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Posts tagged SocialScope
Socialscope Update Being Pushed Out to Some Users, Brings New Features.
May 1st
Oh Socialscope, what a love-hate relationship we BlackBerry users have with you.
Socialscope has been in private beta for what seems like forever. The problem is once you manage to actually get in to the beta, you may or may not actually receive updates to the application before you move into a nursing home. How the team at Socialscope decides which users do and do not receive updates is unclear, but it appears that the majority of people don’t receive the updates right away.
For whatever reason, I have been one of the fortunate few to receive updates in what appears to be (based on other Twitter users’ feedback) the earliest timeframe possible.
Thursday night I was prompted to update the Socialscope application from 0.9.5.88 to 0.9.5.98. I assumed that the update would just be some much-needed bug fixes as the last couple updates have been, but luckily, there were some significant new features introduced.
As you may know Socialscope isn’t just a great Twitter client for BlackBerry, but it also does an excellent job integrating Facebook, Flickr, and even Foursquare. In this update Facebook implementation got a huge update bringing in-app profile viewing and full photo album viewing. Also, more items are being pulled into the Facebook feed, instead of just statuses and wall posts, some 3rd-party application information is included. This isn’t necessarily a good thing however, unless of course you want to know who your friend’s “lover of the day” is. Still, the ability to easily view people’s profiles without being redirected to Facebook’s mobile site is a welcome addition, and photo album viewing rivals that of the native Facebook for BlackBerry application (which I don’t use thanks to Socialscope).
The new version also brings a slightly refreshed “tweet view” with refreshed fonts and a cleaned up layout. The functionality is the same but it looks better and displays information more clearly. New-style retweets are also finally supported in this build, allowing users to properly view and send retweets via “retweet” and “comment” options. Under the hood, this new version runs much faster and loads avatars, tweets, and any photos included quicker and more reliably. Many times in previous versions photos wouldn’t load until I individually selected tweets, even then they would appear slower than they should. Geotagging has also become much more reliable, finding my location more quickly and more accurately, making Foursquare much more useable.
All in all this was an unexpectedly feature-filled update. While it’s hard to predict Socialscope’s direction with the application (seeing how it’s been in beta for so long) it’s nice to see they are still bringing new feature to at least some users.
If you aren’t a Socialscope user yet go ahead and try your hand at getting an invite into the beta, and if you already use the application, let us know if you’ve seen an update lately and what version you’re running.
Twitter for BlackBerry vs SocialScope
Feb 19th
It’s been just over a week since Twitter for BlackBerry came out so I figured it’s about time to compare it to my preferred Twitter app: SocialScope.
I’m only going to be comparing the similar functions of the two apps so even though SS carries Flickr (anyone use this? what’s it for?) and foursquare support, I won’t be discussing them further than this sentence that ends right here.
After waiting for months for a SS invite, I finally got one on Christmas Eve (talk about timing!). I actually got it from a friend who had an extra – like my own personal Santa. With most BB apps, it’s the little things I appreciate. For example, SS puts all of the tweets I send facing the opposite direction (the people I follow show up avatar then tweet; mine show up tweet then avatar), making it easier to find my own tweets; T4BB doesn’t have this option. SS also has the option for 2 accounts, though it’s possible T4BB will add this feature in the future.
Also, SS (and UberTwitter – haven’t used any others significantly to vouch for) use different colors for @replies and DM’s in your timeline (replies are yellow, DM’s are blue) to help them stand out.
One area T4BB totally beats SS is with software updates. It’s only been a week, but T4BB has already updated their app (though rather minimally) where as SS updates are as hard to get as, well, the app itself. Another is that T4BB alerts you to new tweets via your Messages folder (“opening” the message opens T4BB) which is also nice.
As far as appearances go, both apps look clean and polished, as you would expect from any app really.
SS also has significantly more options in the settings menu. You can choose how tweets are displayed (username or actual name), what service you use for uploading images, image caching, etc.
I really don’t see myself leaving SS, but you never know. We’ll just have to wait and see what RIM does with their app
So what do you guys think? Like SocialScope? Or Twitter for BlackBerry? Or maybe you prefer UberTiwtter? Or even Seesmic?
Leave some comments and let us know!
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