PreCentral: Sparrow getting Enyo 2 makeover and new name: sprw

[News Reporter]

If you've been in the webOS community for a while you are probably familiar with the name Arthur Thornton. His various contributions to the homebrew scene, popular apps,

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, and (most importantly wink wink) has made him pretty well known in these parts of the interwebs. Perhaps one the things that he known best for recently is his awesome . We gave his app a rightfully good review because it turned out to be one of the best Twitter clients to grace our beloved platform. Needless to say, Sparrow is the "go to" TouchPad Twitter client for many of us here at webOS Nation, so you can imagine our excitement when we found out that there was more to come for the future of Sparrow.

First and foremost Sparrow is getting a new name. Due to confusion with a very popular Gmail client for Mac and iOS (), the new name will be the homophonic but differently-spelled sprw (not meant to be said with your teeth clenched to avoid vowel sounds). The name change will also help Arthur better discover users that need help or would like to make feature requests with services like Twitter and in forums (you can just ask fellow about the troubles he's encountered with names like and ). With that said, most of us in webOS-land are fully aware that Sparrow in our world refers to an awesome Twitter client, so why bother with rebranding? Because the new sprw will be cross-platform, that's why.

One of the greatest things about using Enyo 2 to build applications is how easy it is to take said app and push it to other platforms. After Arthur finishes building sprw for webOS, he intends to push forward with builds for other platforms. Shortly after the webOS version of sprw drops our friends over at CrackBerry will be happy to know that Arthur is going to push some awesome Enyo 2 goodness to Playbook users with a version of sprw for them as well. In addition to the Playbook version, Arthur also has plans to hit Android and iOS. Last but certainly not least, there will be an Open webOS build in the near future as well.

So when can we expect to see sprw and what kind of new features will it be packing? Arthur will be starting a closed beta for sprw 2.0 later this month, if you'd like to inquire as how to get involved in the beta process, . As to new features, all that Arthur would reveal at this point is that sprw 2.0 will have both a "light" and "classic" theme and that he'll keep the community posted on what he has in store as he moves forward. Ultimately, we're happy to hear that one of our favorite Twitter clients is going to be getting a major update, and as always we whole heartedly appreciate Arthur's hard work and dedication for this platform that we love so much.