The press release I received tonight said it all: "TweetDeck for iPhone -- now with added awesome." I use TweetDeck on my Macs, but had used another competing app for tweeting from my iPhone. After this update, which is the first major upgrade to this free Twitter client, I may have to reconsider!

The features in TweetDeck 1.1.1 [iTunes Link] have been given a squirt of goodness, with these new features added to the mix:

• Video tweeting via integration with 12seconds (record video and send to Twitter or Facebook using 12seconds platform)
• Facebook integration (updates, FB columns, wall posts, etc.)
• Landscape composing (for those with stumbly thumbs)
• Trending Topics to see what's happening RIGHT NOW
• Save Draft for later
• Bit.ly support
• And some additional goodies...

As with the Mac and Windows versions, the TweetDeck for iPhone user interface makes great use of columns, each of which can show a different feed, direct messages, or mentions for multiple accounts. Be sure to watch the video above, and if you're still looking for an iPhone Twitter client, give this fun freebie a try.

There's no shortage of Twitter apps in the App Store. Even more surprising is the number of GOOD apps that connect to the popular microblogging platform. I like each for a different reason: Tweetie has a clean user interface, TweetDeck offers multiple columns that sync with its desktop counterpart, and TwitterFon has ReadItLater integration. There are countless others that have unique features, and many of us end up with at least a couple on our iDevices.

But I have a new favorite, qTweeter, developed by the folks at Efiko Software. You won't find it in the App Store, though, because this app requires a jailbroken device. Multitasking isn't officially allowed (yet?) on the iPhone OS, yet qTweeter relies on this capability to perform its best trick.

Say you're checking the weather and want to tell everyone of the approaching hurricane. Normally, you would close your weather application, swipe through pages of apps, tap on and wait for your favorite Twitter client to open and load all of the tweets that you really don't care about right now, and finally type your warning to get the heck out of town. By the time you do all of that, the highway is going to be grid-locked with fleeing residents and you'll be stuck boarding up windows and sweeping up the debris!

Instead, you could have just "pulled" qTweeter down from the status bar, typed your tweet, and went back to the app still running in the background.

In fact, per the recent trend, you could have also posted that same message to your Facebook status with just a tap of a checkbox. It's a much quicker way to get your message out of your head and onto the Net, a fact that you'll appreciate as you get older and those thoughts become more fleeting.

There's been no shortage of Twitter app reviews on TUAW. We've even covered TweetDeck once or twice. But now, another Mac app and iPhone app have intersected in the Twitter world and I, for one, am ecstatic about it.

Until now, Tweetie had been my Twitter client of choice on both my Mac and my iPhone. I was pretty content with the set up, but had one issue: If I were out and about all day and checking Tweetie on my iPhone, I'd have to re-read all those tweets when I got home because the two programs had no way of communicating what had been read and what hadn't. TweetDeck has finally found a way around this issue, offering syncing between your iPhone client and your Mac client.

Kevin Rose is reporting that the iPhone version of the popular Twitter client TweetDeck is set to be launched tonight (Tuesday, June 16th) at 9 PM PDT. Although the free app will officially be announced at that time, availability is totally dependent on the whims of the App Store. Rose's leak of the app's impending release did not include any precognition of when the app will actually make it into our hands, nor was price information available.

Mashable notes that TweetDeck for iPhone reflects many of the features of the desktop version, including multiple column-based friend groups and a beautiful user interface. TweetDeck for iPhone syncs with the desktop version, and is expected to provide the following features:

• Shake to refresh
• Support for multiple accounts
• Flick to move between columns
• Status updates similar to Facebook toolbar

It was mentioned in our email discussions about this app that it's interesting to see a Cocoa Touch version of Tweetdeck before a Cocoa (Mac OS X) version; the desktop app is cross-platform and runs atop the Adobe AIR framework.

Whether TweetDeck has the mojo to kick Twittelator off of my iPhone home screen remains to be seen. How about you, TUAW readers? What's your favorite Twitter app?

Update: Well, it looks like a number of blogs leaked the news, and TweetDeck for iPhone is now available for download in the App Store.

In the history of marketing battles, The Cola Wars have nothing on the Twitter App War that's currently raging online. Twitterrific, TweetDeck and others (popular with commenters: Pwitter and DestroyTwitter) are waging the ground battle, while Twitterrific (mobile), Tweetie and TwitterFon (to name a few) are fighting it out in the air.

Today we got our hands on a beta of Lounge, a new client for Mac OS X (and iPhone/iPod touch). It's definitely got a way to go (I saw more beach balls than Memorial Day at Hilton Head), but I see where they're going and I like it.

First off, there's support for multiple accounts, and switching between them is easy. A series of buttons appear horizontally in the left of the window, including "My 2 Cents" (which displays just your tweets), Favorites, Friends, Replies and my favorite, Vanity, which finds all occurrences of your Twitter handle.

Mouse over a user's tweet to see options to re-tweet, copy the URL, open in a browser and more. I really like the option to view user details, which lets you see just that user's tweets, his followers, those being followed and profile and URL.

It is kind of wide (wider than Twitterrific but not TweetDeck, of course) so those with small displays be warned. Also, some may be put off by the pastel-colored icons. Still, it shows promise. Check it out if you're up for it, and provide some feedback to make Lounge better.

Since it's turned into Twitter Thursday around here... In a moment of sheer frustration with Twitterrific, I sent out a call on my Twitter feed for recommendations of a desktop Twitter client. Several folks replied with a nod to TweetDeck, an Adobe AIR-based client currently in development for OS X, Linux, and Windows.

TweetDeck is a pretty neat program. The selling point is the ability to split your main Twitter feed into subfeeds that you can then organize into different groups. You can have Twitter be as narrow as a single column while you scroll back and forth in it, or you can make it full-screen and have your monitor filled with nothing but tweeting goodness.

There's a lot of features as well. If you go over the 140-character limit, you can hit a "TweetShrink" button that will turn some of the words to LOL-speak in order to fit the limit. You can upload pictures -- clicking on the TwitPic button will upload the image file to TwitPic and give you the URL for your feed -- and you can shorten URLs via your choice of service by clicking the "Shorten" button.

Another very cool feature is the ability to translate your tweets into another language. The translation is pretty accurate -- even for more difficult languages such as the Japanese I tested with the application. The program itself is highly customizable, and you can tweak the colors and fonts to whatever you like. You can also set different update times for various feeds: for example, you can have your main friends update every minute, but your private messages every five minutes.

TweetDeck is extremely polished for a beta client and I've yet to get the error messages that plagued me with Twitterrific. If you're searching for a free desktop client for Twitter, it's hard to beat this one.

TweetDeck is in public beta and requires the Adobe AIR runtime, which is a Universal binary and needs OS X 10.4.11 or higher. AIR will be installed during the TweetDeck installation process if you do not already have it.

We tweeted this last week, but it seemed worth a second mention: New York-based hip-hop artists DeScribe and Y-Love have released their video for the new single "Change," prominently featuring a trio of MacBook Pro machines. While many computers appearing in videos are idle or showing mocked-up graphics, these machines are in active use -- Y-Love is apparently busy monitoring his Twitter feed via the Adobe AIR-based client TweetDeck.

For more Mac & PC appearances on film and TV, check out Starring the Computer (via Ars), a compendium of technology cameos. You can also see the first music video recorded on an iPhone and a tour of Mac OS in song via past posts... but if you love your Mac as much as this woman does, maybe you should record your own video.