It’s been 364 days since Carbon launched in Palm App Catalog. A day and it would complete a full year. A couple of weeks from our launch a very popular Twitter client “Tweed” from Pivotal Labs was ending its era and with a tiny cooperation with us they recommended their users to move to Carbon while we offered discounts for a month for users to move. While that was an exciting moment for us, it was a sad time for Tweed users as we went through their tweets, they used that app for more than a year. Right at that moment I thought to myself & hoped this day would never come for Carbon, it was sad. And now, I’m at that position.

What is sad about this is the fact that Carbon started as a personal project, before even having a Tablet version, a Windows Phone, or an Android version. It was an app that I was writing for my own use as I wasn’t happy with the free Twitter apps that were available at the time on App Catalog. As you know due to Geo-Restrictions of the App Catalog I couldn’t buy the quality apps, so I wrote mine. Posted a few screenshots with #webOS hashtag on Twitter, and what do you know! An awesome tweep @JohnnyPre(he’s an Android user now) picks it up and retweets it, at the time I wasn’t aware of the webOS community, I just loved my Pre phones. And it just started from there. It became a serious project after launching it.

Maintaining a Twitter app is real commitment that needs to be financially feasible unless it’s a free app done for fun of it. When I took Carbon seriously I put targets, and read the webOS scene deeper, there was a great potential, big promises from webOS folks on the growth of user base and handhelds out in the Market. And we waited for a long time. Nada! And then was our Tablet version “Graphite”. And then was Leo. Oh Leo!

The reason we’re discontinuing “Carbon” on webOS is because we don’t want to have it become an app that is not updated, broken as it has been in the last couple of months. Twitter API changes regularly and that at times could break apps and call for regular updates to keep up with the API, that from a side, and keeping an app that we ourselves don’t personally use anymore? That is tough.

As we discussed this with our friends we’ve been getting calls for open-sourcing Carbon. While that is a great idea, we’ll have to plan that as maintaining an open-source project is something that we haven’t done before and our code has to get polished for developers to make good use of. Our code is a year old, written on a discontinued Framework that is “Mojo” by Palm. While it’s a very skeptical and doubtful about the whole open-sourcing we’re open for talks, you’re a kick ass developer on webOS? Want in? Have ideas and want to guide us go open-source? Hit me at saleh[at]dotsandlines[dot]com.

It’s hard to say this, but this should be it for Carbon on webOS. Carbon could not be anything of what it is on other platforms if it wasn’t for the great webOS community that carried it for the past year and specially every one of our friends who alpha & beta tested Carbon and made the app what it was at the time of launch. Thanking each of you. Thanking every awesome webOS user who bought our app, kept it patient with our bugs and put up with our shortcomings, thank you all!

The app and its tablet version Graphite is now taken off of the App Catalog. Time to turn the page.

It’s been a while since we pushed an update. Twitter has changed quite a bit since our last release as we’ve been busy cooking the Touchpad version of Carbon aka Graphite.

While we were at the drawing board Twitter updated a tiny bit of the Search API that resulted in breaking the search functionality in Carbon. This is now fixed.

Major updates have affected us as well, changes in Twitter’s OAuth permissions which we blogged about and tweeted repeatedly. New URL wrapping feature in Twitter that wraps all the URLs longer than 19/20 characters with t.co URLs. And last night as they announced the Native Photo upload feature in Twitter.

We also had a persistent bug with Background Notifications that we ironed out in this version. We’re back on Carbon updates although we were hoping to be able to re-write it with the new webOS platform, that’ll have to wait until Enyo & webOS3ish support is fully realized.

Change Log:

Bug Fixes

• Search Timeline Fix, Hashcard Fix, User Profile-Mentions Timelines fix. Nearby Tweets fix, Due to Twitter update were not loading tweets.
• Fixed Saving Search that previously gave 401 Error
• Fixed Background Notifications Bug
• Error: 401: Couldn’t authenticate with OAuth. Fixed
• Fixed x-launch parameters for Search

Changes/Additions

We’re still shooting for the major update to v.1.3 with some of the worked out features such as Filter(Mute), Retweets of my tweets, Screenname auto complete, Geo Tagging and Add to Launcher features.

Next, we’ll update with Native Twitter Photo upload feature and release more often with smaller additions and changes to keep the app more lively and updated more frequently as opposed to our previous plans to have major updates in distant intervals.

The update has been submitted to the App Catalog for review at around 5AM GMT+4 on August 17. It should be out any time now.

Twitter announced a series of changes to their API access and OAuth authentication that will affect almost all of the Twitter apps out there one way or another. To that end we are supposed to change a tiny bit of our Access API on Twitter side that will give users access to their DMs in Carbon the way it does right now.

Due to the changes as per Twitter’s deadline on June 15, the new Authentication permissions will be effective and those apps that don’t comply might lose the access to their DMs. We’ll be updating our permissions on Twitter to include DMs just the way we have them right now(if we don’t, then the access to DMs will be stopped after June 1st and you’ll get “403″ errors). We’ll do that on May 26th. After that all the users will have to do the following to be able to use their accounts with Carbon.

Things to do after May 26th:

1. Go to preferences, scroll down to the accounts section
2. Delete every account by swiping to right or left and confirming the deletion
3. Add your accounts again

There’s nothing that we could do right here really as it’s completely on Twitter’s side. We apologize for the hassle but it’s something that has to be done.

Mark this, May 26th. And enjoy your use of the premium twitter client for webOS.

Links to Twitter Announcements:

• http://blog.twitter.com/2011/05/mission-permission.html
• http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-api-announce/browse_thread/thread/e954fc0f8b5aa6ec

Update: We just changed the date from June 2nd to May 26th

It’s unfortunate to see a quality Twitter app such as Tweed going away, it kind of makes us think about Carbon and if one day we’ll have to go through the same(god forbid). We first started using the free version of Tweed as our first Twitter client on webOS as we did not have access to paid apps and we really do realize how hard it is to let go of an app such as Tweed as a daily Twitter app.

The fine folks at Pivotal Labs contacted us about their plans for Tweed’s EOL and did not want to leave their users out and dry, so we’re now offering a price drop from $2.99 to $1.99 for a period of Two weeks in order to make the transition to Carbon easier for Tweed users.

It is now effective and you can buy Carbon from HP webOS App Catalog for $1.99. And don’t forget to tell your friends about it, it’s a short period of Two weeks and after that Carbon goes back to its original pricing which is $2.99.

• Buy Carbon Now!
• Pivotal Labs’ Tweed Announcement

For those of you who are using the Beta version, the wait is over and it’s officially #carbonwebosday. And if you’re on webOS and haven’t tried Carbon, it’s now out in the wild. Grab a copy NOW.

Here’s an intro to our new friends who haven’t been on the Beta ship with us.

This is Carbon

Carbon is the premium Twitter client for webOS devices. Carbon was initially developed because the developers behind it could not access paid apps in HP App Catalog from Dubai, what started as a need is now one of the most prominent, respected and loved Twitter clients on webOS in under six weeks of its Beta release.

Carbon maintains being a webOS app first, and a Twitter client, second. As a Twitter client it’s the Twitter client of choice for features and ease of use. Most of the app features are accessed within two taps or by just flicking the way around.

Advanced gestures such as Power Scroll and webOS-only features such as #Hashcard are some of the unique features in Carbon that were firsts for webOS and Twitter clients.

Carbon leverages webOS core features such as multi-card view and multi-instance app launches and recently with the App Catalog version of the app it makes use of “Just Type” functionalities to post new tweets & search twitter.

The UI in Carbon is as close as it gets to Native apps with accented dark and Carbonic styles. It uses default webOS UI elements to preserve the webOS experience.

Enough Talkin’

Features

Multi-Panel Home Screen: Users can switch timelines by swiping right or left in order to navigate through different timelines.

Configurable Menu: Users can choose a default user menu on home screen and choose between Trends or Lists to be shown on home screen.

Power Scroll Gesture: Jumping to the top or bottom of any timeline is as easy as swiping up or down using two fingers.

Just Type: on webOS 2.x users can use Just Type to quickly launch Carbon to either Search Twitter or Post a new Tweet.

Type to Tweet in Carbon: Users can type on any Carbon screen to start composing a tweet, reply or mentioning users.

#Hash Card: A dedicated webOS card that loads tweets with a certain hash tag or search keyword. It automatically adds the selected hash tag to composed tweets in composition screen. This is a highly useful feature for the times that users follow an event or tweet from it.

Compose Card: If configured, upon taping on New Tweet button Carbon loads a separate card for composing and posting tweets.

Account Card: Every account could be opened in a separate Card

Top-to-Bottom & Bottom-to-Top reading: Upon refreshing any timeline, users are able to configure weather they want to read from the bottom of the newly loaded tweets or start from the top so once timeline refreshes it jumps to the selected end.

Gap Detection: At any given time depending on the breaks between sessions and refreshes; timelines might skip tweets. Gap detection makes it possible to navigate and load tweets between sessions and distant refreshes so that users never miss a tweet.

Video Preview & Direct Video Playback: Tweets that include videos hosted on Youtube or YFrog could be previewed and played back directly in Carbon without opening web browser cards.

Threaded Direct Messages View: Direct Messages are grouped by conversations based on senders & recipients. The conversation view includes a quick composition field for quick replies.

Drafts: Carbon supports saving drafts. Users can save drafts for normal tweets, replies and direct messages.

Tweet I’m Replying to: If configured, users can see the tweet they reply to on the composition screen.

Read Later Services: Carbon saves directly to Instapaper & Read It Later.

My Bit.ly: Users can use their own bit.ly api key to shorten URLs using their own accounts or custom short domain names.

Quoting Tweets: Unlike old-school twitter clients Carbon makes use of the official Retweet function of Twitter and adds an option to Quote tweets in three styles. 1. “RT @name:….” 2. “(via @name)” 3. “tweet”

Share Tweets: Share via SMS or Email or even copy link to tweet for sharing in any other possible medium.

Translation: Tweets that are not in English could be translated to English on tweet screen.

Dark & Light Themes

Three Tweet Font Sizes

And many more to come as we update…

It’s offered for $2.99 so Buy it NOW!

p.s. Our homepage is about to launch with all the graphics and goodies in a bit along with our change log from 1.1.1 to 1.2.0

From day one of our Public beta we’ve been asked for our Launch Parameters by our friends in the webOS dev community in order to support cross-app launching. It’s a bless to be in such a community.

If you ain’t a developer and still wondering what Launch Parameters are then head to webOS101′s Cross-App Launching Introduction.

Carbon’s launch parameters are designed in a matter that if at any time another application tries to use Carbon’s functionalities it’ll do that w/o being in your way or disrupting your current state in Carbon timelines or other screens. To that end, every function that we give access to other apps would open up in separate cards. As we currently support Compose & Search to be accessed by other apps, every Compose Request by other apps will open up a new Card for sending Tweets and the same goes for Search.

Parameters

To Compose a new Tweet pass the launching parameter object as shown below:

 { action: "compose", body: "Tweet body goes here..." } 

To start a Search Card pass the launching parameter object as shown below:

 { action: "search", keywords: "Keyword(s) go here..." } 

Application ID

You can use either com.dotsandlines.carbon or our beta version which is com.dotsandlines.carbonbeta

For a reference on how to use these parameters go to webOS101.

What’s Next?

More parameters and functions are going to become accessible as we go. User search, Tweet view, Image upload, and more are going to be added.

It was one of the first days of Carbon development when one of our friends on Twitter asked if we’re going to support Twitlonger in Carbon. Our straight answer was negative following discussions on how if you need more than 140 you need something else, a blogs post, a tumblr post or anything but Twitter. Days passed us by and we released our first Public Beta.

After releasing our Public Beta v.1.0.11 we then had the chance to talk to even a bigger number of users and we kept on getting requests for Twitlonger. It was time for us to get out and see if it’s really feasible to do so, how’s the user base in terms of numbers. It was simple math, we ran 5 tests using Twitter’s search site and we were blown away with the results. Check the screenshots below.

The simple math was this, we saw a huge number of Tweets being sent along with their Twitlonger URL, the number was huge! An average 5 tweets a second coming form Twitlonger on Ubertwitter and a lot more on iPhone’s standard Twitter client.

So we started using Twitlonger ourselves, on different Twitter clients to know what we’ve been missing. That was when we found out how wrong we were slashing such a useful service from being used by us and keeping it away from Carbon users. Such a shame we should’ve implemented this on day one. It’s that good!

The team at Twitlonger were really excited to see a webOS twitter client is finally going to implement Twitlonger, another shocker for us, we thought at least one of the 8,9 twitter clients on webOS has implemented it, boy we were wrong. So there it is, Twitlonger on Carbon, it’ll be working as shown in screenshots below. Scheduled for the release in the next update v.1.1.2.

So as you can see in the screenshots we post to Twitlonger and read long tweets in Tweet View automatically. Next time your friends tweet using Twitlonger you won’t need to open links in the browser, Carbon will grab the whole conversation for you.

Twitlonger will be available in Carbon as of v.1.1.2, which is the next update that we’ll push as soon as we polish and iron some of the reported bugs.

On another note

Using the search site on Twitter on the day of #thinkbeyond showed us a rather great collection of data that got us a little proud. Although it was our Ninth day on the Beta feed, at any given time we had more tweets coming from tweeps using Carbon with the hashtag #thinkbeyond than any other webOS twitter client. While such data can’t be held accountable, we still felt good about it.

And, back to the lab.

Now that we’ve got the hang of pushing updates and getting feedback from our beloved Beta testers we’ll be releasing more often rather than releasing only with big updates, so we’ll be going up in Minor versions from now on as Carbon is maturing and as we rafactor many parts of our code-base.

Here’s what’s new in v.1.1.1 of Carbon for webOS.

Copy Link to Tweet & View Tweets from a Status URL

There are times when we don’t want to Retweet or Quote another tweet but want to share it either with a tweet or any other way possible. The best way to share a tweet or have a reference for it is by having a link to the Tweet on the original status page on Twitter.com. On Tweet view we enabled this on our dots menu.

As explained above we enabled copying link to tweets, now how useful would that be if we made you go to your browser to view those tweets that you receive in URL? Tweet URLs are in http://twitter.com/CarbonWebOS/status/36746499266318336 format. Now in Tweet view, tapping on these links will open the tweet in Carbon rather than the Browser.

Youtube Video Preview & Other URL discoveries enhancements

Previously we read short Youtube URLs in http://youtu.be/gbmJGpFetqw and showed preview and a still frame from the video in Tweet view. Now, we read all formats of Youtube URLs and show previews for all of them including http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbmJGpFetqw. And by tapping on Previews we open the videos in Youtube Application w/o invoking or opening the web Browser. The way it’s supposed to be!

The Raw Change Log

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Tweet-Translation Bug in webOS 2.0
• Fixed the time-line bug that caused the last tweet to disappear between “More” tweets
• Fixed bug on time-lines that have no older tweets, the last tweet would disappear once we hit Twitter’s EoF
• Tapping on Notification Direct Messages Icon used to take users to time-line panel instead of Direct Messages.
• Fixed the bug that showed the wrong Status for Direct Messages. It showed Replied everytime we had new Sent tweets & Received tweets at the same time.

Changes/Additions

• Raised the time-stamp updater on time-lines from 3 minutes to 5 for better performance
• Added Long Youtube URL discover for http://youtube.com/watch?v=<id> & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<id>&<lots of paramters>
• Added “Copy Link to Tweet” option on Tweet View. Copies the URL to any given tweet in http://twitter.com/username/status/statusid format.
• Added Status Link detection, tapping on a URL that links to an official Tweet page on Twitter.com now shows the Tweet in Carbon.

Download v.1.1.1 Now!

Our current build v.1.1.0 was released on Feb 9, on #thinkbeyond day. Having all the news on HP’s mega event we got glued to our seats and as the rest of the webOS community’s News junkies didn’t think anything but #thinkbeyond, so this post comes out now, a little late, most of you wouldn’t need to read this as you’ve been updated on our Twitter stream or simply experienced the new goodies and fixes. Our change-log was available at the time of this update’s release on our help site: http://help.carbonwebos.com. But this is the detailed version.

Read, Unread & Replied Statuses for Direct Message Conversations

Our threaded conversation view for Direct Messages has been one of those features that all wished they had since day one of webOS. Now, with even more interactivity and style. We mark conversations as Read, Unread or even Replied.

Show the tweet I’m replying to

This is one of the most requested features since our first beta v.0.9.23. It’s really cool and useful having the tweet you’re replying to right in front of you, in case you wanted to refer to a word or just to have it there in case you wanted to take your time and reply carefully.

So, this is what we did, why just get the text of a tweet, get the whole tweet there.

Delete your own tweets on Tweet View

Although we had a delete option that followed webOS style of removing items by swiping away, we’ve had a big number of request for having an option on Tweet View.

And here’s the raw Change Log as posted on our Help website.

Fixes:

• Pixi More button visibility and position.
• My Bit.ly credentials now appear as expected after closing preferences, it wasn’t showing up after closing preferences and coming bagk to it.
• Fixed draft resaving bug that reset the type of Reply Draft to a regular Tweet Draft
• Fixed the nasty bug on user profiles that showed wrong Follow/Unfollow status & button

Changes/Additions:

• Added “2 hours” & “3 hours” intervals for Background intervals as requested by users.
• Added option to disable Timeline auto-refresh
• Changed Bit.ly’s “Get Your API Key” to a straight API Key Page in Preferences.
• Changed button label from “Tweet” to “Message” in direct message composition.
• Added Img.ly images discovery and preview
• Added Twitgoo images discover and preview
• Changed “RT @tweep“ to “RT @tweep:“ in quote function, added a colon.
• Removed Message-User option when viewing own-tweet, ye know, you don’t wanna’ message yourself.
• Disabled Reply command on own-tweet
• Removed Follow/Unfollow from own-profile screen…
• Links/Hashtags/Mentions are now tappable on DM Conversations

For bugs, suggestions or any questions go to our help website at http://help.carbonwebos.com

It’s been quite a journey so far. From the day we started sketching the UI on November 12th until the first Beta release in Jan 18(after we got our party crashed on Jan 14). Days full of rush, full of excitement and joy.

While you’re reading this now, you’re probably asking yourself why are you guys posting this so late, everyone in the webOS community knows that Carbon’s out. Oh well, we were in such a rush on the Beta launch that we couldn’t do anything else but Code and Test up until the last minute that we uploaded the app to Palm’s beta feed.

The launch was amazingly well received as we had our twitter friends ready for us to launch and we even sported a hashtag #CarbonWebOSDay the whole community was so supportive that we really didn’t know who to thank anymore.

We gotta’ give it up BIG to our Beta testers and specially our very own Private Beta testers who’ve been working along with us to enhance and improve Carbon.

So here it is the release details. Note that we updated from 1.0.11 in about 5 hours of the beta launch of 1.0.1 due to a nasty bug that our users found in Notifications & Background Updates.

Features in this release:

• Parallel Timelines(previously called Multi-Panel)
• Power Scroll: Yes! We came up with it. Our two-finger gesture that lets you jump to the top/bottom of the timelines.
• Hashcard: A card for a specific #hashtag that refreshes and let’s you tweet with the selected #hashtag
• Multi Account & Multi Card: You can open up a card for each account
• Video Preview: One of our firsts, usually twitter client show you previews of Images, we do that with videos and stream them and playback the videos in your respective apps; Youtube & Video Player
• Personal Bit.ly accounts
• goo.gl URL shortening
• Image & Video Upload
• Instapaper direct integration
• Read It Later direct integration
• New style Retweets and Three styles of quoting: RT, via(@tweep), and “Quotes”
• Reply All Options
• Copy, Share Tweets
• Translate Tweets to English
• Type To Tweet
• Compose Card
• Notifications & Background Updates: highly interactive notifications system that we call “Smoke”
• And many many more…

What’s next?

• Geotagging & Locations updates
• Flickr Upload
• Share to Facebook
• Light theme
• Personal goo.gl accounts
• 2.0 Features such as Tyep to Search and Quick Actions.
• Launch Parameters
• And bug fixes as we find them or get reported by our lovely Beta testers

Our friends at Precentral have done a great job covering up the launch of our Private & Public betas. We wouldn’t say any further when we have such great journalists in the community. Big love to Derrek and the gang. Here’s their amazing coverage: Carbon beta bursts out to eager Twitter masses and an earlier preview of our beta private release last month:Preview, Carbon Beta [video].

Get the Beta

If you haven’t downloaded our beta yet, then get it from Palm’s beta feed Carbon Beta v.1.0.11