have you any wool?

If you’re a twitter “power user” or even just an average twitter fan, you’ve probably heard of TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a desktop twitter client build on Adobe Air. Most consider it THE premiere twitter client, with Seesmic a close second.

Yesterday, TweetDeck finally released the long awaited TweetDeck for iPhone. I spent the evening toying around with the app and I must say, I’m impressed. Very impressed. The app manages to capture the look and feel of the desktop version, but also expand on it in ways that make sense on the iPhone and take use of its unique interface and user interaction.

Navigating your Incoming Tweets
Column based groups, replies and dms are all back on the iPhone app. The initial view is zoomed out and flicking left and right allows you to easily scroll through each column, each showing the last 4 tweets. Tap a column and it zooms in, revealing the rest of the tweets and allowing you to scroll through them. Zooming in also introduces left and right arrows to cycle through your column list.

Targeting a Specific Tweet
Once you’ve zoomed in to a single column and are viewing the contained tweets, clicking on a single tweet brings up a new screen. From this screen you can reply, retweet, favorite and even email the tweet. On a user level, you can also dm from this screen or click through to the user’s profile.

Groups
Groups are included just like on the desktop client and work the same way. One cool feature pertaining to groups is that when you’re zoomed into particular user’s profile, you can add them to any one or more of your groups from that screen. I think users will find this easier than having a group and trying to plug people into it, especially when you’re following people that you’re not familiar with. You can pull up their profile, see what they’re about and then categorize them from there.

Sync
Perhaps the best innovation is the ability to synchronize your columns across clients. You can now create a TweetDeck account that saves your preferences to the cloud and then syncs them to your iPhone and multiple desktop clients if you so choose.

Integration
The iPhone app supports a host of URL shrinking services and appears to default to bit.ly. It also supports TinyPic and yFrog as its photo services, though I expect more may be added later.

There are many more features not listed here that make this a great twitter app for the iPhone, if not the best. In my testing I did have the app crash a couple of times, though there have already been bug reports submitted to TweetDeck regarding the issues.

Be sure to check out TechCrunch for some video demos of both the desktop and iPhone clients.

Microsoft is currently working on a project called Microsoft Tag that I was introduced to today. The concept is pretty simple and not unlike the barcode readers you currently see on mobile phones like the iPhone. You hold your camera up to a  barcode, snap a picture, and the application downloads pricing information or product details. Handy, right?

Well what if you could do this with anything? That’s what Microsoft Tag allows you to do. You signup for an account on their website and can instantly start creating these Tags. You can type in some free form text, create a vCard or embed a URL. When you’re finished, MS does it’s magic and a simple square image is produced that is filled with a multitude of color triangles. This, in effect, is a barcode.

So how do you read it? Well that’s easy too. MS has produced a Windows Mobile app and an iPhone app that reads these Tags instantly and performs a function. By instantly I mean, you don’t have to *snap* the photo. When the software detects the image pattern, it’ll launch the resulting function automatically. And by function, I mean – it might link your web browser to target the URL, it might dial a phone number, import a vCard into your contacts or just display some free form text that the Tag author inteded you to see. What’s more, you can share these tags with your friends.

So – cool idea, what would I use it for? Oh the possibilities are near limiteless provided MS continues to expand on the concept and it takes hold with consumers, which I think it will. For starters, you’ve got business cards. Put one of these tags on your business card and when it’s scanned, it’ll import your vCard into someone’s phone. No need to type it out. Heck, don’t even PRINT your contact info on the card – just use the tag. That way, your clients are forced to import your vCard to get your info and now you’re in their phonebook and not another business card lying on kitchen counter. You could place a particularly eye catching ad in a magazine with a little Tag that directs people to your website. Your restaurant could place a tag on it’s takeout menu that will launch google maps and give people directions to your location. These are all some of the ideas Microsoft has already posted on their site.

But…..what else could you do? I started thinking up some ideas and suggestions and I may continue to add to this post as more come to mind. Some are probably silly, some already done, but these are just some things I thought would be cool.

• Obviously an API is needed so that you can create tags on the fly in your web applications and would not need to visit Microsofts site to produce them manually.
• Phone Number Validation: If a phone is required to sign up for your webapp, you could use an API to produce a Tag that directs the users phone to call an authentication server of even send a text. You could verify this text came from their entered phone number and you’ve just validated their entry.
• Integration with a push/pull desktop App: This would take MS getting involved, but often if you’re out on the run you don’t have time to stop and smell the roses. So scanning a tag of a movie poster takes you to their official website to view the trailer. Great, but you don’t have time right now. Instead, have it queue up your scanned tags and when you get home you could have a desktop app pull down all the ones you’ve scanned. Or with a push service, have them there already waiting.
• Integration with other reminder or bookmarking services like Evernote. Scanning a tag sends it to evernote so you can check it out later. You could even embed it with geo-location information because you’re taking the pick with your mobile. So if the Tag was as some fancy restaurant you wanted to remember, you’d know where it was.
• Reporting Malicious Tags: I think they need to implement a feature when you can flag a tag as being malicious. Maybe a tag at the local store actually sends you to a porn site. You don’t want your kids inadvertently scanning those.

These are just a few ideas I had. I’ll post some more later. Comment and let me know what you think!

Wordress Tag for Microsoft Tags Blog Post