Still interested? Hop inside.

Cheers is the brain child of Farhad Mohit (Shopzilla and BizRate.com) as well as acquired talent from Google and Stumbleupon.

The gist of Cheers is to not so much share artsy pictures like Instagram, but to “share life” and allow you and your followers to rate and comment on those special moments. The overall layout borrows from various other social apps including the aforementioned Instagram, Oink, and Stamped, but differentiates witha vastly different color palette. Also, similar to its competitors, Cheers ties into Facebook, Twitter, and others by allowing quick and easy friending/inviting and sharing of content.

Rating of users and content is measured by “Cheerfluence”, though according to the devs, isn’t meant to be taken too seriously.

On the surface I must admit I really like Cheers. It’s a beautiful app (more-so than the other apps mentioned here, save for maybe Instagram) that makes me want to use it even if their amount of users is still low.

And there-in lies the problem. Even the best looking mobile apps can have a stagnant, pittance of a following. A perfect example of this is Path. Path has shown what a good UI can do; a lot of hype and prolonged “honeymooning” was made possible by Path’s gorgeous UI and unique layout. Facebook, meanwhile, is a perfect example of the opposite — a (now) decent UI and utterly terrible experience can still trounce good design/layout and a more personal/inviting experience at the end of the day. And that’s sad. I’ve deleted the stock Facebook app from most of my iOS devices because it’s buggy and can’t even make the simplest of tasks, notifications, work without me wanting to punch Zuckerberg in the head.

While Cheers isn’t quite as unique as Path in the aspect of UI, it is a well designed, niche social networking app that given enough media hype, could elicit a small but loyal following. And who knows, Cheers could even become the next Instagram. This particular sector of the market is so full of competition it’s almost impossible to amass Facebook/Twitter-like numbers at this point. But we’re hoping Cheers is different in the public’s mind.

How Cheers Could Beat Facebook

If we think about “what’s next” for Cheers now that their mobile app is out, we know how they could challenge even the mighty Facebook — build a full blown website that can be used on phone, tablet, computer, smart toothbrush, etc. Instead of “Liking” something, in a year or two the new hot thing could be “Cheering” things. While the mobile-only route is notable given the continual increase of time spent on mobile devices, truly becoming a “life sharing” service requires more than just a phone app. We’d certainly love to see Cheers (or anyone, actually) shake up Facebook’s monopoly.

I’ll give Cheers a couple of weeks (and hope you will too). If you decide to join, be sure to give me a follow (thegadgeteur) so we can really put Cheers to the test, and don’t forget to comment on your experience with Cheers. Time for eye candy.

More: Chee.rs

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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)

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…

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But as awesome as Tweetbot is, we (as well as many other potential Tweetbot customers) are still left waiting for an official iPad version as well as the elusive #006 app. Another day, perhaps. But for now, enjoy Tweetbot 2.0 and let us know what you think.

Available now in the App Store for $2.99 to newcomers or as a free upgrade to current users.

New Features & Tweaks

• Updated timeline view along with support for inline thumbnails within timeline

• Links within timeline are now easily discernable by a different color and single-tappable

• “Retweeted by” bar now integrated and tappable

• Cell colors have been tweaked for better contrast

• New DM view

• “New Tweets” bar has been redesigned — (Can be dimissed by tap and configured in Settings > Display)

• Timed auto-refresh. Set the timeline, mentions, and DMs to refresh every 5 minutes

• Readability support added as mobilizer service

• “Much improved” tweet replies view

• Links in user profiles are now tappable

• “Huge” font size option in Settings

• Improved scrolling performance

More: Tabots.com/Tweetbot

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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 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.

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…

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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.

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.

You see, Instagram’s ToS explicitly prohibit 3rd party ability to write (read: upload) photos to Instagram for spam purposes. If Instagram goes along with Simser, it’ll be happy times for Windows Phone users and perhaps a catalyst to get Windows Phone share moving in the right direction, faster. If they say no, well, Metrogram will be nothing more than an Instagram browser.

Should photo uploading be allowed in Metrogram, look for it’s debut in 3-4 weeks, and if not, 2-3.

We’re hoping Bil can get some help from Instagram. The Instagram team has already proven they’re over-taxed just working on iOS (as is evident by the still not released Android version). Moving to Windows Phone would sure be a lot easier if Instagram was there waiting for us.

Today a fresh version (v1.2) was released sans changelog. The only clue as to what is contained in the latest Tweetdeck update is simply the words “Security and Stability Fixes”. Features aside, if we could get the app to not crash and display random, weird issues we’d be happy. So we’re actually quite glad.

Give the new Tweetdeck 1.2 update a try and let us know how your mileage goes.

So we gotta ask: Have you jumped on the Path bandwagon?

• Download it now: Facebook Messenger for Windows

The list of improvements include Facebook Groups support as well as improved media handling and tweaked photo/video uploads. Not anything earth shattering by any means, but enough to keep the 3 PlayBook owners of the world happy a little while longer.

Get it in App World starting…now.

A freelance writer by the name of Giles Turnball asked himself that very same question until one day, he did just that. After confirming several volunteers, Giles began sending/replying to tweets via post card. As you can gather, responses from Giles took many days and even strenched into the week time frame.

“The mechanics of it took a while to work out. Most difficult was replicating my personal Twitter timeline—how could I post the same thing to everyone? Well, by writing it out lots of times.

For those “public” tweets, I wrote the same thing out 15 times, on 15 cards, and sent them to 15 different people. This took every moment as long as you might think; possibly a little longer.

Other tweets were easier to do. The analogue of sending an @reply or a DM is simply sending one card to one person. Much simpler. Soon after starting the project, I settled on these as the best way of communicating.”

While it’s not something we’d readily embark on, we commend Giles for his Tweet-by-Post project. At the very least it’s intriguing, no?