Twuner is a “talking” Twitter app. What this means is that unlike a traditional Twitter app, which allows you to read tweets of interest, Twuner allows you to also listen to those tweets. We refer to it in the iTunes App Store as a Twitter utility because it was not designed to replace a regular full-featured Twitter client (such as the excellent Tweetie or Twitterrific). However, we do not want you to think of it as just a cool toy.

We believe that Twuner is the first mobile Twitter client application to harness the power of Acapela Group's highly advanced text-to-speech engine and add support for audio media playback between the vocalization of tweets. If you'd like to be impressed by the amazing human-like quality of the voices used in Twuner, please try Acapela Group's interactive demo (from the drop-down voice menu, choose “Heather” to hear what the American English voice sounds like and “Graham” to see what the British English voice sounds like).

Although Twuner can be a lot of fun to use, it was designed mainly to serve as a productivity tool. By automatically fetching the latest tweets and reading them for you, it changes the act of following your favorite Twitter users from being synchronous to asynchronous or from being a "foreground" task to a "background" task.

Furthermore, even if you are not following thousands of other users and therefore not receiving tweets every couple of seconds, you do not need to get bored whilst you are waiting for new tweets to arrive since Twuner allows you to listen to any media (music, podcasts, audio books) stored on your iPhone or iPod Touch and it automatically takes care of pausing and resuming media playback as necessary.

Twuner can be very useful in the following scenarios:

  • You are working in an office environment. You normally use your iPod Touch or iPhone to listen to music while you work. With Twuner, you can still listen to your music, but when tweets arrive, your music is paused, the tweets are announced, and then music playback is automatically resumed. Furthermore, since Twuner automatically refreshes itself periodically (as often as every 30 seconds should you wish), you can be fully up-to-date with all the news arriving via Twitter with minimal impact to your productivity (and without anyone in the office realizing that you are a true Twitter addict).

  • You are at home, studying, doing house work., or watching TV. You do not want your eyes to be glued to a Twitter application just so that you do not miss any breaking news or the latest updates from your family, friends or favorite celebrities. Once again, Twuner comes to the rescue.

  • You are driving a car to/from your office. You normally listen to music, podcasts, or audio books on your iPhone or iPod Touch through the car speakers. If you use Twuner, due to its built-in media playback functionality, you can still do this. But, in addition, when a tweet arrives, instead of taking your eyes off the road and risking an accident, you keep your focus on your driving and wait for Twuner to temporarily pause the audio media you were listening to, announce the tweet, and then resume playback. This way, you don’t have to choose between (a) listening to the radio to get the latest news and (b) listening to your iPhone / iPod Touch to enjoy your music / podcasts / audiobooks - you can have both.

  • At the end of a long day, when you are resting in bed and you feel that your eyes are too tired for you to look at an LCD screen just so you can catch up with the latest tweets from your favorite people or organizations, just close your eyes, relax, and let Twuner read out the tweets for you.

Here are Twuner’s main features:

  • Listen to either tweets from your own timeline (i.e. tweets from people you follow) or tweets by one of several preset users (some of the most popular/influential members of the Twitter community)

  • Support for multiple Twitter accounts

  • Listen to tweets mixed with your favorite music, podcasts, or audio books such that you hear your chosen audio media in between tweets

  • Choice of American English (female) & British English (male) voices with adjustable rates of speech

  • Transcript of all tweets spoken by the app (links mentioned in these tweets are "clickable")

  • Inline web browser (so, for example, you can view the photo linked to in a tweet without having to exit the app)

  • Automatic refresh of tweets from the selected source at a user-selectable frequency (can be as often as once every 30 seconds)

Here are some screenshots:


Twuner - screenshot 1Twuner - screenshot 2

Twuner - screenshot 3Twuner - screenshot 4


And here’s a demo video that tries give you a feel for what it is like to use Twuner: