Twitter

Other than the launch of the new Instagram clone “Facebook Camera” app, the biggest update today goes to the popular Tweetbot Twitter client for iPhone that is now at version 2.4. Included in the massive update is a new search view, as well as access to Trends, Top Tweets, and People that are now together in a single browse section. Nearby tweets were added with an option to change the location, and a ton of improvements to search, including location-based keywords and the ability to change trends’ location from within search view. And, that is only some of the features and fixes included Tweetbot 2.4.

Below is a complete list of features included in the update, with other notable apps and updates to hit the App Store today including the Infinity Blade II: Vault of Tears content pack.

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Face.com’s facial recognition iPhone app, KLIK, just released version 1.0 today with filters and a new learning mode.

The app’s previous “testing” version, as Face.com’s co-founder and CEO Gil Hirsch described it to 9to5Mac exclusively, debuted in January. However, the latest flavor exhibits face-friendly filters akin to Instagram and improved recognition capabilities that also Facebook-tags people, while remembering those features for future occurrences in case the social network cannot (some Facebook users’ privacy settings do not allow for photo-tagging).

“We looked at the photos people were taking and chose filters suitable for people’s pictures,” explained Hirsch to 9to5Mac. “Our filters are face-friendly.”

Hirsch detailed how KLIK’s artistic filters compliment faces due to their subtle colors and saturations, while other apps’ filters are more generalized for pictures of animals or objects and are often too harsh. Meanwhile, the face-learning software not only tags friends in images, but it quickly trains itself to remember them. The team behind KLIK noticed Facebook users do a lot of uploading, but not much tagging, and that decreases the amount of sharing. Therefore, the facial recognition may not always be on par, but the app’s new learning mode quickly corrects this lapse.

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Twitter just announced on its blog that its iPhone client will get an update today with enhancements made to “discover, search and notifications.” The update does not appear to be live, but it will be available here when it is.

Included in the update is a new “Activity” stream within the Discover tab. The blog post explained:

With this update, you can see Activity on Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android. Activity is a stream of updates that shows which Tweets are favorited or retweeted by the people you follow and which accounts those people follow or add to lists… Activity appears below the redesigned stories in Discover. Now you can tap any story once to see Tweets about a particular trend or news article. You can then read the entire story or join the conversation by replying, retweeting or favoriting related Tweets.

Improvements to search include suggestions for spelling and related terms, autocomplete for first and last names in the Connect tab, access to your most recent queries in the Discover tab, and the ability to jump directly to a user profile by tapping usernames in Connect.

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Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey is not the only photo-loving business executive upset by Instagram in recent weeks. While Dorsey stopped posting photos on Instagram after Facebook reportedly beat his Twitter to an acquisition of the app, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller quit Instagram for another reason: Android.

A reader noticed Schiller deleted his Instagram account (@schiller), and then reached out to Apple’s most visible public speaker by Twitter for confirmation. Schiller told the reader that he quit the rising photo-based social network, because the app “jumped the shark” when it launched on the Android platform.

In terms of iOS marketing, which is something that Schiller runs at the highest level, Instagram could have been seen as a pull for smartphone buyers to the iOS platform. The fun, convenient, and growing network was featured several times in Apple’s App Store—even winning “App of the Year” recognition. As marketing chief at Apple, seeing one of the platform’s most popular third-party pieces of software running on millions of Android phones is a disappointing sight.

Update: 9to5mac reader Clayton got in touch (we verified headers) with SVP Schiller who clarified his position… a little:

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Engineer support (almost) never tasted so good. 

Twitter just announced a little agreement that subsequently guarantees it would never pursue other companies that poach its “pull-to-refresh” patented feature, which is duplicated across a slue of iOS and Android applications.

The micro blogging service unveiled the “Innovator’s Patent Agreement” today that assures the world it will not use its patents against competitors, while allowing engineers to keep control over their patents.

“The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended,” explained Twitter in a bog post.

The IPA will affect every patent issued to Twitter engineers in the past and going forward:

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One of the biggest problems that we, as technology writers, face is choosing exactly what to write about on the site. What specifically is worth covering, and what should we leave for other pubs/Twitter/Facebook/Google Plus, etc.? We often pass on the smaller stories or the ones that do not directly relate to our core mission, even though we find them valuable or interesting. We do not want to stray too far from our core idea.

Nevertheless, we have long been after a way to cover the smaller stories, but more importantly give a forum to discuss these general topics, especially if they are interesting. Now that we have 9to5Forums, we have come up with something we call “Asides.” The idea is to bring together a “linked list” type of format coupled with gratuitous linking and the PandoTicker or AllthingsD Voices method of spreading the best of the Web.

Here are the types of topics we will cover on Asides:

1. Mid-minor, but still interesting, Apple/Google news, tips, rumors—especially where there is not much to add from the source.
2. General technology news covering Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. (if it is big and relates to our readers).
3. Sillier stuff like Joy of Tech cartoons or Reddit-type memes.
4. Deals or new gear from 9to5Toys.com that relate to readership needs desires.
5. Interesting posts on 9to5Forums.com that catch our eyes.
6. Quick observations that we would normally Tweet or retweet.
7. App promo codes or hardware giveaways.
8. Author news like “Mark will be writing/tweeting from Poland this week.”
9. Minor site news like outages or minor updates.
10. Anything interesting we do not find deserving of a full story.

We think we have found a new way to present these minor stories in a manner that has not been done before. Asides will appear chronologically on the website interspersed between regular posts (and in feeds and social media).

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However, you will only see the title on the web site, and it will be smaller than a full-sized story. We are working with WordPress on a way so these can open inline, but —for now— clicking on an Aside link will open a new page.

Our expectation is to post 20 or more of these per day. We hope you like Asides and find them useful.
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O.K., here is another Instagram story, but now its about the iOS app landing the No. 1 free app spot in the App Store for the first time—despite much media attention on the subject of it selling out to Facebook.

Hipsters everywhere donning their skinny jeans took to Twitter to post one last heavily filtered image, while threatening to delete their Instagram accounts after news broke earlier this week that social network giant Facebook bought the app for a cool $1 billion.

Many tweets and reports even detailed how to keep Instagram photos from Mark Zuckerberg’s acquisitive hands through export services like Instaport.me that essentially leave users free and clear to erase the Instagram app from their smartphones.

The public’s warning now seems empty, of course, as Instagram itself used Twitter this morning to announce its sudden surge in popularity. It looks as though the intense press scrutiny only encouraged the iOS app to soar up the charts. Meanwhile, its new parent company does not even sit in the top 25 free apps in Apple’s App Store.

[tweet https://twitter.com/#!/instagram/statuses/189845445458132992]

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TL;DR: By popular demand, we are rolling out 9to5Forums.com built on the Vanilla platform. As part of this new structure, we are moving our comments going forward to Vanilla, as well. Single sign up for both is quick and easy (including login with Twitter/Facebook/Open ID, etc.). Oh, and there will be prizes!

Long version:
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ArsTechnica quotes a Russian antivirus company called “Dr. Web” that claims hundreds of thousands of Macs are infected with the Flashback Trojan detailed earlier this week. The attack takes advantage of an old Java vulnerability that Apple just patched this week.

Variations of the Flashback trojan have reportedly infected more than half a million Macs around the globe, according to Russian antivirus company Dr. Web. The company made an announcement on Wednesday—first in Russian and later in English—about the growing Mac botnet, first claiming 550,000 infected Macs. Later in the day, however, Dr. Web malware analyst Sorokin Ivan posted to Twitter that the count had gone up to 600,000, with 274 bots even checking in from Cupertino, CA, where Apple’s headquarters are located.

Dr. Web said over half of the infected computers were in the United States (including 274 in Cupertino), and 20 percent were in Canada. The malware self-installs after you visit a compromised or malicious webpage. Obviously, it would be a good idea to update any Macs in your control.

If you think one of your machines may be infected, F-Secure has instructions on how to use the Terminal to find out. If these numbers are true, chances are some 9to5Mac readers are infected. Update: A reader comments that he was infected (599,999 more to go):

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Here is one we are a bit dubious about because of the date: Variety Magazine says Twitter magnate Ashton Kutcher is signed on to play Steve Jobs in the upcoming biopic movie:

Ashton Kutcher is attached to play Steve Jobs in the indie pic “Jobs,” which Joshua Michael Stern (“Swing Vote”) will direct from a script by Matt Whiteley.

The film will chronicle Steve Jobs from wayward hippie to co-founder of Apple, where he became one of the most revered creative entrepreneurs of our time.

Joshua Michael Stern will direct, and production will start in May, according to Variety.

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Wow. Solid lineup of developer/presenters:

This year we have an awesome speaker line-up, including cool dudes like Loren Brichter (Tweetie/ex-Twitter), Neven Mrgan (Panic), Karl von Randow (Camera+), Raphael Schaad (Flipboard), Matt Rix (Trainyard), Shaun Inman (Last Rocket) and many more.The full line-up and other details like the date and location can be found on our website, www.onemorething.com.au – videos from the 2011 event can be found on Vimeo:http://vimeopro.com/omtconf/2011 and we even have a podcast where we interview all the 2012 speakers up on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/one-more-thing-ios-conference/id511706732

This is a great excuse to visit a world-class city.
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With the launch of the new iPad just hours away, there will be a flood of new iPad owners looking for apps that boast the device’s 2048-by-1536-pixel resolution Retina display. To make it easier, Apple posted a new section on iTunes that lists Retina-ready apps recently updated to take advantage of the new display. The section currently consists of about 24 apps, some of which include “Tweetbot,” “Skitch,” “Infinity Blade II,” and “Sky Gamblers.” However, there are surely countless devs submitting updates to their apps right now. Go past the break for the full list of apps.

The Twitter iOS app was just updated to version 4.1.2 with the only new feature being high-resolution graphics for the new iPad’s Retina display. The update is available in the App Store now (iTunes link).

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According to an Apple filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today, Tim Cook sold 20,178 shares of his company’s stock in a series of transactions over the past two business days. The sales started at $547 per share and climbed to $551 before the last transaction, which left Apple’s Chief Executive Officer with $11.1 million.

Cook, who earns a bit more than $1 a year in Apple salary, was awarded 1 million shares of Apple last year, which vest in 2016 and 2021. Those shares are now worth over half a billion dollars.

Apple is the world’s most valuable company with stock valued at $552 upon today’s closing bell and continued to climb in after-hours trading.

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[slideshow]

Twitter updated its iOS app with long overdue usability enhancements and a host of little improvements and bug fixes. Twitter for iOS version 4.1, a free download from the App Store, brought back the handy swipe shortcut. Just swipe a tweet in your home timeline to reply, retweet, favorite or share it, or view the Twitter user’s profile without leaving your timeline. You can also copy and paste tweets and profiles, press and hold links to get more options, including opening the link in Safari, tweet, copy or mail that link, or read it later.

When checking someone’s profile, the app will finally tell you whether that person is following you and people search results has gained verified badges. The Direct Message feature now lets you mark all DMs as read by tapping the check mark in the lower right corner. Other nice-to-haves: Font size settings, confirmation alert for Find Friends, and improved image quality in tweet detail.

Sadly, the app still does not support sending long tweets, and all these new features and improvements are for iPhone only. Release notes are after the break.

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As of today, Twitter is baked into both iOS and MacOS X on a relatively low-level. Apple’s own social network Ping has yet to gather any steam in the marketplace. Facebook and Google are both growing their social networks like crazy while they are increasing in value.

Apple has $100 billion in its pocket, and CEO Tim Cook said at a recent Goldman Sachs event that he is looking for innovative ways to spend the money.

Do you think Apple will buy Twitter? If so, when?

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Update: Tapbots followed up with a separate iPad version of Tweetbot that is a different purchase (also $2.99), but it implements many of the new features and UI elements introduced in the v2.0 update for the iPhone app earlier today. It has a new two-pane iPad UI and other features specific to the larger display. For anyone holding off on Tweetbot to avoid having to use another client on iPad, the iPad version is probably worth the extra $3 with this mornings update. BI and Rene at iMore has the review:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3oEjHrvzUEg#!]

Developer Tapbots just dropped an updated version of its popular third-party Twitter iPhone client. Tweetbot version 2.0 [iTunes $2.99] is a significant update with dozens of new features and changes, and its first impressions seem to be positive.

Perhaps the biggest enhancement in the new Tweetbot is the updated timeline view that refines the UI making links (now colored), profile images (thumbnails now appear in timeline), and usernames just a single tap away. Another nice addition is the tappable “Retweeted by” bar now appearing in the timeline. Other improvements made to the app include adjusted cell colors for better contrast, a redesigned direct message UI, and a new “New Tweets” bar that can be hidden with a tap or through Settings…

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