Review of Swift twitter app

I have decided I should write some reviews of the apps that I check out on my phone.  I am going to start with the twitter client called Swift.

Overall it is a nice, small app for twitter.  The interface is nice to work with once a person discovers the bar on top with your username is a menu. With features including the ability to search for other users, search all twitter, following and unfollowing, it does most of what you can do from a computer.

On the down side, the notification does not indicate how many new messages there are and it does not have the ability to include location in a tweet.

I am currently switching back and forth between this app and Twidroid for my twitter needs.  I will write a review of Twidroid later.

 Follow me on Twitter 

I was at : 7671-7715 Yorkshire Dr, Reno, NV 89506,

Testing another blogger client

I am posting this with a different blogger client for my T-Mobile G1 called Blogaway.  It allows labels but does not seem to allow editing of old posts.

This looks promising, except for the lack of editing old posts.  It does have an option to include geotagging.

I was at : 7671-7715 Yorkshire Dr, Reno, NV 89506,

new app Androblogger

generates an error 4 when I post a blog entry, but posts log.

new app bug

the new app posted two copies of last post

found new blogger app

I found a new blogger app in the market, it looks very nice.

blogger project

I have been looking at the sample code and am getting my mind wrapped around how to organize the app and how to do the individual processes and to work with the gdata blogger api. It looks like I SHOULD be able to do everything through the existing api. I will be working on the project this coming week. The first step will be to get it to display a list of my blogs. Initially this will be for personal use only as my username and password will be hard coded. After I get the basics working, I will figure out how to store settings so that others can use the software.

Interesting details about the gdata api

I was using wget to study the gdata blogger api and noticed that it was sending the blog entries that have html were being sent with the code formatted with strings starting with & and ending with ;. This could be useful working on a blogger client.

blogger software progress

I have been looking at the source code for A-Blogger. So far I have not found what is stopping it from posting html. I have found that the back end code is already in place for catagories and comments. I am not sure what it would take to implement them. I will continue to look into their code as well as look into my work project.

I have started a new project.

I have been looking at the samples included with the gdata source code. It does handle html so I would be able to format my posts and imbed links into them. What I need to do is figure out how to migrate it from a console app to an Android app. If I get it working at all I might release a beta of it. If there is enough interest, I might even make it available through the Market. It would be a pay app to cover some of the costs.

A-Blogger update

I uploaded the picture of Alexander last night via email publishing. I discovered that it stores the image at picasa. This means I can live with the fact this client cannot upload photos. I do have a problem with the fact that I cannot do ANY FORMATTING OF MESSAGES, past capitalization and punctuation. I cannot create new paragraphs as you can see in the post "General Update". Each number is supposed to be a new paragraph. The lack of formatting makes it tough to read.

General Update

1. I spent alot of time going through sample programs and tinkering with the gdata library trying to get it to access the server. I could not figure out how to display the data. I will look at the source code for A-Blogger and look at increasing the features of it. It already has a lot going for it. 2. This afternoon I cut down and partially cut up a dead blue spruce in our back yard. The Ryobi One+ Chainsaw that we bought worked great. I found out that it looks like the older batteries that I have seem to be going bad, they are about 3 years old. I will work on the cleanup some tomorrow. 3. I did a battery calibration on my T-Mobile G1 last night. It seems to have helped with the battery life. I am currently running it dead again for the second time. So far I am at just over 9 hours with moderate use. Only one or two calls though.

More about blogging system

I posted the last message via email. Clearly emails are parsed to find links in them. A post by email cannot be edited with the client I am working with on my phone. It looks like I may have to write a parser for this program or write an interface that allows you to insert a url or image. Either on will be a major project for a hacker of a programmer, like me.

Update on A-Blogger client

It looks like the A-Blogger only allows plain text. Any sort of html causes a problem when posting. I will look through the code later and see if I can change this. I also would like to see what it would take to include images in posts.