My Online Thoughts & Pontifications

Twitter to Put Promoted Tweets in Your Timeline in Next 2 Months

We’ve already noted reports that Twitter is preparing to up its ad game by placing paid-for tweets right in the middle of your Twitter stream. Now we know the deadline for the change-over. Promoted tweets will start showing up in users’ timelines within the next 8 weeks, according to several sources who have been briefed on the matter.

Here’s hoping they offer a paid for Pro service which allows you to remove these!

Read more at Mashable

Rumours are afoot of a Facebook project, code named Project Spartan which aims to setup its own to HTML5 app store, therefore bypassing Apple’s stranglehold on iOS.

Apple has always been up front that there are two options for developing on iOS, native apps through their App Store, which they reserve the right to review and HTML 5, which doesn’t have the same restrictions.

Personally I'd welcome this project if it appears as more choice is generally a good thing. I suspect the limitations of an HTML 5 experience when compared to a native iOS app, although not massive, will still make the App Store the preferred destination for most punters.

Yesterday after months of development work, Reeder for the Mac officially moved out of beta and was launched on the Mac App Store.

I won’t bother writing a full review as Federico Viticci pretty much nails it in his review of Reeder on Mac Stories.  Suffice to say that I have been using the beta for months now. Its a fabulous app, with a gorgeous interface and all the features you have come to know and love on the iPad and iPhone, plus a few more such as feed management.

Take a few moments to read Frederico’s review and then get over the Mac App Store and download it right away!

With Apple taking the unprecedented step of announcing the agenda for tomorrow's WWDC keynote before the curtain goes up, we know they will be talking about iOS5, OSX Lion and iCloud but what will we hear specifically?

There is rumour and speculation all over the web, so of it likely to be pretty accurate, some wide of the mark. I thought I'd add to the chorus by posting my personal wish list of what I would like to hear from Steve and Co. tomorrow evening:

iOS 5

• Better notifications - something has to be done here as multiple alerts get lost, some sort of drop down panel from the top of the screen would be good (similar to Android I understand) but quite frankly anything would be an improvement.
• Improved app switching - I know Apple introduced the double tap to switch in iOS4 but personally I find this really annoying, especially when switching back and forth between two apps repeatedly. This one is a no brained as we know that existing iOS betas have App switching via gestures as an option on the iPad and seeing this rolled out as standard across all iOS devices would be great
• Improved sync, especially files - Again another popular gripe is how hard it is to move files on and off the device and share them between applications. Like many I use Dropbox to support this, which many apps are increasingly supporting. However with the advent of iCloud, many of us are hoping this will provide an Apple powered answer to this issue, which will be fully integrated into iOS5.

iCloud

• Dropbox style functionality - See previous point
• Online backup of music - generally expected by all and would love to see this. I am pretty anal about back-ups, with multiple local copies and cloud solutions, hopefully covering any eventuality. The big issue with backing up to the cloud is both my iTunes and Aperture libraries, due to the Gb’s of data involved. Is the music side could be covered by the new iCloud service then that would allow me to remove one aspect of my online back-up strategy
• Online backup of TV & Films - an extension of the previous one to include not just music but practically anything held within iTunes. At the moment I only back-up films and TV programmes locally, due to the expense and time it would take to push these up into the cloud. Again if Apple could cover this off for me I would be a very happy man and would definitely look to buy the majority of my digital content through iTunes in the future.
• Online backup of Aperture Library - as previously mentioned this is the other large aspect of my current online back-up strategy. Personally speaking I could cope with loosing my music and videos but if I lost our photos, like many I would be devastated. Please Steve, can we roll iPhoto and Aperture into iCloud as well please?

Anything else?

• iWork 11 - I am a massive iWork fan, especially Pages and Keynote. Its now coming up to 2.5 years since the last update so I am desperate to see an update, hopefully with better support for formats such as Microsoft Word, to make it easier when sharing documents with colleagues.
• Lion release date and price - again widely expected but thought I would add it.

There are a lot of other rumours going around that sound interesting, the integration of Time Capsule into iCloud for instance, but for me the above is what I will be listening out for tomorrow.

Typically I will be doing a Duathlon as Steve takes to the stage, at least wanting to hear the news will hopefully drive me onto a competitive time!