To be honest: I’m using Twitter not very intensely. One of my Facebook accounts is used to update my Facebook status, another to follow some 40 interesting people or companies. My followed people generate roughly 400 tweets a day. I normally browse through their writing using my iPhone during short breaks. Sometimes during TV commercial interruptions. Sometimes while in transit or just while waiting for something to happen. When at home at my work desk  I also use my desktop system (Mac) to get an update.

What had bothered me for while is the lack of sync between different systems of what I have already read. Honestly I don’t understand why this is so complicated. I had hoped that Tweetdeck or Seesmic had implemented this until now. But so far the Seesmic iPhone Client is still missing, Tweetdeck has some sync functionality for searches.

Echofon as a first solution

After having tested a number of iPhone clients, I worked and stayed with ‘Twitterfon Pro’ for a steady couple of month. Today they released their update version. Beneath a name change to ‘Echofon’ they also announced that they implemented a sync function and push notification.

Right now, the sync function requires a Firefox plugin on the desktop client side. After installing both clients I had to:

1. adjust the Twitter account settings to enable push notification and allow ‘read status sync on the iPhone side
2. enable the same on the Mac side

 It’s working

At least I got i working, but the Firefox AddOn is not really a beauty compared to full feature Twitter clients. It took me some time to find the Echofon symbol within Firefox. I reloaded Firefox several times and always tried to add a toolbar symbol which I couldn’t find. I finally found the greyed out symbol in the bar on the bottom line of Firefox. The symbol became active after login into my Twitter account using the right mouse click on the symbol.

On their web site Echofon also announces a full Mac client. So I’m looking forward to this.

I’m currently not fully clear on the exact sync intervals. At least it sync, when I switch within the iPhone app once to "’Messages” and back to the “Friends” tab.

- PTL -