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10 Iphone and Ipod touch apps of interest

Byrichard

There are a lot of applications that are available both for the Ipod touch and Iphone and here is a quick run down of applications that you may enjoy using.

MiGhtyDocs

MiGhtyDocs is an application that makes looking at your google documents easy. It allows you to view offline any document that you have consulted on either the touch or the Iphone. It’s limited in that you can’t do any editing from the device itself.

Twittervision

For those that enjoy using twitter and the international aspect this application allows you to see tweets from around the world as they’re sent out. It’s limited in that you can’t yet to select just your friend’s tweets.

Tumble

Tumble is the companion app to your use of tumblr. If you’re taking pictures, finding links you want to share or more it allows you access to the functionality of Tumblr whilst mobile.

LinkedIn

The Linkedin app has four main parts. The first of these is to show your contacts latest’ actions on the social networking website. The second option labelled connections shows you everyone that is in your contact book. Click on any contact and you get a few extra details. The third option is search if you’re looking for something specific. The final icon, the megaphone shows your contact’s status, whether they’re looking to hire people or any message they may feel like sending.

Newton’s cradle

Newton’s cradle is a little bit of fun. As a child we’ve all played with the cradle. It’s the one that has the four balls hanging and the one on one end taps into the three others and only the third bounces away. It detects the attitude of the device and can be a nice method of procrastination

Audi A4

The audi a4 game is a blatant bit of advertising. It’s a driving game and the controls are very simple. Right pedal for acceleration, left pedal to break. You control the car by tilting the phone either to the right or left.
It’s not that hard to play and it won’t be such a challenge to get the hang of the controls.

Labyrinth LE

Labyrinth LE is that platform you played with as a child. It’s a plank of wood with holes and walls. As you tilt the plank of wood (iphone or ipod touch) so the ball rolls with gravity. The tilt sensors work well on this game and it’s another way of making those moments of inactivity less boring.

Pyramid Lite
Pyramid lite is a card game where the aim is to add two cards together to get to a total of 13.

Gottago

Gottago makes it easy for you to plan your trips both within Switzerland and to outside. Select the city you’re leaving from and the city you want to get to. Do a quick search and it will provide you with a number of routes you can take.

SBBTimetable

It’s the same as gottago but by the CFF/SBB.

Speedtest

This is an application that allows you to test the connection speed of whatever you’re using to surf the web from on the ipod touch or iphone.

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Newsgator on the ipod touch

Byrichard

Last night I started using newsgator on the ipod touch and today I’ve come to the conclusion that I really enjoy this app. The reason for this is mobility. With the ipod touch I synchronise the feeds before I leave the computer and at my leisure I can read all the feeds and clip those that I think are relevant for later reading or to be shared.

It’s also a nice way of feedreading because it’s small and practical. No laptop to carry around and no need for wifi to view the content.

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Getting the laptop back (possibly)

Byrichard

Tomorrow I should have a clearer idea on why the laptop decided to die on me but a phonecall yesterday points towards dust. I’m not sure what the dust may have destroyed but that’s what may have caused the fault. 

Without the laptop it’s been an interesting week. It’s seen me playing witgh two versions of linux and portable devices such as the N95 and the touch. Both have their merits and it’s got me thinking about phasing out laptops from my use of the world wide web. What if i could get all podcasts, all e-mails and media content to both these devices without a computer?

With Nokia podcasts I can get all the audio files, with interbine I can get all the videos. With S60 I get some browsing for flash content and with the ipod I get a nicer display for browsing content. Both are easy to carry.  Both charge quickly with the right charger. 

At the same time neither of them has a good typing keyboard, being perfect for short form but a nightmare for writing a blog post for example. With time the experience should improve. 

 

 

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Which do you take to bed, laptop, mobile phone, both or other

Byrichard

We’re living in a permantly more wired world and our conversations are no longer reserved to the workplace, bar or ski slope. As a result electronic devices are making their way into the bedroom more and more frequently. How many of you are on twitter. Is twitter the first person you say good morning to. Are you a Seesmic morning person or a seesmic goodnight person.

Here are the answers I got within a few minutes.

melissah melissah @warzabidul Laptop for me. 08:14 AM December 01, 2007 from twitterrific in reply to warzabidul Icon_star_full 

Rupert ruperthowe @warzabidul if i take a laptop to bed, i get threatened with a red card. phone just feels a bit creepy. so i just stay up through the night. 09:02 PM November 30, 2007 from web in reply to warzabidul

Documentally Podcast Documentally @warzabidul i am more a book/notebook and ipod touch in bed man. 09:02 PM November 30, 2007 from web in reply to warzabidul

sizemore sizemore @warzabidul: Every night I take to bed with me a girl, a laptop, an archos, a book and occasionally a cat. I don’t get much sleep. 

Maggie MaggieConv @warzabidul I take both! 03:56 PM November 30, 2007 from txt in reply to warzabidul Icon_star_full 

Neil Simmons dungeekin @warzabidul: laptop/WiFi devices don’t go upstairs with me. Phone does, but only as an alarm clock. 09:19 PM November 30, 2007 from web in reply to warzabidul Icon_star_full 

So if you thought you were the only one taking your laptop, ipod touch or mobile phone you’re not the only one. There are many of us doing the same.

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The social media living room.

Byrichard

The social media living room is great because it’s really any device that you can connect to the web with, whether a simple mobile phone or a full spec desktop computer.

Some of us look at the computer first thing in the morning and last thing at a night. This is as much as part of a technological expansion in the form of broadband.

Just today an article by the BBC described how people are more and more wired with 90% using broadband, or some similar number. What this means is simple

More hours spent therefore more conversation. With twitter it’s more overheard conversations. That’s not where it stops.

Twitter, seesmic and similar websites turn a private discussion into a public one where the “overheard conversation” is a key point. It’s an evolution back to the route of internet chat. 10 years ago I spent 13hrs in a row online and I saw the shift from Australia to Japan, India, South Africa, Eastern Europe, Europe, NEw York and more.
The difference is that at that time there was no meta data and the initiator to conversations was ASL. Now it’s reached maturity for those of us early adopters. Many of our friends are middle adopters and when they start using it they will not take full advantage.

Look at how people use facebook. When asked by @leisa on twitter during a meeting in real life how often I checked facebook I answered as much as my e-mail. A lot of people do.

What is not talked about is how middle adopters use it. They are far more limited. They don’t add rss feeds because they have no blog, few pictures if any on flickr and in general do not create content. They’re lurkers. Almost all of my friends are facebook I’ve been to parties with, studied or a combination of more. As a result it’s a personal network of IRL friends who have links to each other as well as through me.

These people don’t use twitter, jaiku, tumblr, Pulse plaxo or more. I surprised a conversation on facebook where after seeing someone comment on their post one facebook user asked the other how dare they comment. They didn’t understand the principle of the forum. That’s something all of us are familiar with as early adopters. We are not technological determinists. We believe in the need for something and create a technology to cope.

Look at Seesmic. It’s video. It’s twitter with video. One person commented on how it was based on time consumption. He said that although he would love to see everyone’s video and listen to what they have to say that because it’s time based it would take too long. As a result he’d follow just the friend’s timeline.

This brings me back to twitter. How many friends do you have. Do you still use the public timeline or is your friend’s timeline filled with more than enough conversations not to need this?

I think it’s a really interesting conversation. How does the social media living room integrate into your daily activities.

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Why I don’t care about the iphone anymore

Byrichard

Had it not been for the ipod touch I would still care about the Iphone and I’d be down at regent street now with the geeks waiting for the device to be released into the wild. As things are not only can I not afford the device but more than anything else I found it large, clunky and uncomfortable in contrast to the touch.

Would you really want to get a phone you can’t use for typing notes in conferences or lectures? Do you want to have your mp3 player and phone to die at the same time? I don’t think that’s a good option. I’m happy with my phone contract. Having 3200 minutes is more than enough for a person like me. The Iphone contract has just 200. Nothing worth getting excited about.

When you consider the 18 month contract this seems a little stupid because free wifi is currently increasing across the country and with an 02 bolt on for £7 a month you get unlimited data (withn limits) whilst keeping the minutes you have at the moment.

I’m looking forward to the next generation of iphones but at the moment I’m left cold.

I’m sorry not to get excited about the iphone. Apple will just have to try harder to get me to want one.

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On trying to unblock the i-pod touch.

Byrichard

Today I tried to unblock the ipod touch and it froze the first time and started to heat up and the second time the screen went to black. I thought on two occasions that my ipod was bricked. I’ve been able to re-install everything and am now syncing the content back onto the device.

For the first attempt the device was plugged into the computer and whilst I did see the install app on the screen the display would stop responding. Whether this is due to weak wifi or an incompatibility I’m not sure.

On the second attempt the hack didn’t work and went so far as for the display to cease working. I tried re-starting it with the button and nothing changed. As I plugged it back into the laptop it detected that something was happening and so I was able to restore the ipod.

In summary I’m not going to try that again with my own ipod. I’ll wait until February when they’ll allow third party apps to be included.

Vtap to play videos on the Iphone and Itouch

Byrichard

Today whilst surfing through the webapps I found one that’s great for what I do, share video content via the web. I found Vtap, a video sharing website that allows you to search through, select and stream videos straight through to your iphone or Ipod touch without either converting it to an ipod compatible format or using the youtube website.


For certain videos it gave me a feedreader rather than playing the videos but for those that are already indexed it works well. It’s definitely worth a try and it’s a taste of the future.

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Hit the ground running (waking up in Web 2.0)

Byrichard

There was a time when you would wake up and it’s only half an hour later that the world around you would be clearly visible. In today’s web 2.0 world you wake up and twenty other people are wishing each other good morning. Many are celebrating that it’ Friday and others have pathetic status messages about 40 days of celibacy, about being overworked and all those other messages.

Of course everyone has the right to their feelings and to their own experiences but as certain individuals spend more and more time online they notice these status messages and trends and get really tired. Look at the level of media saturation about the McCann story. I muted a podcast for mentioning the story. Careless parents lost their daughter, end of story. It’s not worth as much airtime as it’s been given.

Then there’s the “back from the dead media coverage” that gets just as tiring. If a royal driving a car doesn’t wear her seat belt and dies as a result of a crash then she should not be idolised in the way people have done. It should have been an opportunity to promote the use of seatbelts to avoid repeat deaths in such a manner.

Then there’s the enthusiast’s oversaturation of the media. In particular I’m thinking of the Iphone. Of course it’s a beautiful new interface, of course it’s ushered in the fully screen tactile device but for anyone outside the US the media saturation has become too much. If you’re an active consumer of new media news then there’s a good chance you would have read several thousand articles boasting about how great it was. As a result a lot of people got media burn out from the story. It’s only as a result of getting an ipod touch that I can tolerate those stories once more.

The 30 minute news round up in the evening preceeded by the daily newspaper has been followed by an era of instant access to news stories once they have been written. What this means is that for ardent consumers of new media it is easy to reach a burn out/saturation point. we, as new media consumers must be careful not to read about single topics so much that we are unable to hear about specific topics anymore.