Bar Android & Twicca

On Monday nights, this funky little teeny second-floor bar in Shibuya becomes Bar Android, a gathering place for Android geeks. This last Monday, which was Hallowe’en, I went; what a blast, and I got a new Twitter client.

I tried a few shots of the interior with my SLR but it was just too dark and crowded. However, the Galaxy Nexus managed to take this panorama, which is sort of twisted in places but nonetheless looks to me like the place feels. It’s amazing that the phone managed to get anything useful at all; that said, apologies to the guys whose faces got fractured.

If you want more pictures, there’s an album of the event on Facebook.

The people were wonderful. I went along with Google colleague Soonson Kwon and they sent Ruby Rumiko Bessho to pick us up at Shibuya station, which is a good thing, because our chances of finding the joint without some help would have been remote.

Ruby had called in the fact that we were both weak with hunger after a day of rehearsing for GDD Tokyo and soon after walking in, I was equipped with a very decent beer and something or other that was beef-centric and tasty to eat.

Now of course, anyone from the Android group at Google is going to be an attention magnet at Bar Android, and after I’d met thirty or forty people I raised my voice and said “Who’s got a cool app to show me?”.

The first memorable one I saw was toneconnect, which uses DTMF signaling to exchange data between mobiles. Kind of low-rent technology, but damned clever and it should in theory work between any two mobile devices, any flavor, when all the glossy high-tech paths between them are broken.

Next, there was this cool thingie that shares a picture between two devices, as in they display it in sync and when you scroll or zoom it, both do it sync. Like so; I didn’t get the name, if someone has a link for it, let me know and I’ll share.

But the real find of the night was my new Twitter client Twicca. Its author Tetsuma Aoyama was there and got a little tense when I started installing it on the Galaxy Nexus with its funky engineering build, but it went in like a champ, runs flawlessly, and looks great on the big screen. Except for, the authenticate-with-Twitter step requires copying and pasting a confirmation number, huh?!

Here’s Tetsuya, who normally looks much better when he’s not wearing Hallowe’en gore and packed into an overcrowded sweaty bar.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum so I won’t name my former client; but I have to say that Twicca is lightweight and snappy and nice-looking and has all the features I want. Plus, it has a plug-in architecture which is a win in my book. Hey, how is Tetsuya getting paid?

I’d call that a successful evening.

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