Trumblog

ÜberTwitter has kicked off the new year right with a new beta release that adds some great additions to what is already my favorite Twitter application for the BlackBerry.  You can get a complete list of the updates and bug fixes in the release on their website, but the most important, and useful, upgrades are reviewed below.

When you first launch the new ÜberTwitter there are 21 setup screens. That’s a lot, but the benefit is in the options and customization of layout and functionality that ÜberTwitter delivers. Luckily you can access these screens through the Options menu item, because you are bound to want to tweak these settings further as you understand the results and the enhancements that you can achieve through them.

Layout Updates

ÜberTwitter has a new logo and a new timeline layout style, bubble, and larger avatars.  Except for the logo these are all options which means that if you like the original bar timeline layout style or the smaller avatars you can select those options.  You can also modify the timeline and tweet composition font, font size and format to truly customize the look and feel.  I’m using the bubble layout, larger avatars and 16pt BB Alpha Sans.

Über Bar

Another layout that ÜberTwitter has added is the Über Bar with tabs that appear at the top of the timeline and allow you to quickly access different views of the timeline. There are default views Home, the standard timeline, @Replies and Mentions and finally Direct Messages. You can customize the Über Bar by adding profiles and lists of your choice. You will soon be able to add searches to the Über Bar and it would be great to be able to add locations to the Über Bar well. ÜberTwitter also needs to work out the formatting for switching from tab to tab, which currently places the first tweet at the top of the screen rather than the tabs themselves.

Lists

I’ve been playing with Seesmic for the BlackBerry and they are already supporting lists.  ÜberTwitter may be late to the party with this feature, but they do Twitter Lists right with full functionality.  Not only can you view your lists, but you can manage them adding and removing members, see who has subscribed, etc.  You can also create brand new lists, see lists that are following you, subscribe to lists, etc.  In other words there is no need to use Twitter.com or another application to manage lists, you can do it all from ÜberTwitter which is a great step forward for that functionality.

Retweets

A step back in functionality was Twitter’s controversial new retweet feature.  ÜberTwitter has done a great job of managing the retweet issue by adding the new RT functionality while maintaining their support of the old method that allows editing. You can set one or the other as the default method or make a choose each time you retweet. Both Twitter and Facebook could learn from ÜberTwitter’s strategy of adding new functionality while maintaining the old therefore allowing users to customize their use of the application, a usability enhancement that no one could argue with.

@ Completion

ÜberTwitter calls this handy feature “Friend Picker”, but what it does is when you type “@” a list of the people you follow is displayed that you can select from and is then inserted into your Tweet.  This is particularly handy for non-reply mentions of your Tweeps (especially the ones with long or somewhat complicated handles).  It also makes DM’s so much easier.
Note to Facebook: I’d love to see this functionality in your BlackBerry applocation for status updates as well.

Geo-Tagging

ÜberTwitter already supported geo-tagging, but with this release incorporates support for Twitter’s geo-tagging capability as well. Like ÜberTwitter’s support of retweeting, they have maintained the use of myloc.me URLs so that you can use them, Twitter Geo-Tagging, or both.

Profile Maintenance

Updating your Twitter profile is now an option with ÜberTwitter. Not only can you update your avatar you can change your name, description, location and url.  I don’t change my profile that often, so the benefit here seems limited, but it’s a nice add on.

Other updates include spam reporting, find people, Twitlonger.com support for 140+ character updates, WhatTheTrend.com integration for explanation of trending topics, identification of verified users with a blue checkmark icon and enhanced network connection logic. As I wrote earlier, you can read all about these on the ÜberTwitter website.

The updates that ÜberTwitter has made in this latest release take what is already the best Twitter application for the BlackBerry to a new level for ease of use and enhanced functionality that will protect it from competitors in the future. Should Twitter produce a native BlackBerry app as they have hinted, ÜberTwitter has set the bar high.