Tag Archives: mtwit

No Twitter support outside US?

failwhaleI know this is a bit off topic but it’s something that’s been bugging me. As many of you know, I am working on a Flash Lite based Twitter application (mTwit) that will run across all devices that have Flash Lite on board. Even though my account and my server have been whitelisted on the Twitter service, this is now the second day that my Twitter account gets suspended “due to strange activity“. I’m not sure what else I can do to make sure that a) Twitter doesn’t suspend me while developing the app and b) my server back end gets accepted as a Twitter proxy. I’m pretty sure I did all I was supposed to and did all I can.

In dealing with the Twitter support people, I noticed that it seems that there isn’t a single support representative outside the US. That means that getting support outside the US business hours seems to be a big no-no. I wonder how many people outside the US use Twitter. I bet it’s a massive number.

This is rapidly becoming one of my pet peeves… Companies/startups should start thinking outside their borders! Especially when they are active on the Internet. The Internet doesn’t stop at the border!

So… Because of no support outside US business hours I won’t be on Twitter (and won’t be working on my app) until they reinstate my account.

Read full storyComments { 1 }

mTwit progress update

I know, I know… everyone is doing Twitter clients these days. It’s the new “Hello World”! With this “Hello World”, I want to show the possibilities of the Flash Platform for mobile phones. I am building “mTwit”, the Twitter client for all recent Flash-enabled phones. I decided to publish it with our new distributable player. Right now, that gives me a potential install base of 27 million users… Now, if they all donate $1, that would make me very happy ;-)

Right… about the app now. I basically started from scratch after I found out that I completely over-architected the app and that I was stuck. After reading up on a few best practices, I decided to use the Feather Framework. Although I did need to tweak it quite a bit, this framework and its components are an excellent starting point. I am also building this application so that it automatically and optimally uses the available screen size. Below is a screenshot of the app running on a Nokia E71. You can see that the components automatically adapt to the wider screen size.

mtwit_e71

I also recorded a quick sneak peak of the current build of the application. I recorded this from a Nokia N95 and I hope that it gives you a bit of an idea on the performance.

The application is far from ready though. There’s still a lot to do, but I think I am making good progress. Some people thought I was going to release it today… Now don’t get me wrong… I do appreciate your enthusiasm! However, I don’t want to rush things. I want to make sure that everything works and that the user experience is just as good as other Twitter apps you may be using. So… stay tuned! I will update you on my blog when I have more…

Read full storyComments { 7 }