Hands On: Cheers For iOS.

It’s been quite a while since I signed up to be notified about about Cheers, so much so that I honestly forgot about it. But today an email hit my inbox saying the new iOS app was live. If you haven’t heard of Cheers, I’ll preface this hands-on by saying it is very similar to both Oink and Stamped — “life rating” apps — with a little bit of Instagram ideology thrown in.

Still interested? Hop inside.

Midday Tech Blips: Nest Promises To “Vigorously Defend” IP, Path Apologizes For Contacts Pilfering, Deletes Contact Info.

It’s the middle of the week. And we all know what that means. Hump day. In completely unrelated news, two tech companies are having a bad Wednesday: Path and Nest.

If you haven’t heard, Path, a popular, niche social networking app for iOS has recently come under fire for yanking each and every contact in users’ address books and uploading it to Path servers — all without notifying the user. Today, Path CEO issued a public apology saying that (1) it wouldn’t happen again, (2) that a new version is making it’s way to the App Store storefront with an opt-in option for sharing contact info, and finally (3) Path is deleting all ill-gotten contact info from their servers. You could argue that Path made a terrible mistake in taking the contact information of their loyal users as they did, and that they don’t deserve the customers they have. But we’ll counter with that they’re going above and beyond (and much faster we might add) than your typical, larger social networking site/service would. The new 2.0.6 version of Path with the opt-in contact sharing should be live in the App Store as we type. (Via: Cnet)

On a similar upbeat tone, Nest and their new lawsuit against Honeywell is going to be a good one to watch from the sidelines. The company announced today plans to “vigorously defend” themselves, their intellectual property, and their own innovations against a company (Honeywell) that is simply using a “patent-attack strategy to stifle thoughtful competition” — fighting words for sure. (Via: The Verge)

Hands On: Tweetbot For iPad.

Tweetbot 2.0 for iPhone is finally here. Now what? Get Tweetbot for iPad of course!

Ok. So Tweetbot isn’t a universal app. In our opinion, it’s easily worth the $6 spread across two devices. We, as well as countless iPad users who use and abuse Twitter have been waiting for months to get Tweetbots beautiful pixels all over their 9.7″ of Cupertino-designed glass. And now that Tweetbot for iPad is available, what do we think? It’s great! It is robust and full of features, yet at the same time simple in design. Honestly, if you’ve used Tweetbot for iPhone, the iPad version is pretty much identical, just bigger. Everything from the iPhone app: Push Notifications, gestures, gorgeous UI, support for multiple services (Read It Later, Instapaper, Cloud App & more) as well as the ability to customize which shortcut links are present on the sidebar.

At $2.99 it’s not worth a second thought as to if you should purchase it or not, because quite frankly, it’s awesome. Tweetbot has instantly become our favorite Twitter app for iPad, unseating our previous favorite (stock Twitter app). Download it now (App Store link).

Gallery full of eye candy after the break…

Tweetbot 2.0 Is Out! Here’s What’s New. (It’s Awesome).

Tweetbot 2.0 has been teased around twitter for the last couple of weeks. Though if you follow either @tapbots_paul or the official @tweetbot account, you’ll know the taunting has been especially brutal the last couple of weeks. But the waiting is finally over. Tweetbot 2.0 is here. Hop past the break for a breakdown of the new features and screenshots…

First Shots Of Carbon For iOS Hit The Web.

@CarboniOS just tweeted a couple of screenshots of the upcoming Carbon for iOS Twitter client (and then subsequently removed them). But were fast like ninja tonight. (Update: New ones are now up.)

For those not familiar with Carbon, it was one of the most popular Twitter clients for webOS. Now that that journey has run its course, the team has been focusing on bringing the awesomeness of Carbon to Android, iOS, and WP7.

A couple of individual shots after the break…

Instagram Spied As Android Market “Featured App”. Release Imminent?

Announcements of new hardware and software often get mistakingly posted before their official release (if they’re not already leaked beforehand). The “bad” affect it has on the company in question is debatable. We’d argue that the small leaks here and there only increase the anticipation and hype around a genuinely lusted after product/service.

Instagram for Android is the latest to suffer from pre-release release. The screenshot above was captured by an AndroidGuys reader and shows the Android Market’s “Featured App” as the currently unreleased Instagram for Android. Clicking on the link by said reader resulted in a failed journey into awesomeness (read: the link was broken). Still, despite leaving the Android Market empty handed, the person who caught the image above (as well as the rest of us) shouldn’t have to wait too much longer. Details around Instagram for Android have been constantly bantered back and forth in the online world.

Keep waiting everyone. It’s almost here.

Carbon For Android Getting Closer To Completion. New Screenshots Tickle Our Fancy.

The Twitter scene on Android is going to soon be receiving a very much needed, welcome competitor. Carbon for Android is one of the several new projects that the Carbon team is working on (WP7 and iOS versions also in the works) since their original platform of choice (webOS) essentially bit the dust.

Over the last week a couple of pictures of both the general timeline view and threaded DMs have been tweeted by the company’s @CarbonAndroid. And today, the team posted several more images, this time depicting the profile view.

What’s immediately clear after looking at the images is that Carbon for Android will be pretty unique when compared to all of the other Android Twitter clients currently available, and dare we say, much more polished. Now, if the Carbon team can push out a good looking and functional, smooth app, well, we’ll be happy as clams.

Check out the updated (complete) gallery of what’s been posted so far after the break…

Twittelator Neue 1.1 Hits App Store. Push Notifications Finally Arrive!

We’re pretty hardcore Twitter users. And because of that, a Twitter app that doesn’t support *native* Push Notifications is of no use to us. So when we first realized that we couldn’t use the wonderfully unique Twittelator Neue because of that fact, we wept deeply (on the inside of course). Since its release, we’ve constantly checked the App Store to see if Twittelator Neue had received the hallowed Push Notifications update. And each time we were denied. But alas, today our perseverance was rewarded — Push Notifications are finally here!

Besides Push, Twittelator Neue 1.1 features a “ton” of UI enhancements and bug fixes, Timeline galleries, recent user photos, and tweet replies & conversations.

Some may scoff at the $1.99/year fee required for “Neue Notifications” as they’re called, but let’s be real, the servers needed for such a feature requires money to own/run/operate. For smaller companies such as Stone, the outfit behind Twittelator, it’s a necessity.

We’re currently testing the update now and will report back by days end our thoughts. In the meantime, we invite you to try out the update yourselves and report back with any quirks you find, too.

Mentions of Facebook, iPad 3 Found In Latest iOS 5.1 Beta.

After rooting around in iOS 5.1 beta 3, it seems the folks over at iMore have found more previously leaked evidence suggesting the iPad 3 is lurking in current iOS 5.x source code as “J1AP” and “J2AP” — one of course being the wifi-only model and the other wifi + 3G. Though admittingly, mere mentions of model names in source code aren’t exactly concrete. Apple has begun inserting fake model numbers into source code to throw off adventurous people such as you and I from revealing next-gen devices ahead of schedule.

But what’s even more intriguing can be found in the screenshot above — Facebook integration.

Now, Apple and Facebook originally had a deal to bring Facebook integration in iOS 5 along with Twitter. But literally at the last minute, Apple pulled Facebook integration. At the time they claimed it was because of “onerous terms”. Facebook of course denied such claims. Whether or not this is left over legacy code or not remains to be seen. Consider our fingers crossed.