If you liked what I posted earlier this week on how to make an iPhone stand with a paperclip, you will appreciate this video found on Make on how to make an iPhone dock, using binder clips. It doesn't look really easy to do but the result is pretty good. If you try this at home, please send us pictures!
Month: October 2008
Mind Maker Mindmap application for iPhone/iTouch
Although many people I work with use mind mapping software, i am much more of a "draw it out on paper" person and it has never felt spontaneous to capture my thoughts using such a tool. I don't like to lug my laptop to every meeting and when I got spontaneous ideas while walking or working out, paper always seemed to be the best approach.
So as I was browsing through new apps in the App Store, I saw the Mind Maker [iTunes Link] app developed by Ultravague, and the idea of having mind mapping software that is a lot more portable and always accessible might make the difference in usability for me. So I decided to give it a try.
So for two days now I have had it installed on my iPhone and I have tried to use it for all my meetings (which are considerable these days!). It takes some time to reorient yourself from linear written notes to the relationship-based tree concept but I like the end product. Much easier to navigate through when you are trying to drill down and go back and add more detail later.
The tool is pretty intuitive. It was easy to make new branches and nodes. I kept trying to connect a node to more than one parent and I guess you can't do that. I think that one of my problems with these types of tools is that my mind doesn't always link things in an hierarchical fashion.
But my personal issues aside, I was able to create a tree really quickly and and organize it the way I wanted to. I couldn't figure out how to export it so after a quick browse at the web site I found out that the next version 1.1 (which they say is almost ready to submit to Apple), will support exporting mind maps to images and the following version 1.2, will allow mindmaps to be published to the web and exported in a variety of formats.
Features that I would like to see added:
The ability to associate a text, images, or url's with the nodes, this will be especially useful when version 1.2 comes out and I can publish my mind maps to the web. The ability to create cross associations (a node has more than one parent) so that I can map more complex relationships The ability to name the relationships because connections are sometimes the most important thing to remember.All in all it is a good deal at $4.99.
Let me introduce you to 2 new bloggers
I recently posted about positions being opened for iPhone bloggers to join me at the iPhone Download Blog. I received many requests, most of them being completely unqualified. A lot of them just didn't match what I was looking for.
After giving a few tries to some of the people who had applied, I realized this co-blogger thing was being more a pain in the butt than anything else... I gave "contributor rights" to a few kids and the only thing they would do was copy/pasting posts from TUAW or Engadget.
Then there is the blogger who says he's going to write a post every day and you never hear back from him after 3-4 days. A total waste of time and energy.
That was until Alicia got in touch with me. She sent me a nice email, explaining why she wanted to write and sent me some of her qualifications and she also directed me to her iPhone blog. I really liked her writing right away and after spending a while on the phone with her, I knew she was the right person for the job.
Alicia is now an author here. You may have already see her introduction post and you also may have read a few of her posts. You can tell she's a much better writer than I am - hey, English is my second language, so don't be to hard on me ;-)
The same day, Cody sent me a witty email (I like wit!) that raised my attention. I gave him a call and he was very pleasant and seemed very knowledgeable about the iPhone so I asked him to send me a few posts, telling him that I would publish them under his name and that if everything goes well, I will grant him access to the blog.
He did a great job at sending me very interesting posts that you may read here, and today I sent him his login info. He's now officially part of the small team, along with Alicia, and myself Sebastien.
I'm still looking for one or two persons to write about new iPhone apps (reviews, etc...) and general iPhone news (pretty much report what's going on in the iPhone world).
If you think you would be a good match, please read this and make sure you meet all the "requirements".
Thank you and welcome to Alicia and Cody.
The house that Apple built
[digg-me]For the last couple years, Apple's iTunes Store has taken center stage as the Internet's most used online music store. After the rise and fall of such "illegal" online music sources such as Napster and other P2P networks, Apple decided to give the rough, uncharted market of online music purchasing a shot.
You see, Napster and other peer to peer file sharing networks either charged no fee, or a low monthly fee, and none of that money made it back to the music labels, publishers, and producers. But in its usual pioneering way (see the Apple II, iPod, iPhone, etc...) Apple came up with a solution that would please the record companies, and the consumers who sought cheaper alternatives to buying music other than their local record store.
Enter The Apple iTunes Store! All songs were available for download at $0.99 from a library big enough to make CD Warehouse jealous. And from then on, it was an unstoppable monster, gaining momentum when the video iPod was released and agreements were made with movie and television production studios, giving users the option to download their favorite TV shows, and movies as well.
Then came application and game downloads for your iPod and iPhones, another revolutionary online method of distribution, and made Apple and a lot of small time developers fairly wealthy (well, wealthier in Apple's case). Nothing seemed like it could stop the download colossus until the National Music Publishers Association started kicking up dust around Washington asking that its record companies and producers receive more royalties than it's current $0.09 a track from Apple's iTunes profit.
Apparently they made enough noise for the Copyright Royalty Board to hear them, and the three judge panel is expected to make a ruling very soon. Now, what does that mean to all of us outside of the industry politics? There are a few possible scenarios if the board votes in favor of the NMPA.
The $0.99 standard price tag on mp3s would have to be raised to keep up Apple's profitablity while giving the Music Publishers a raise in the royalties. Or secondly, and hopefully this could only happen in another demension, Apple would shut down iTunes, explained fairly well in this comment by Eddie Cue in today's CNN Money article by writer Devin Leonard:
If the [iTunes music store] was forced to absorb any increase in the ... royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss - which is no alternative at all, Cue wrote. Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably.
Once again, only time can tell what will be decided, or if Apple really has the gall to upset millions of iTunes users in shutting down the Internet's largest online media download store. How would that effect their iPod/iPhone sales? What would the rest of us do to quench our thirst for cheap media downloads? Start using Amazon's music service? Rhapsody? [shudders] Maybe Apple needs to just start its own record label and hire the top talent in the industry and cut out the middle man. Then they'd probably have an anti trust lawsuit on their hands. Oh the tangled webs we weave...
Apple drops its NDA on released apps
Apple announed today that it is dropping its very controversial Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) for released iPhone softwares.
From Apple:
We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.
And who's going to protect developers from YOU, Apple, stealing their work?
However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software.
Oh, really? What makes you think that? Could that be the thousands of bloggers and newspapers talking crap about your legal grip on developers??
They also highlight the fact that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released, which makes sense.
It took a while but you finally listened to us, Apple.