Homescreens | First & 20

Thu, Mar 11

If you haven’t heard, Brizzly (left) bought Buzz Andersen’s Twitter client, Birdfeed. I’ve only played around with Brizzly for a few minutes, but the similarities to Tweetie (right) are pretty obvious (pull-down refresh, the added footer tab menu, and the blue-ball status indicator within the menu). I personally loved Birdfeed and wish they just changed the name and icon, added a couple of their features and kept the design and layout as-is.

Couple more gripes pointed out by John Gruber are the removal of Instapaper support and having to make a Brizzly account instead of just logging into Twitter.

You will be missed, Birdfeed—But congrats to Buzz! Can’t wait to see what’s next for him.

Fri, Dec 4

Twitter unveils new mobile version

Mike Schramm, of The Unoffical Apple Weblog:

Twitterific lead the charge way back when, but Tweetie came quickly after and then the flood gates were opened. But now, a late and unexpected challenger has entered the ring: Twitter themselves.

I haven’t played with the new mobile version of Twitter, but I totally agree with Gruber:

This would have been great two years ago, before there were native iPhone apps. Still might be great for Android, Pre, and Symbian phones.

Wed, Nov 25

iPhone App Site Design Trends

Web Designer Wall:

A nicely designed website for the app is very important. A beautiful website helps to drive traffic in and also makes your app stand out from the crowd.

Some pretty good advice for those building websites for iPhone apps. My favorite sites out of the examples shown are TapBots (Weightbot & Convertbot) and atebits (Tweetie).

Sun, Oct 11

Thu, Sep 3

Looks like the developers of new Facebook app (left) took some advice from Loren Brichter. Not only did they do away with the “shake-to-refresh” feature, but they made a button to refresh new statuses at the top of the list, tucked under underneath until you scroll up — exactly like Tweetie (right).

Tue, Jul 21

Besides being stupid, the other problem with shake-to-do-something on the iPhone is that the iPhone is heavier and much more expensive than a nano. It’s not something you want to go flying out of your hand.

—Loren Brichter on Facebook’s Shake-to-Refresh Feature