Tweet Speaker – Listen to Twitter for iphone, ipad Review

Our rating:

By: The Application Cubby LLC

Version #: 1.0

Date Released:

Developer: By App Cubby

Price: $2.99

User Rating:

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Twitter has been in the Apple news quite a bit lately. With the release of iOS5, the iPhone introduces Twitter to many people who had only heard of it in the news. The App Store is full of third party clients for Twitter and many find remarkable ways to slice and dice the constant stream of information that comes from the little blue bird. While most apps give you extra features or let you manage your feed in ways you wouldn’t expect (like as a 2-D platformer), they all seem fixed on the whole “reading” your tweets.

This is where TweetSpeaker steps in. This little app does one simple thing, it reads your tweets out loud. You might think this is silly at first and would be a novelty at best, but think about the next time you are on your daily commute and you wish you had something better to listen to than the FM morning show host laughing at their own jokes. With TweetSpeaker, you are able to listen to the latest quips from perhaps your favorite comedian, or insights from a political pundit. TweetSpeaker also lets you listen to your lists which makes it very useful to have a particular list just for TweetSpeaker.

For controls you can set the speed at which you read, as well as support for Tweet Marker. You can also set actions for tapping on a tweet. Your options in this regard are limited to sending to Instapaper, or Safari. I know this app is designed for times when you are not able to actually look at your phone, but it would be nice to see other options like ReadItLater, or to add to your Twitter favorites being able to be assigned to the tap function.

During operation, TweetSpeaker has an elegant wood background that showcases the tweet being read, while the radio wheel allows you to dial back and forth through your timeline. The voice itself sounds like the high quality text-to-speech voices available on OS X. It does stumble on some of the harder abbreviations that can be common on Twitter, but for the most part it is clear and articulate. Links are not spoken out, but instead are declared as links and then the title of the site is read. Replying to a tweet is easy with the on screen controls, but unfortunately there is no voice recognition at this time, though I would be interested in seeing an integration of this app with Siri. Finally there is also a mic button that teases that more voices will be forthcoming.

With any mobile device, no matter how accessible, you will have times when your can not have your eyes glued to the screen (however I do know several tech writer that would dispute this claim). For those times you could listen to music, or a podcast, but why not listen to Twitter, and keep yourself up to date with the pulse of the internet. If you are a Twitter junkie, you should pick up TweetSpeaker while it is on sale for $1.99. Happy Listening!

We rate this app 4 out 5 stars.