Having sorted out how to facebook from N900 last night, it was time to check on my second favorite online activity-Tweeting. The micro-blog service of Twitter has really caught on me and I just can’t imagine a day without accessing Twitter for Twitter is my new Google for its user generated content for search phrases have that human touch to it and are updated in real time making it a far better search engine than any of the automated search engines in market today.
Whether you find Twitter as an ideal replacement for google as the search engine of choice is debatable but the addiction to Twitter is unquestionable not only for me but for millions of netizens out there, for whom tweeting is as much a part of everyday routine as brushing their teeth! How does the N900 treat the Twitter addicts like us? Let’s find out.
Hahlo
Used to my iPhone, I thought I need “an App for that” but as it turns out I don’t actually need one! Yeah you read it right, there is this web app called Hahlo, which like google apps runs directly from the browser. So you don’t have to bother about installing anything on your N900s. Now thats one cool feature, but the list doesn’t end just there and infact the awesomeness of this web app continues to grow on you as you start using it.
I was kinda sceptical about the capabilities of a browser based app on the emerging Maemo platform but make no mistake Hahlo is a fully loaded twitter client for this latest platform. Features like auto-refresh, inline photos, inline replies, tweets near me, Auto-login, etc make this one of the most complete twitter client on the N900.
Gravity
If you have ever had a symbian smartphone, you would have probably heard of and used Gravity, one of the best selling twitter clients on this platform. The application is one of the most impressive on this platform and was the first application to introduce Kinetic scrolling on the symbian devices. Kinetic scrolling aside, the twitter client is one of the best across any platform and yeah I would love to have this on my N900. Unfortunately Jane Ole Suhr, the developer behind Gravity has no plans to rewrite the code for the Maemo platform. There is a huge market demand for this app on the Maemo platform and if you are one of those who are missing the Gravity experience on the N900, please do vote here to convince Ole Suhr to come up with the Maemo version of the best selling twitter client on the symbian platform.
Coming back to my question, yeah looks like the N900 can handle twitter load in an effortless manner. While am a big fan of Gravity, am more than impressed with the capabilities of browser based Hahlo. Browser based apps are the way to go and Maemo 5 as such seems to be future ready!
P.S- Btw, N900 is now officially on sale in the US where it is priced at $ 649 (Nokia flagship store) and $509.99 at Amazon and other participating stores.