Written on 16:07 by SamWalters
All day! 2 hours to go and I'm as excited as a kid in a sweet shop! Lots of rumours flying around now. bring on the itablet!
Rearding iPhone 4.0, I don't think it's gunna happen today, I think we'll see 3.2 and apple will make us wait for 4.0 until the new iPhone hardware is available :(
What are everyones thoughts?
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Written on 18:43 by SamWalters
Today the apple© app store passed 3 Billion downloads. That's a crazy amount of downloads considering that the app store has only been live for 18 months!
“Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months—this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The revolutionary App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices, and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”
Apple reached 2 billion downloads in September so another Billion in 4 months.
Apple© just continues to grow and grow at an ever increasing speed. I can just imagine the grin on Steve Jobs' face right about now!
Written on 12:21 by mochaSync
Ever since I started a Twitter account, I have been battling myself over which iPhone client I favor. As you know by now, the App Store has no shortage of them either. As time goes by, developers must find ways to stand out in the ever-growing sea if they want to survive. Not many people are willing to settle for bland graphics and narrow scope. Just as with everything else we shop for, we want the most for our money. Why should our iPhone apps be any different?
For me there are three main factors I judge by: Features, Visual Style, and Reliability. Even some of the big name clients fail at scoring high in all areas, usually ranking well in one and falling short at another. After a few weeks of serious use, I think I can say TwitBird [
iTunes link] has surpassed the others and ranked highest in all three of these categories.
Have a look at that! Very sleek, yet functional, and easy to read. The above showcases main timeline with the Dark theme found in version 2.2. This is my personal favorite theme, but its good to know there are two others that you could choose from, Movie and iChat Bubble, both of which mimic the look and feel of a typical chat window. Another cool feature of those themes was the ability to pick and choose your background image. I really favor apps that give ample customization to the user.
Now take another look at the above picture, look closely at the top tweet (mine lol). Notice anything cool? How about that "in reference to" box just below my @reply? SUPER COOL! That really helps recall what you were replying to, and it does so in style! Thats a huge bonus in functionality plus it tips the visual count too!
Here is a glance at a typical user profile, accessed when tapping on an avatar in the timeline. Not so much of a reinvention, but it just feels right with well chosen fonts and color schemes.
For this review, I purchased TwitBird Premium, which supports up to 2 twitter accounts, and inter-TwitBird push notifications. This is basically invoked if another TwitBird user sends you a Direct Message or a Mention. I didn't get many of these in my testing, which is a shame and something I hope to change with this review! As you can see from the above photo, each account will show a small badge of unread tweets/mentions/DM's and so forth.
After selecting an account, you are brought to the "Home" view which contains a break down of "Messages" and "Tools." MEssages further breaks down your messages in an mailbox style view, each box with it's respective badge as well. A quick scroll down will reveal many more "Tools" such as Drafts, Search, Nearby Tweets, Trends, and Saved Links. Other features include now playing tweets with link to iTunes and voice recordings. Being a musician, I like sharing music, however, I was hoping that TwitBird would also include the cover art in my now playing tweets. Perhaps this will be implemented in a future update. These are all major features that help push TwitBird to the top of my list, most notably the "Saved Links" feature. While there is support for Read It Later and Instapaper, a built in feature is a super nice touch.
Also under the hood, tucked away until needed, is two more features: in-line picture viewing and map link. When a user posts a picture, the picture is included in the tweet view screen (just tap a tweet to expand its contents), along with a small snapshot of the users geo-location! Very neat! Have a look...
When you click on "Nearby Tweets," a map loads with a nice fancy radar type graphic. As users are found, there avatars are loaded and placed on the map. Again, such a cool feature! Just brings a nice feel to the whole UI. This is a great way to find new "tweople" (people who tweet...) and even your own friends!
In my testing, I did have a few hiccups, such as double posts. However, I was able to pin this down to the fact that my iPhone is Jailbroken with a backgrounding/multi-tasking app running. Removing that app cured the double posts right away. Since then, I have not experienced any problems at all.
At the time of this writing, Boxcar [
iTune Link] announced they now support all of the TwitBird versions (the free, Premium, and Pro versions). Coupled with Boxcar, TwitBird is my ultimate Twitter client.
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Written on 18:10 by SamWalters
A new Twitter client app has hit the app store!
Called twittle, it's a basic yet very functional Twitter app.
The first thing that caught my attention was how quick it was at loading the app and all the posts, even on a GPRS connection..
Priced at 59p, it's cheaper than most of the Twitter apps that are any good.
It comes with 2 themes; dark and light. I personally prefer the dark theme.
My favourite feature is the settings option to use safari as the broswer instead of the built in one as they tend to be less functional.
Pros: it's lightning quick, retweets work well (which is more than can be said for tweetie right now), the 2 different themes.
The cons: it will not allow you to click links in tweets which kind of takes away the auto open safari feature, if you try to do too much at once it crashes, it doesn't like loading user profiles..
Summary: it's very good for a beginner.. But for an extensive Twitter user it doesn't pull out the stops.
A few updates will fix that.. Especially if they add a lists feature..
For now I'm sticking with tweetie, but don't rule this one out until you've tried it :)
iBlog marks: 3/5
Written on 22:02 by SamWalters
WiFiPhoto is an alternative to syncing your photo's from your iPhone via iTunes. Plus its a LOT faster!
You can add
pictures from your camera roll by simply tapping on them to activate the red tick. Click as many as you want and then click done at the top.
Then all the selected photo's appear in a list. At the bottom is a URL link to your photos. Open your web browser on your PC and enter the address.
After going to the link in your web browser the following page appears. Click each image individually and download them, or click the download zip button, and download them all in a compressed zip file.
Its fast and effortless. Unlimited photo's, no quality loss and only 59p. Another app you'll never know how you lived without!
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Written on 19:40 by SamWalters
Air Mouse allows you to control your laptop/pc/mac with your iPhone. Acting like a mouse you can control the cursor, right and left click, scroll, and thats just the beginning!
Air mouse was recommended to me by a friend who had found it for 59p in the app store. It allows control of the mouse via 2 different ways
This is the trackpad. It works in the exact same way as the one on a laptop. Touch it to move the cursor around the screen. Touch the arrows at the bottom and scroll your finger up and the down the screen and you have a scroll function. The buttons to the left and the right of the scroll are your left and right click.
The Keyboard is fully functional, allowing CTRL, ALT and the WINDOWS key for extensive functionality of your computer. Shake your phone up and the keyboard appears. Shake it down it is disappears. Press the arrow key on the keyboard (Top Right) and we move on.
This is the function screen. Using the computer software that coincides with the app, you can change the functions keys to represent different programs. For instance, itunes, firefox, safari etc. Clicking the appropriate button will open the program on the computer that its associated with.
The buttons at the bottom can control programs on the computer. The arrows represent forward and back for instance in firefox. The home key will take you to the browsers home page. The enter key will do the same as if you had pressed enter on the actual computer keyboard.
The button at the top right of the screen switches the trackpad, the scroll in now directly in the middle and a lot bigger.
Turn the iPhone landscape and you get a wide trackpad. The left and right clicks are at the bottom and the scroll function is on the right side.
This is another function screen, this one controls the a web browser with a series of buttons.
Back, Search, Home, Forward, Refresh, Stop and Favourites.
The second way of controlling the computer is via the "air mouse". It uses the accelerometer built into the iPhone to move the cursor around the screen. Very tricky to get the hang of, but once you've got it, it works amazing well.
Currently this app is only 59p. It would criminal to miss out. Its taking pride of place on my iPhone, and although it won't be used too often. Its there when i'm sat on the sofa and my laptop is on the other side of the room hooked up to the tv and i need to pause the movie.
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pictures from your camera roll by simply tapping on them to activate the red tick. Click as many as you want and then click done at the top.
Then all the selected photo's appear in a list. At the bottom is a URL link to your photos. Open your web browser on your PC and enter the address.
Air Mouse allows you to control your laptop/pc/mac with your iPhone. Acting like a mouse you can control the cursor, right and left click, scroll, and thats just the beginning!
This is the trackpad. It works in the exact same way as the one on a laptop. Touch it to move the cursor around the screen. Touch the arrows at the bottom and scroll your finger up and the down the screen and you have a scroll function. The buttons to the left and the right of the scroll are your left and right click.
This is the function screen. Using the computer software that coincides with the app, you can change the functions keys to represent different programs. For instance, itunes, firefox, safari etc. Clicking the appropriate button will open the program on the computer that its associated with.
The button at the top right of the screen switches the trackpad, the scroll in now directly in the middle and a lot bigger.
Turn the iPhone landscape and you get a wide trackpad. The left and right clicks are at the bottom and the scroll function is on the right side.
This is another function screen, this one controls the a web browser with a series of buttons.