Month: November 2008

Gone are the days when people went through the tedious process of looking up for a word on a bound dictionary. Electronic dictionaries on PC made the process easier but as usual we wanted more – an anytime, anywhere, instantaneous access to digital dictionaries. Some thought this was just another unreasonable whim of mankind. But as they say "whims and fancies can be a path to creativity and success". This was proved with the creation of Mobile Dictionaries, its strongest manifestation being iPhone dictionaries.

Many dictionary-related apps have been covered in this blog so far but let me give you an update on WordBook [iTunes Link], an already excellent app which has gone par excellence with the release of its latest 2.0 version. With its rich 150,000 entries you would be scanning through an 1,800 page equivalent content in a jiffy. That's brilliant, but even its previous 1.1 version had the same feature. So there isn't anything fresh on that front. However, a new feature in the latest version has the power to give pronunciations and origin of words along with their definition.

Now let's not get ahead of ourselves and shower praises since there are many dictionary applications out there providing these features. So what is it that sets this dictionary really apart? Is it the anagram window which boasts of an ability to search words whose spelling the user partly knows/remembers? Well not entirely. So what’s cooking?

Look closely at the words DICTIONARY, LINKS, THESAURUS and WEB towards the right hand side of the image above. These are not just mere words but they are links to a one stop destination to all that you could ask off a dictionary.

By default the Dictionary link is active which gives you the pronunciation, definition, and origin of a searched word. Now comes the useful part you can click on LINKS to get the synonym, antonym and attribute of the word. Furthermore, you can click on THESAURUS which gives synonyms in different forms i.e. adjective, noun and verb. If this weren't enough you can click on WEB so that wordbook directly looks up on the internet to retrieve information on the word you have searched. You can even customize and set your own favorite dictionary site to be searched by wordbook.

This phenomenal linkage of thousands of words equips you with not alone the definition of a word but also provides you with a series of similar words which can be used in different forms and contexts all from one single window. Yeah that’s true a one window access to all your wordy needs. So go ahead and "Quench your thirst for words" through WordBook [iTunes Link] that you can download from the App Store for $7.99.

Since I bought the iPhone 3G back in July, one of the features I have been using consistently is photo geotagging.  Immediately, I downloaded AirMe [iTunes link] from the App Store.  AirMe is what I use to judge all other photo uploading apps.  You can use AirMe to take a picture and it automatically uploads it to one of three sites: Facebook, Flickr or Picasa.  AirMe doesn't have a multitude of features, but what it can do it does well.

This weekend I saw Pixelpipe - Media Gateway [iTunes link] in the App Store.  What intrigued me about this app is that you can upload your iPhone photos to multiple sites at the same time, unlike AirMe which is limited to one site.  Pixelpipe supports a mind-boggling 39 photo/video sharing sites, 10 blogging sites, e-mail and FTP.  And, like AirMe, Pixelpipe is free.  So, how could you go wrong with an app that does so much?  Unfortunately, it is the little things that matter most.

Adding websites to upload to is quite simple.  Each site is called a "destination."  I added box.net, Flickr, Picasa, TwitPic, Blogger and Facebook.  One minor point is that the settings for Pixelpipe are changed within Safari, which I find unusual.  Settings for most apps are changed within the native app.

One big mistake I made is uploading all of my photos on my iPhone to Pixelpipe and then uploading them all to my destination sites.  I would suggest NOT hitting the "Upload All" button unless that's what you really want to do.

The camera portion of Pixelpipe is one of its weakest points.  Pixelpipe does not geotag photos you take within the app.  Boo.  I have never seen a camera app that doesn't allow geotagging.

Pixelpipe also has trouble uploading vertical pictures correctly to their destination sites.  I took two pictures with a vertical orientation.  I named them "Reflections" and "Grande Mocha Coconut Frappaccino."  In Pixelpipe and in my Camera Roll, the pictures are shown the way they should look - vertical.  But, the same picture at all other "destinations" are shown rotated horizontally as shown in the picture below.

Again, I have never seen an app that is unable to handle the correct orientation of a picture.  Very, very disappointing.  Pictures taken with Pixelpipe in a horizontal orientation are uploaded correctly.

On the other hand, one of the great features of Pixelpipe is the ability to change the title, description and tags of the picture before you upload it.

Still, a lack of geotagging and the inability to handle vertically-oriented pictures correctly are dealbreakers for me.  While uploading pictures to multiple websites is a great idea, I won't do it at the cost of the basic features I'm already accustomed to.