iHome + Sleep

I was very happy to receive an iHome dock/clock for Christmas this year, and in the box there was a small note that said iHome apps would be coming to the iTunes Store in December.  They didn’t quite make that timeframe, but in early January the iHome + Sleep app went live.  I’ve since had a week to use it and I have to say, it was worth the wait.

From the home screen of the app you get a slick interface that shows you what you’d expect – the time.  From here you can setup different alarms, including the time, what music to sleep/wake to, what social networking messages to send out when you go to sleep or wake up, and you can even have the app keep a log of everything that happens on Twitter and Facebook while you’re asleep so you can get caught up first thing in the morning.  One of my favorite features though, is right up top on the main screen – the weather.  Knowing that it’s 19 degrees when I get up let’s me know I better get my butt in gear so the car will have time to defrost.

Another cool thing is the interface for adding alarms.  Rather than doing the normal text list of alarms, iHome has developed a slick punch-card system for your different alarms.  The card displays the name of the alarm, what time it’s set for, and even the album covers for whatever music you’re going to sleep or wake-up to.  You can flick through your various cards, and to set an alarm you drag it down into a slot much like “punching-in” to work.  It’s a pretty unique and satisfying user experience.

If that wasn’t enough, the iHome + Sleep app even tracks your sleep statistics.  At anytime you can hit a button and see how much sleep you got last night or what your average amount of sleep has been for the past week, month or year.  Very cool.  Finally, as you would expect, it works with my iHome dock exceptionally.

Oh, and did I mention it’s free?  Yup.  Free.  I had paid for an app that works as an iPhone alarm called “Awaken,” but iHome + Sleep blows it out of the water to the point that I’m probably going to uninstall it.  Anyways, if you’re an iPhone or iPod Touch user hit the iTunes Store link below to grab iHome + Sleep.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ihome-sleep/id346249053?mt=8

iPhone OS 3.0 for Consumers

I’m sure you all saw this one coming.  Here’s my run-through of what Apple announced at their iPhone OS 3.0 event earlier in the week.  Since most of what intrigued me in the keynote was related to their “features for consumers” I’m going to dedicate this post to those.  Some of the SDK additions for developers are interesting but that relies quite a bit on the actual developers putting them into good use.  So, without further ado:

Cut, Copy and Paste
Shocker of all shockers, Apple finally got their act together and found some way to accomplish the impossible task of integrating cut, copy and paste into the iPhone.  This has been a long time coming, and I’m glad it’s finally here.  With the new cut, copy and paste feature you’ll be able to, surprise, copy and paste text not just inside of one application, but across all applications on the iPhone.

Landscape Mode
Another obvious and necessary upgrade, landscape mode lets you run all of the standard Apple iPhone applications in landscape.  Most importantly, this means that you’ll be able to get the larger-format widescreen keyboard that was up until now exclusive to Safari in all of your Apple iPhone applications.  Note that I say Apple iPhone applications because, as far as I know, this will only count for their traditional suite of pre-installed apps (Mail, Notes, Contacts, etc.).  This update should help some of the folks out there with bigger fingers to type a bit more easily, especially in Mail.

MMS
Again, it seems as though with iPhone OS 3.0 Apple is just trying systematically tick off items on a fictional checklist titled “Cell Phone Necessities.”   With MMS you’ll finally be able to send and receive multimedia messages on the iPhone including pictures, sound files, and contact cards.  To me personally this isn’t a feature I’ve been waiting for since you can already do most of those things in email, but I know that a lot of consumers have been deterred from purchasing an iPhone because of its lack of support for MMS.

Voice Memos
Have you ever seen one of those commercials with an older lady using a small voice recorder to remember where she parked, or what to pick up at the grocery store?  That’s basically what voice memos are.  Using voice memos you can now use your iPhone to record short messages for later playback so you too can overcome your forgetfulness.  I think this is a feature that seems kind of hokey, but some may like it.

CalDAV and Calendar Subscriptions (.ics)
Getting calendars to sync properly on your touch device has always been a tall order.  Sure it can be done, but you have to jump through a lot of hoops if you’re not using exchange.  Now that the iPhone calendar app supports CalDAV hopefully keeping my Google Calendar synced won’t be as much of an issue.  I’m pretty excited for this feature, as I’d love to have my calendar events synced perfectly between calendar.google.com, iCal on the desktop and my mobile device.  Also being able to subscribe to calendars will be a nice addition.

Search and Spotlight
Finally we come to search.  Search has been integrated into all of the standard Apple iPhone apps so you can now quickly and easily search through your inbox, contacts, calendar of events and so on.  Apple has also integrated a new homescreen, Spotlight, which lets you search the entire phone at once.  Say for instance I typed in “Ron” with Spotlight.  Not only would the Spotlight results show the emails I’ve received from my friend Ron, but also the songs on my iPod by the artist Ronnie Drew and a calendar event I set to have lunch at “Ron’s Cafe.”  Okay that last one was a bit of a stretch but check out the image below to get a better idea of how it works.

Conclusion
So that’s it.  Like I said there were no bombshells really, and most of the event was devoted to checking off some features that Apple has been inundated with requests for since the iPhone launched.  Some of the developer SDK additions seem promising but I can’t really comment on those until I get a chance to play with the apps that utilize them.  It was a pretty straight-forward and almost mundane event, but that leaves a lot left for WWDC in June.

Is an Apple netbook a good idea?

My app store applications

So it’s been a while since I first started using Apple’s app store, and I’ve tested various different applications that provide various different functionality.  Based on what I have used so far and what I’m still using to this day, I figured I’d write a post outlining some of my favorites.  Granted I probably don’t install new applications as often as a lot of people do, so this list might not be full of the latest and greatest, but still if you own an iPhone or iPod Touch and you haven’t heard of the following applications you should go ahead and check them out.  Let’s get started!

Air Sharing

Ever wish you could use your iPhone or iPod Touch as an external hard drive?  Better yet it’d be nice to view some important documents from the device as well.  That’s what Air Sharing does.  When you set up Air Sharing you set up a connection between your Mac and your touch device.  What that means is that you can easily mount your iPhone or iPod Touch to your Mac wirelessly.  Once mounted you can drag and drop files from your Mac to your iPhone completely seemlessly.  I’ve found it’s been particularly useful for .pdf and .doc files I’ve been given in classes.  If I’m in class and I need to reference something in the notes I just pull out my iPod Touch and I’m good to go with Air Sharing.  Air Sharing is also free, which is a good bonus.

Remember the Milk

There are a ton…and I mean a ton of to-do applications for the iPhone.  Some are free and some are paid, and as expected some are fairly basic while others offer a lot of functionality.  My to-do list is a website, however.  Remember the Milk has an excellent web app built specifically for the iPhone which sings on the device and looks better than most to-do software applications I’ve seen in the app store.  I think there has been a lot of people who have forgotten that Apple was pushing web applications pretty hard before they unveiled the SDK for the iPhone, and Remember the Milk is certainly not a website which should go overlooked.

Aside from the pretty interface which allows you to add tasks to your various lists, set priorities, set due dates and so on (all of the features you’d expect with a to-do list), RTM integrates into a lot of other applications as well.  For instance, I recently started using Mozilla Labs’ Ubiquity extension, and there’s already a nice command for adding and viewing your tasks straight from Firefox.  RTM also has a Firefox plugin which shows your tasks inline with your gmail account and (as I’ve mentioned before) using gmail in a web browser without my tasks sitting to the right has since become foreign to me.  Finally there’s even an RTM dashboard widget which allows you to tick off completed tasks throughout the day.  If you haven’t used Remember the Milk and you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, check out i.rememberthemilk.com from your touch device and give it a spin.  The only drawback is that it costs $25 after the initial 15-day trial period, but I loved it so much I dropped the cash without thinking twice.

Wikipanion

This is a fairly simple application.  We all know that Safari is excellent on the iPhone.  Still, there’s sometimes when you just want to search Wikipedia and get some information that is pre-formatted for easy reading on the iPhone.  That’s what Wikipanion does.  All you have to do is open Wikipanion, search for Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes and the application pulls down the article after formatting it for the iPhone’s screen.  It also has predictive queries so if you start by typing a few letters of your keyword chances are pretty good that one of Wikipanion’s suggestions will be what you’re looking for.  Wikipanion is another great free app.

1Password

It’s obvious that one of the best parts about Apple’s touch devices is that they’re mobile computers.  As a result, you probably find yourself logging into your web services from the device quite often.  However, if there’s one complaint that anyone can make about the iPhone it’s that the keyboard is a little unfriendly when it comes to inputting strong passwords.  1Password allows you to safely and securely store your passwords on your iPhone or iPod Touch.  Using 1Password you only have to remember…you guessed it…one password in order to access your others.  After inputting your master password you get access to your concealed account credentials, and from 1Password you can login to various sites.  1Password is free for now despite being a paid application on the Mac, so if you’re even slightly interested I’d check it out before they decide to start charging.

So there you have it.  Those are the applications (aside from ones I’ve mentioned in previous posts) which I’m enjoying the most right now.  Honorable mentions go to Twitterific which is still my favorite Twitter client on the iPod Touch and Bloomberg, an awesome stock application that blows Apple’s Stocks app out of the water.  The only reason I’m giving those two an honorable mention is because Twitterific isn’t exactly the most obscure application, and Bloomberg is really only useful if you’re a stock junkie…otherwise it’s just pretty to look at.  =)

Now Playing:
Deftones – Teenager (Idiot Version)
The Orange Box

Apple’s “Let’s Rock” iPod and iTunes Event

I was very interested to see what sort of new products would be unveiled by Apple on Tuesday, and I have to say, there’s some interesting news based on what they showed us.  If you were following any speculation leading up to the event then there isn’t much in the way of surprise, but what I’m most interested in is the way they’re trying to market some of their products moving forward.  Let’s start with iTunes.

iTunes 8.0 was officially released Tuesday, as always a free download, and it brings some new functionality to the old standby application which the bulk of people turn to for their music management.  Firstly, you get a new gridview for music that’s very similar to the layout of the stacks gridview.  Really this was sort of already implemented into iTunes with the App Store though.  If you have downloaded any applications for your iPhone or iPod Touch you’ll have noticed that the applications tab basically lists your installed mobile apps in a gridview.  Take that feature and apply it to your music albums and you get the idea.  They also brought NBC back to iTunes so if you’re hankering for some new episodes of The Office this Fall you can get them from iTunes for $1.99 (standard definition) or $2.99 (high definition).  Apple has also figured out how to make the high definition content viewable on your computer so if you don’t have an Apple TV you won’t be left out.

The most important feature added in iTunes 8.0 is Genius.  Genius does its best to create playlists for you based on certain songs in your music collection, similar to how Pandora or Last.fm work.  So for example, if I’m listening to a Deftones song and I would like to make a playlist of 25 songs that Genius thinks is similar to it, I click the Genius bar and bam – all of the songs that are similar to my Deftones track are ready to be played in succession.  The only downside is that, since Genius is only limited to your iTunes library (despite making recommendations from the iTunes store) you won’t get as many accurate matches as you do from Pandora or Last.fm (services which pull from their own, expansive libraries of music).  Right now I’m listening to a Genius playlist based on the song by Deftones called “Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event,” a relatively mellow song, and so Genius has pulled in 24 other songs it thinks are similar.  Some matches are spot on like A Perfect Circle’s “Vanishing” or Team Sleep’s “Our Ride to the Rectory,” while others are a little more questionable.  For instance, how is DragonForce’s much heavier “My Spirit Will Go On” or “Storming the Burning Fields” similar to “Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event?”  Both are heavy power metal songs where as, like I said, “Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event” is a melodic and atmospheric piano piece for the most part.  Intriguing to say the least.

Still, Apple promises that as more and more users use Genius it will become smarter over time (it makes records of everyone’s iTunes libraries anonymously).  I still wish there was a way to approve or disapprove matches though.  In any case Apple’s event on Tuesday wasn’t all about iTunes – there was plenty of iPod news to go along.  First off, to no one’s surprise, they showed off the new version of the iPod Nano.  Gone is the “iPod Phat” design from last year and now we get a nice tall, skinny version of the tiny player with a nice curved design and widescreen display.  The Nano even has some accelerometer functionality.  Steve Jobs showed how you could shake the Nano in order to initiate a shuffle of your music!  As cool as it sounds I think this feature might suffer from the Nintendo Wii complex; that is it sounds cool in theory but is anyone going to want to shake about their MP3 player in public?  The Nanos come in a plethora of new colors as well, ranging from professional-looking black and aluminum to  the more fun pink, orange and (my personal favorite) green variants.

Next up is the iPod Touch.  Now, I just got an iPod Touch not too long ago so I was sort of hoping in the back of my mind that the updates wouldn’t be too significant.  Needless to say I’m a little disappointed.  Aside from getting a much-needed price drop the Touches were also graced with a bit of a hardware design and new hardware features that I’m envious of.  The most notable features are the new volume rocker and external speaker, two features that I’d honestly love to have on my 1st generation iPod Touch.  The physical volume rocker is kind of obvious – it would be nice to be able to change volume without having to even take the device out of my pocket – but the external speaker is a justified phenomena that you might not understand unless you have an iPod Touch or iPhone.

I’m not sure if the same is true for most iPod Touch users but I find myself carrying mine without headphones.  There’s so much you can do with the iPod Touch that doesn’t require them that I find myself content to just browse the internet, check my email and use applications rather than listen to music or watch videos.  Still, it’s that one time when you’d like to have your headphones with you and you don’t that makes you realize how important the external speaker is.  For example, what if you want to watch a YouTube video?  You don’t really need great sound to watch a YouTube video, just something passable.  However if you’re like me and you tend to leave your headphones behind then you’re kind of stuck.  The external speaker is perfect for that.  Basically what it does is make the iPod Touch more of a portable computer than just an iPod that also has computer-esque features.

I think one important thing to note about the new iPod Touch is how Apple has chosen to market it.  It’s no secret that the App Store is full of a bunch of different games, some of which are free and others that cost money.  Because of this they dedicated an entire portion of their presentation to showing off some upcoming games for the iPod Touch, and have labeled the iPod Touch the “funnest iPod yet!”  Sounds to me like they’re going after some of the portable gaming market.  Maybe they were inspired when John Carmack noted that Apple’s mobile offerings are more powerful than either the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP?  I think the fundamental difference between the iPod Touch and other portable gaming consoles is that Apple wants to sell hardware, not software.  Sony and Nintendo are glad that you’re purchasing their systems but where they really make money is on the games.  Is the same true for Apple?  A lot of the games, as I mentioned, are free or relatively cheap.  I’m not sure how that will figure into their strategy but it may have an impact.

Apple made some other announcements of course, such as that of the iPhone and iPod Touch firmware 2.1 release this week, the iPod Classic moving to just one SKU, a 120GB model.  Neither announcements are really that important I don’t think (the update is mostly bug fixes/Genius integration, and the iPod Classic is probably product phase-out).  So that’s it really.  No huge changes, just some expected news that was leaked by Kevin Rose and others well before the actual event in true Apple style.  There is one last part of the keynote I wanted to share though, and that’s Steve Jobs poking fun at some of the unrest about his health.  After WWDC questions were flying as to whether Mr. Jobs had been stricken with cancer again, and to that he simply replied “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”  Well said, I think.

If you want to watch the keynote you can now view the quicktime version by clicking here.

Now Playing:
DragonForce – My Spirit Will Go On
Crysis

How to beautify your blog on the iPhone and iPod Touch

This is my first video in a while, so I figured I’d put it up now instead of waiting until Saturday.  On Saturday (tomorrow) I should have my review of Haze up, so stay tuned for that! =)

Now Playing:
Flogging Molly – What’s Left of the Flag (Live)
Bad Company, Too Human 

Buy, Borrow or Bury: Trism

I promised a second video and here it is!  My first game review for the iPhone/iPod Touch is Trism.  It’s a brand new take on the puzzle genre of games that have become very popular, fans of games like Bejeweled, Hexic, and even Puzzle Quest will be right at home playing it.  It’s my first App Store purchase, so was it worth the $5?  You’ll have to watch the video to find out. =)

Now Playing:
The Pogues – Sally MacLennane
Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm (can’t wait to review this one!) 

iMac “Review”

So at this point I’ve had the iMac for a few days, and I figured I’d post some of my opinions.  I went back to the video format for this post as well, you can find those after the text.  Everything’s going great so far, I haven’t run into a single problem that I can think of.  Leopard is awesome, boot camped Vista is awesome, basically everything’s going well.

The second part of the video is more of an update on the iPod Touch.  Since my first video I’ve applied the Invisible Shield and also toyed around with the App Store a bit.  I go over both in more detail in the videos if that sort of thing interests you. =)

I’m thinking about making my Saturday posts videos from now on…I find doing the videos easier than writing and linking a post, and I figure I can just as easily talk into a camera about whatever subject matter the post would have contained.  If you have any opinions one way or another feel free to leave a comment!  Anyways, without further delay:

iMac “review”
 

Part 2 – iPod Touch update

Now Playing:
Machine Head – Desire to Fire
Eternal Sonata

Taking the plunge

So I finally did it.  It’s finally done.  That is to say it was done a few weeks ago when I ordered my new iMac.  That’s right, I’ve made the switch to the Mac platform.  I suppose that’s only half-true, I still use Windows on a daily basis, but it’s true that both my primary desktop and laptop computers are Macs.  Of course both run Windows, but the hardware at least is all Apple.  I kind of feel like a shill typing this to be honest.

With the massive swell of people getting in line to bash Microsoft lately I’ve always tried to be the one person showing off their strengths and attempting to quell some of the misnomers going around.  I still think Vista is a solid upgrade to XP, and when I’m stuck in XP there are features from Vista that I miss.  If you asked me to sit behind one of two modern computers, one running Windows XP and the other running Windows Vista, I’d gladly use the Vista machine.  I also love the Live services, I use Office as my primary desktop application suite, and my primary gaming platform is my Xbox 360.  So then, why the change?

I’m not going to beat around the bush and try to come up with some deep-rooted philosophical reason for why macs are superior to PCs.  The truth, and I’m not afraid to say it, is that macs are prettier.  The hardware is prettier, the software (including third party apps in general) is prettier.  I’m a sucker for a slick interface I suppose, and for that reason coupled with a refreshingly simple computer purchasing experience, I went mac.  As I’ve said before, when I get a new machine it generally means I’m ordering a ton of different parts and then spending a day putting them all together and troubleshooting.  I have to be up on specs, component speeds, what the best CPU for the price is and so on.  With my iMac the hardest decision I had was deciding between a wired or wireless keyboard (I went wireless).

Enough of that though, I’m sounding like a switcher commercial!  I guess the point is that I’m still interested in all platforms despite the fact that an Apple product is sitting in front of me right now.  I still use the Microsoft software I mentioned above including Windows, I’m just doing it from a mac.  So far everything has gone pretty smoothly,  the 24″ screen is beautiful and I couldn’t be happier.  I also picked up an iPod Touch along with my mac so I’ve spent some time playing with that as well.  If you’d like to see more about that you can watch my first video from the iMac’s iSight camera, a video that I took last night only a couple hours after it was delivered:

Like I said in the video please leave some comments with software recommendation for both the mac and the touch!  I might start doing these videos a little more frequently too, so look out for that in the future.  I’ll also do my best to refrain from posting about my mac too frequently.

Now Playing:
System of a Down – Radio/Video
Eternal Sonata