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Twitter can be a great way to follow what friends and celebrities are thinking; to get snapshots on the thoughts of people around the world. And the great strength of most Twitter clients is in the way in which they allow you to follow and sort the list of people you follow.

But enough about them what about me?

Two Twitter apps, JustUpdate and Gyazickr, break away from the rat-race of adding features to Twitter, and instead go the opposite direction: stripping away features and focusing solely on updating your own feed. Both applications are free.

JustUpdate

Category: Social Networking (Twitter client)
Developer: Patrick Quinn-Graham
Requirements: iPhone 2.1 software
Compatibility: iPhone and iPod touch
File Size: 0.1 Mb
Version Reviewed: 0.1
Price: Free

JustUpdate is the barest of bones: you get a screen to compost a post. That’s it, except for two buttons which let you scroll through your friend list, saving you the trouble of remembering their Twitter handle. One posts a public “@reply,” while the other is for private Direct messages. There’s a large keyboard and a running count of how many characters you have left.  Hit send, and it posts to your Twitter feed.

That’s it. There’s no friends list, no built-in browser, no location finder, nuthin’.  It’s as simple as a ball-peen hammer, and dead useful if you want to just get a post up without being distracted.

Gyazickr

Category: Social Networking (Twitter client)
Developer: Naoki Hiroshima
Requirements: iPhone 2.2 software
Compatibility: iPhone and iPod touch
File Size: 0.2 Mb
Version Reviewed: 1.7.1
Price: Free

Gyazickr, in addition to having perhaps the worst name for an application since Leprosy ‘98 for Windows, is also focused just on posting, but posting photos. You can either take a new snap or use your photo library, and the photo will be uploaded to one of three services: your own Flickr or Tumblr photostream, or Gyazickr’s Flickr stream—and if you upload it to the last one (the only one which doesn’t require registration), then you’ve more or less lost control of the photo.

Another problem is that in order to use it with Flickr, you have to authorize Gyazickr with your Yahoo account…something I was unable to do. Logging into my Yahoo! account was no problem, and I was able to tell Flickr that I wanted to use the app, but when it gave me an authorization code to enter, I couldn’t find a place on the app to do so. Checking the Gyazickr Twitter feed I was lucky enough to find a post explaining that despite what Yahoo! said, I didn’t need to enter the number, the app would simply remember it. But every time I tried to post a picture, Gyazickr crashed, reloading it brought up a message asking me to re-authenticate with Flickr. Sigh. If it did work, then in theory I should have been able to post photos from my Flickr stream into Twitter as well.

There’s also an “everyone” button that allows you to view what others are posting to the Gyazickr stream, a neat distraction.

Gyazickr was of limited use on my iPod touch, since I obviously can’t take live photos and instead have to rely on the pictures I’ve loaded, taking some of the spontaneity out of the Twitter experience.  Frankly I find Twitpic to be better integrated since any replies to the photo show up as replies to my Twitter account.

Conclusion

What JustUpdate lacks in flash it makes up for in speed (you don’t have to wait for your entire feed to load if you just need to post a quick message) and simplicity. As the saying goes, “It does what it says on the tin.” I could see the appeal of Gyazickr for picture addicts and heavy users of Flickr and Tumblr, but its frustrating inability to log in took away a lot of its charm.