Apps

Well, since I haven't quite figured out how to make money being a gadget nerd, I'm forced to keep my day job. Unfortunately for me, that day job requires that I be up to date on all state-required licenses, and wouldn't you know it, its time for renewal. So with a week or so before exam date, I'm given study material and some time off.

"I'm screwed," I thought, staring at the 300 page study guide with intimidation. After about half an hour of highlighting the same sentence over and over, my trusty iPhone came to the rescue. To the App Store! I knew I had come across a flash card application on there that might be just what I needed to keep focused. Sure enough, gWhiz mobile's gFlash+ [iTunes Link] showed up in my search and better yet, was available for free.

The application is about as simple as it gets. It comes with 3 sample topics, showing off the app's ability to offer flash cards in standard Q&A form, True or False form, and even multiple choice. After browsing the small catalog of flash card topics, it was obvious I was going to have to make my own. This is also fairly simple, as long as you have some sort of google account (iGoogle, Gmail, documents, etc.) because the program depends upon google documents' spreadsheet application. Here you put your question in column A, and your answer directly beside it in column B, and this will make up the front and back of your flash card.

After making all your flash cards, you'll need to download them onto your iPhone. I know it seems like I'm being repetitive but this, too, is extremely simple. From the main menu you choose the 'download your own data' option, and after a quick google sign in (you'll only have to do this once), you're looking at all downloadable data in your google documents folder. Of course, you'll select the spreadsheet you just devised, and it'll take a second to download.

I myself made about 100 flash cards of vocabulary words and definitions. The first card shows up with the word, and after I answer, I touch the card to turn it over and reveal the correct answer. The program does keep track of your progress by allowing you to press a check mark or an x depending on if you got the questions right or not. It is optional for you to have your total correct answers display at the top of the screen.

Over all this program is extremely functional and easy to use, it definitely served its purpose. I can study anywhere, anytime I want. I can do a few vocab words, or the whole 100, it's fantastic. As an iPhone application, though, it's held to high standards. The GUI could be dressed up a bit, and if anyone from gWhiz is listening, how about a full screen view, with actual note card backgrounds. And as long as we're throwing out ideas here, how about voice recognition ability that can tell if you answered correctly or not. Well, for now, let's just work on making this software more reliable.

Anyone who has read my reviews in the past, knows how much I hate crashing, and this one tended to do it more than I wanted it to. But gFlash+ is nonetheless great at what it does, and it has helped me out tremendously, being able to take my studying with me wherever I go. A note should also be made that this software is also available for blackberry/treo phones, and while not as cool as the 3G, it enables my co workers to download my license exam review from the gWhiz website for their cell phones. Guess who the most popular guy at the office is?

P.S.

Another hi tech studying tip is recording yourself reading material you have to study/remember with a recording app on your iPhone. Now when you go to sleep tonight, pop in your head phones, and put the recording you made earlier on loop. I'm not promising you'll wake up in the morning with a head full of knowledge, but at least you are increasing your exposure to the material. Thank you, thank you, hold your applause. ;op

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.

You asked for it, so we're going to give it to you!  There are at least two iPhone apps that can sync your documents over the air!  I tried Box.net [iTunes link] and MiGhtyDocs [iTunes link].  Up until recently, you needed a wifi network to sync your documents to your iPhone.  Both of the apps I am reviewing only require an Internet connection to sync.  And you don't really upload the file to your iPhone.  The files are uploaded to a website which the apps can read.  Both apps are free, but they really do come at a price - a lack of features.

Last week, the first Google Android platform mobile phone, the T-Mobile G1, was released and one of its features is syncing Google Documents over the air.  MiGhtyDocs attempts to mimic that feature.  And I wouldn't say it's entirely successful.

Google Documents already comes with its own upload restrictions. You can only upload:

MiGhtyDocs only supports documents and spreadsheets. This is not looking good.

Documents load fine, but spreadsheet support is not very good. I uploaded five MS Excel spreadsheets.  The results range from very good to very bad.  Some spreadsheets showed up in a weird alignment.  One spreadsheet couldn't load at all.

The one great feature MiGhtyDocs has is its ability to view a document even when you don't have an Internet connection.  The green dot next to the document name (pictured, above) means the file has been saved in a cache and you don't need the internet to view it.

MiGhtyDocs has tremendous potential to be a great app.  With a few more updates, it may even be usable.

You can go to Box.net to sign up for a free gigabyte of space to upload your documents for later viewing on your iPhone.  I have to say that this app exceeded my expectations in many areas.

Like the Datacase and Air Sharing apps, Box.net supports mp3s, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, pictures and PDFs.  It even was able to display my mhtml file, which is a file neither Datacase nor Air Sharing could view.  However, the free subscription does not allow you to upload a file more than 25MB, so I couldn't upload a video to check that out.  Also, PDFs, especially large ones, take some time to load and view.

The only reason why I cannot recommend Box.net over similar wifi syncing apps is its lack of landscape mode.  PDFs are almost impossible to read without landscape mode.

Box.net is a great first attempt at over-the-air document synching.  Hopefully, landscape mode, which is its only blemish, can be added in a future update.

Now when I get the urge to try a new app that I see on the App Store, or maybe hear about in Cydia, I always go in with the same 3 questions. Is it easy to use? Is it something that I'll use? And is it stable? There are tons of other things I look at, but these are the 3 I focus on. So with that in mind lets take a look at Mcleaner, a new application available in Cydia, via the iSpazio's repo.

Now typically this is one of those ones I'd sub consciously pass over. The description said something about blocking SMS messages and phone calls, and I'm thinking, when would I ever use this? But this time it was almost like a little bird was whispering in my ear, "Go ahead Cody, try Mcleaner out, maybe even review it on idownloadblog.com." He sounded French. Anyways I listened and decided to give it a try.

Wow. That's not the word I'll be using at the end of this article, but that's what I first thought when I opened the App. This looked so well done, especially for a Cydia App. By default you start off in the 'Working Mode' profile, but you can create others. Maybe you have a 'work mode' and then a 'church mode'. Then you can setup your whitelist and blacklist.  The white list is a list of contact names or phone numbers that you would like allowed on this particular profile. And of course the black list is a list of names and numbers that you wouldn't like to contact you.  You may also schedule profiles to take affect at certain times, for example, 'work mode' can be scheduled 8-5 M-F, I though this was pretty cool.

Everything seems to be made so effortless for the user, as you are given several choices when asked to add a contact to a list, add from contacts, input number, add from recents, etc.  You may also choose to block unknown and private numbers, perfect if you are constantly getting harassed by telemarketers and the like. The developer definitely gets an A+ in ease of use here.  We can go ahead and throw in one for stability as well, I haven't had any issues, and a quick test block on my girlfriend's number proved successful.

So Cody, this thing sounds sweet, should I go ahead and download? Ah, ah, ah, this is why there are 3 questions. I have to say, Mcleaner is very well put together, but has a very small target audience. Unless you are wanting to avoid bill collectors, or that creepy guy at the office that always texts "Sup?", I don't see any other real use for this application. Now, I'm sure if your attending high stakes meetings on a daily basis, you might find this program very useful. But for the majority of us, well me at least, I'll stick to the good old mute switch on the side of my iPhone. I generally hit it on my way into the office, and it has served me well.  Especially since at the end of the 15 day trial, your asked to pay 11.99. One love.