First of the random ideas for Over The Air hacks – a Twitter client for Windows Mobile.
When posting a tweet, the key is speed. I don’t want to wait to launch an app, I don’t want lots of features. I just want something to take my message and post it.
When reading tweets, I don’t mind waiting (e.g. for the list to be gathered).
And on mobile, I don’t really want regular notifications or polling. Following over a hundred people, I’d either hose my phone battery by constantly getting updates, or I’d miss most updates anyway. I just need to be able to see a list of updates when I want.
I went for a Today screen widget for posting, written in C++ to keep it quick and lightweight.
And if you click on the twitter logo, it launches your default browser at the mobile Twitter site http://m.twitter.com/. The best of both worlds 🙂
Download a copy here
To set your username and password, go to the Options dialog for “Twit Today” from the Today screen control panel applet.
Update: There has been some confusion in the comments… this is a ‘Today screen‘ plugin – which means it is for the Today screen that you get on touchscreen devices. It is not a ‘Home screen’ plugin (which are meant for devices without a touchscreen). Apologies to the people whose time I wasted by being unclear!
Update 2: The current version is 1.6 (version is shown in the settings screen where you enter your username and password). If you have an older version than this, please download it again.
Tags: mobile, overtheair, twitter, twittoday, windows mobile, windowsmobile
Cool idea. I tried installing, though, and I’m not getting any joy. The download I grabbed was 18.4K in size, and installed w/o errors. I’m intalling an an HTC / T-Mobile Wing (Win Mo 6 Pro), and I’m installing onto a memory card. The install created a TwitToday folder in Program Files, but there were no files in that folder. Any ideas?
I heard someone else mention that it wouldn’t work when installed on a memory card – don’t know why. They said it worked fine when they installed to main memory though – have you tried that?
Yes, Dale, that seemed to work. Thanks!
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Sweet!!! Just downloaded and it’s working beautifully!!
Thanks!
great! glad to hear that’s it’s working. thanks very much for the feedback 🙂
Verizon XV6700: It installed fine and displays fine. On the 6700, then top QWERTY row acts as number keys when a control button is pressed. This program acts as though the control key is always pressed, even though other applications are working fine. I can only type messages that don’t contain letters from the top row of keys!
@KertDawg
That’s very odd. No idea why… I haven’t written any code to handle key presses here. It’s just a plain text box.
Do you have a page for installation help? I have no idea what to do with the CAB file.
@Cyndi – I’ve not written anything myself. You may want to try this
[…] Options dialog for “Twit Today” from the Today screen control panel applet. Download Twit Today HERE! Technorati Tags: […]
[…] Now for those of you already Twittering, you can now give fresh Tweed from your Windows Mobile device! Download the app for your pocketPC here: Twitter for Windows Mobile […]
Great idea! I’m having some difficulty however. I downloaded and installed the cab without difficulty. But nothing shows up on my homescreen. I do have the MSN plugin and the Google plugin installed. Is it possible that they are taking up the space that your screen widget needs to display properly? Thanks in advance for your time.
Wow, I was just about to give Twitter a try and then I saw this! Perfect!
[…] Although a lot of people seem to be finding my Twitter widget for Windows Mobile useful, it seems that there are also a few people who noticed that it was hacked together in a few hours overnight! […]
@cyclefreaksix – I think it’s unlikely that other plugins should have anything to do with this. Can I confirm a few things:
– you have a touchscreen WM5/WM6 PDA?
– you installed the CAB to main memory and not a storage card?
– you went to the Items tab of the Today Screen applet in Settings after installing the CAB?
@Jeff Kirvin – Thanks very much!
Awesome plugin. Too bad it refuses to send messages with “???” skandinavian letters.
I installed the plug in but nothing shows up on my home screen. I Have a T-Mobile Shadow w/windows mobile 6. I also have on my home screen google search. Please help
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@Sean
I’m not familiar with the Shadow – but the fact that you said “Home screen” instead of “Today screen” suggests that it is a WM Standard (rather than Professional) device. Is this right?
Because this is a Today screen plugin, which will only work on devices with a touchscreen (e.g. WM 6 Professional).
Sorry for the confusion
Thanks Dale that clears up my confusion
This is really interesting, but there’s two things I’d love to see in version 2.
1. A transparent background, a la the Google Search Today plugin.
2. Triggering the current SIP on touchscreen devices, also like the Google plugin or Live Search. Currently, there’s no way to actually use this on my Mogul without pulling out the slider keyboard. It was obviously designed with Treos in mind.
[…] if this all sounds great to you, head over here to download your free copy of Twit Today. And let the developer know what you think of it. (via […]
[…] Twit Today es un cliente gratuito de Twitter para Windows Mobile que se integra muy bien a nuestro “Today“ Lee mas de : Gratuitos | Pocket Pc […]
@Jeff Kirvin – thanks very much for your comments.
Transparent background is interesting, and I’ll look into that.
As for the SIP support – it’s a fair point. I wrote it essentially for my own use – and both my devices (HTC Universal and HTC Advantage) have full QWERTY keyboards. I’ll try and add SIP support when I get the chance.
Looks like a nice plugin with some great potential, but the keyboard on my Samsung SCH-i730 (WM5 PPC Phone Edition) doesn’t seem to completely work. The letters that have numbers that get used with the Function key seem to also get interpreted as number. As the shift key get see as the * that is it’s function alternative. Hope there might be something you can do to improve the hardware keyboard support. Either way, keep up the great work!
@SinisterJunkie
Sorry to hear you’ve had problems with it. It’s a weird one… I’ve not seen this for myself, but I’ve read people report the same problem with the Google search Today screen plugin. Very strange – I wonder why that happens…?
Any chance you will develop a version for the rest of us (i.e. those without touch screens)? Have heard great things about the app, but I have a Moto9Q – no touch screen 🙁
No problem of course. I’m also not sure why it happens, but appreciate your response and look. Still looks like a sweet plugin for some. 🙂
[…] had mentioned about using Twitter on Windows Mobile devices here and here. Well, I just came across this plugin, which allows you to tweet directly from your device’s today screen! As you can see, it […]
@Kathy Jacobs – I’ve not written a Home screen plugin before. And from what I hear, they’re a little complicated. I might have a look at it at some point, but to be honest, it probably wont be any time soon. Sorry!
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[…] sofware was made by Dale Lane, and you can grab a copy […]
I too see the same problem on my xv6700. in the today screen it treats any key that a character that a telephone key pad has seems to be hardcoded to the number/symbol and I can’t get the letters on the keyboard to show. even with fn/cmd key etc.
I think the today screen is assuming that txt entry that might happen on it would be all phone number related. 🙁
@Jeff – that would make sense. I wonder why this only happens for some models?
Unfortunately, neither of my WM models have this problem, and the emulators don’t either. So I’ve not been able to recreate it, or see for myself what key codes are getting generated.
[…] facto, são das pequenas coisa que nascem grandes ideias: Dale Lane teve a excelente ideia de fazer um pequeno aplicativo que permite criar entradas no Twitter, […]
Nice, a couple suggestions:
1) On the XV6800 in horizontal orientation, the “OK” button is a bit squashed.
2) Would be very nice if pressing Enter on slideout keyboard would send the twit. Don’t want to break out the stylus to press the aforementioned wee “OK” button.
3) Would be nice to put an inline message in the textbox indicating success. As is there is no feedback to indicate the mesage was sent.
4) Would also be nice to put a inline message in the textbox when login information is not configured, or to use IE cookies somehow. My first tweet was met with a 401 error, because of course I didn’t RTFM. 🙂
@Wade – thanks very much for the suggestions. They’re good ideas, and I’ll add them to the list for when I next have a play with the code for this.
Dale, this is just the sort of thing I was looking for, so thanks! I’d like to second the SIP-support request from above. Also, it’s hardwired into my fingers to end text-box input by typing or drawing an ENTER, but that doesn’t work for TwitToday: I have to explicitly hit the OK button. Please consider adding support for ENTER, too! 🙂
Thanks again!
Oops, just noticed that Wade had already asked for the ENTER feature. Nevermind…
Excellent plugin for my HTC Touch. I hope you don’t mind me sharing it with my visitors on my website (wm6software.net).
@Kyle – Thanks for the comment. I don’t mind people mentioning my work, but a link back to me somewhere would be nice!
[…] I was thinking it would be great if someone came up with a similiar one for microblogging. Enter Twit Today. The only one I found so far. It’s ok but I’d say don’t leave the text input […]
Hi
Amazing working. Anyway, when you use a keyboard like touch dual.. you can type letters and just numbers.
This means that is impossible to use.
Txs for your work.
hope my comments help.
I would also like to vote for a SIP version.
I have a Dell x51v hacked to run WM 6.1 but no physical keyboard (though I will try with my Stowaway BT keyboard at the weekend).
[…] have even tested a few apps (tinytwitter, twitterlicious, and twittoday) for my windows mobile 6 device. Even though you don’t need an app to send tweets you can […]
this app rules, but, since twitter gets overloaded a lot this will try to send the message till twitter times out, then give a 504 error and erase the message, can this be fixed?
@nick – sure. I also want to get it to try and spawn a background window and do the work of sending the tweet in that background process. This means it wouldn’t block the Today screen while it waits for a timeout, too. Unfortunately, I’m short of time at the moment, so it’ll have to wait for a few weeks though – sorry.
Awesome plugin. I was just thinking today that I would like a Twitter plugin for my Today screen on my Mogul and when I did a search in Google your app popped up all over the place. Awesome job!
I would also like to throw my vote in for the support for SIP. It seems that this is the most requested feature. When I switch to the slideout keyboard my Today screen does not scroll down to the plugin and I have to type blind, go back to portrait mode to check my typing, and then hit the ok button. It works, but is clumsy for us Mogul users.
Perhaps instead of the static text box it would show your current status until you clicked on it to update your status? (I hope that made sense.)
I hope that you continue to actively support this plugin. Again, awesome job!
Love the idea but keep getting a “403” error when I try to post the tweet. I’m pretty sure the username/pwd are right. Any idea what could be causing that?
This is on an AT&T Tilt smartphone with WM6. Thanks.