iTwitter is a fast, flexible, rich featured twitter client for iPhone and iPod touch. It has a lot of cool features that you see in other Twitter apps, but rarely together.

UNIQUE FEATURES FROM iTwitter
- Badges to show number of unread tweets
- Landscape mode supported everywhere in iTwitter
- Landscape inline browser
- Address Book
- Landscape launch to compose
- Customizable user home screen(Big deal for business twitter account)
- Group feature
- Cached tweets for faster loading
- Inplace profile viewer

Other iTwitter FEATURES
- Handle multiple twitter accounts
- View your twitter timeline, replies, and direct messages
- Manage your favorite tweets
- Browse your following and followers
- Compose new tweets,
- Fast Retweet
- Reply directly to tweets and send direct messages
- Follow and un-follow people
- Inline TwitPic image viewer
- Upload pictures to TwitPic
- Unparalleled scrolling performance
- Twitlonger supported
- Uses secure connection (https)
- Custom searches
- Nearby searching
- Save your favorite searches
- landscape keyboard
- Conversational Threaded tweets

Poised to cause severe cases of ADD and OCD, iTwitter will Push updates to your phone as they happen. For Twitter addicts like me, it can be a blessing and a burden. It’s a fairly nice upgrade for users that are using TwitterFon, and the interface is a step up as well. The only catch is that to receive Push updates, those users must also be using iTwitter. I presume that they did that because it is new and they wanted to get it out there, and perhaps a later update will Push updates from anyone on any client.

I haven’t really found any client I like as much as I do TwitterFon, even popular ones like TweetDeck I just can’t get into (especially the Desktop version). This one seems pretty good so far, but the update timing is a little slow compared to the other products. With 3G connectivity a bane on the battery life, we gotta make the most of our activity time, and that can’t be sitting and waiting for updates. Hopefully they will improve on that in the future.

Check it out today iTwitter on AppStore

Here are some of my favorites so far, in no particular order:

BeeJive IM: Killer IM client that connects to all the popular IM services. Similar to Trillian without all the bloat. Uses IM threading just like the iPhone SMS app.

Urbanspoon: Tells you whats in the area to eat, reviews, and the price.

Radarscope: RadarScope is a specialized display utility for weather enthusiasts and that allows you to browse NOAA’s public NEXRAD Level 3 data feed.

Slacker Radio: Listen to over 100 expert programmed radio stations or create your own custom stations directly on the iPhone. Slacker Radio is the best way to discover new artists and hear your favorite songs.

FlightControl: Have you ever wondered what would happen if you were handed complete control over LA’s air space during your coffee break? Find out in this brilliant new casual game from Firemint! Air traffic control is the world’s most stressful job, but not for you. You don’t need heading angles, flight rules or meteorological reports, you’re a natural! A prodigy! A born controller! Just touch and drag the planes to their runway.

AOL Radio: AOL Radio powered by CBS Radio features over 200 stations that span more than 25 genres of music plus 150+ CBS RADIO stations from across the United States. For the first time, iPhone and iPod Touch users will be able to access hundreds of free music stations.

AOL SHOUTcast Radio: SHOUTcast Radio is one of the leading online directories of professionally and community programmed radio stations. There are over 25,000 stations from around the world and over 500,000 simultaneous listeners at any given time. SHOUTcast is known for its depth and breadth, with broadcasts ranging from globally recognized music to local music and talk stations.

TwitterFon: TwitterFon is a simple, clean, easy to use, and is a superfast Twitter client for your iPhone and iPod Touch. TwitterFon is focused on ease of use and 80% of your daily Twitter tasks, such as see your friends/replies/messages timeline, see favorites, and send/reply a tweet. You can also search tweets, get twitter trends, upload photos to twitpic.com, and update your location information.

Alarm Clock: For someone who is dead to the world when they are sleeping, this was a no-brainer App to download. Quite handy, I can’t believe this isn’t on the iPhone by default.

The new 3.0 Firmware introduced a lot of new features that the community has been demanding since the iPhone first went on sale.

You can see most of the new features here:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/

The one thing that stuck out to me as ‘missing’ when I was looking through the phone was the Tethering functionality. Tethering lets you use an external device such as a MacBook to use your phones data connection to access the internet. Previously, that page did not say AT&T was not supporting tethering, and you cannot find this option anywhere on the iPhone right now. Of course, with a jailbroken iPhone, you can access anything. That voids warranty though, so we don’t want to do that. But, there is a way to enable iPhone Tethering without jailbreaking the phone!

**Disclaimer: It is against AT&T TOS to use data tethering, so use at your own risk!**

On a Mac:

First, you need to have iTunes 8.2, an iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS, and 10.5.x Leopard Operating System for iPhone Tethering to work.

1. Download the AT&T carrier settings file (thanks Gizmodo)
2. Connect your iPhone to your Mac via dock or USB cable
3. Copy the following text: defaults write com.apple.iTunes carrier-testing -bool TRUE
4. Open the Terminal app, and paste the text you just copied in Step 3
5. Sync your iPhone in iTunes, when it says Ok to Disconnect, hold the Option key and click Restore in iTunes
6. It will ask what file to restore. Select the ATT_US.ipcc file you downloaded in Step 1 and click Restore

Now you can go into your Settings on the iPhone and see that Internet Tethering is a new option!

If you are using Windows, the steps are slightly different. You can view the steps over at krillr.com.

Be careful! AT&T does not want people using iPhone Internet Tethering right now because they do not have a data plan for that, so if you go online don’t transfer a lot of data and garner attention.

For those who don’t know, the iPhone and iPod Touch are identical (the iPod has no phone capability, obviously). As long as iPhone is on AT&T, I’ll never have one. I don’t think I would want my phone and iPod as one anyway for various reasons, but I digress.

The AppStore boasts a few hundred applications with more on the way. Apple is encouraging developers around the world to develop for the iPhone, and even make a little money too (some apps are free, others cost anywhere from 1.99 to 99.99).  The SDK has been available for some time now, and there are tons of unique apps on AppStore. Ironically, its the free ones that seem to be the best (the paid ones are poorly to mediocrely scored). Users weigh in on AppStore apps with reviews, for usability, performance, purpose, stability. It’s like a condensed version of an Amazon product page.

I browse the AppStore daily for new apps or updates. My only complaint with it so far, if not the only one, is that there isn’t a section to see ‘New’ apps.  I can’t tell if these are mixed in with the listings, but they are not easy to spot unless you have a pretty good memory. Perhaps a future update will make this easier to view.

I am an avid music lover, so I was quite thrilled to find the following apps on AppStore. Incidentally, they are what I consider the best current apps on AppStore so far, basically because they saved me from having to invest in Sirius or XM Radio (I have a huge disdain for FM radio- its disgusting crap that never changes because the industry is so messed up, but thats a whole other topic). Now with these I have immensely supplemented my playlist of ~3000 mp3s with free streaming music:

1. AOL Radio – Besides AOL Instant Messenger, this has to be hands down the best thing AOL has ever put out, period. With tons of stations at your fingertips, there is always something brand new just a tap away. So long as you have a data connection, you have music, and its all totally free. On top of that, you can mark favorites, or tap to purchase the track from an online store, and see a list of recently listened to songs for purchasing. This alone is worth the investment for an iPod Touch / iPhone. But wait, theres more.
2. Last.fm – Last.fm was another internet service that I was a heavy user of. It works based on delivering songs to you from picking genres you like. The userbase tags songs and artists so the results that stream to you are fine tuned. I used this a lot last year to discover new music and now its on the iPod Touch / iPhone too. It also keeps complete logs of what you’ve listened to on your account page. Can’t get any better than that.
3. Pandora – I remember when Pandora was an technical demo of sorts back in my first year of college (2000). I was quite impressed at the level of accuracy and the algorithm behind Pandora that makes it such a great / unique service. It’s very simple: Pandora lets you input your favorite bands, and based on what you put in, it creates playlists for you of music it believes you will enjoy. There are so many factors and ways it indexes music its insane- and for me, it’s rarely off the mark. Over 400 different musical attributes (see List of Music Genome Project attributes) are considered when selecting the next song. These 400 attributes are combined into larger groups called focus traits. There are 2,000 focus traits. Examples of these are rhythm syncopation, key tonality, vocal harmonies and displayed instrumental proficiency. It’s almost like Pandora can read your mind.
4. Tuner – Tuner is very similar to AOL Radio, but with full listings of Internet radio stations, or ShoutCast radio stations. These are indie stations created by users and their own playlists. There is just so much music here its insane. Comedy and talk as well. I heard this app was pulled from AppStore though, but I cannot confirm.
5. WeatherBug – Normally I wouldn’t dare ever suggest to anyone to put WeatherBug on their computer, due to its bugginess and spyware/adware it throws on your PC. But for a portable device like the iPod Touch / iPhone, it’s indispensable. If only the device’s Weather program was more robust I wouldn’t need this. But when you live at the beach, this is a must have- especially for the Google Map Weather Radar mashup.

This is just the start for what AppStore will have. It will only get better as time goes on. The top 5 apps above are free, with the exception of Tuner ($5.99).

The games are great too. One game, Super Monkey Ball (first released as a GameCube title, unbelievable) uses the accelerometers to guide the ball through the mazes. Just a glimpse of what is possible with the future of handhelds in general. It’s been said that the iPod Touch alone is as powerful as the Sega Dreamcast, a console from 2000/2001 which saw its demise when the Playstation 2 was released. That is pretty damn powerful, as most fans (including me) still have/use the Dreamcast from time to time. Mine is loaded with 800 classic Nintendo games. Child of the 80’s.

Get one of these. You’ll be glad you did.