Review: October 2008 Archives
Once you're set up, Genius is added as one of the iPhone Playlists. Touch the iPod icon, then the Playlist tab.
Genius will now be the first option. Hit Genius and your music collection with be shown, in alphabetically order, listed by song. Select a song you would like to use and the software will make a playlist for you with comparable songs, just like the big brother version on the PC/Mac.
There are a couple minor differences between the iTunes Genius and the iPhone Genius, the first simply because of size.
It's photo week on the blog, so we're exploring some of the cool paid apps that let you do surprising things with your iPhone's camera. CameraBag (temporarily $2.99, available here) lets you create different looks with your iPhone's camera, such as imitating the output from a plastic Holga camera (here called "Helga") or creating smooth black and whites, a la Ansel Adams.
Other looks include 1974 (faded and tinted), Lolo (over-saturated color, like a Lomo camera), Cinema (dramatic and moody), 1962 (dramatic black and whites), and Infrared (simulates a popular landscape photography technique).
Taking photos with CameraBag is incredibly fun. We love how bizarre the Helga setting makes portraits, or how the Lolo setting makes still lifes pop like a diner's neon sign. The app also works with pictures stored in your photo library, so you can give any image the CameraBag treatment.
The revised and updated iPod touch offers a slimmed down profile and bulked up features. While the change is more evolutionary than revolutionary, it makes using the player a lot more pleasant.
It's odd that Apple's marketing has dubbed this version the "funnest iPod ever" in ads, since all the fun features it's showcasing—the ability to download games, a built-in accelerometer, multi-touch controls—aren't new with this version. Still, there are plenty of new features to get excited about.
The Outside
Pick up the iPod Touch and you'll notice immediately that it's thinner than its predecessor. All versions are just 0.33-inches deep (as well as 4.3-inches tall and 2.4-inches wide, with a weight of 4.05 ounces). The back is now gracefully rounded, so it feels better in the hand.
The iPod touch has gained a few worthwhile physical features already found on the iPhone. It now has external volume buttons on the top left, so users can nudge the volume up or down without unlocking the screen. The touch also now has a speaker—an iPod first—so users can listen without headphones or earbuds. It doesn't provide the fullest, richest sound, naturally, but it's a helpful addition for those times when you want to share a song with some friends.
The Inside
The iPod touch comes with iPod software version 2.1.1, so you won't need to upgrade the software to get access to the online App Store. (Older iPod touch owners had to pay for the upgrade.)
That means this iPod touch also supports the new Genius feature, which enables the iPod to create playlists based off one starter song. In our testing, the Genius feature performed amazingly well, creating playlists that captured the mood and style of the original song, while still offering some variety. We spoke to an Apple representative who said that the algorithms behind the Genius feature analyze the playlists of millions of iTunes users, examining how they combine songs. They also consider iTunes Store purchases, seeing which songs are bought together. Contrary to what we expected, it doesn't create playlists by matching genres or beats-per-minute.
Author: Judy Mottl
Ahead of the hotly anticipated T-Mobile G1 smartphone's arrival in stores next week, early reviews show not everyone is convinced that the Android-powered handset is ready to take on the Apple iPhone or muscle onto the turf of Windows Mobile or the BlackBerry.
Yet among reviewers and industry watchers, there's still little doubt that the G1 offers big potential for driving smartphone innovation.
See here for the full story at InternetNews.com.
It's not just hype that's made the iPhone the hottest smartphone around. If you're due for an upgrade, take a good look at the iPhone 3G.
Author: Troy Dreier
A few early adopters probably regretted their decision when the iPhone 3G was released. While the original iPhone was a game-changer that spurred forward a category often lacking in innovation, the iPhone 3G delivers several features that were much-needed (such as 3G connectivity) and some that were pleasant surprises (such as GPS mapping).
So it's sad that the people who couldn't wait to get their hands on the original are still locked into their two-year contracts. Maybe for its next trick, Apple could do something about cell phone pricing models.
The iPhone's new features
The biggest omission in the original iPhone, and the biggest improvement this time, is 3G connectivity. That means you can load Web pages, download e-mails, and load maps much faster that with the original model. During weeks of testing the New York City area, we typically saw pages load as quickly as over our broadband network at home.
Apple's official reason for not including 3G on the original iPhone was that it took too great a toll on battery life, and it's true that this model has worse battery performance. It's rated for five hours of talk and 300 hours of standby. Plan on charging it every evening, especially if you watch video or play games. While someone who only makes occasional calls or listens to music can go two or more days between charges, people who use the 3.5-inch, 480 by 320 pixel screen often will find the battery draining much more quickly.
The iPhone is also making inroads to the workplace with this version, which includes support for Microsoft ActiveSync for push support of e-mail, contacts, and calendars. It also includes Cisco iPsec VPN support. We weren't able to test the workplace features, but we did test the iPhone with MobileMe, the successor to Apple's .Mac suite of online tools. [Click here for a full review of MobileMe.]
When used with a MobileMe account ($99 per year), the iPhone sends and receives e-mail, contact, and calendar changes to and from the desktop. Add a contact in Apple Address Book on your desktop and it will show up on your iPhone in minutes, using over-the-air syncing. While it doesn't offer true push functionality, as Apple originally claimed, it's proven itself nearly as fast in our testing, syncing typically just a minute after a change.
The phone's GPS mapping won't replace a dashboard GPS navigation unit (it doesn’t offer real-time turn-by-turn directions or 3D maps) but it does make it simple to find out your current location and get directions to wherever you want to go. It's always been accurate in our testing, showing our position to a half-block. Just as handy is how it works with other iPhone applications, showing, for example, a contact's location with just a tap. [For more on iPhone’s location-based technology, click here.]
Author: Troy Dreier
This shopping app isn't just great for cheapies, but for anyone who has trouble thinking of holiday purchases. Start your planning now with Cheapskate, available here at the App Store.
It lets you create lists of people you'll be shopping for, then take photos of gift idea while you're out shopping. The app keeps track of where each idea was found. We love the simplicity.
When you're ready to buy, just use Google Maps to find your way back. It's the perfect app for shoppers (like us) who see great gift ideas while browsing through stores, but then forget all about them once we're home.
Author: John Roling
When Apple’s iPhone 3G was announced, Apple made a big deal about supporting Enterprise email. The problem for Lotus Notes users was that “Enterprise” initially only meant Microsoft Exchange. And while that hasn’t changed for built-in iPhone connectivity, IBM has made Lotus Notes on the iPhone a reality with Lotus iNotes Ultralite.
IBM Lotus iNotes Ultralite is a web application that you access through the mobile Safari web browser on the iPhone. You go to the same URL you are used to for normal webmail access, and the email template is smart enough to serve up a mobile browser optimized version of your Lotus Notes.
Lotus iNotes Ultralite Homepage
Notes Ultralite includes access to the following pieces of your Lotus Notes:
When you access your inbox, you can read all of your messages (including rich text HTML messages,) reply, forward and create new emails. You can move the message to the trash or even take already read messages and mark them as unread.Your inbox
The Sent mail view
The All Documents view
Your trash folder
Your Day At A Glance daily calendar
Your Contacts
During these transactions, you are actually accessing your live email file on the server so changes are instantaneous.
Lotus iNotes Ultralite Inbox
In addition to the normal email functions associated with the Inbox, you can scroll through everything you’ve Sent from Lotus Notes and you can also view every document in your entire mail file by going into the All Documents view. Lastly, you have the ability to look at anything you’ve deleted within the last 48 hours by checking the Trash folder.
Access to these basic functions are pretty decent, but there are a couple caveats. First, you have no way of seeing your folders or moving email to a specific folder within Lotus Notes. That means that if you have an email saved in a particular folder and not the inbox, the only way to find it is by checking the All Documents folder.
That in itself wouldn’t normally be much of a problem, but there is no Search function within iNotes Ultralite. This causes a problem if you have to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. Trying to find a message out of thousands in your All Documents folder without being able to search takes too much time. It CAN be done, but it’s fairly tedious.
Sending a new email
Up until now, no calls on the iPhone were free. You had to use your anytime or weekend minutes to make them. And international calls ran up additional charges for airtime.
Now a new and free program, Fring, lets you use programs like Skype on your iPhone.
Skype has been available for PC and Mac users for several years. It uses a technique called VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). With it you can make make calls to anyone using the bandwidth of the internet. All you need to do on your computer is download Skype and then if your friends also have Skype, you can call them.
If they don't have Skype, you use Skype-out and dial their home, work, or cell numbers. Skype-out costs a few pennies a minute.
Call quality is good - like a cell phone call - but not quite as good as using Skype on your computer. I've tested the program with calls to South Africa and England.
Fring - which has been available for jailbroken iPhones (those that have been hacked to run unofficial software) for a while - allows programs, like Skype, MSN Messenger, and ICQ - to work on the iPhone. It works on 1st and 2nd generation iPhones, without having to fool around with their software.
After downloading the Fring from the iTunes application store, just type in your user ID and password from the VOIP program and you're ready to make those calls.
Fring works on the Wi-Fi system, not the 3G or Enterprise connection, so calls don't count against your minutes.
So download Fring, which is free, and give it a try. Let us know how it works for you.
Author: Troy Dreier
Phone calls, music, directions… and even inner peace. Who knew an iPhone could deliver so much? Meditator ($3.99), the best meditation helper in the App Store, available here, makes it easy to sit quietly and look inward anywhere you go.
Set how long you'd like for a session, and how much time you need to get settled before you begin. You can even set interval timers, so that you know when a certain amount of minutes has passed. We love the versatility of this app, which lets you save three mediation configurations, so that you can start up a session with just a tap. We also love the alert sounds, which include bell, gong, and thunder sounds. The controls let you set different beginning, interval, and ending sounds, so that you don't need to use the same sound each time. Use it for silent mediation, or choose one of four natural ambient sounds (forest, ocean, river, and storm) for a peaceful backdrop.Author: Troy Dreier
If you want to keep an extra close eye on your investments in these days (and who wouldn't?) you're going to want Bloomberg on your iPhone. Leave it to the market news source that's become the Wall Street standard to deliver an incredibly useful and detailed financial app.
Bloomberg offers news, stock quotes, company descriptions, market leaders and laggers, price charts, market trends, and more. You can even use it to create customized lists of stocks to track. After using it for a while, we're crazy about the ability to drill down into data, and to easily track a portfolio.
A few minor ads support this free app. Check it out here at the iTunes App Store.
Author: Troy Dreier
Not a tool for finding a nearby bar, PubSearch ($.99) is a fast and efficient research tool for medical professionals and students. It lets you access the millions of research papers indexed in PubMed. By combining a simple, efficient user interface with fast access to the database, it lets you concentrate on finding the research articles you need without getting in your way. The app, available here at the App Store, includes EZProxy support, so that even when you're away from your institution's network, you can (if your institution uses EZProxy) access the full text of articles in any journal your institution subscribes to.
Author: Troy Dreier
Sure, the iPhone includes a weather app, but the information it offers is pretty limited. If you need a little more information to plan your day, download WeatherBug. It puts live, local weather conditions from over 45,000 locations at your fingertips. View severe weather alerts, weather cameras, detailed forecasts, current radar, and satellite maps. Check WeatherBug out here at the App Store.
