Review: November 2008 Archives
The ComicZeal library so far includes ten different titles with varying amounts of each comic. We hope the developer will add more over time. Right now, we're enjoying the available issues of Police Comics, which show the Spirit's and Plastic Man's earliest adventures.
The app remembers your place in each comic you download, so you can pick-up your comics with ease whenever you like. For less than the price of one new comic book, this is the best comic deal around.
With the well-designed WootWatch (available here), we can monitor what's on sale anywhere we go. It even let's us know when there's a woot-off-it which a myriad of helpful and hopeless items are sold off in quick succession-complete with the site's spinning lights.
Woot.com has grown and this app supports all it offers, including the daily t-shirt sale and the daily wine bargain. When you find something you like, you can buy directly through the app. The latest update includes an alert that lets you know when a new item is available.
Notebooks are gaining ground on desktops, since more people prefer a portable that they can take to work or a coffee shop, yet smartphones are replacing notebooks, because wouldn't you rather have something you could fit in your pocket?
The problem is that smartphones can't store the same volume of data. That's an opportunity for clever solutions like Egnyte, which offer a desktop experience on your favorite portable.
Egntye is a fantastically simple virtual file server targeted at small business owners. Setting it up takes only a few minutes, and we were impressed with the depth of the features.
Start by surfing to Egnyte.com, where you can sign up for a free 15-day trial.
The service allows for three different types of users: the administrator, power users, and standard users. The administrator has total control over the account. A power user is an employee who can upload and access files from the account.
You need to sign up for at least one power user, and you pay $15 per month for each one. Next are standard users, who are probably people outside your company who need to access certain files for limited times. There's no limit on the number of standard users you can have.
When the little icon on my iPhone told me that there was an update for my Google Mobile App, I didn't realize that the UPDATE waiting for me was so super. As you may have heard, the Google Mobile for the iPhone now includes voice recognition. No need to type a search word or phrase, just launch Google and speak into the iPhone.
When you put the phone up to your ear, the iPhone's motion sensors sense that, and it begins recording. All you need to do is say in a normal voice your search terms, like "Plaza Hotel," "35 degrees Centigrade in Farenheit," or "pictures of the Liberty Bell."
Google searches and displays the results on your iPhone.
We found the voice recognition algorithm to be very accurate, although it sometimes misses on proper names.
The Google Mobile App also does searches based on your location. If you are in New York City or Atlanta and say "Movie show times," the App searches for movie times in that city.
Of course, with the Google Mobile App you can also type in your search using the touch screen keypad and you can access Google Mail and other Google applications through it.
There's even an instructional YouTube video (See below) to show you how to use the application.
This is a must have application for your iPhone.
Recording sounds on the iPhone has recently become as easy as taking pictures. Get the baby's first sounds, the bar band doing their encore, or add audio to your blog. Recording on an iPhone might even help a reporter on deadline. There are several programs that enable recording available at the iPhone store. We've chosen two, iTalk and iProRecorder, that are simple to use yet allow professional quality recordings.
iTalk by Griffin
This free application (an ad-free version is available for $.99 known as iTalk Premium) is more than a voice recorder. It can record high quality sounds that can be saved for replay on the iPhone or can be imported to your computer using Wi-Fi and drag and drop for further editing, burning to a CD, or e-mailing.
To transfer audio files to your computer you will need to also download on your computer a free program from Griffin. This program, when launched, will detect your iPhone, and once you confirm access on your iPhone the program will allow you to drag and drop audio files directly to your computer.
Three qualities of recording levels are available (Good/Better/Best). The Best level is high quality audio, suitable for broadcast.
iTalk has a nice interface and is compatible with the iPhone, iPhone 3G, or 2nd generation iPod Touch (requires a stereo headset).
iProRecorder by BIAS
This $.99 application also allows you to make high quality recordings. iPro has a beautiful interface and recording and playback is done with a simple one-touch. BIAS (see bottom image) is a well known audio software company and this program is a useful adjunct.
Let's end the week with a little music (part 1). Besides being an excellent communication and entertainment device, the iPhone is also an ideal teaching tool. One of our favorite learning apps is Mozart ($9.99, available here), which teaches note reading in a few minutes a day.
Mozart makes learning notes into a game, where the notes scroll across the screen and you have to identify them before they reach the left edge. There are plenty of customization options, letting you choose the clef, major or minor key, and instrument (it works for vocalists and violin or guitar players, too).
After only a little time playing, we noticed our ability to read notes getting stronger. This is a perfect teaching tool for anyone who plays music and needs to brush up on the basics.
Let's end the week with a little music (part 2). We're sorry, Shazam, we loved your amazing music ID feature before, but that's before Midomi stole our heart.
Midomi, available here, can do what Shazam does (quickly listen to and identify any song playing), but it does so much more. You can sing or hum to Midomi and it will still identify the song. You can speak or type a line from the song.
The only downside is that you have to remember to bookmark your finds, because Midomi doesn't automatically make a list of tagged songs, as Shazam does. Still, it's the far more useful song identification app, and it's got a permanent place on our iPhone.
