25 March 2009
Twiggy Beta Released
As you know, we’ve been working on building a mobile widget this week, called Twiggy. She’s coming along very well – so well in fact, that we’re ready to release a beta. Feel free to download it now. Love to hear your feedback!
How to use the beta
You can use the Twiggy beta in two ways:
1. Open the .wget file with Opera – it will automatically install the widget.
2. Go to the download link in your mobile browser. Your mobile device will need to be widget enabled (S60 Nokia phones and others)
One of the reasons we’ve been able to build Twiggy so quickly (roughly two days) is because jQuery works so well with the Web Run Time on the phone. There is a jQuery plugin for the Twitter Search API, so we simply used that. Bam. Here are the links for the jQuery plugin:
1. Complete info on the plugin
2. GitHub repository
Build a widget, win £20,000
If you’d like to try to build a mobile widget, you should enter it into the Betavine £20,000 competition. There’s no strings attached to the money, so it’s a sweet opportunity. I’m one of the judges, so I’m looking forward to seeing the entries.
Here are three great resources to learn how to build mobile widgets:
1. Betavine
2. Widget basics
3. Creating your first widget
We recorded a live video this morning and explained the tech a bit more:
Photo credit: flickr.com/photos/islandfreedom
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Phillip
# March 25, 2009 - 1:34 pm
Congrats! It’s crazy cool you guys did this in 4 days! Huge props to the Carsonified team! Hope it’s a successful app!
Simon Hamp
# March 25, 2009 - 1:36 pm
Nice to see suggestions being taken on board – Carsonified are definitely a forward-thinking company.
I’m enjoying this week with you guys, almost feels like I’m there… but I’m finding it difficult to concentrate on my work… my fault not yours.
Ryan
# March 25, 2009 - 1:39 pm
@Phillip – Thanks mate. It’s technically only taken us two days though ;)
Laura
# March 25, 2009 - 1:52 pm
Works really nicely in Opera.
What does the icon to the right of the star/favourite icon do? Looks like settings maybe?
Elliott Kember
# March 25, 2009 - 1:59 pm
Hi Laura,
That icon is supposed to be a “save” button – it saves the query to the favourites list. I guess it’s supposed to be a floopy disk. We’re working on a better image :)
Tom Bryan
# March 25, 2009 - 2:32 pm
Works well in Opera and looks awesome.. and after 2 days? You guys make me sick ;)
In all seriousness, any thoughts about porting it for use on the iPhone?
Julian Cheal
# March 25, 2009 - 2:44 pm
Great work guys. It’s been really cool following the videos throughout the week.
Big hugs to the Carsonified crew!
Elliott Kember
# March 25, 2009 - 2:55 pm
Tom: Yep, I should be able to make a version for the iPhone.
I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do favourites yet, but it should be pretty easy – and the HTML should be pretty similar. I just have to remove the widget-specific stuff.
Tom Bryan
# March 25, 2009 - 3:07 pm
Cool. I’m not sure if the iPhone really needs it, given the range of Twitter apps already available for it, but it’d still be a handy tool to add to the arsenal.
Laura
# March 25, 2009 - 7:58 pm
Aha, save. Makes sense.
I’d use an iPhone version. I find the search function on the varying apps fairly clunky.
jQuery: » This Week in jQuery, vol. 4
# April 3, 2009 - 2:25 pm
[...] The folks at Carsonified have just released a beta of Twiggy, an app that searches Twitter from Nokia’s widget-enabled phones Opera as a widget. Widget apps are built in HTML, CSS and Javascript, and are stored and executed locally. Twiggy lets you search Twitter and save favorites. Elliott Kember, who along with Mike Kus is responsible for creating Twiggy, describes their use of jQuery in the app: [...]
links for 2009-04-06 « sySolution
# April 6, 2009 - 3:00 pm
[...] Carsonified » Blog Archive » Twiggy Beta Released (tags: revisar) [...]