Reviews - page 152

If you’re a rugged, outdoorsy type — or just really careless — you’ve undoubtedly been looking for the toughest case ever for the iPhone 4.

OtterBox has been the go-to company for this sort of iPhone protection. And while it’s taken them some time to come up with something for the iPhone 4, the company has finally released something in its tough-as-nails Defender line.

OtterBox offers three levels of case protection. There’s the Impact, which is designed for everyday casual protection; the Commuter, for people who are looking for a little more; and the bulk-be-damned Defender series, for those who want the absolute most protection money can buy.

How does it measure up?

I like to keep my todo list nice and simple, so for a while now it has been a plain text file that sits inside Dropbox.

That still meant that remote edits of the file using my iPhone were tricky and fiddly. They won’t be any more, though, because I’ve just spent a dollar on Nebulous Notes, a new text editor for iOS devices that’s designed for dealing with documents stored in the cloud.

Specifically in this case, documents stored inside Dropbox. You have to tell Nebulous Notes your Dropbox sign-in credentials, and it offers to remember them for you (with added protection of a four-digit PIN for security’s sake).

The editor itself offers a choice of a handful of fonts and colors (including green-on-black for you green-on-black text editor fans).

There are a few other basic Dropbox-level functions, too: the app can create new folders and text files, as well as delete stuff you’ve already got in your Dropbox. It is strictly limited to displaying and editing plain text, though: it can’t handle rich texts, and it won’t display images or PDFs. But if – like me – the main thing that matters is the words, that’s not going to be a problem.

I love my iPhone photography apps, and I thought I knew about all the best ones. Turns out there’s always something new to learn.

Heather Powazek Champ posted a list of her favorite iPhone photography apps, and among them was one that was totally new to me: Diptic.

Phone Disk, from Macroplant, is a utility for Mac OS X (and Windows) that runs quietly in the background on your computer until you plug-in an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad using a USB sync cable. Plugging in your favorite iDevice causes Phone Disk to seamlessly mount the iOS file system on that device to your computers file system. Once mounted you can directly access the files on that device using Finder (and Windows explorer) or any other program.

You’ll be interested in this application if you’re an IT Ninja looking for another good troubleshooting utility to carry around or you’re simply curious about the data that resides on your favorite iDevice.

Osmos for iPad is a unique game for Apple’s new platform. It reminds me a little bit of Spore from Electronic Arts, but only a little. I got bored with Spore on my Mac and iPhone pretty quickly, but I cannot say the same about Osmos.

The app makes good use of the iPad’s graphic abilities, touchscreen interface, and audio hardware. The latter provides nice music and sound effects that make playing the game for long periods of time enjoyable. However, the rapidly changing game play, that made me feel immersed in a totally new gaming experience, was what really made me fall in love with this game.

I’ve been using Apple’s Magic Trackpad for just over a week, and I can confidently say it’s replaced the mouse for me.

The Magic Trackpad is easier to use, much more functional than even a multibutton mouse, and possibly less prone to causing repetitive strain injuries.

Continue reading

Independent app developer Tim Sears has just released his latest creation for iPhone, and if you are a Foursquare user, this is one for you.

Future Checkin utilizes the new background location features available with iOS 4 and allows you to check-in to your favorite, recent or nearby venues without even getting your phone out of your pocket.

Rolling Stone‘s Special Issue of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time made its debut Tuesday on Zinio, a digital publishing platform that could spell the difference between “survive” and “thrive” for old-school media publications looking to keep the doors open in coming years.

With a stable of top-tier periodicals such as National Geographic, Esquire, American Photo, Car & Driver and many more, Zinio definitely leads the way in showing how paper publications might remain not only relevant but vital and attractive to a new generation of “readers” weaned on the sizzle and flash of gaming and 3D entertainment.

Publication is morphing into something beyond simple words and pictures, evolving into an immersive medium that both pushes ideas and information out to consumers — and draws them in with interactive features and activities that take one beyond the superficial layers of what an article or essay might seem to offer.

Thus, with such crucial stakes at hand, did Zinio, Apple and Rolling Stone produce something of a mixed scorecard with the 500 Greatest issue.

Ever tried asking a cow about the weather?  Because they’re not really the most informative beasts (about the weather, anyway).

“Cow, it looks like it might rain sometime today — any idea when?” Cud-chewing.

“How strong d’you think the wind will be later?” More cud-chewing, accompanied by blank staring.

“Look, cow, can you at least tell me if there are any severe weather advisories I should be aware of?” Cud-chewing stops, then resumes a few seconds later; blank stare may or may not actually be a look of terror.

Using the iPhone’s native Weather app is like asking a cow about the weather: it’s cute and harmless, but not very informative. Unless you’re exceptionally partial to cows and/or don’t mind walking off into the occasional surprise thunderstorm, it should be banished to the back page and replaced with The Weather Channel’s app.

Since the dawn of time, more or less, the iPhone’s inability to play back Flash has been a consistent point of complaint from the anti-Apple crowd, particularly proponents of Android. Never mind the fact that, until TODAY, no one outside of Android developers had used Flash on any Android phone.

More comically, of course, Hulu, that prize of Flash video, doesn’t run on Flash-enabled mobile phones. But now it does run on the iPhone, along with the PlayStation 3 and a few Internet-enabled TVs — for a price. I was admitted to the $10-a-month beta for HuluPlus, and I’ve put it through its paces. While it is undeniably quite an achievement for mobile streaming video, it’s also undeniably a beta, and I’m miffed to be paying.

Apple’s iMovie is an app designed to run exclusively on the iPhone 4, but it will actually run on an iPhone 3GS by applying a hack. The app puts a mobile video studio in your pocket and gives you another creative way to use your iPhone by offering you some nice video editing and enhancement features. You can turn otherwise boring videos into something more exciting with it. It won’t replace iMovie or Final Cut on your Mac, but as a portable alternative to those apps it can be pretty handy.

The iPhone 4 brought changes in shape, function, features, and so on, but to the joy of many cell phone photographers, the device now includes a rear facing 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash and a forward facing VGA-quality camera. Apple enhanced the cameras via software improvements like FaceTime, zoom, etc. linked to the hardware changes above. These changes will probably calm the complaints about the camera that I heard about on the previous iPhone models. However, regardless of the issues users have developed exciting ways to use the camera and there are innovative third-party applications to help along the way.

One such app is Camera+, which is a joint effort between Taptaptap and Canadian photographer Lisa Bettany. I figured it was worth taking a look at it since it was on sale Sunday for $1.99 (regular price is $4.99).

Newton Peripherals carved out a niche in the gadget-universe, guided by the simple principle that the best gadget is the one you take with you — because that’s the one you’ll use. They created the MoGo Mouse, a mouse-remote hybrid that tucks away into a laptop’s pc-card slot, then followed it with the MoGo Talk: an ultra-slim Bluetooth headset that resides in — and actually forms part of — a case which attaches to the back of the iPhone 3G/s.

But while the design concept is brilliant, engineering-wise, the Talk wasn’t quite ready for prime-time when originally released; complaints surfaced that the headset was difficult to eject from the case, and more alarmingly, that the case’s pop-up charging port was fragile and often broke, removing the only method available for charging the headset.

ID8-Mobile has since snapped up Newton Peripherals, addressed the Talk’s problems, made a few other minor improvements to the case (while leaving the headset unchanged) and re-released it as the MoGo Talk XD. So did they get it right?

Unfortunately, Second Life definitely ain’t what she used to be. There have been more than a few headline-grabbing scandals in recent years, user numbers have fallen off a bit and the newest official Linden Labs viewer software hasn’t exactly gotten rave reviews.

However, there is still a very large and very loyal SL contingent that is eager to access their digitized world wherever and whenever they can. Those people have been begging and pleading for a reliable Second Life viewer for the iPhone since day one. Those same people really began clamoring for something more mobile when the iPad came on the scene.

Pocket Metaverse Pro ($2.99) is just that app. With versions for the iPad and iPhone (and free versions to boot), Pocket Metaverse is more than adequate for accessing Second Life and other similar Open Grid virtual worlds while on the go.

Number seven in our series is free, streamlined, an absolute joy to use — and here’s the biggie — syncs seamlessly with one of several desktop companions (which are also free); it’s also the first essential in our series that fully replaces a native app.

There are several excellent iPhone apps available for cyclists. Abvio’s entrant into this category is called Cyclemeter, which turns your iPhone into a GPS-based cycling computer. The $4.99 app has been updated to allow multitasking and full iOS 4 integration.

In many ways, Cyclemeter is pretty similar to other apps such as B.iCycle or iMapMyRide. It offers full integration with Google maps and iCal. You can control your iPod from within the app. It can save your routes and post rides to your Twitter or Facebook accounts. And it will produce some pretty impressive charts and graphs to help analyze your performance. Battery consumption is also on par with that of other cycling apps.

I’d heard mixed reviews about Samsung’s new 14.2 megapixel TL240 point-and-shoot camera. One friend told me it was slow. You know, the dreaded shutter delay? Depress the shutter and two weeks later it fires off.

Expectation is a mighty powerful sense. I hate going to movies that are highly recommended. I tend to expect too much, and in most cases the movie never lives up to my expectations. That is why my brother always recommends movies to me by saying, “It was a piece of CRAP, don’t miss it.”

But when it comes to the TL240, my lowered-expectations didn’t pan out. This is a nifty little camera that takes good pictures. It has a nice big touchscreen, and some suprisingly-useful shooting modes like “blink,” which is perfect for shooting relatives who always have their eyes closed.

The AirStash is a $100 USB card reader with a built-in Wi-Fi hotspot. It is used to stream media to other devices, which means broadcasting movies, music, and video to your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad and other gadgets with limited amounts of memory.

If only it worked.

It’s said Odin gave one of his eyes in exchange for a drink from the Well of Wisdom. Luckily for us, quenching our thirst for knowledge is somewhat less dramatic — all it takes is the punch of a button and bam, we’re at Wikipedia. Question is, which button to punch?

With its dizzying collection of features, Wikipanion is that button.

This is the app every iPhone sold int he U.S. should come pre-installed with. There are probably good reasons — or maybe bad ones — why it isn’t; but it’s easily available, it’s free and it might just save you some money.

Animated Knots by Grog is a great app that teaches you to tie all kinds of handy knots. This is the first app we’ve reviewed to earn five Black Turtlenecks using our rating system!

Money makes the world go ’round, right? If that’s the case, then there’s no more essential app than PayPal; and here in the U.S., it’s really the closest thing we have to a virtual wallet — a concept other cultures (like Japan) have enjoyed for years.

Iomega’s new Mac Edition eGo Desktop Hard Drive packs a whopping 2-Terabytes in a compact, stylish package.

Available now for $249, the eGo drive offers plenty of connectivity options — USB 2.0 and a pair of FireWire 800 ports — making it suitable for a host of tasks, from backup to iMovie video editing.

I’ve spent the last few days glued to my iPhone watching the grand drama of the Tour de France (or “Tour-DAY-France” if you’re an ex-racer from Oakland named Bob) unfold in Europe via Versus’ Official Tour de France Live app.

Regular visitors to this blog will probably have noticed that we mention Dropbox a lot. I mean, we won’t shut up about it. Why? Because it’s so ridiculously useful.

The way it works is simple: It’s a portal for files from your iPhone to your Dropbox account, a free service that gives you your own 2GB cloud to store files and media, and if you want to, lets you share those files and media.