j1ck.tweet – Beta 1 of our Java Twitter client ready!
Posted October 14th 2009 under twitter
So, finally, with the help of Hoops and Yoyo (on the left), the first public beta of our Java Twitter client is ready. The simplest way to install is to open your Java-enabled phone’s web (or WAP) browser and type the following URL:
You’ll get to a simple page where you can choose the appropriate version for your phone, click on the relevant link, and the app will be downloaded and installed on your phone. After this, we hope using the app is rather self-explanatory.
The font size of that page is too small on some phones (esp. Nokia), but there is not much we can do until we customize it for each phone. Rest assured, fonts in the app are big and readable! That is actually one of the main design goals of j1ck.tweet and our whole system.
I hate feature lists. I think app design should be about the user experience. But of course not everybody thinks alike, and knowing whether some required functionality is supported is often useful. So here it goes, summary of j1ck.tweet features:
- All standard functionality: timeline, @mentions, DMs, favorites, following/followers, follow/unfollow, profiles… and of course tweeting!
- Simple, no-nonsense interface. Up/Down/Click and using a menu is all you need to know.
- Quick Reply / Retweet / Favorite in each tweet
- Trending Topics / Saved searches support
- Multiple-account support.
- Twitpic support: you’ll see the picture without having to navigate over there
- Camera support! Take a snapshot from the tweeting form itself and have it automatically uploaded to Twitpic. Great to share where you are in a moment.
- Pretty good support for touch-screen phones (we’re testing mainly on Nokia 5800 and Samsung F480)
- Support for QWERTY keyboard phones (Nokia E71 is currently our main testing device for this)
Here is an (incomplete) list of phones where we’ve tested this to work fine:
Nokia N70, Nokia N73, Nokia N80, Nokia N81, Nokia N95, Nokia E50, Nokia 6230, Nokia 6288, Nokia 6500, Nokia 5610 XpressMusic, Nokia 5220 XpressMusic, Nokia 2630, Nokia 3109c, Nokia 3120 Classic, Nokia 5800, Sony-Ericssson W880i, Sony-Ericssson K610i, Sony-Ericssson Z610i, Sony-Ericssson K800i, Samsung SGH-U700, Samsung SGH-J800, Samsung SGH-i560, Samsung SGH-L760, Samsung SGH-F480 (touch-screen), LG KU-380, LG KU-800, Motorola RAZR V3, Motorola VE 538
Temporarily, it won’t work on the Nokia 6020/6021, which are quite old and where app size is limited to 128kb (!). We plan to reduce the size back to let it work again on this phones, but we haven’t had the time to do so yet.
All feedback will be very welcome (that’s the goal!). Just write to support@j1ck.com. We hope to use this public beta to start testing the scalability of our server (which, for obvious reasons, hasn’t yet been tested “on the wild”), and compatibility with as many phones as possible. But still, we’ve already been using this ourselves for weeks, and we are already enjoying it a lot, and I hope you will too!
Any comment?
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37 comments
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jon BeltranDeHeredia, Raul Solorzano. Raul Solorzano said: Probando en Nokia E71 RT @jonbho Beta 1 of j1ck.tweet, the J1CK Twitter client for Java phones, ready for download! http://bit.ly/4DUKCA. [...]
Probado en Nokia E65 y funcionando a la perfección
@sagudino, gracias, we’ll add E65 to the compatibility list!!
¿Funciona en Android? ¿Prevista alguna versión?
Inigo: todavía no, pero estará! (For everyone else: not yet ready on Android, but there will definitely be a version in the future!).
nice app
now, how do I type uppercase letter from my E71?
I need it for my password
Aldi, in principle, you can type uppercase by pressing “shift” (the up arrow) at the same time, but since it’s a password field and only “*” asterisks are shown, it’s not apparent…
Have you tried it and it doesn’t work? Does it work in the username field?
nope. it doesn’t work in the username field. is there any setting in E71 that could make it work?
thanks for this! Main problem i’ve seen so far with 5800 is it gets a bit confused if the screen rotates. Also the @ reply function won’t then let me type anything. Not tested the photo function yet.
Nattyem, thanks! The rotation problem is a known issue. We’ll fix it before 1.0. The @ reply issue is weirder, though. It should work fine! Please write to support@j1ck.com for more details!
Tried on a Samsung Star 5230 but don’t works: maybe because it’s a .JAD file and not a .JAR?
snazzo, if you can take the URL and change the .JAD into .JAR extension by hand, the .JAR is in the same folder. We don’t have a 5230 here, but we’ve checked with the Samsung F480 extensively, which seems to be the same OS, and it works great. What is the exact problem? Have you tried installing OperaMini (just surf over to operamini.com) and seeing whether it installs and works? We’re very interested in making it work on all phones reliably…
@admin: downloaded the .jar in my Samsung Star 5230, but after the initialization it give me 3 times this error:
“Failed to initialize: java.lang.IllegalArgumentExeption: Missing port number”
The 4 times it load graphics, connect, ask for userid and psw but then it gives error again, and again, and again… Sorry!
@admin, just a little more info.
if the connectin is via Wap il loads graphics, ask for user & psw, than gives Error (not any other info, just “Error”).
If I use the plain internet connection it gives immediatly error: “Failed to initialize: java.lang.IllegalArgumentExeption: Missing port number”.
Wish it helps!
@admin: Hmmm… Opera mini and Snaptu works great on this phone…
Snazzo, it seems more related to the connection than anything else. Knowing that SnapTu and Opera Mini work fine is useful. What connection type is Opera Mini using? You can see it on its settings dialog (it will be ‘http’ or ’socket’).
@admin: Opera works with HTTP
@admin: I think you are right: if I click on my account it gives back “Network error – Not implemented”, but I am unable to change anything in the settings of the app.
Snazzo, we’re trying to understand it. It seems quite weird. We’ll get back in touch with you via email as we have more info or more tests to do! I apologize for the problem, with the way the mobile ecosystem is it’s even difficult to understand and reproduce a problem!
@Jon: thanx, it doesn’t matter, it’s a beta, anyway… I’ll stay tuned for any news from you!
Thanks Snazzo for being so understanding! Still, we have to look into these issues if we want to go from Beta to 1.0!!
hi, that’s a great application. but that can not auto refresh the timeline , and can not support chinese for RT .
can you help to fix these bug ?
Hello Riku, thanks for the comliment!
Can you please (1) explain what kind of auto-refresh you would like to see in j1ck.tweet, and (2) how should Chinese be supported for RT? We just add “RT @user” at the front for retweeting, how should the Chinese version work?
Thanks and best regards!
[...] the first public beta of j1ck.tweet, the twitter client built on our J1CK platform, last week (see here). Our intention was just to reach a few dozen users to test compatibility and the stability of the [...]
samsung c5212 works fine! ever with unicode chars (cyrillic and etc)
but how to post from camera?? how to post photo? where is no photo menu i found (
Viktor: to take and post a photo, after you select “What are you doing?” and go into the tweet-form, bring up the options menu and there should be a “Photo” option. I don’t know exactly where that is on your phone, because J2ME forms are a bit weird and each phone can configure menus differently. We have three options in the tweet menu: “Send’, “Photo” and “Back”, and they should be available on the soft buttons and in the menu. After you have taken a photo, there will be an additional “Remove photo” option.
If that doesn’t help, please post again with extra info on what the soft-button legends read when you enter the tweet menu, and we’ll try to understand what’s happening.
Jon! on samsung c5212 i have only Send, Select Language, Back in the tweet menu!
Hi Viktor, I have just checked it with the dev team, and there may be an unavoidable issue here.
Unfortunately, the Java implementation on some phones doesn’t allow Java apps to access the camera. J1CK.tweet detects this, and if it’s not available, it just doesn’t show it on the menu. We’re certain for this to happen on the Motorola VE538, and it’s likely that the same problem happens on the Samsung C5212. This would be easy to check: no Java app should have camera access.
We’ll try to confirm this in the future, when we get a C5212 to test it ourselves, but this is 99% the likeliest option anyway.
Looks like a great app. It installed ok on my Nokia E51. But doesn’t work. Once I start the app it says Initializing and then after some time it says Failed to initialize: service unavailable. I have an GPRS/Edge data connection. Is that a problem?
Looking forward a fix
[...] J2ME version for general Java phones is already out there and being used quite extensively. The public version is Beta 1, and we’re finalizing some [...]
Hola,
acabo de instalar la aplicación en un nokia e61 y va estupendamente. Enhorabuena por el programa (joé, como suena eso). Y si me permitís, un par de sugerencias:
1.- Posibilidad de desactivar las imágenes. Yo soy un poco rácano. Eso, unido a que no tengo tarifa plana de internet en el móvil, me lleva a desactivar las imágenes en el navegador. Sería interesante incorporar esa opción al programa. De esa forma se aligera la descarga y, lo que es más importante, la factura
2.- Posibilidad de hacer búsquedas en twitter y seguir hashtags. Estoy pensando en incorporar una función similar al twubs.com. Es decir, que te puedas conectar a una búsqueda de un hashtag, seguirlo, y tener la posibilidad de twittear desde esa pantalla.
Lo dicho, buen trabajo.
[...] producto público, un cliente Twitter, hace algunas semanas. Podéis ver el anuncio de la misma en http://j1ck.com/blog/2009/10/14/j1ck-tweet-beta-1-of-our-java-twitter-client-ready/, así como una revisión de la buena recepción que ha tenido mundialmente en [...]
[...] eta datozen egunetan espero dugu ateratzea. Hementxe duzue Beta 1 bertsioaren iragarkia: http://j1ck.com/blog/2009/10/14/j1ck-tweet-beta-1-of-our-java-twitter-client-ready/. Gure sorpresarako, betak ere nahiko arrakasta izan du munduan zehar (batez ere Brasilen, Txinan, [...]
I was a great app. I’ve installed on my LG KC550 but I cannot
use the camera to take some picture (I cannot see the menu
for taking the picture) moreover, when I press the options
menu, I cannot see the select bar so I don’t know which menu
I will select.
not work on my sony ericsson g502, got this warning message : Failed to initialize: length required
Patit, I just sent you an email about the issues. Mainly, the Photo option comes in the menu when typing a tweet. If it does not appear, it may be due to your phone’s Java not supporting camera access (happens with some phones). Also, please check j1ck.tweet 1.0 to see if the selection bar shows in the options menu. Thanks & happy new year!
Kus, I just sent you an email about the issue – basically suggesting that you try out our latest version, 1.0, which was released recently. It may help fix the issue. If not, let us know, so that we can investigate it further. Thanks & happy new year to you & everyone else!