The developers of Birdhouse specifically state that it’s not for looking at your friends Twitter updates. So what does it do?
Well, Birdhouse is a “drafts manager” for your tweets. It’s supposed to be used as a notepad for whenever you get an awesome thought in your head that might go away. Although Birdhouse only does one simple task, it does it very well. Keep on reading to find out why.
[This review was written by Raj. Raj is a 15 years old graphic and web designer from U.S. and, obviously, a Mac user. You can reach him on Twitter, or head over his website where you’ll also find some gorgeous icons he designed]
With Birdhouse, you can store and rate all of your drafts. It’s supposed to work offline, so that an internet connection won’t prevent you from getting your awesome thought into your iPhone.
Settings
There really isn’t all that much in Birdhouse’s settings. You can manage multiple accounts, and set up an email to send backups to.
Toolbars
At the top of Birdhouse, you’ll find a small version of your Twitter picture to the left, and a button to start writing to the right. In the middle, there’s a toggle between your unpublished drafts and the Tweets that you’ve actually sent.
At the bottom of Birdhouse, there’s an icon for settings to the left, and an email/clear button to the right. In the middle, there’s yet another toggle, but this one toggles the sort order between time and rating, which I’ll get to later.
Birdhouse’s main pane is set up to be simple - you see your tweet, the date and time which you last edited it, and the number of stars it has. Tapping on a draft takes you to the extended view.
Extended View
This is the real heart of Birdhouse. Here, you can see and edit the number of stars a draft has and the account it’s being posted with. There’s a toggle at the bottom for editing stars, seeing when it was created/last edited, and changing the account you post with. At the very bottom, there’s a delete button and a publish button, and right above there is a nice, unobtrusive line telling you the number of characters (out of 140) you have left as well as the current account selected to tweet with.
If you go over the number of characters allowed and try to publish a draft, Birdhouse will ask you “what is this, your blog?” - a funny little extra. Fortunately, you can save drafts longer than 140 characters to come back later and trim them down.
Misc.
Birdhouse allows you to export your history and current drafts to email, so that you can keep a copy in case something happens to them. While it’s not very feature packed, Birdhouse has a nice, clean, iPhone-like UI that stays out of your way and allows you to easily capture your thoughts. Publishing is just a tap of a button and then your tweet is live.
Where it’s lacking
Birdhouse is lacking in several areas. There’s no way to send a tweet to your favorite Twitter client, and no Twitlonger support for those of us who sometimes need more than 140 characters. In addition, it doesn’t have any landscape support, which is absolutely essential in a writing tool.
Is it worth it?
To be honest, it isn’t. Birdhouse is quite feature-lacking and the updates are sparse. Hopefully, a new update will bring more value to the app, but it’s really not worth the $1.99 at the moment.The developers have an awesome promotional video that’s sure to give you a laugh or two. Birdhouse is available in the App Store for $1.99.
