Twitter Demands Popular Android App “Touiteur” Change Names. #touiteur #android

Users of popular Android Twitter app “Touiteur” can help the developer, Levelup Studios, pick out a new name. The reason: Twitter doesn’t like it. Actually, according to twitter “Touituer” is too close to “twitter” and as such, is confusing. Right. Ok. Asinine. Not only does “Touiteur” look nothing like “Twitter”, it doesn’t come close to sounding like it either.

But alas, LevelUp Studios is taking it in good stride and offering their customers the ability to pick the app’s new name. The official Touiteur Name-Picking Voting Page has quite a few choices. Currently, “Plume” and “CuiCui” are the top two choices with 196 and 104 votes respectively. Don’t like either of those? Leave your mark and cast your vote.

[LevelUp Studio]

Upcoming Twitter app for Android: “Touiteur”. [Preview]

Back when the whole Twitter thing exploded, I wasn’t exactly interested. It wasn’t until I started Gadgetsteria late in 2008 that I truly realized how helpful Twitter could be. Since then I’ve been through a BlackBerry, iPhone, and currently have a Droid. Along the way, I’ve sought out the best Twitter apps for each respective platform as one bad Twitter app can certainly put a damper on the whole experience.

Now that I’m on Android, I’ll admit that the Twitter offerings compared to iPhone offerings were until recently, lacking in both features and appearance. As Android has quickly matured over the last year, that’s changed with apps such as Seesmic, Swift, and Twidroid. Today however, I bring you an early look at LevelUp Studio’s “Touiteur Android app for Android.

As far as features go, the biggest and most important feature to many Twitter power users is multiple account support. Touiteur has it. Other features such as reply, retweet, inbox, are but a few of many features we’ve all come to expect from more upscale Twitter apps. However, my favorite feature so far is the drop down for composing tweets. Instead of hitting the menu key and then clicking “compose/new tweet” or navigating to a separate button/screen for tweeting altogether, simply swipe down down on the black bar at the top (much like the notification bar). Love it!

In it’s beta-ish state however, I several features are missing — Picture hosting, uploading profile pic, Widgets, trends, wizard to create a new account, view mention (that’s a big one), displaying a message when rate limit are exceeded, and viewing people’s lists in profiles. Again, some pretty staple features that are not yet present. But don’t forget, Touiteur is still in development so all of those features are on the plate.

I’ve been following Touiteur ever since I stumbled on Beautiful Widgets way back in late October. At that time, the highly popular ex-HTC look-a-like weather widget was taking all of the dev’s time. With that in the past, resources are now open for Touiteur.

Anyone familiar with the popular iPhone Twitter app “Tweetie” will find the hidden menu that appears below tweets after selecting them a nice tough. I know I certainly did.

So far, I’m highly impressed with it’s UI and functionality slated for the final release. Speaking of that, I’ve heard “end of the month” as a strong goal for a public release, so, it’s not too far off. Until then, go ahead and give the gallery below a run through. I’ll update here as progress is made. Let me know what you think and be sure to stop by LevelUp Studio for updates. Gallery and Video of Touiteur in action.

Gallery

Video

Twidroid 3.0 for Android coming early December

Even though I wasn’t initially enamored with Twitter, I have come around in the last year. While I’m still by no means a twit-a-holic, I do find myself spending more and more time on the popular micro-blogging network. Since I jumped ship from my iPhone to the Android platform, I’ve been looking far and wide for a comparable Twitter client. Twidroid has generally been crowned the top Android Twitter app, though unfortunately isn’t even close to Tweetie 2 for the iPhone. Now I’m not saying this to knock Twidroid, I’m merely stating that the Android Twitter apps need more time and refinement. Along these lines, I mentioned a nifty app called Touiteur a few days ago. This Twitter app (still in development) looks to be one of if not the best Android Twitter app once released. Obviously the developers behind Twidroid don’t want to see that and have formerly announced that Twidroid 3.0 is coming. Coming when? “Early December”. Now I have two Twitter apps to keep my eyes on. Being the spec hounds that you are, I’m sure you want some hard info. The new specs include:

• Threaded conversations

• Twidroid plugins + examples on our website (e.g. google maps, support any photo service)

• Single tweet view with extended infos

• Remember timeline position setting

• Jump to top in timeline button

• Autocomplete usernames for replies

• Bring up tweet box directly by typing @

• DM list now with avatars

So after looking at the list above, and checking out that earlier post I mentioned about Touiteur, we can see that both of these apps are approaching the whole Twitter scene differently. Twidroid is continuing it’s strong presence with more functionality. Touiteur being the newcomer is bringing a rather large feature list as well as a more visually pleasing, clean UI. Is Twidroid’s UI in need of refinement? To some that’s debatable. Personally I’m finding the UI in Touiteur a bit more finger friendly and clean. But again, that’s my preference. Still, it doesn’t take away from the robust feature set of Twidroid 3.0. When all is said, which app has your most interested: Twidroid 3.0 or Touiteur?

Androinica > @kevinawhalen > Twidroid