Srcasm

I chose my new design for the site and I’m very happy with it.  It took a bit of poking, prodding and modifications but it now looks fine in IE, Firefox and Safari/Chrome and I owe all the thanks to you, the readers.  I’m constantly amazed at how quickly the internet moves — and they’re quality movements.  Within only a few minutes of posting to my blog and sending out a tweet on Twitter, I got response, after response, after response.  I didn’t need to put together a grand ‘ol survey and get a legal department involved in what I can and can’t ask you.  I simply put my thoughts down to virtual pen and paper and voila, a masterpiece (or at least a new blog design) was chosen in mere minutes.

Today we’ve got some of the fastest communication methods available to us.  One-to-one conversations via cell phone or IM are great for individual conversations, and one-to-many conversations can be held on messages boards and FriendFeed to share with the world.  I think it’s great that we can communicate at the speed of light but there is a loss of privacy that comes with the advantage of speed.  That’s why there are companies today that are providing new methods of communicating that also cover privacy and security.

Sites like OtherInbox let you stay anonymous (and cut down on spam) behind the mask you call an email address and tools like PGP allow for encrypted communications between parties that need to keep their secrets, secret.  One of the largest challenges that all of these services will have to overcome is speed.  It takes a bit of setup to get PGP running properly and for OtherInbox, you need to go through all of your accounts and change your email address to an OtherInbox address.  These are barriers to entry that these organizations and others are successfully breaking through.  OtherInbox is working on a way to change your email addresses automatically and companies like Passpack are taking public-private keys and making the process of sending secure messages simple.

All of these organizations have a lot of work ahead of them but they’re all well on their way to making security just as important as speed.

If you’ve known me for more than about, oh 5 minutes, you’ll know that I’m always connected to the internet.  I live, breath and eat bits (not my cat) and bytes for breakfast and I love to chew on the latest and greatest Web 2.0 awesome-taffy that I find every day.  That’s why I was so excited when I found the greatest Twitter app for Blackberry (or Nokia, Sony Ericsson or any Java-capable mobile device) AND a great Twitter desktop app too boot.

Twibble (by spider labs GmbH in Hamburg, Germany) brings simplicity, convenience, power and control all into one tiny mobile application.  Not only does it work properly (auto updates, vibrate/alert on direct messages and @replies) but it also provides some pretty awesome additional features that I haven’t seen in the mobile Twitter application realm (at least not for Blackberry):
 

1. Send a tweet via your data plan or SMS! — Why is this important?  Well, sending a tweet takes data.  For many people, they don’t have unlimited data plans so being able to send via SMS could save some moolah.
2. GPS/Location awareness — Twibble can not only update your status or your location based on your GPS coordiantes but it also has built in support to map where your Twitter friends are.  Simple click on a user and choose to locate them on a map and off it goes.
3. Auto-refresh — This feature sounds simple but I have yet to find a Blackberry Twitter app that properly refreshed both tweets, DMs and @replies automatically in the background.
4. Hotkey support — While using Twibble, you could navigate the large and comprehensive menu structure or you could use some of their hot keys.  Press 2 or “R” and you’ll form an @reply to the person, 3 or “D” will direct message the current user you’re highlighting and 1 or “T” starts a brand new tweet (which can then be sent via SMS or data)!
5. Data savings — Not only does Twibble help to save data by Tweeting via SMS, it also only retrieves the latest tweets.  Some applications refresh all three timelines (making 3 API calls) to get your DMs, @replies and latest updates.  Twibble doesn’t.
6. Integrated twitpic support — While posting a tweet, you can select an image off of your phone and upload/refrence it automatically in your tweet.  Nice for the on-the-go web reporter.

There are a bunch of other neat features that Twibble mobile provides and you can check them out on the product page.  What I was surprised to learn was that Twibble also made a desktop Adobe AIR client as well.  This client is cleanly designed, supports multiple accounts and follows some of the same shortcuts and features that Twibble mobile has.  This makes the transition from desktop easy and fun.

Personally, I would pay for this app (maybe $10-$20) becuase it’s that good.  What do you think of Twibble?  What are some other clients that you have used?