Visualize Your Twitter Timeline In A New Way With Crest
Crest ($1.99) by Adam Bell is a new way to visualize your Twitter timeline.
I love Twitter, but sometimes it can be a bit boring to stare at your timeline in the same way, everyday, for most of the day. Personally, I like to use my iPad as a secondary display while I’m on the computer, and at times I would like to take a glance over to it to see my Twitter feed in-between work-related matters. Fortunately, a new app has just come out that changes the way you can see your timeline – it’s like a cool screensaver.
I was caught off guard by this app, personally. I just saw news about it break in my Twitter timeline, so I had to check it out. And I’m very glad I did. The beautiful design of the app caught me and drew me in – it’s optimized for Retina iPads, so you can see every detail in crisp, clear glory.
The first step is to log in to your Twitter account. Unfortunately, the app only takes one account at the moment, so choose wisely. It also doesn’t use the native Twitter integration in iOS 5 for some reason, so you will have to go about it with OAuth. Once you’re logged in, the magic happens.
Crest does not display your timeline in a traditional view. It’s an entirely fresh new concept, and while it may not be practical for those that do major tweeting, it makes a great display on your iPad. Avatars from the people you follow will drop in from the top of the screen and begin piling up. Once an avatar reaches the bottom (or lands on another avatar), you get a fluid “bouncing” effect that looks so realistic, you would actually think these are real cubes (but of course they’re not).
The rate that they fall down is pretty good – by the time you start reading tweets, the screen will get filled up pretty quickly (of course, this depends on how much activity is going on in your timeline). Crest features live streaming, so once new tweets arrive, they will immediately drop in from the top of the screen – there’s no need to ever manually refresh. Once the screen is filled, all of the current tweets get “disposed of” (they fall off the screen) and Crest starts anew.
Interacting with tweets is done by simply tapping on the photo of the person that tweeted. A message bubble appears, with their name and username, and content of the tweet. If there are links, you can tap on them to view them in the in-app browser. Usernames and hashtags can be tapped on as well, which will bring up a profile or start a new Twitter search, respectively.
Crest features three gestures that will help you navigate the app. Tapping on the dark areas will bring up the search bar, compose button, and settings. If you swipe on a tweet, you can reply directly from Crest. If you swipe right-to-left while not viewing a tweet, you can compose. A swipe from the left-to-right will bring up your profile information.
With Crest, you can only compose a basic tweet – that means no location, images or video; you just get a basic character count. Inside the app’s settings, you can toggle the option to use 3G (if you have the iPad for it, of course), and the ability to enable or disable retweets from users.
Of course, an app like this is the perfect display for your desk, so you want your iPad’s screen to remain on, right? Fortunately, Crest makes it so that your display cannot go to sleep while the app is active (visible) on the screen. This means you can leave this on all day on your desk while working (and just hope that you can resist tapping on every single tweet). Crest also works in both portrait and landscape orientation without losing any beauty.
While this is a great app to have to show off your iPad and Twitter, maybe in the future they can add the ability to manage multiple accounts, and perhaps even a retweet or favoriting ability (you can only reply). You can only view the main timeline, though it would be nice to see list support later on.
Crest is still a very polished app (especially for a 1.0), so I highly recommend you check this app out if you want a cool way to show off your timeline. It can only get better from here on in.
