Features:

• all Twitter operations supported
• set favorites
• tag specific users to follow separately
• translation of foreign language messages
• Twitter search
• submit via Ping.fm
• avatars supported

The Good:

Nambu Touch for the iPhone® follows on the Nambu Network Inc.’s Nambu for Mac OSX 10.5+. It has a good-looking UI and supports just about every Twitter operation you could want, down to searching and tagging specific users for filtering/following. Submission via Ping.fm is a nice feature.

The Not-so-Good:

Nambu Touch is a very promising application that already supports many useful features. It is compatible with the iPhone® and iPod Touch™ with the iPhone 2.1 software update. Also, be aware that it costs $1.99 at the App Store.

Tweetwave.com rates it: ★★★★

Features:

• browse and @reply followers
• send photos to TwitPic
• automatic URL shortening using http://is.gd
• send current location to Twitter
• insert a Google Map URL to your current location
• unique “shake to erase and start over” feature

The Good:

Twitfire is a solid app for the iPhone® with some great features. It provides all the information found in the Twitter web interface and the “shake to erase” feature is quite unique.

The Not-so-Good:

Sometimes the focus can seem to be too much on nifty features like “shake and erase”, but overall, Twitfire gives few reasons to complain.

Tweetwave.com rates it: ★★★

Features:

• Send a single post to multiple sites
• View posts from multiple sites in a single view
• Copy and Paste of web site URLs into posts
• Detects links within posts with ability to open them in built-in browser window
• Group posts by account or by time
• Allows you to page through older posts on your Friends page
• Instantly convert all URLs to shortened form using TinyUrl, Qurl, or is.gd
• Full detail page on each post, showing profile of the user and their recent posts
• View public, friends, and your own timeline
• Easily reply to any post
• If a post was a reply, allows you to view the replied to post
• View users home page with built-in browser
• Color coding of posts by account
• Customizable font size, post box transparency, refresh interval, and more
• Create multiple accounts and manage them easily
• Account specific settings for viewing and sending posts
• Easily toggle accounts on/off or only have them show in certain views
• Ability to connect to a Jabber XMPP account such as jabber.org or Google Talk to get instant notification of any posts that contain user specified keywords
• Added a “Replies” tab to view @replies to you
• Option to save notices between runs
• Option to Hide (ignore) users

The Good:

La Twit is a very good aplication for the iPhone, packed with useful features. Ease of use is primary with La Twit. It even has a transparent post box so you can view prior posts while composing one.

The Not-so-Good:

Of course, we always want every app to do everything for us, and complain bitterly when it fails. La Twit has bitten off a lot, and some of the features (although all useful) take a while to get used to on the iPhone. Support contact is only via “form” (as opposed to phone or email), and we aren’t sure about the turn-around time.

Tweetwave.com rates it: ♦♦♦♦

Features:

• Display timeline
• Post a message
• Create a favorite
• Replies including messages contain @ are emphasized
• Input support for “@<ID>”
• Growl Notifications (replies are notified with a higher priority and stickied by default)
• Manage unread tweets

The Good:

NatsuLion is a basic desktop app for using Twitter, and it accomplishes its limited goals quite well. Graphics are good and the Growl notifications are a nice feature. For those who are interested, NatsuLion’s website offers a link to its source code. Of note, there is a version of NatsuLion for the iPhone®, available at the App Store for free (our comments for the desktop version apply to the iPhone® version too).

The Not-so-Good:

As we mentioned, NatsuLion does its job well, but its job is rather limited in scope. Also, the supporting info on the website appears to be in Japanglish (can’t really blame them, these guys are from Japan after all), and that can be either very amusing or very frustrating, depending on the time of day.

Tweetwave.com rates it: ♦♦

• Shows up to 200 tweets:
  Rich text display; bold will display as bold, etc.;
  Clickable inline links and @names;
• Two looks: Balloon and Simple
• Displays border for tweets in which you are referenced in Balloon mode.
• Tap a tweet to view details, send replies, and mark as a favorite.
• Explore the latest hot topics with Trends.
• Search the Twitterverse:
  Search using official Twitter advanced query terms;
  Location/Date-based search supported;
• Send and receive direct messages:
  Distinctive look, to separate it from tweets;
  Threaded display of sent/received messages;
• View details of tweets:
  Reply to user (ties directly to this message in the web site – more accurate than a simple @reply);
  Send direct message to user;
  Mark tweets as favorites;
  Delete your own tweets;
  View a user’s profile;
• View user profile information:
  View favorites/history;
  View a user’s friends/followers;
• Compose tweets and direct messages with ease:
  Upload images via TwitPic;
  Type-ahead name matching of friends when sending direct messages.

Tweetsville is available at the App Store for $3.99 and requires the iPhone® 2.0 software update. ♦♦♦♦

Features:

• perform power searches for tweets
• view trending topics in Twitter

The Good:

Summizer uses the Twitter Search API to dig through the database for related tweets. If you’ve got a topic that you search for more often, you can save that search for later use for the sake of sparing your thumbs. Summizer also automatically pulls down the latest trending topics from Twitter, giving you a quick and easy way to see what’s on the collective mind at any given moment.

The Not-so-Good:

Summizer is currently focused solely on searching and trend watching, so it doesn’t offer any means of logging in, tweeting, or following users. Also, Summizer comes at a price: $4.99 from Apple’s App Store. Some say it accomplishes the same thing that Twitter Search does (running just fine thank you if you bookmark it on your iPhone®).

Tweetwave.com rates it: ♦♦♦

• Handle multiple twitter accounts.
• View your timeline, replies, direct messages and favorites.
• Browse your friends and followers.
• Post new tweets, retweet
• Reply directly to tweets and send direct messages.
• Follow and unfollow people.
• Mark tweets as favorites.
• Navigate reply chains.
• Inline web browser.
• Post links with automatic link shrinking via bit.ly.
• Upload pictures to twitpic.com.
• Update your twitter location.
• View twitter trends and perform custom searches.
• Save your favorite searches.
• Implements the full twitter API.
• Uses secure connection (https).
• New: Go to User shortcut
• New: Nearby search
• New: Themes and adjustable font size
• New: Bookmarklet support

Very cool: ability to load additional tweets from further back in your timeline (something twitteriffic won’t do). ♦♦♦♦♦