On Monday nights, this funky little teeny second-floor bar in Shibuya becomes Bar Android, a gathering place for Android geeks. This last Monday, which was Hallowe’en, I went; what a blast, and I got a new Twitter client.

I tried a few shots of the interior with my SLR but it was just too dark and crowded. However, the Galaxy Nexus managed to take this panorama, which is sort of twisted in places but nonetheless looks to me like the place feels. It’s amazing that the phone managed to get anything useful at all; that said, apologies to the guys whose faces got fractured.

Bar Android, Shibuya

If you want more pictures, there’s an album of the event on Facebook.

The people were wonderful. I went along with Google colleague Soonson Kwon and they sent Ruby Rumiko Bessho to pick us up at Shibuya station, which is a good thing, because our chances of finding the joint without some help would have been remote.

Ruby had called in the fact that we were both weak with hunger after a day of rehearsing for GDD Tokyo and soon after walking in, I was equipped with a very decent beer and something or other that was beef-centric and tasty to eat.

Now of course, anyone from the Android group at Google is going to be an attention magnet at Bar Android, and after I’d met thirty or forty people I raised my voice and said “Who’s got a cool app to show me?”.

The first memorable one I saw was toneconnect, which uses DTMF signaling to exchange data between mobiles. Kind of low-rent technology, but damned clever and it should in theory work between any two mobile devices, any flavor, when all the glossy high-tech paths between them are broken.

Next, there was this cool thingie that shares a picture between two devices, as in they display it in sync and when you scroll or zoom it, both do it sync. Like so; I didn’t get the name, if someone has a link for it, let me know and I’ll share.

Picture-sharing app

But the real find of the night was my new Twitter client Twicca. Its author Tetsuma Aoyama was there and got a little tense when I started installing it on the Galaxy Nexus with its funky engineering build, but it went in like a champ, runs flawlessly, and looks great on the big screen. Except for, the authenticate-with-Twitter step requires copying and pasting a confirmation number, huh?!

Here’s Tetsuya, who normally looks much better when he’s not wearing Hallowe’en gore and packed into an overcrowded sweaty bar.

Tetsuya Aoyama

De mortuis nil nisi bonum so I won’t name my former client; but I have to say that Twicca is lightweight and snappy and nice-looking and has all the features I want. Plus, it has a plug-in architecture which is a win in my book. Hey, how is Tetsuya getting paid?

I’d call that a successful evening.



Contributions

Comment feed for ongoing:Comments feed

From: kabayan (Nov 06 2011, at 18:57)

Thank you for coming our bar!

Please fix few points. 'DMTF' is 'DTMF' and that app name is 'toneconnect'. It's on market already.

We home see you again!

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From: Luis (Nov 06 2011, at 19:16)

What app did you use for the panorama, Tim? I've been looking for a good panorama app but haven't found one.

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From: Tim (Nov 06 2011, at 19:42)

Hey Kabayan, thanks. Fixed.

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From: Chippy (Nov 06 2011, at 22:19)

Twicca has been my favorite client for well over a year but I switched yesterday.

Twicca has an experimental feature option for donators which includes multiple accounts. The problem is you have to donate €14 for 90 days access to the features. Too much in my opinion.

If you require multiple account access you might be better off with UberSocial which is free and costs €4 for a year of ad-free usage.

It doesn't have the great shortcuts and widgets of Twicca tho.

Chippy.

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From: Christian Mogensen (Nov 07 2011, at 01:41)

+1 for Twicca. I found it a couple of months ago after getting fed up with the crashy laggy nature of Tweetdeck. I tried a couple of others, but Twicca's snappy responsiveness even when sync-ing won me over. The UI never seems to block, which is a huge win.

The tap=menu instead of showing you the tweet on a form took a couple of days to get used to, but other than that it was a no-brainer.

The PIN-for-auth is what twitter clients need to do these days, it would seem. Metrotwit just asked me to do the same PIN and dance.

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From: Hanan Cohen (Nov 07 2011, at 02:30)

When you twitted about Twicca I have installed it and use it instead of the default Twitter app.

I am happy I have switched.

Sometimes it has a problem parsing URLs so I cannot click them.

I have twitted @twicca_en with a link to the problematic post and hope Mr. Aoyama will find a way to fix it.

Will be happy to donate something.

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From: Giulio Piancastelli (Nov 07 2011, at 04:44)

That confirmation number is part of the Out-of-band/PIN Code authentication, as it's called on Twitter developer documentation.

Quoting.

<i>For applications that really can't handle the full OAuth process Twitter provides the out-of-band/PIN code authentication mode, also known as oob.

This authentication flow is almost identical to full OAuth except instead of being directed back to your website the user is presented with a PIN code. The user is then asked to type this PIN code into your application which will then complete the token exchange.

In the full OAuth flow this manual process is performed by the callback URL and transparently to the end user.</i>

Don't have the slightest idea why Twicca uses it, though.

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From: kabayan (Nov 07 2011, at 08:04)

Thank you Tim.

We're planning to display Bar android on Google IO in SF as same as GDD.

I hope you'll commend us!

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From: Norman Walsh (Nov 10 2011, at 19:23)

Just another +1 for Twicca.

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From: Doni (Dec 03 2011, at 01:14)

I've used twicca for a couple months now. Love it! I love the color-coding. Do wish it could do multiple accounts, but otherwise no complaints. :-)

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