simple click fills in the gap! You no longer need to suffer from FMS (Fear of Missing Something) on Twitter.

Twitepad has the same features we’ve come to expect from other Twitter apps (eg save to Instapaper, use Bit.ly with your API key to shorten URLs) but does so much more than any other app. This is really the new must have Twitter app. v1.3, now available in the App Store, adds the only two features I was missing, the option to email a tweet to someone and use Twitlonger for sending longer messages. Even with those missing in v1.2, Twitepad was the best Twitter iPad app; it will now pull even further ahead of a mostly lacklustre and over-rated pack.

iHome iA5Walking through our local London Drugs, a western Canada retail phenomenon of a drugstore that is also a leader in photography, audio-visual and computer sales, i saw an unusual iPhone dock and could not resist slipping my iPhone into it to check out its sound. To my surprise, the iPhone responded by a notification popping up to inform me that the iPhone requires an app from the App Store and asking if I would like to download it. This is not your father’s clock radio; in fact, it isn’t a radio at all. Welcome to a hint of what the future has to offer in this social networking iphone alarm dock.

iHome iA5 iHome + Sleep main displayiHome iA5 iHome + Sleep settings

The iA5 by iHome Audio is simple in its design looking like a stylized black box with an industrial grating front like an Apple Keynote slide theme. When you dock your iPhone for the first time and enter the settings screen on the iHome + Sleep app, one option is to have the iA5 set to the time on your iPhone; well, that’s easy. Other options include allowing it to find your location (or manually setting one) for the weather information that it keeps up to date. You also enter your Facebook and Twitter usernames and passwords for the social side of this device. Socialized sleeping?

iHome iA5 sleep cardThe app allows you to create a stack of different sleep and wake up cards for different days of the week. On each card, you can choose what music or podcast from your iPhone you would like to listen to and for how long when falling asleep. You also choose whether to wake up to a music or podcast selection or to an alarm sound of your choice. Slide the desired card into the slot like inserting a punch card and your alarm is set. One small caveat, if you program one of these cards for MTWTF for your usual weekday wake-up, then it won’t work for Monday unless you also set that card to be for Sunday as well since that is the day you will be falling asleep. (I haven’t missed an alarm since figuring that one out!)

Another option that you can program is whether you want to post a tweet on Twitter or a Facebook status update upon awakening or sleeping. You can create a bunch of different tweets and updates and will be prompted when setting the app at bedtime and when you wake up in the morning, to choose which one to send. 

iHome + Sleep Overnight News (Twitter & Facebook)You can also set reminder notes before you go to bed; jotting them down so when you wake up you can review them. I haven’t explored that feature yet because I tend to use OmniFocus to jot down and reorganize my ToDos so they are synced to all my computers and iPhone via MobileMe. (That can be a whole other blog article for the future.)

The other social aspect of this device/app is that your twitter and facebook news feeds get cached from the time you set the alarm at bedtime until you wake up in the morning. When you slide the awake slider in the morning, your personalized news feed is ready for you and you can see all or filter to see just Twitter or just Facebook. Another warning here…as soon as you close the app, your news feed is gone. (Perhaps with the 4.0 iPhone OS this may remain cached as long as the app remains active in the background.)

iHome iA5 Sleep habitsIn addition to keeping track of the local weather, your overnight Twitter and Facebook news, and allowing you to sleep and awake to your choice of the iPhone’s iPod selections, the iHome + Sleep app also tracks your sleeping pattern in terms of how many times you hit the Snooze bar, hours of sleep, Bedtime, Wakeup time, favourite album to fall to sleep to and wakeup to. The sleep information details most recent, average this week, average this month and average this year.

Overall I’ve been very happy with the iA5 and would recommend it if you are looking for a bedside dock for your iPhone or iPod touch. It is great how it doesn’t take up much space and the sound is quite good. The fact that it is monophonic is not an issue since you are lying in bed with only one side of you facing the speaker. Without an iPhone or iPod touch the device is fairly limited. There are some manual controls so you can adjust the time and built-in alarm but this device is really meant to be controlled by the iHome + Sleep app.

As a complete and total geek, the idea of clothing with pockets for all my gadgets with a tunnel system to deal with all their wires was a dream come true. When my wife bought me the ScotteVest 5.0 Fleece Jacket early in 2009, with the added touch of the Leo Laporte TWiT logo, I was thrilled to have the ideal birthday present. Six months later I was even following Scott Jordan on Twitter as a loyal fan. Now, more than one year since my first SeV product, and having purchased 11 other jacekts, shirts, and pants since then, I can’t believe how much money I spent on such poorly made products. This article is not just a one-off short term trial of one piece of their clothing but rather an extensive test of many of their products over a one year period.

I guess ‘technical clothing’ would not be the appropriate term. This is usually used for high quality gear that can withstand some extreme weather conditions for outdoor sports. They actually refer to their products as TEC - Technology Enabled Clothing. The SeV products are really clothing items for geeks like me who never have enough pockets for all their electronic devices. The SeV clothes are so poorly made that not only can they not survive outdoor activities, they cannot survive regular wear and tear, are frequently defective on arrival, and some of the items can’t even survive their first wearing. Their excellent customer service policy of replacing any defective items should not be an excuse for their shotty construction. Zipper pulls, snaps, and velcro all break right off and seams come apart too often.

ScotteVest products are designed in America but all workmanship is outsourced to China for the products I purchased. Also, I use the term design rather loosely as their clothing really lacks any style unless you happen to be box shaped and color blind. For the most part, there is no tapering of any of the clothes and their colors are mostly black, gray, khaki and a dark green; mostly colours for guys over 70 years old; perhaps because their vision isn’t what it used to be.

ScotteVest 5.0 FleeceThe original purchase was the 5.0 Fleece Jacket. Pictured here is the one without the TWiT logo as that one is Sold Out at the time of writing this review. This item has actually survived nicely and is the reason I went on to buy more SeV products. Although I like all the pockets and the tunneling system for the wires, it really is very boxy, not tapered at all, so fits more like a potato sack than a piece of clothing. The versatility of being able to zip off the sleeves, carry an iPod, iPhone, camera, bluetooth headset, tunnel the ear bud wires through the lining has been a lot of fun. On close inspection though when you notice that there are holes in your arm pits because the zippers don’t even meet properly, you begin to realize that this is a ScotteVest hallmark - absolutely crappy zippers are consistent through all their products. Getting the sleeves zipped on or off is a bit of a struggle because they are so poor. If they were to actually use good quality zippers it would significantly improve their clothing.

ScotteVest TEC HatMy second SeV product was the TEC Hat, also TWiT branded. This was worth the price (free bonus) and became very useful when I began to buy other SeV products that have hoods that are brimless so I began to wear this cap under the hood to keep my glasses dry on rainy Vancouver days. As with most SeV products, this is not waterproof so expect to get wet. There are a couple of pockets in the hat for loose change or a house key if you decide to go running with it and have no other pockets. The styling makes this the kind of hat your father or grandfather would wear that they picked up at a flee market; again somewhat boxy sitting on top of your head rather than fitting the head properly like a sports cap.

ScotteVest Pack Windbreaker

The Pack Windbreaker and the beginning of my woes. With winter ending, I no longer needed the heavy Fleece so the new Pack Windbreaker looked perfect. With its light weight and the way the jacket folded into its back pocket, it looked like a great update on the original packable K-Way jacket of the 1970s that I used to wear as a kid. I wore this almost every day for a few months as things fell apart. Of course, the zippers were lousy, as already mentioned with their other products. The main zipper would frequently be difficult to get started and would frequently get stuck part way up. The eyelet around the hood pullstrings came off as did the velcro on the inner ear bud pockets. I wasn’t quite sure what was going to come apart next so I contacted customer service. This is when I learned two interesting things; first that they really do want their customers to be happy so they said just send back the jacket for replacement and second, that they don’t actually manufacture any of their products. This is because the customer service rep had to contact the manufacturer of the jacket before giving me the return authorization. The manufacturer? Wait a second, I thought ScotteVest was the manufacturer. I guess they don’t really make anything; they are a marketing company. Like so many great American companies, they have an idea, then find the cheapest way to get their products made. This didn’t really seem to bother me at the time as I was so happy that they would replace the jacket and even send it in the other color (drab grayish geen instead of drab gray which turns out to confirm another consistent thing with SeV products - colors to appeal to men over 70 years old and not just lousy zippers.)

ScotteVest Performance T-shirt

I was so happy with how I was treated by customer service that I continued to buy, buy, buy. I bought a few Performance T-shirts in both short and long sleeves. These are actually holding up even after a few months of wear. They even have red and blue colors and some tapering to the fit. Of course, the zipper pulls rarely lie down properly but it wouldn’t be an SeV product if it didn’t have lousy zippers. Pockets are located in front of the shoulder and down above the hip on one side and they have access holes for earbuds as to be expected from SeV clothing. Of course, this is not really original anymore as many other companies now have sports T shirts with mp3/iPod pockets.

ScotteVest Performance Polo

The Performance Polo, as with the T-shirt, is actually of reasonable quality again with the same zipper problem. Colors are more limited and the should pocket should really only be used to hid a credit card and a few spare bills as it is very awkward to have an mp3 player or phone constantly in your way in that location. Of course, as a sign of their lousy workmanship, one of the two polo shirts that I ordered had the end of one of the ear bud loops not sewn in at all so instead of being a loop, it was just a long piece of rope. So, once again I had to return this for an exchange.

ScotteVest Evolution JacketAnother winter closing in and somehow still buying this crap, probably because the performance shirts were working out well and that Customer Service was so nice. A great lesson I guess for business is the importance of good customer service. That being said, even better would be quality products which SeV fails at accomplishing. My Evoluation Jacket has all the pockets and tunneling I’ve come to love, a big rear pocket that can hold a netbook or iPad, and a hood for the rainy vancouver winter days. Oops! The hood can’t even keep rain off the face as it has no brim to it? And a snap under the collar in back broke off the very first time I unsnapped it to thread my earbuds. Also, as with the Fleece, the sleeve zippers don’t meet and are difficult to re-attach as the zippers are such poor quality. What did I expect, quality and good design? Shouldn’t I have learned by now?

ScotteVest Travel PantsThe Travel Pants seemed like a good idea! Why just have lots of pockets in a jacket if much of the travel time I would not be wearing a jacket? The belt that comes with the pants is a thin ribbon with a buckle that only fits one way but no easy way to tell which way. If the belt gets twisted, which is easy because it is a ribbon, then you can click the buckle toggle and never be able to open it again! Yes, that’s what I did. I was fed up with dealing with customer service and all the problems with their products that I just bought a new belt and thew out their crappy one although they did offer to exchange the pants/belt if I would return it to them after they contacted the manufacturer. A month or so and just a few wearings later and the innser seam below one knee came apart over a 3 inch length. I sewed this up and was able to admire the poor craftsmanship when it comes to the seems on these pants. A quality product would at least make sure the material overlapped well before sewing and some would double sew the seams and even add an extra layer of piping to reinforce the seems. Not ScotteVest! They didn’t even align the material properly to do a proper seam closure. Of course that would requires some degree of quality and pride in craftsmanship.

ScotteVest Cargo PantsThe Cargo pants have faired better than the travel pants to date but I have only worn these a couple of times and they haven’t even been washed yet. I do like the idea of these being able to pass as a normal set of pants (or trousers in the UK) with lots of pockets and even tunneling for wires. Not sure what would be wired in my pants but crazier things have been known to happen. Perhaps these will hold up like the performance shirts as something wearable but I will have to see if it survies its first washing.

ScotteVest TEC ShirtSurviving its first washing is not the worry when it comes to the TEC shirt that is coming apart on its first wearing. Oh yes, nothing quite like traveling overseas proudly sporting a new SeV shirt with my passport tucked into an upper inner pocket. By the time I arrived at my destination, the zipper pull was no longer on the pocket! You’ve got to hand it to Scott Jordan, once again proving that he is very consistent with finding the crappiest zippers for all his clothes. I can’t wait to see what else comes apart on this shirt aside from the zipper pull. The zippers don’t pull smoothly, even those with their pulls intact and I’m sure some seams will give way before long.

The idea of pockets in clothes isn’t really something that can be patented so anyone who can build a better mousetrap can do so. There are so many cliches I can use for how stupid I have been in buying so many ScotteVest products such as fool me once, shame on you; fool my twice, shame on me. They have a really good idea and are beginning to show some better color choices, at least with their performance clothes. The Performance T-shirts and the Cargo Pants are actually the only items that were not defective upon arrival or quick to fall apart (but time will tell.) However, most of the rest of the SeV line is drab in its colors, lack styling such as a tapered fit, and have shotty workmanship with their zippers, snaps, velcro and seams all made from the cheapest sources possible. Everyone has performance clothes with pockets for iPods and holes for ear-buds nowadays. SeV has really helfpul customer service with a great policy of exchanging damaged goods. That being said, they really need to make better quality goods. They should start with a significant investment in better zippers on all their prodcuts and should take better care in at least sewing seams properly if not double-reinforcing them. If they can’t improve their quality, as anyone can put pockets in clothes, other companies will come along and build the better mousetraps that Scott Jordan can’t.

Addendum (from letter to drafted to customer service written 05Apr2010 with no reply yet as of 17Apr2010 but ended up stuck in the outbox so never got to them and just realized that on 23Apr2010 otherwise they would have acted on it): As nice as it is to have good customer service, I can’t help but to think that things would be better if your company concentrated on improving the quality of their products. I have bought many items from you over the past year and here are some general comments that perhaps can be used to make your products better. I think your customers would like to see quality craftsmanship and would be willing to pay a bit more for this. I had originally assumed that your company manufactured its own clothing but when you kept referring with each return about having to notify your manufacturer, I realized you are a sales and marketing firm. I wonder if this means quality doesn’t matter as long as you can show a profit and there is more money to be made by churning out higher volumes of lower quality clothing than to make better products. That being said, I know that Scott does take the products very personally and is proud to have his name on these items. I think he would like to be making the best quality possible with reasonable pricing.

Zippers: your products almost all share this as a problem. You use really lousy zippers on everything you make. Pay a bit more for better zippers.
Seams: little effort is made to sew things together well; your clothing appears to be thrown together, without even properly aligning the material, then sewn with thin threads with no effort to reinforce any seams. Performance gear needs certain seams, if not all seams, sewn in two layers with additional piping to add reinforcement where more stress might be applied. That being said, your clothes fall apart even at unstressed areas suggesting they are just poorly made.
Style: drab colors best suited for grandfathers and almost no effort for form fitting (only exception being colors and tapering added to the performance line.)

You have a great idea with adding so many pockets to clothes and holes/tunnels to wire them together. Unfortunately, anyone who makes outdoor clothing can add pockets and holes and are doing so. I hope you can look at improving your quality to match that of your excellent customer service. Please remember that I am not writing this based on just purchasing one item but rather on purchasing: Fleece 5.0, TEC Hat, Cargo Pants, Travel Pants, TEC Shirt, several performance Ts in long and short sleeves, Polo shirts, Pack Windbreaker and an Evolution Travel Jacket…almost all of which have had problems and all in the past year. You might say I have invested a lot in your company and expect better.

Blue Mic SnowballAlthough we don’t need a top of the line microphone to record for podcasting, using a poor quality microphone will tune out your listeners pretty quickly. One also needs to look for ease of set-up so you don’t need to turn on a mic pre-amp and have to have a fire-wire connection available, especially with Apple moving away from firewire on some of their laptops. This is where the Blue Snowball USB microphone can be the ideal choice.

I do have two top of the line studio Sennheiser microphones but their sound quality exceeds by far that of the final production once it is converted to mp3 or mp4. Technically you need to err on the side of the source material being better than the final production will allow but there is no point in using a $1,000 microphone plugged into a $600 pre-amp when a $129 (CDN) USB mic can just plug directly into your computer and still exceed the sound quality of your final production.

Using the Snowball could not be any easier thanks to its USB connection. Once you’re connected, there are only 3 settings to worry about on the back of the mic, Cardiod, Cardiod with -10dB if sound source too loud, and omni-directional if you need to pick up from behind the mic rather than just in front of it. Listen to it in action on the latest 3 episodes of Talking About Glaucoma (me on the Snowball with Drs Hom, Damji, Schuman, Burgoyne over skype.) You will here that the sound is fairly rich and more than adequate for these podcasts. Certainly a great value and could not be easier to set-up and use.

iVolume in actionBy searching the 'net for a solution, I came across iVolume - by Manfred Schwin (mani.de). The app is installed on your computer to which you sync your iPod and works in conjunction with iTunes to properly normalize the sound levels just as Levelator does for audio files for my Talking About Glaucoma podcast. As this program works in conjunction with iTunes, you need to turn ON sound check on both iTunes and your iPod for it to work properly. After installing the app, when you run it for the first time, it analyzes your entire iTunes collection and adjusts the sound levels accordingly. You only need to run it again when you add new music to your iTunes collection. As I had over 9,000 songs, I did have to leave it to run overnight the first time, but now whenever I add more songs, it just takes a minute or two to normalize the new content.

Now when I have my playlist running in the operating room, there are no more big surprises of the volume suddenly getting really loud or frustration when the next song comes on and its inaudible. I consider iVolume to be a core application that is missing from iTunes and everyone who is experiencing the same issues with fluctuations in sound volume in iTunes or on their iPod or iPhone should look into buying this. (The free trial works as well but pauses every few songs to annoy you into buying it; it's worth every penny.)

On October 12, 2009 Socialoomph notified its customers that effective October 15, they will no longer be repeating or rotating tweets. They were told by Twitter that this practice is in violation of their terms of service as it is the equivalent of spam. They quoted the following on their service blog:

"Recurring Tweets are a violation no matter how they are done, including whether or not someone pays you to have a special privilege. We don’t want to see any duplicate tweets whatsoever- They pollute Twitter, and tools shouldn’t be given to enable people to break the rules. Spinnable text seems to just be a way to bypass the rules against duplicate updates and essentially provides the same problems."

From spam that I have received at times, it is usually pretty obvious when you look back at that person or bot's list of tweets and see that every single tweet has been identical. I think just blocking the exact repeats makes sense to help minimize some spam clutter. As for rotating tweets in order for our info to reach more people and not get buried, is this a matter of twitter simply not being able to increase their capacity fast enough so they are ordering the end of spinnable text or do they really feel that we are polluting the world with our words.

I have found that most of my tweets that get retweeted are NOT my first tweet but rather one of my rotated versions of the first one. This must be related to living on the west coast of canada and the morning round going out when people not checking their tweets as often in other time zones and the evening ones hitting most of the potential audience when everyone is asleep. Since many apps still don't load beyond the past 200 tweets in a feed, the odds are very high if people don't check-in with twitter for more than a few hours that they have missed many tweets.

I just want to be able to have my messages reach people and spinnable text facilitates this. I am not convinced that banning tools to facilitate this, such as those offered by @socialoomph.com, is a crime.

iPhone 3.1 update:

App genius now part of new 3.1 iPhone OS to suggest other apps we might like. Good marketing strategy; we all know Apple needs help with that...ha ha ha! With so may apps at the App store, it does help to have some guidance. Not sure that this really addresses the major flaw with the app store in how the top sellers are $0.99 or less even if not very good making it hard to find gems that might be more expensive but worthwhile. Perhaps the Macworld app gems app is a better way to find the apps you might need compared with this App Genius but we'll only know as we try it out over the coming months. When the music genius was first launched, until its database was populated by iTunes libraries, it was far from ideal but as the database increased, it has improved greatly.

iTunes 9:

Improvements in genius playlists in the form of a Genius DJ. It looks like this will allow you to select from the artists you have in iTunes, rather than just basing your genius list on a single song. This gives the user more control over the list that is generated. More power to the people (and that's the closest to any Beatles references I'll get to for these comments.)

Manage iPhone apps in iTunes; phew, that rumour is true and welcome relief. We will finally be able to move groups of apps around on our iPhones more easily than just one app at a time from the device. The leaked videos in advance of this even were therefore accurate.

Copy between your 5 authorized household computers. This was possible only with music when became DRM free, now applies to movies and shows which is good since HD versions can fill things like your Apple TV (if you are a victim, oh I mean owner, of one.)

iPod Touch line refresh:

A bunch of iPod Touch/iPhone game demos then followed after going on about how popular the iPod touch has been: 20 million iPod Touches. This reminds me of a parody about the iPhone 3G when it was being released with a fake Steve talking about how they had sold 15 trillion first gen iPhones. All this build up was to announce price drops in the iPod touch line with $199/$299/$399 for 8GB/32GB/64GB respectively. They have now doubled the RAM on the top two models.

iTunes store re-design:

Redesigned iTunes store and now iTunes LP to encourage people to buy full albums instead of just tracks. Nice clean layout and sharing options. You can now gift the album, add to a wishlist, tell a friend about it, share on facebook and on Twitter. This really adds a new level of interaction that was lacking before in iTunes. I was always saving wish lists at Amazon since there was no option in iTunes and I do like the option of being able to share links via email, facebook or twitter. This would be the "It's Only Rock and Roll" moment in the keynote. A better looking iTunes store, with bigger images, lyrics, and access to bonus album material such as cover art, credits, etc.

Now movies on iTunes include the Extras found on DVD releases. One of those things which should have just been there all along and now is offered as an aren't we great feature.

More hardware refreshing:

iPod classic, now bumped back to 160GB and keeping same price that 120GB was (before it was slashed by $30 earlier today.)

iPod shuffle, oooh, ahhh, big woop? still no controls, dropped price to $59 for 2GB and, drumroll please....more colours. Also a special edition all silver one with 4GB for $99.

iPod Nano now has a video camera built-in; Steve is calling this a FREE video camera! Yes, if you buy a whole new iPod Nano. Uploading of videos to iPhoto then to Youtube from your mac. Now FM radio is also built-in to the nano and there is a microphone, speaker and bigger display 2.2". Looking at the pricing of $149/$179 for 8GB/16GB this actually does make for a great competitor to the Mino since it also packs full iPod features. Still won't have the resolution of something like the new Kodak Zi8 or much in the way of optics but does give portability.

Norah Jones provided the musical entertainment to end the event. It's only rock and roll and minor - and improving iTunes and bumping up the iPod line will probably make Apple stock sink. We can't expect every Apple event to Rock the world, can we?

An AudioBoo article on using a Kodak Zi6 since I still don't have the new iPhone 3GS and wanted to keep the number of cameras I was taking with me on my camping trip. I had a Canon 50D with 2 lenses as well as a Sony HD video camera but couldn't imagine carrying this around while camping and hiking on Salt Spring Island in BC.Ironically, the photo associated with this AudioBoo recording was done with my iPhone 3G as the recording was made from the iPhone and AudioBoo allows attaching a photo from the iPhone when posting.

Addendum: by the end of the trip, got the Zi6 wet with ocean water, and now rendered useless. The photos and video it produced were excellent and fortunately, I had been backing up to a laptop and also, as this device uses an SD card and not a built-in flash memory, all the images and videos are safe and sound...yet another advantage of the Kodak devices over the MinoHD and similar flash drive devices.

Here is a photo using the Kodak Zi6.

Ferry terminal in Nanaimo to Fulford Harbour, Salt Spring Island, BC