Using an iPhone & iPad in Thailand Tips, App Reviews and News for the iPhone and iPad by Richard Barrow

Tweeting with Buffer on your iPhone

With Buffer you can add a lot of tweets into your queue of Buffered Tweets, without flooding your followers.

The website for Buffer has been out for a while though until recently I never really paid it much attention. The concept is good as it saves you from spamming the timeline of other people on Twitter. Instead of sending out a dozen or so tweets in a row and then going silent for the rest of the day, Buffer makes it easier for you to spread these tweets out during the day. On the Buffer website, you can set up certain times during the day when you want tweets sent out. Then, as you write tweets, it will go into this queue and will then be automatically sent out at the appointed time.

A few days ago they brought out the iPhone app for Buffer which is when I started to play with it. From what I have seen so far, I do like it a lot. Early in the morning, when I am feeling more inspired, I can enter a series of tweets and these will then be sent out during the day. I like it that you also have the option to change the order of the queue or change a scheduled time to send a tweet out straight away. There is a workaround bookmark that you can set up for your favourite browser. When you choose this bookmark while browsing a website that you want to tweet about, you are sent straight to the Buffer app and the title and link is there waiting for you. One thing that it doesn't seem to have yet is the ability to change the time within the app. You need to go to the website to do that.

Download Buffer for free on iTunes >>>

Goodbye Twitter Hello Tweetbot

If, like me, you have been using the official Twitter client on your iPhone, you are probably annoyed with the recent upgrade. I loved the simplicity before. The ease of use. And most importantly, the familiarity. Which is the main reason I never switched to a different client. The upgrade forced me to go looking. Lots of people were recommending Tweetbot. But at $2.99 I didn't really want to pay that much while others were offering the same for free.

However, I woke up this morning to see that they have reduced the price for a limited time to only 99 Cents. This is the first time they have ever done a price reduction. Their aim is to obviously grab the people who are wanting to jump ship. It seems to be working. I downloaded it this morning and judging by the latest stats, downloads for them have gone through the roof.

So far I am liking it a lot. It has everything that I want. It also has a few things that were dropped in the upgrade to Twitter such as translate. I don't normally post "reviews" without testing an app out for a few days, but I am not sure how long they will keep the price at 99 Cents. So, if you are disappointed with the new Twitter upgrade, then consider downloading Tweetbot.

Google Plus App available for the iPhone

Google+ for mobile makes sharing the right things with the right people a lot simpler.

Last night Google finally released their iPhone app for Google+ which can be downloaded for free from the US iTunes store. At this time, it is not available in the Thai store, but it is possible to set up an account in the US store if you "buy" an app that is free. If you don't know already, Google+ is the latest attempt to take the crown from the social networking leader Facebook. At the moment it is by invite only, so you won't be able to use this app until you are able to sign up. I have an account myself and I'm happy that there is now a mobile app which will allow me to post while on the go. You can see my Google+ stream by going to http://gplus.to/RichardBarrow

Free Facebook Batch Photo Uploader for iPhone

Last week I reviewed an app called Album Manager for Facebook. The version I reviewed is ad-supported. Today I noticed that another one called PhotoLoader for Facebook is at the moment being offered for free from iTunes. It was $1.99 yesterday so be quick before it goes back up. It does basically everything you need to upload pictures from your iPhone to Facebook. You can select the pictures that you want, edit them by changing orientation or adding captions, then upload them to an old or new photo album.

What I would like to see in one of these Facebook apps is an option to tweet a link to your new photo album automatically. I haven't found one yet. I have seen some tweets before that say something like "I have uploaded xx pictures to xx photo album on facebook". I think this is automatic and can be set up in your Facebook account. But, I can only see how you can do this for Facebook Pages and not for normal accounts. Does anyone know how to set this up or know of a iPhone app that batch uploads to Facebook and tweets at the same time?

Download PhotoLoader for Facebook for free on iTunes (today only) >>>

Twitter the Smart Way

Smartr's the fastest way to get your news on Twitter. It turns the links in your twitter feed into beautiful, readable content.

One of the main problems with Twitter clients for the iPhone and iPad is that you never know if a link to an article or blog is going to be interesting or not. The only way to find out is to click on the link. However, with Smartr, released in November 2010, you now get to see a page preview instead of links. In the above example of my timeline, on the left is the normal twitter chatter which doesn't have any links to articles. On the right is the smartr version where you see a preview of the articles in your timeline as well as a thumbnail. You can then easily reply, retweet, save to Instapaper/ReaditLater, or post to tumblr/Facebook. You can also tweet as normal in this Twitter client. One nice bonus is that it will remove all those annoying 4sq checkins from your timeline! Download for free from iTunes.

Thanks to @travelfish for recommending this iphone app. If you have any favourites then please let us know. Follow me on Twitter for all the latest news on using an iPhone in Thailand.

Free International Phone Calls

Every now and then, an app comes out for the iPhone that immediately jumps into your personal top 10. The kind of app that you makes you wonder how you survived without it in the past. Viber is just such an app. It's very simple in concept. Basically, it allows you to call anyone on your contact list that has viber already installed. The call is completely free and it doesn't matter if they are in the neighbouring town or on the far side of the world. The steps to get it up and running are very simple. After installing you are asked to register your phone number. You are then sent an SMS message with an activation code. Enter this into the app and then straight away your contacts are all imported into the app.

Unlike Skype, you don't need to log in or create a buddy list. As you can see in the top left picture, the contacts that have Viber are already marked. I have four on my list so far. Over the weekend I was out in the middle of nowhere when I got a phone call from my sister out of the blue.  She was on the other side of the world but the quality of the sound was as if she was in the same country. And that was using Edge. Obviously 3G and WiFi is a lot better. I have already used this a lot over the last week to make free calls. It is so much better than Skype as you don't need to log in first. Nor do you need to be both on the same buddy list. If you know someone's telephone number then you can call them for free as long as they have Viber. The developers promise that new features coming soon include texting and ringtones.

Download for free at iTunes >>>

UPDATE: You can now send free text messages to your contacts. Also has push notification for this.

Video Conferencing for Free

One of the most exciting innovations for the year 2010 is Video Conferencing. Apple introduced it on the iPhone 4 and called it Face Time. I had never tried the front facing camera on the iPhone until today as Skype has finally updated their app to include video conferencing. And I must say that the experience is pretty remarkable. This is futuristic technology and we have the capabilities here in our hands now and it is free. Not only the app but also the video conference call. This was a wonderful New Year's present from Skype. I just spent an hour chatting with my father who is back in the UK.

What's better than Face Time is that you can choose either WiFi or 3G. We had a go at both with satisfactory results. Though of course 3G in Thailand is not always that fast or reliable. But, it hardly dropped out although there was some time lag when using the 3G. As this is skype you can also do video conferencing with people who have web cams on their computers. Apparently you can also receive the picture on your iPad though of course you cannot broadcast any video back. Undoubtedly iPad 2 will have two cameras to make use of this new technology.

I am so happy that new technology still excites me. I have this feeling that 2011 is going to be a great year for gadgets and new technology. I can't wait!

Twitter for iPhone Gets Push Notifications

One of the features for the official Twitter app for the iPhone that I have missed since the beginning was push notification of new messages. Even when you were inside the app you didn't know that someone had sent you a private message until you scrolled to that screen. So, sometimes I wasn't aware of a private message for several hours or more. Now that has all changed with this free update that just came out today. Now you can choose to receive push notifications of any tweets that mention your name (either from people you follow or everyone in the world) and whenever a private message comes in. You can set this up differently for each of your accounts. It is looking good so far. Now the only thing that I am missing is scheduled tweets. At the moment I am using the free HootSuite for that. Don't forget that Twitter also works on the iPad and in my opinion the best twitter app.