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Our Twitter application were featured on a Singapore local daily, MyPaper, yesterday.

Tweet easy, thanks to free S’pore applications

MyPaper, 16 Apr 2009

CHEN JINGTING

TWITTER fans here have created applications for fellow tweeting Singaporeans to “tweet” conveniently and securely – for free. These third-party applications are mainly for Twitter users who update their profiles via SMS. Tweet.sg, started by software engineer Jym Cheong about three months ago, has more than 700 users.

A user only has to send his password and message to a designated number. A program will then copy the SMS message onto his Twitter account online. “Tweet.sg updates the account on behalf of the user,” said Mr Cheong, who designed the program. The 33-year-old told my paper that he is not making money from tweet.sg. If a user has free SMS as part of his mobile-phone plan, he does not need to pay a cent when he uses tweet.sg, he said.

If the user exceeds his free SMS limit, charges are paid to the telecommunication companies, not tweet.sg.
So why did he start tweet.sg? To save money for local Twitter users, he said. Initially, users needed to send their SMSes to a number in the United Kingdom, which can incur expensive international SMS charges. A similar Singapore-based site, Widgeo.us, which provides web technology-based solutions, introduced its free Twitter application last October. Currently, nearly 700 fans are using the application. It stores and encrypts users’ passwords in its system to protect their privacy and prevent misuse of information, said co-founder Chua U-Zyn, 26. Tweet.sg also has its own security measures.

Mr Cheong said: “Once the SMS reaches the system, it is not stored and is sent to Twitter. Whether the attempt is successful or not, the system would delete the SMS so that no trace of it is left.” Mr Chua hopes that Widgeo.us would be able to access users’ online account information without requiring their login information in the future. “Then they don’t have to give us their passwords, which means greater security and user privacy.”

jtchen@sph.com.sg

Do check out our just-improved Twitter application.

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Tags Media, twitter, widgeo.us