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Tweeting on the go is the new thing. Nothing shows you’re hip and with it like an iPhone imbued with the ability to send tweets about anything and everything you’re doing. Of course, some people actually need to do this, so there are legitimate reasons for a Twitter-enabled mobile device too.

Whatever your reasons for doing it, it’s not likely you’re going to be happy just using the Twitter Mobile website from your iPhone or Blackberry. Unless you only follow four or five people, you probably won’t want to use the SMS (text) feature either.

You’ll need an app. But which one?

For this look at mobile Twitter apps, we’re separating them by device type and then looking at the most popular for each.

Blackberry
The real Twitter mobile war is between Blackberry and iPhone users. Crackberry enthusiasts have two popular clients: TwitterBerry and Tiny Twitter. You can see the latter below in the Java Handsets section, but TwitterBerry is a Blackberry-only app. It’s fairly basic for something made for such an advanced mobile platform. In fact, it’s pretty limited with no profile viewing or URL shortening. Funny, since it does support TwitPic. If you’re not a real twitaholic, this might be OK for you.

iPhone
Apple users will have 6 real choices for iPhone use (six if you check the Java Handsets section below): Tweetie, TweetDeck, Nambu, Twitterific, Twitellator, and TwitterFon. All three are available at iTunes.  Picking a favorite is not easy, but the most popular (by a slim margin) appears to be Tweetie.

Tweetie has a lot of filters/searches, is intuitive to use, seems to run fast, and supports multiple accounts as well as access to Trends. This is a nicely done app for the iPhone, though it can run a little slow at times.

TweetDeck (aka TweetStack) for the iPhone just came out with a new rendition. So far, while the new upgrades are nice, the app is having some real hangups. Running as, basically, the desktop version of TweetDeck for the iPhone, this app has a lot of power and functionality, but is very slow too.  Once it is working as it should, this will ultimately become the only app I can see myself using.  It supports multiple accounts, great alerts, and is free.  My only few hangups so far are the fact that it keeps booting me off, and that if I receive a direct message I have to send it back as a direct message, and if I fail to click send dm it sends it to everyone.

Twitellator Pro is relatively new to the scene, winning the Editor’s Choice at Mac:Life in May.  It handles multiple accounts and does most everything you expect a powerful Twitter client to do.  Because it’s so new, there aren’t a lot of users to draw feedback from, but it’s a robust app.  It does seem to run faster than TweetDeck for the iPhone, for sure.

TwitterFon is popular, I think, purely because it’s free. If all you need are basic Twitter functions, a fast app, and something simple and easy, then this is the iPhone app of choice for twits. If you need a little more power and function from your Twitter experience, though, then cough up the $3 and buy one of the other two apps on our iPhone list.

Java Handsets
Tiny Twitter is by far the most popular Java-enabled client for tweeting. In fact, if you’re using one of the other phones on our list, it’s likely Java-enabled and can use this instead. This app includes a lot of options for personalization to enhance how you interact with Twitter on your mobile. This is a great app that does all basic Twitter functions as well as a few extras.

Symbian
The Nokia smart phone OS of choice, Symbian generally has just a few apps and only one real Twitter app of any note. Twibble Mobile has the very basic Twitter functions and that’s about it. No user icons (just names), but it has a cool location-mapping plugin that allows your friends who’re including location pings with their tweets to show up on a map on your phone. Otherwise, Twibble isn’t much better than just going to twitter.com.

Windows Mobile
ceTwit is one of the few and proud WinMobile apps for Twitter that’s enjoying any success at all. Avatars, auto-refresh, and more are all built-in and the app almost makes Windows Mobile look pretty. Almost. Most basic Twitter functions are supported and it even color-codes tweets.

That’s our wrap-up of Twitter mobile clients. Nearly every one of these is a big step up from just getting text messages or using the Twitter Mobile site. Some are better than others and some mobile devices have more ability than others too.  Best app appears to be TweetDeck so far if they can get their act together.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter @rev2 and @lapp and have fun!

With that 140 character limit, Twitter definitely became fertile ground for the URL shortening marketplace. When Twitter first released, it included TinyURL as its built-in short URL service, but recently changed it’s preference to bit.ly. That was a move that some saw as the precursor to a Twitter buyout of the little URL shrinking company. Of course, that hasn’t happened. Yet.

Until Twitter came along, most people had heard of TinyURL and that was about it. Used for “hiding” web addresses in posts, shrinking addresses so they’d fit on one line of a page, and so forth, there was little use for a good URL shortening service.

Now, there are dozens of them.

In terms of numbers of users (or uses), TinyURL is still on top. There are a lot of these service to choose from, though, so we’re going to look over the most popular and give you our Top 5 for Twitter use.

bit.ly
One of the more popular services now, bit.ly offers customizable URLs, tracking services, a 301 redirect service, and is Twitter’s current default shortening service. Tracking and other information can be imported into Google spreadsheets for analysis.

budurl.com
While many of this service’s functionality is available only by paying a fee, it is nonetheless popular amongst Web marketing professionals because of its abilities. Includes customizable URLs, tracking services, and 307 redirects.

cli.gs
Private, real-time statistics and geotargeted URLs are just some of what’s inside cli.gs. Customizable URLs, tracking services, 301 redirects, and more.

TinyURL
Still top dog in URL shortening, if TinyURL doesn’t make some changes soon, they may lose this ranking. The largest missing piece is tracking services, which all of the others on our list offer. Slightly shorter character counts due to smaller site addresses are also a factor.

zi.ma
No registration is required to view stats on a single URL, but an account gives a lot of extras like bulk URL shortening, csv downloads, and more. This is one of the most feature-rich of the shorteners on this list.

Up-and-Comers
Some newcomers to the URL shortening game are worth mentioning here. These are some of those that have made a little splash and got our attention.

is.gd
While you can’t customize URLs at is.gd (or track them), you can use it as a redirect (301) service. This one is simple and quick to use.

su.pr
Still in limited beta, this service is owned by Stumble Upon (hence the name) and promises to be one of the ones to keep an eye on. Beta keys can be had by subscribing to their Twitter account, naturally.

tr.im
This service uses your Twitter account as your login, making it a sure-fire hit if it keeps up the rest of its services too. Great one to try, it might surprise you.

u.nu
This one has a single huge (or short, as it were) advantage: size.  U.nu creates the smallest URLs of any shortener at about 8 characters each (not including the “http://”).  That’s tiny.  For this single reason, it may become quite popular, but I doubt it will ever get high on the list without the addition of tracking and other services as well.

Of course, we couldn’t leave out twurl.nl (TweetBurner), though this service has lost popularity due to the superior marketing built-ins of new competition.

All of these services are free and most require registration to get to the advanced statistics. Even if you’re just a part-timer, tracking your shortened URLs is important to your marketing if you plan to watch where your visitors really come from. Several WordPress plugins give automatic URL shortening and some Twitter plugins (for blasting or visitor-sending) also do this.

The field of battle in URL shortening services is ever-changing now, though, with Twitter as the main focus for most of them. Most Twitter apps have a built-in (or several built-ins) for shortening as well.

Picking a favorite is no easy task, but I think I would say bit.ly is at the top of my list with cli.gs close behind (when it isn’t getting hacked).  The services are similar, but bit.ly is built into Twitter and many Twitter apps, so it comes out on top.  Which one is your favorite?  Leave a comment and let us know.

The ever-popular VOIP and chat client, Skype, has released a new beta version for Windows that adds screen sharing. This was added to the last Mac beta in January, but the Windows version also includes integration with Gmail, Windows Live, AOL, Hotmail, LinkedIn and Yahoo for contact imports.

The new update allows both PC and Mac users to share screens (not just video) to make it something like GoToMeeting, though not as multi-user functional. With it, though, one-on-one tutorials and meetings can be done relatively easily.

Although some popular third-party plugins have better functionality in this regard, they’ve got to be feeling the heat as Skype is sure to make this feature much better before it’s official release. One downer to the screen sharing beta is that voice calls are required first, which might be a pain if you aren’t using a microphone.

Small price to pay, though, if you need a quick way to share a screen and show someone how something is done or give an update. Much easier than pointing a Web cam at it and hoping it looks right on the other end.

With the new addition, you can show all or a selected part of your screen to the other end. This is, as usual, a stable beta release from Skype and few have reported any problems with it.

The new screen sharing does not work with multiple contacts, however, so group chats with screen sharing are not yet possible. It can also slow down connections if you’re using voice at the same time, but usually only for those with shared or otherwise already-slow feeds.

Other small additions to the new Skype beta are birthday alerts, new functions for the visually-impaired, and a few bug and other fixes.

This is a nice first step for Skype, though I would have expected a little more from this addition. Maybe Skype is just seeing how much call there is for this kind of functionality to decide whether it’s worth developing. Still, it’s nice to see and might be useful for many of us.

The new Palm Pre is set to hit the streets, via the Sprint network, tomorrow.  Sprint is hoping this will be their new flagship smartphone.  AT&T and Verizon are hot on Sprint’s heels, waiting for the relatively short exclusivity contract with Palm to end so they can get in on the Pre action too.

Although Verizon Wireless’ CEO made claims last week that it would be putting the Pre on its network in about six months, the CEO of Sprint, Dan Hesse, says that’s inaccurate.  While he wouldn’t give a tim period, he says the exclusivity contract Sprint has with Palm is longer than six months.  You can see video of his press conference at CNet News.

Apple, meanwhile, has seen the potential threat and is planning to introduce a cheaper, lower-powered version of the iPhone.  That might happen as early as Monday and is rumored to be the new iPhone Movie, which would likely go into production this summer.  The new phone could be as much as $100 cheaper than Apple’s current low end phone .

AT&T still retains their exclusive deal with Apple as the iPhone’s only carrier.  Financial Times reporter Joseph Menn thinks the new iPhone will debut at Monday’s developer conference with a keynote by Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller.

Meanwhile, the Italian iPhone blog ispazio has published leaked photos of the new iPhone (seen left).

Both Apple and Palm are probably going to see each other more and more as rivals.  Currently, the iPhone holds about 11% of the world’s smart phone market and Palm barely registers, having lost their primacy long ago.

Sprint, for their part, is offering an extremely low-cost value plan for the Pre, including the $100/month “Simply Everything” plan.  No word on how much connectivity is included with that, but it’s a plan aimed specifically at smart phones like the new Pre.

This could get interesting.

If you have an Apple iPhone and have upgraded to the new Beta 5 release for OS 3, you’ve doubtless noticed a few changes.  The biggest is to MMS.  YouTube video streams saw an improvement.  For a minute anyway, then they reverted back to the way they were.

According to Gizmodo, the fixes were dramatic.  They were most impressed with the YouTube upgrades and most concerned with the locking of MMS so that current iPhone hacks to make it work with localized services are gone.

Winandmac.com was excited about the YouTube improvements and then quickly reported that they were fleeting and are now gone.  I’d like to think that Apple was testing the limits of the 3G network regarding video quality, but that’s just my hopeful guess.  Many iPhone users complain about the ugly quality of most video streams–especially YouTube–so this would have been a welcome fix.

Meanwhile, over at the iPhone Blog, discussions of the MMS changes are heating up.  The beta 5 release apparently shuts down any user control of MMS, effectively blocking tethering, carrier tweaks, etc.  The carrier file itself is also closed to editing, giving rise to compatibility concerns for some AT&T affiliate network users.

So, the Apple network has released both Beta 5 and iTunes 8.2 pre-release developer information has been distributed to developers.  As MacRumors.com says, this is unusual coming only 8 days after Apple’s last release, deviating from their usual bi-weekly schedule.

It will be interesting to see how these latest upgrades change the iPhone experience for users.  I expect there will be a lot of scrambling around by techs at affiliate carriers for AT&T who were reliant on tweaking the MMS to gain compatability.  The other day I watched as an associate was unable to watch YouTube videos after the upgrade, so many of the bugs might not be worked out.  I will wait until it gets a clean bill of health before downloading this time.  Many hack-apps will cease to function as well.

Imagine telling your entire study group you found the cheat sheet for the test in the Dumpster outside the Science Hall, with one click of the button. Or letting your girlfriends know that Margarita Happy Hour is happen’ right now at some filthy bar down by the docks – without texting each and everyone individually.

With Tatango, you can send ad-sponsored SMS texts to entire groups for free. Leave voice messages en masse. Even upgrade to business class options so you can stretch your legs a bit and get a complimentary vodka tonic while you holler at your homies through a super-streamlined messaging platform.

The site and service, formerly known as networkText, has gained traction with sports teams, schools, celebs and even churches, according to Tatango. There is also a blog, Twitter page and Facebook profile.

Written up in everything from The Wall Street Journal, CNN, TechCrunch, to PCWorld, Tatango is a breeze to register for. My only question is this: Will I really use Tatango? I see and understand the practical application, but my phone (an iPhone), already allows me to send text to multiple peeps. Sure, Tatango can save me multiple keystrokes when I’m talking trash to my fantasy football team and want to spare my arthritic thumbs the pain of typing on my tiny keyboard, but I imagine the time savings is just seconds.

I guess that’s just where we are in today’s uber-hustle-and-bustle encironment: Seconds are everything.