Although it’s been delayed, today Twitter finally switch off the ability to use a username/password combination to access the Twitter API (used by many third party applications to access your twitter account).  Instead, a more secure system called OAuth must be used.  Now, many twitter clients have either moved to OAuth, or offer a choice of methods.

So, from today, the old method will no longer work; if your preferred twitter app has stopped working, first of all, check to see if there is an OAuth option, and if not, you might want to check for a software update to see if that resolves it.

Some apps will simply no longer work; fring have announced that in the short term their twitter addon for the Android version of fring will no longer work.

Of course, with many manufacturers building in twitter (and facebook) support into their phones, and many of those vendors being less helpful in providing any form of firmware update service, it’s possible your mobile phone app will no longer work either.

It’s not all doom and gloom though; when twitter were last planning this, I did a little research, and found that the majority of the mobile phones built in applications seemed to be using OAuth, and hence would not be affected.  Have you been affected? Has your preferred twitter client stopped working, and there’s no update? Let us know via the comments…

Screenshot of Gravity on Symbian courtesy of nokiaaddict.com (now gerrymoth.co.uk), and we should point out that Gravity has supported OAuth for some time, so as long as you are using a fairly up to date copy, you shouldn’t have any problems with Gravity.

It’s not often a new app can come along and provide similar features to an existing application, yet still be worth installing, but Socially App seems to be one such app.  If you are a heavy Twitter or Facebook user on Symbian, chances are you are already running Gravity, which is by far the best overall Social Networking client for Symbian, but that does not mean that there is not a place for Socially App on your device.

The main benefit to Socially App is that, when a call comes in, it will display the latest information that it has on the individual, based on their posting to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN.  That last point can’t be missed; Gravity does not (currently) support LinkedIN, so this app does provide a convenient way to access and update your status on a wider range of platforms.

Of course, one must not forget that if you set it to regular updates and you have Gravity doing likewise, then you run the risk of running into the API limits on Twitter that could impact the experience on both tools.

If you only have a few friends and they don’t tweet / use facebook all the time, then you can turn on Desktop alerts in the Socially App, which will put the information onto the homescreen when updates come in, but with more than a few friends, and this gets unmanageable.  Another nice touch is going into Contacts you can long press * or Fn and it will display your online contacts as opposed to your local contacts; it would be nice to see more integration along the likes of fring which creates a single list of all online and local contacts, but it’s still useful.

One other feature that the Socially App offers is the ability to screen your calls; I need to play with this some more to see how it works, and whether it’s useful in the long run, but after a brief play, it’s fair to say Socially App is definitely worth a look; not necessarily as a tool for providing updates of your status to others (and Gravity still wins here, especially as it can connect via ping.fm, which therefore allows posting to many more sites than either tool natively provides), but as a way of getting status updates of others and providing that information when phone calls come in seems a powerful feature.

If you want to try it out (and it’s currently completely free) then point your Symbian phone to m.sociallyapp.com and download the latest version.

Having recently released an Android version of their fring client, fring have now announced an updated Symbian S60 client which offers video calling, allowing you to video call your fring and Skype contacts.  Initially for S60 devices (both touch devices such as the Nokia X6, Nokia N97, Nokia N97 Mini as well as the traditional non-touch Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8GB, and Nokia N82 devices).

For more details, and a video showing it in action, head over to fring’s website here.

fring have in the last few days released their fring client for the Android platform too (which is available from here).  It offers VOIP calls via Skype, MSN, or VOIP SIP providers, as well as chat capabilities with those and other platforms (Yahoo, AIM, and even ICQ).  This is good news for fring, and we should see fring continue to develop their Android client in the same way they have with all the other platforms they support.  Although there is some twitter support, this version doesn’t yet have all the features of the Symbian version.

Although only available for Nokia phones (others, such as Samsung should be available soon), fring have updated their client for Symbian S60 3rd and 5th Edition devices, with a minor update, which brings some stability improvements, and a smoother installation process.  This new version is 3.40.19, and is available now direct from fring.

fring have updated their S60 application (to v3.40).  One of the key features of this new version is the ability to merge your contacts together; so, if you have the same contact on multiple services, you can now combine those entries into a single contact entry.  It can also go through your address book and spot if any of your existing contacts are also fring users, to allow you to be able to converse directly through fring, saving call costs (and in reverse, if they provide it, you will be able to see other people’s fring profile and what other social networks / IM accounts they have).

fring state these new features will come to their other versions, but it’s nice to see them release them in their S60 client first; we’ve been using this version for a few days, and have been impressed by how easy these new functions work.

For more information, and to download the new client, head over to fring’s website.

Up until last week, Nokia were able to offer a handful of potentially useful applications direct to their smartphones via the Download! facility.  Well, this is being slowly replaced by the Ovi Store, and this has now gone live.  This isn’t just some small little launch; selecting a well established S60 3rd Edition FP1 phone can give you over 1000 items to choose from; some are free, some are chargeable (the odd “free” application may use chargeable SMSes to register, which to our mind means it should not be classed as free).

There are videos, applications, ringtones, travel guides (and that’s just within the first few listed items in the most popular free section!), although it’s not perfect; a search for twitter did not list fring, despite it being in Ovi Store and having a twitter addon, and equally, there are a few UI issues which we are sure Nokia / Ovi will iron out.

This has great potential, and should get better over the next few weeks.  If you are interested, head over to the Ovi Store for more information.

With the new OS (v1.5, AKA Cupcake) now rolling out to all UK T-Mobile G1 phones (and coming preinstalled on the Vodafone HTC Magic), there are a number of interesting software applications that have been recently released, which we thought we should mention…

Firstly, Google have added Bar Code Scanning support into the Shopping Search functionality on Android, allowing you to scan a barcode of a product, and Google will then provide you with Google’s Shopping Search for that product (you can also use it on generic items such a “Bluetooth Headsets”, but sometimes you just want details on a single item to see if you could buy it cheaper elsewhere).  The first time you try to run a Bar Code Search, you’ll be asked to install their BarCode Scanner application, if you don’t already have it installed.

To access Google’s Shopping search from your Android phone, simply head to Google.com, type in a query, hit Search, and then select the “Shopping results” link at the top of the search results (or tap More from the Google homepage and select Shopping from there).  This integration of the Barcode Scanning into the Product Search is only available in the US and the UK.

Secondly, we covered WeFi before here where we talked about fring now supporting WeFi, the social based Free WiFi location service, and now WeFi have launched their own Android app for getting information on WiFi hotspots.  As people travel around, the WeFi client records details on WiFi hotspots, signal strength, and how easy is it to connect to those WiFi hotspots, and then allows other clients to automatically connect to the best Free WiFi in the area (this deals with one problem of connecting to what appears to be free wifi that then requires you to login / pay for access).

Although the WeFi website only seems to offer a Windows Mobile download, you can search in the Android Market, or you can download it from here.

Continuing today’s Wi-Fi theme, fring have updated their client (for Windows Mobile and Symbian S60) to now support WeFi, which is a Wi-Fi location service.  WeFi users map areas of all the useable Wi-Fi hotspots, which are then published and shared for everyone to use.  A WeFi client will then automatically look for the best connection available in the area.  With fring’s addon, you will be able to locate the available internet access either via your GPS, or search by typing in the address.  WeFi currently have over 20 million Wi-Fi hotspots discovered in their worldwide database.

To get the new WeFi addon on your Symbian S60 or Windows Mobile Device, you’d need to download fring’s latest version here.  More information about WeFi can be found here.

fring have updated their iPhone / iPod Touch app, which should be available now in the iTunes Store.  You can now select to hide offline contacts, but probably the key new feature is offline notifications.  They’ve also added the flag icon to allow you select the country you are trying to dial (via SkypeOUT or SIP calls) and it will automatically enter the country code for you (shown above).  If your contacts (Skype, Google Talk, MSN etc.) try to reach you whilst the app is turned off, it will notify you when you come back online.  This is being slowly rolled across the UK and US right now, and should be “eventually be in line with Apple’s 3.0 firmware and new notification feature”

More information on this version of fring here.

Update: fring have also provided more information their “always-on” system here.