The iPhone will no doubt see it's fair share of Twitter clients (just as the Mac has). Twitterrific is the big name in the Mac/iPhone Twitter app space, but in a client from Tapulous called "Twinkle" has also been generating some interest. Originally released as a jailbreak application for the iPhone and iPod touch, Twinkle has just debuted on the App Store with the ability to location-base your tweets.

While Twitterrific seems to have more precise locating abilities, Twinkle uses the location-based tweeting in interesting ways. For instance, you can see tweets originating within a certain mileage range from your location. Twinkle allows you to easily view your direct messages.

Overall, Twinkle looks like it will give Twitterrific a run for its money. Best part of all? Twinkle (iTunes Link) for iPhone and iPod touch is absolutely free.

Check out our gallery for some screenshots.

When the App Store first launched last Thursday, I saw Pandora and AOL Radio and immediately wondered if they would work on my first generation iPhone using EDGE. The quick answer is yes, however, you do make some sacrifices in one of the applications. Read my full review below to get the full details.

About Pandora (Download Link)
Pandora is a part of the Music Genome Project and allows you to create "stations" of your favorite artists. Pandora then pairs those artists to others you might like and plays an unlimited playlist based on your favorite artists. Pandora tracks your likes and dislikes and will play songs based on those results. Pandora lets you find new music for free, and who can argue with that?



About AOL Radio (Download Link)
AOL Radio is a CBS Radio partner that provides online streaming radio stations. Unlike Pandora, AOL Radio is a true streaming radio station in the sense that you can play local stations which support in-audio advertising. AOL Radio can use the location feature in order to find CBS affiliate stations that bitcast near you.



User Interface
Both Pandora and AOL Radio follow a similar user interface design: they both look like the iPod feature on iPhone/iPod touch. Both of the interfaces are nice, however, I have the same gripes for both. The volume controllers in both seem to be independent of the iPhone's volume controller. This can cause the audio to be distorted if you turn it up too much in the applications themselves since you can use the volume buttons on the side to control the audio volume as well.

Secondly, I would love to be able to quit the application and have the audio keep playing (I know, this is an Apple/SDK restriction, but it would still be nice). You can, however, lock the phone and keep the audio playing (which is a nice feature).

Both applications allow you to purchase the currently playing song from the iTunes WiFi Music store. AOL Radio also provides a link to find out more about the currently playing song on AOL Radio's site.

WiFi (or 3G) vs. EDGE Use
When you are playing the music over WiFi (or the 3G cell network), you get awesome audio quality. Both applications seem to provide audio quality that matches that of purchased iTunes songs. On EDGE, however, AOL Radio falls short by providing very low quality audio (I would guess 56k audio). However, Pandora on EDGE seems to maintain good audio quality when you have a signal that is greater than 2/5 bars.

So, who wins?
Since both of these applications are absolutely free and have equal pros and cons, I would recommend downloading both to see which one fits you the best. If you are on a 3G iPhone, both will work well no matter where you are (assuming you're within 3G coverage). However, if you have a 2G iPhone, you might prefer Pandora because it provides better audio quality over EDGE. You can download both applications by clicking the download links above.

Disclaimer: The Unofficial Apple Weblog and AOL Radio are both owned by AOL.

Facebook always seems to be on the forefront of iPhone development. They were one of the first social networking websites to have a good web application specifically designed for iPhone, and now they are one of the first big-name social networking sites to have a decent native application on the iPhone.

The native application looks very similar to the web-based version, but with a few minor "upgrades." You get photo taking/uploading support, iPhone-esqe photo galleries, and Facebook chat. Facebook chat really works wonders, especially if you have been using the web-only client.

The Facebook iPhone/iPod touch application is available right now for free from the AppStore.

There are historic days, people. The App Store went live, and all of a sudden, we're drowning in new things for the iPhone. But it's not just a big deal for iPhone owners -- this is a huge day for society and technology in general. While there have been lots of PDAs, and lots of apps to run on them, there's never been anything like the App Store before -- here's five ways that Apple's platform for iPhone application distribution will change our world.

1. Ubiquitous computing.

Any science fiction writer will tell you that we're already living the future -- we can teleport things, robots are easy to make, and almost anything dreamed of can be done if you have enough money to do it. But a technology really doesn't move from fantasy to reality until it's everywhere, and thanks to the iPhone 3G, computing has become just that. You can't take a laptop around with you all the time (as in, to a fancy restaurant or to the movies) to edit photos or post to your blog, but you can bring the iPhone. It's the ultimate ultramobile platform, and it's now cheap enough to be everywhere, and powerful enough that almost any common computing task can be done.

Four more huge changes after the jump.

We've all awaited the .Mac to MobileMe switch for a while now (some more than others). However, Apple's 6 hour time table for upgrading to MobileMe turned awry and led into an almost 24 hour up, down, up, up, down cycle.

If you're like most users experiencing the 24 outage, then you haven't been able to login and experience MobileMe first hand. So why not take a look at our gallery? We've got pictures of the entire MobileMe suite of web applications and user preferences: from the login screen to storage partitioning.

[via GearLive]

Tonight, we will all say "goodbye" to .Mac, a service that has been a small part of Apple for almost 8 years. iTools, .Mac's predecessor, was launched on January 5, 2000 at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco and was a free service that included a HomePage, iCards and the much coveted @mac.com e-mail address that is commonplace today (as well as the forgotten 'KidSafe,' which was a database of kid friendly websites Apple compiled so you could make sure your children weren't up to no good on your Mac). As more users came to the service and the cost of bandwidth went up, Apple began charging for the service and called it .Mac.

The name ".Mac" was born at the Macworld Expo in New York on July 17, 2002 and provided several new services including: a beefed up iDisk (with a dizzying 100 megs of space), Backup, and a free copy of Virex. On September 17, 2002, Apple announced that it would discontinue the free iTools service in favor for .Mac.

That brings us to, well, tonight. Apple is scheduled to take down .Mac and replace it with a newer, rebranded service named "MobileMe." While some scoff at the name, TUAW can't help but see the other side of the picture: look how far iTools has evolved over the past 8 years. So, join us in saying, "So long old friend, we hardly knew ye."

Do you have a favorite story to tell about iTools or .Mac? Be sure to mention it in the comments below! Apple is scheduled to take down the .Mac service between 6 p.m. and 12 a.m. pacific time.

How did we ever get by without tabbed browsing? Think back to the days of OS 9 and IE 4. Ugh.

JimD at creativebits has shared a cool trick (Firefox and Safari) for quickly returning to a previously visited website in a new tab, thus preserving the site you're currently browsing.

This got us thinking of some of our favorite browser tricks, like this one. If you've got several tabs open, you can move from one to the other with keyboard shortcuts. In Firefox, it's Command-Option plus the arrow keys. In Safari, it's Command-Shift plus the arrow keys.

Quickly jump to the address field with Command-L (both Firefox and Safari). It selects the full text, so you can either just start typing or hit Command-C to copy the url. Of course, Safari 3 lets you grab Web Clips and turn them into Dashboard widgets.

Have you got a favorite browser trick to share with newcomers to the Mac?

The slowness of Flash has long been a complaint on the fairer platform and it finally looks like somebody at Adobe was paying attention. Adobe Labs has released a beta for Flash Player 10 and among the changes is a major speed boost. Indeed commenting on his personal site, one Adobe Flash engineer has gone so far as to say that "this version of the player runs... [the GUIMark] benchmark substantially better on OSX than any previous Flash Player version. It should be up to 3 times faster" (more details here).

Adobe Flash Player 10 beta 2 is a free download from Adobe Labs. However, they warn that previous version should be uninstalled before updating.

[via MacNN]

If you think Firefox could run a little faster on your Mac, then you might want to download one of BeatnikPad's custom builds of Firefox 3. "Minefield" (previously known as BonEcho for pre-3.0 releases) is Neil Lee's custom build of Firefox. He is currently offering custom builds for:

• Minefield (Firefox) 3.0 for Intel
  
• Minefield (Firefox) 3.0 for PowerPC G5
• Minefield (Firefox) 3.0 for PowerPC G4

Neil Lee has been offering custom builds of Firefox for many years now. They can make Firefox run a bit faster and smoother on older Macs. You can download them for free (though donations are accepted) from the BeatnikPad website.


[via IGM]

"Some General Tips for Switch to Mac From Windows," is Walt Mossberg's new post in which he tells users, well, how to switch from Windows to a Mac with ease. He covers the menu bar, task bar, Start menu, control panel, keyboard shortcuts, quitting programs, minimizing windows, switching programs, right-clicking, and finally, dealing with the screen.

So, if you are a new Mac user, you might find these tips and tricks helpful. (Walt notes that you can also find tips similar to his on Apple's Mac 101 website.) I'm personally grateful to Walt for writing this blog entry, which is part of a larger article in the Wall Street Journal. This shows that there are still true big media journalists who are open to other platforms besides Windows/PC.

TUAW also invites you to check out our ever-growing Mac 101 section to find tips, tricks and more for getting around in Mac OS X.

Thanks, Christine!

According to Apple Support documents, personal domains will be kept intact with MobileMe. Blogger Sean Sperte noticed a "personal domain" option while watching the MobileMe quick tour. That prompted some investigation which led to this support document. Sure enough, it confirms that .Mac personal domains will remain untouched by the change:

"...If you have a personal domain setup for your iWeb site, it will continue to work without changing any settings at your registrar."

Thanks, Apple!

[Via Geek&Mild]

Here's a quick tip for Safari users. As you know, tabbed browsing is best thing to happen to the 'net since The Tron Guy. Keyboard jockeys create new tabs by pressing Command-T. But there are a few of you who dislike releasing the mouse, even for a second.

You folks can simply double-click the grey area next to a tab to create a new one. Everybody wins!

[Via Geek&Mild]

ICANN, the ruling body for Internet domain naming, has voted to relax a few rules that will supposedly open up a whole slew of top-level domain names, multiple news sources are reporting. They haven't exactly said why they're doing this, only that it will "preserve the security, stability, and global interoperability of the Internet." Which seems like a good reason, we guess. But whatever the reason, it's good news for people who don't want to use the old standbys of .com or .org -- now, bidding can start for .sex, .xxx, .post, or any other combination of letters.

Like, for example, .mac. Yes, for the first time in the history of the Internet, Apple would have been able to make good on its .Mac brand -- except that, as you know, they decided just a few weeks ago to change that brand to Mobile Me. Though we supposed mobile.me is probably out there somewhere.

Of course, as we've speculated before, the change to Mobile Me wasn't so much about domain names as it was about just getting away from the Apple brand, and creating a service that both Mac and PC users would be interested in. So odds are that Apple wasn't waiting for .mac anyway. But it is interesting that even though they can finally have it, they don't actually need it any more.

Thanks, Darcy L!

Some readers are reporting that they cannot login to their .Mac service. Apple is currently reporting that the Web Pages are down at mac.com.

"Members cannot access the www.mac.com website. It will be restored ASAP. Read more for interim solutions," Apple notes on the support website.

Could this mean that Apple is working on transitioning over to their MobileMe service? Well, time will tell. Be sure to stay tuned to TUAW for updates on the .Mac outage. If you spot any new changes with your .Mac service, be sure to leave a comment or send us a tip!


Update (7:05p EST): Some users are reporting that while .Mac is taking longer than normal, they are now able to login. Apple has yet to post any additional updates on their support website. The Web Page down status has not been removed.

Update (7:44p EST): Apple has updated the status page. The status currently reads, "Members cannot access the .Mac Welcome page. It will be restored ASAP." Stay tuned to TUAW for the latest about the .Mac outage.