HelTweetica: Twitter + iPad made simple.

(I wonder if Gary Hustwit approves of this app)

HelTweetica is a free Twitter app for the iPad that caught my attention a while back —mainly due to it’s simplicity.

Initially, I didn’t think much of it. Then, one day whilst watching a World Cup match, I decided to use my iPad to see my Twitter stream as I worked from home with the laptop -and the match- both in front of me. If you are one of the many who experienced the biggest sporting event in the world with Twitter by your side, you know how important it was to keep up with the Twitterverse during matches.

I started by opening my iPad client of choice: Twitterific. It crashed after a while. Then I moved to Twittelator for iPad: not the best client as far as readability goes. Then I moved to TweetDeck: somehow it crashed as well. 

Then I remembered: “…oh yeah, there’s that other app…”

Here’s a Twitter iPad app that is simple. Really simple —in fact, too simple at first sight. Once I found that it won’t let you upload images, or shorten links or many of the other things more robust apps like Twittelator for iPad let you do, I knew I’d never use it regularly. 

Bur here I was, trying to watch the World Cup and none of my other apps were working, so I decided to open this one and try it during “heavy traffic” time. 

I was impressed: it didn’t crash once and it felt very “live” —meaning, it felt like it updated instantaneously. More so than all the others (which is casually one of the many reasons I chose Seesmic Desktop over Tweetie for my Mac).

I guess it lives up the philosophy behind Helvetica: simple and clear. You get a broad view of tweets: it’s not too crammed, yet not too spacious. Each tweet has a section on the far right to let you do the basics: reply, direct message, favour o retweet.

I find HelTweetica to be a great alternative to mostly consume tweets. It can be a great way to see your Twitter stream go by as you watch your favourite match or television series. Whenever I feel like having the stream “in the background” as I do something else at home, I tap on the HelTweetica icon on my iPad and off it goes.

HelTweetica does have one thing other apps don’t: the “All Stars” mode, which turns your iPad into a WWDC-like “app wall” of sorts, made out of the avatars of the people you follow.

Tapping on a small button on the top right corner generates a red square that travels randomly through all the avatars until it chooses one and displays that person’s tweet in full screen rather nicely —using Helvetica, of course.

Here’s one of my tweets after I tapped on my own icon in this collage:

What I don’t know is why HelTweetica (after a number of attempts) chose to display this World Cup-related 22-day-old tweet when it generally displays the latest tweet of any of the other people I follow. 

This may not be a “killer” feature, but it sure puts a spin on the Twitter experience I had not seen anywhere else. Think of it as a good wait to distract the mind for a minute or two.

All in all, you should give HelTweetica a try (it is free, after all). It’s a simple, yet unique Twitter app for the iPad that should at least serve as a reliable alternative to any of the others you may have downloaded so far.