David Chan’s Blog

One of the things I love doing on my iPhone is to capture and share candid moments in my life.  And there’s probably no better way to broadcast novel messages than with Twitter.

There are a lot of ways of getting pictures on Twitter with the iPhone, and I’ll list several here.  Each of the methods I’ve tried have their pros and cons, and I’m uploading via 3G, and not wifi.

1. Twitterific

The first method is via the app Twitterific (free ad-supported version, downloaded from app store).  To attach an image onto a tweet, simply press the “camera” icon, and you will have the option of taking a picture.  The image upload doesn’t take too long (around 15-20 seconds).  Here’s a screenshot of the image quality:

To date, all of my images uploaded this way have been rotated sideways.  The image quality is average but still very decent.

2. Twittelator

Twittelator is another iPhone app found in the App Store.  Like Twitterific, it is free, but does not have any ads.  The camera icon makes a familiar return in the create tweet screen in Twittelator, and pressing on it will give you the option of selecting a picture to upload or taking a new picture.  The image upload time was very fast.  Here’s a screenshot of an uploaded image:

Here, the image has been cropped, and that some of it has been cut off.  This image size isn’t acceptable for me as it’s hard to tell which parts will be cropped when you’re taking and uploading a picture in the wild.

3. Email picture to TwitPic

The third method doesn’t require an app - just a setting on TwitPic.  Goto the TwitPic website and login with your Twitter credentials and you should see some new options in the top navigation.  Enter the settings screen and you will get to see your private email address for uploading images to TwitPic.  I’m going to assume everyone knows how to email photos from the iPhone, and there doesn’t need to be text in the body to upload your photo.  The subject line of the email becomes your tweet, and your post will appear in Twitter anywhere between 1-5 minutes.  Uploading an image with this method on 3G takes quite a while (30 seconds to 1 minute), and you’ll probably want to refrain from doing anything which might stop the uploading.  Here’s a screenshot of the uploaded image:

The long upload time is offset by the great image quality and (relatively) high resolution of the picture.

For the most part, Twitterific has the best balance between upload time and image quality.  The rotated picture is definitely a setback, but I’m sure Iconfactory will look into that issue.  Emailing to TwitPic directly is probably the best way to go if you want quality, and currently that is my method of choice for uploading images to Twitter.

Update: July 27

I’ve recently started using Posterous as an alternative to emailing to TwitPic directly.  Posterous is basically a blog you update via email, and any media attached to the email message gets embedded into your post.  Although Posterous is a standalone (micro) blogging platform, it does integrate with Twitter, and any posts you create in Posterous gets tweeted.  I’ll spare you any of the signup details (as it’s actually quick and quite painless), and go right into the image quality.

Mousing over the file will give the above tool tip, letting users know that they can view the full size of that image.  Of course, the “full size” is the shrunken down version of the original, done automatically by the iPhone Mail.app, but it’s still nice to be able to get an even larger image.  Image upload time was decent, from around 25-35 seconds on 3G.  As a bonus, Posterous sends you an email when the upload is complete, letting you know if the upload was successful.  Great feature for Roger’s quirky 3G network (though some people might find confirmation emails annoying).

I was a loyal fan of uploading images directly to TwitPic, but as it stands, Posterous is slightly faster and offers a few nicer features, and leaves me wondering if there’s a need to use Twitter clients to send pictures at all.

The last time I called into any of the Rogers customer service lines was about 2.5 years ago, to check my account status.  That was long enough for me to forget why I don’t like calling in for help: the Roger’s “priority queue”.  Regardless, I dialed in today to inquire about the new iPhone, and if I could take advantage of the $30 6GB data plan.

After about twenty minutes of holding (in the queue of priority), I finally got a hold of a representative in the Cancellations department.  I decided to play hardball with Rogers to see if I could get a retention plan to offset some of the hefty costs for the phone, and I fully expected resistance on their side.  After about fifteen minutes with the customer service rep, I walked away with a great plan and a lot of savings.  I was really surprised at how that happened, but they mentioned that I was a “top tier” customer who generates lots of revenue for them.  They got me to sign with them for another 3 years, but I was going to do that for the subsidy on the phone anyways.

The voice plan they offered me comes to $20 per month, and comes with:

• 300 daytime minutes
• Evenings and weekends starting at 6pm
• Call display

I also added the $30 for 6GB of data for the iPhone, and purchased the 8GB iPhone for $249.  There is also a $35 “manufacturer” fee for the phone, but to compensate for that, the service rep waved my first month’s voice fees. They are going to UPS express the phone to me, which should arrive in two business days.

All in all I am very satisfied with this phone plan, which totals to $50 a month before systems access fee, 911-fee and taxes.  It’s still not the best but it is definitely better than what some of my (Canadian) friends are paying.  I’m not suggesting that everyone should call into Rogers and play hardball, but do find out what your loyalty is worth, and perhaps you might walk away with a fair cell phone plan.

Recently I’ve been given a chance to do some work on formatting existing web content to display nicely on the iPhone. Normally, making webpages mobile-compatible consists of having simple layouts, large and readable (non-serifs) fonts, and little to no pictures/media. However, the iPhone has a fully capable browser which allows a web developer to throw existing mobile web pages out the window. That and the overall slickness of the device and its UI really discourages anyone from making mediocre Web1.0-looking pages.

The zooming on the iPhone’s web browser is pretty easy and intuitive, but I have never been a big fan of zooming. Even with the location specific zooming (via double-tapping on a text block or image) I still find it a bit cumbersome. Using the <viewport> meta tag, you can control the dimensions and scaling of your page. Here are the attributes that can be set, from the Apple iPhone web development website:

• width The default is 980. The range is [200, 10,000].
• height The default is calculated based on the width and aspect ratio. The range is [223, 10,000].
• initial-scale is the scale to render the page when it first loads. The default fits the page to the screen. The range is [minimum-scale, maximum-scale]. Keep in mind that the user can change the scale, either through the pinch gesture or by a double tap.
• user-scalable determines whether or not the user can scale the page. The default is yes.
• minimum-scale is the lower bound for scaling. The default is 0.25; the range is [>0, 10].
• maximum-scale is the upper bound for scaling. The default is 1.6; the range is [>0, 10].

However, setting a specific width for the webpage is difficult because of the iPhone’s tilting capability. The screen, or viewport, is 320 pixels when in portrait mode, and 480 pixels in landscape view. To make a page look the same in both modes, the folks at iPhoneWebDev have discovered the following meta tag:

With this meta tag, you can set your page elements to be 100% width, and your pages will fit in both viewing modes. Font sizes will be consistent too! This is a good starting point for any webpage designed for the iPhone.