Today, more than 400,000 apps are available fort the iPhone. Yet, only little public research is available on how people use all these apps. I am working on this! Especially, I am interested in how people customize and organize their devices. This study aims on exploring how people arrange icons on their devices. To take part please perform the following steps. Depending on your iPhone skills, this may take a few but not more than 10 minutes.

This sounds like a pretty interesting research project, I’d love to see the results found from it eventually - looking at my icon layout it feels pretty obvious that I just like it to be a checkerboard of colours, but i’m curious to see what’s found beyond that. If you’re interested in helping out and contributing as well follow the link or hit up istudy@dfki.de, for every 100 participants a €20 iTunes coupon will be raffled off as well to sweeten the deal.

A huge achievement for Apple, and completely deserved.

(via MacStories)

Any lucky British so-and-so’s heading to WWDC next weekend and wondering how to sort data for your UK iPhone, a nice reminder from last year.

Because iOS devices are regulated size and there isn’t a varied range - the size and shape marginally fluctuates with each generation - unlike Android which is more a hotch-potch of every mobile hardware maker going with different shapes, sizes, screens, hardware and cameras. With iOS devices designers can invest time and money to make quality accessories for the devices rather than the crappy screen protectors for Android phones you can only find for 99p on eBay. Of course you can get crappy 99p screen protectors for the iPhone too but we also have access to a tonne of quality products.

I think, because the iPhone has such a devoted following we get some crazy amazing accessories you would never dream of having on any other phone, just the other day I saw some kind of case which used mirrors to make what you were seeing on your iPhone screen 3D, I mean wow!

I was also just thinking I might try and make ‘I Was Just Thinking…’ a regular feature, every Thursday or something - it’s one of the few days I don’t have anything going on! What do you think?

Really liked this post, though I must confess i’m still a devoted Tweetie user, there’s nothing else out there with the same refined interface that has caught my eye. I’m not a power user of Twitter either so the missing features don’t really bother me though I do agree we shouldn’t have to put up with the lack of feature in the application. There are so many more promising Twitter clients in the App Store for iOS than for OS X, maybe the Mac App Store will remedy this though. Regardless, an update should have been put out for Tweetie a long time ago. Tweetmate though. Wow. It looks to have the kind of ‘refined interface’ i’ve been waiting for. Huwbert out

assortedslices:

Twitterrific for Mac was the reigning Mac Twitter client. Other clients, such as Tweetdeck, had been built in Adobe Air and released multi-platform, but us Mac users prefer Cocoa based applications. I was a diehard Twitterrific user myself. It was a fine app, and it worked for most.

When the…

This is big for Ping. The other additions; the Ping sidebar, the Ping Like & Post options on all of your songs in iTunes. I couldn’t have cared less, I actually found both the features quite annoying but this is going to get more people connected through Ping and hopefully more people using it. I’m interested in the integration of Ping post’s in the Twitter rich embed panel and i’m going to try and start using it. Make the Twitter a little more personal, you know?

I do though think (more like ‘hope’ actually) this is just the start. What Ping is really missing is a way for people to actually communicate though Ping. At the moment you can only comment on someone else’s post, but even that’s a bother to do. The integration of Twitter could be taken a lot further: 140 character status’ which would be posted to Twitter and Ping. @ Style messaging to Ping users through Twitter,and of course the other way around. Both networks could benefit from this I think, getting more users. Obviously though, Ping is going to be the network which gets the most out of this partnership: the major social network taking Ping under it’s wing.

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Good news, Ping users: Apple’s music discovery service just got official Twitter support, according to the Twitter blog:

Starting today Ping, iTunes’ new social network for music, and Twitter are making it even easier for people to share music discoveries with their friends by putting Ping activity, song previews and links to purchase and download music from the iTunes Store right in their Tweets on Twitter.com.

Basically, you can link your Ping profile to your Twitter account and find Ping users among the people you’re already following on Twitter. Once the accounts are linked, your Ping activity will be mirrored to Twitter, and thanks to NewTwitter’s rich embed panel you’ll be able to see song previews and iTunes links directly in the Twitter home page:

When you click on a Tweet that’s sent via Ping or that contains an iTunes link, you’ll see the song or album in Twitter’s details pane, with the ability to listen to song previews from iTunes, making the experience even richer.

iTunes song previews are available on Twitter.com in the 23 countries where the iTunes Store offers music.

This is a huge step forward for Ping, which is still lacking Facebook support. Ping, however, just got a lot more connect and, perhaps, useful with the addition of Twitter.

Just seen this whilst browsing the Alphonso Labs - creators of the Pulse RSS reader for iOS, Android I believe, and Windows Phone 7 - forums, i’m trying to get it working again on my iPod Touch, it crashes every time since i’ve updated it. But thats besides the subject, that comment from Alphonso Labs was in response to someone saying they should make Pulse for the Mac. The guys at Alphonso Labs might just be trying to be polite, maybe not though. I really hope it’s the latter, think of Pulse on the Mac, flicking through your news feeds with your Magic Mouse/Magic Trackpad! It would be a replacement for Times in my opinion, although Times for Mac is great, it’s been forgotten about and I just completely prefer the look of Pulse. The response from Alphonso Labs was posted two months ago, I don’t know how long it takes to develop software, but if its finished for the launch of Lion next year, I will be elated. Huwbert out.