If you’re addicted to Techmeme, like we are, you’re probably addicted to reading it on your mobile phone too. The problem is that the experience hasn’t been great. There was a mobile version of the site, called Mini-Techmeme, but no one seemed to know about it. More importantly, it didn’t give the full Techmeme experience because it didn’t include discussion items. Today, Techmeme has launched a new version of its site optimized for smart phones.

If you visit the regular Techmeme site now on devices like an iPhone, a Palm Pre, or the new Verizon Droid, you’ll see a site optimized for touchscreen phones. The site include three main tabs, “Top, ” More,” and “New.” These represent the three key areas of Techmeme’s main site. This tabbed navigation allows you to easily jump through the sections. Each section contains the main headlines and a right pointing arrow which you click on to see the discussion items.

First of all, yes, everyone on Twitter now should have access to the new Retweet functionality. Currently, only Twitter.com and a handful of clients support the new mechanism. But did you know that you can also trigger the new Retweets via SMS?

As the Twitter mobile account noted earlier tonight, if you simply send “RT USERNAME” to 40404 (at least in the U.S.) it will automatically retweet the last tweet of whatever username you entered has sent. And yes, it will be a new-style Retweet.

At last, here’s the droid we were all looking for. In this frame you can clearly see R2-D2’s cameo in JJ Abrams’ Star Trek. This time there’s absolutely no doubt about it: It’s been confirmed by ILM.

Click on the image to see the high resolution version

Can you see him floating there, on the left, right below the huge arrow that I also missed when I saw the movie? That’s obviously him, a fact that has been confirmed to me by one of the movie’s sequence supervisors at Industrial Light & Magic—the same guy who said this previous sighting was just the shuttle.

I don’t know about you but, right now, I feel like what I imagine my dog Jones feels every time I take his collar off to scratch his neck. Oh yesyeyeyeyes. YES. Harf. Woof. [Image capture from Science Fiction Stuff—Thanks ILM tipster]

Tweetie 2 is so far ahead of every other iPhone Twitter app, it’s astounding.

It’s the most polished Twitter app yet, oozing slickness with every swipe. Yet, it’s exploding with new features, and still really fast. It manages to cram in every possible feature you could possibly want in a Twitter app—offline reading!—without feeling too complicated or bloated. Truthfully, it’s a brand new, totally different app from the original, down to the core. If you already own Tweetie and don’t buy Tweetie 2 because you feel like you shouldn’t have to spend another $3, Alyssa Milano, it’s your loss.

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Form, Oh Shiny Form

The main Tweetie 2 interface feels just like the original—awesome—with two big differences: The chat bubbles are dead, replaced by a solid stream of tweets, and glowing notification orbs tell you when new tweets, mentions or direct messages are waiting for you. That’s a huge functional leap over the original Tweetie, where you had to click over to each section to see if you had new messages. Plus, the orbs just look cool, like they’re cut off by the bottom of the screen. The one flaw here is that sometimes it doesn’t register you’ve read a message, so you’ll wind up clearing the orb for the same message twice.

How do you refresh? When you hit the top of a timeline and keep pulling down, an arrow pops into sight that tells you to pull down, and as you down, it smoothly spins upward, telling you to release to refresh. It’s simple, but slick. There’s also a search bar up there, so you can look through all the tweets you have pulled up for something that caught your eye.

So Much Function

The greatest new feature in Tweetie 2 is its offline powers. They’re great. Not only does it cache tweets to read offline, but you have other Twitter capabilities, like adding favorites, which are synced up the next time you go back online. A basic drafts manager lets you store and edit tweets to send later.

You can set up virtual push notifications so you can see whenever somebody you follow drops a Tweet bomb, like RealTracyMorgan. (They show up as a text message from 40404, i.e., Twitter.) Sadly, this doesn’t extend to @replies, but it’s for following a particular person (or persons, if you want a lot of messages about tweets). Other new functional awesomeness includes auto-complete for @replying and direct messaging people who have confusing-ass usernames you can’t remember (though you have to go to the user, and then compose a message to them), the ability to link people with address cards, a very pretty nearby tweet search, and integration with multiple services like Instapaper and Tweet Blocker.

Buy It Now

If you’ve never paid for a Twitter app or even if you have, Tweetie 2 is well worth the measly three bucks it costs. It’s fast, it’s got full offline powers and it’s so polished your iPhone will slip out of your hand while you’re using it. It’s not perfect, but it’s the closest yet.

Super smooth UI, gushing with polish and animations

Exceptionally good offline powers

Feature-packed without feeling bloated

No real syncing with desktop app

No real push notifications

[iTunes, Atebits]

the_arrow writes “Scottish artist Edwyn Collins wanted to stream one of his own songs on MySpace, but it seems that copyright misunderstandings make him unable to do so. According to the article, ‘Management for the former Orange Juice frontman have been unable to convince the website that they own the rights to A Girl Like You, despite the fact that they, er, do.’ Collins said, ‘I found a nice lawyer guy at Warners, very apologetic, promised to get it sorted, but all these months later it isn’t.’ His wife added, ‘MySpace are not equipped to deal with the notion that anyone other than a major [label] can claim a copyright.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Release date:

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Photoshop and Illustrator, as we’ve all come to realize, have revolutionized contemporary design and illustration, unleashing the creative potential of artists the world over. Through this tutorial, we’ll take you through process and technique, from sketch to Photoshop to Illustrator, so that you can learn skills to complement your ample creativity! As we go through constructing this image, I encourage you to experiment with the skills you learn, applying them to your own style.

Pencils sharp! We start with the sketch. Though a short one, this step is without a doubt the most important in this tutorial. With a strong sketch and concept, you have a much better chance of producing a first-rate result! That said, let’s begin fleshing out the rough details of our illustration.