Echofon Galore

I’ll admit it, I was on call today and I had a bad back. So I couldn't walk around the ward to do the paperwork in Day Care. I would rather sit in front of my laptop, doing some reading as well as tweeting. So here I am, and the evening ward round would be another couple of hours, all drugged up with anti-inflammatories. The plan would be to have a quick bite, then Maghrib prayers, and start the rounds at around eight from Casualty.

I thought I would write about my current twitter clients, because I must say that I was really impressed with the current iteration of Echofon for Mac desktop - free as I downloaded the Lite version from the App Store and couldn’t really tell the difference with the USD 19.99 ‘heavy’ version. It all started when I started using the Echofon for iPhone and iPad last week. Beautiful, unobtrusive interphase and excellent push capabilities for the iPhone version, which can be muted at night so as not to chirp while you were sleeping. The same iPhone download also expands into a fully-fledged iPad client which was also excellent.

What I love about the iPhone app apart from the reliable push service - the previous I used was SimplyTweet with its rather dull interface - was how well it integrate with the photo clients, supporting most conventional photo uploading services. The conversation modes were also nice, as well as well as the DM page which turned the tweets into conversation panels. The location service was also reliable, and it latched on onto my GPS position very quickly, with options to turn it off of course. Another great feature was the fact it integrates both twitter RT service as well as manual RT with comment with the RT @ format. The “quote” RT system of the official twitter client drove me mad!

On the desktop client, I was also able to integrate my bit.ly client without any hiccups. The great features from the iOS program translate well onto the desktops, so you get almost the same format in terms of image integration and conversation. But there was an added feature. You can sync up the iOS and desktop clients, so that say if you have just used you iPhone client, the unread counter would reset to when your phone was switched off when you boot up the Mac desktop client. Clever I thought. Since I have only been using the clients for only a few days, it may still be too early to start jumping up and down raving about it. So, I shall write again after a couple of weeks.

P/S: I would be writing regular reviews on my tech website in the near future. My alter ego tech persona can be followed here, and the website is here.