Who needs another Wikipedia client, right? Safari is good enough to get to any Wikipedia article, and since they’re optimized for the iPhone, you have no reason to have a companion app. This point was especially made when Wikipedia launched their official app, which was essentially a Webkit wrapper. It takes a real Cocoa developer to break all your preconceived notions about what a dedicated mobile client can do to a web service. And Sophia Teutschler’s Articles is that one app that truly brings Wikipedia to the iPhone.

Teutschler understood that Wikipedia on a mobile platform doesn’t need to be like Wikipedia on the desktop. When you’re dealing with such small sizes, there’s no need to have the ability to edit any of the articles. Lack of editing on a mobile client doesn’t take away the wiki from the pedia. The first thing you’ll notice with Articles, is how clean it is. Every article exhibits beautiful readable typography, with just the right alignment for images and other content. Links are a pale blue so as not to distract you from the main content. Sub-sections flow as part of the article. Subject info now hides under that familiar i icon near the first image.

In terms of UI, Teutschler has borrowed from iPad Safari, sporting a lighter metallic shade than the current blue that is the native iPhone UI. Search for any article, and it will automatically pull down suggestions for you to tap on. Search by titles, or by content. Pinch to increase/decrease text size. Double tap and hold to invoke God-scrolling (technically called ‘chapter index scrolling’). One of the best features of the app is its ‘Pull down to lock orientation’, something like what’s in Tweetie except this one locks or unlocks your screen orientation. It’s funny how obvious and natural these user interactions feel once they’re shown to you. And that’s the essense of good user interface design.

It doesn’t take long to come to a conclusion that Articles is currently the best way to experience Wikipedia on the iPhone. The fluid interaction with the application, the ability to open multiple pages at a time, store bookmarks, all comes together in one fantastic user experience. And this is just version 1.0. Kudos to Sophia for pulling this one off so brilliantly. If regular Wikipedia reading interests you, that’ll be a $2.99 well spent.

Twitter is what you make of it. A service that has been largely community driven, Twitter’s free API access means developers can create some truly unique ways of interacting with it. Here’s one that’s quite old, but I don’t think has got the attention it deserves. Reportage, by WhereCloud.

Reportage is a client like no other. Instead of having to deal with one linear timeline, Reportage’s approach is following one person at a time. You do this by ‘tuning in’ to each account, largely recognizing them by their avatar, using its gorgeous pseudo radio tuner user interface. By the sound of it, the approach seems totally absurd, something that’s set to fail. Using it however is a whole new experience.

I’ve so far followed what the SA team members have been saying by looking through the SA twitter feed—which follows all current writers. However, it doesn’t show me their replies, and conversations are also cut off. With Reportage, I can see a feed of who @brandonpittman has been talking to, and if I’m following those people he’s been talking to, their replies, in one cohesive list. Another use case, for me at least, is following news sites. I’ve given up on RSS as a source of news, using it as just a way to catch up on the week’s happenings. Twitter on the other hand keeps me updated with the current news. With reportage, I have a bunch of techie feeds like Ars Technica, MacRumors et al, and I can see through them if if I’ve missed anything. If I need to read an article, hit the Instapaper button—I’ve switched from Read it Later back to Instapaper—and it’s saved for future reading. This way I don’t even have to be following a lot of these feeds, since you can load users that are outside of your following list.

That was about the accounts you’ve marked. But there’s a general ‘Timeline-esque’ view as well—the world view. This will pull any recent tweets from your timeline, or those who have mentioned you, and group them into one avatar/icon for each user. So instead of seeing my entire timeline at one go, I get to see @kyleve’s tweets first, then @teucher’s, and so on. If @Teucher and @kyleve have had a conversation during this timeframe, both their tweets will show in each other’s feeds—that is, everything that’s relevant to that user, but only from what’s happening in my twitter feed. I hope I’m explaining it right. I’m get to get comfortable with this workflow though. It’s a little too much to handle for those following over 200 people since there’ll be a lot more to ‘tune in’ to. Luckily there’s a ‘mute’ button, so if you don’t care about a certain chunk of people, you can turn them off. Oh, and did I mention you can send out tweets from the app as well?

Reportage does have its drawbacks however. First is it’s not very good at caching. Either it’s buggy, or it’s just not meant to cache. So if it has downloaded its set quota of tweets, it won’t automatically fetch tweets from those accounts I’ve marked. So if Ars Technica doesn’t get its tweets in, I have to manually load them in. It doesn’t have threaded conversations, so you can’t follow conversations that involve people you don’t follow. There’s no offline mode, so if the app doesn’t register an internet connection on launch, it automatically quits. It also doesn’t have support for modern things like lists (or even have its own version of grouping multiple accounts). No twitter searches either, so it can’t be used for tracking your business. Instead it wastes space on ‘local tweets’ and personal timeline.

Overall, it’s hard to recommend Reportage to everyone. It certainly doesn’t replace Tweetie as your standalone twitter app, nor does it supplement a business oriented app. I like it though. I really like it. Like I’ve been launching it every day (though not many days have passed). It’s got a really slick user interface, good looking list and profile views, and lets me sit back and catch up on what’s important. That’s what it’s about. It’s about cutting out the noise, sitting back and enjoying tweets. Following your favourite people with added enthusiasm rather than having to filter out their tweets from everything else. Perhaps you might want to do the same—perhaps I should be recommending it to everyone. That’ll be a very confused $1.99 at the App Store.

[Update: If you do get the app, remember to uncheck the “Follow @reportage” while giving out your username and password at the welcome screen. Sneaky.]