Apps

iBowl: For those Can-your-Phone-do-this-ers, and that’s it

Cody Lee ∙ Updated January 29, 2016

From the makers of iGolf comes iBowl, the game that promises that you can "take the lanes with you wherever you go." But before you hang up your real bowling shoes, there are a few things you should know. I myself got excited when doing my daily browse of the Top 25 Free applications in Apple's App Store. After reading through several raving reviews, and considering its #2 position on the Top 25, I decided to give it a go.

The first thing you see when the application is loaded is a set of very simple instructions. Select what side of the lane you wish to throw from, and hold down the "bowl" button strategically placed in the middle of the screen (so you can cradle your phone in your hand) and bowl. Let go (of the button, not your phone), and watch your ball soar rather randomly down the lane and knock over pins. Their description on the App Store claimed it detected spinning your iPhone to spin the ball but I have yet to experience it.

Now, some of you might be thinking, it's free what did you expect. Well, I didn't really expect anything, after all, I wasn't a fan of iGolf when it was released. I have to admit this game does have a few nice features such as the ability to play a full 10 frames, and a high score board to keep track of the 'king pin'. But don't let the "challenge a friend" option fool you, it just opens a new email with an inserted link to download iBowl.

A few suggestions from this lowly iPhone gamer would be to tighten up the acuracy on the ball movement down the lane, or even to explore other options like using touch instead of the accelorometer. Some realistic physics, or at least random pin action would help out.

Also, SGN could consider selling cases with adjustable wrist straps to lower the amount of iBowl related damaged iPhones. Changing the fake "challenge a friend" option into at least 2 player mode just goes without saying.

So although it is a descent presentation and a neat idea, this thing is about as useful as the apps iLighter and iBeer, mostly for those "hey can your phone do this"ers. I found that this application sat unused on the springboard unless I was showing it to people, and even then could only muster up a few frames before it got tiresome.

SGN seems to have some great ideas going with these iSports apps, and I'm excited to see what updates and future apps they bring us.

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Backgrounder runs multiple apps at once

Cody Lee ∙ Updated November 22, 2022

Backgrounder from Lance Fetters is a new Cydia app out that promises to turn your ordinary iPhone into a multitasking machine. And after a quick download I'd have to say it delivered it in style.

Upon install you'll get a hard respring. But don't get caught looking for an icon, because there is none. You activate the app by opening up any legally downloaded Apple App Store app, (I haven't gotten it to work with  cydia apps), and holding down the home button until a prompt pops up and lets you know backgrounder is enabled.

Now, for those of you who use a music app like Pandora, and want to listen to your Pandora music while you browse your photos or do something else on your iPhone, be excited. I personally use it when I am playing a video game. I hit pause, run backgrounder and quit the game, send a text, and re open the game and voila! No loading time, and I didn't lose my progress in my game.

I haven't tested the battery usage, but I'm assuming it makes a noticeable difference if you leave it on. And it will stay on until you restart/respring or disable it manually the same way you enabled it.

Bottom line is, this application will help make light work of those once tedious app switching jobs. I am cody lee, and I approve this message

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Fring is out! Officially

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

A few months ago I talked about Fring on my personal blog. At the time, this app was just being released for jailbroken iPhones. Six months and 3 firmware upgrades later, Fring made its way to the App Store.

What is Fring?

Fring is a mobile internet service & community that enables you to access & interact with your social networks on-the-go, including make free calls, live chat and seeing your contacts online presence with all your fring, Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo! and AIM friends using your iPhone’s Internet connection rather than costly cellular airtime minutes.

So far, Fring is the only VoIP app available in the App Store, along with Truphone, althought other similar apps are coming soon.

I haven't tried Fring yet but expect a review from us within the next few days. In the meanwhile, if you try it, please let us know what you think by leaving a comment.

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Save web pages for offline reading with Instapaper

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated March 18, 2019

You're at the San Diego airport just about to get on this flight to Chicago for a conference you really don't want to attend when you come across this looong article on the New York Times website about how the Senate finally passed the bailout bill. You'll never have time to finish this article before the usual "please turn off all electronic devices".

In the good old days, you would have had to wait to land in Chicago to read this article. Thanks to Instapaper, these times are over.

Instapaper allows you to easily save them for later, when you do have time, so you don’t just forget about them or skim through them.

Let me explain you how to use Instapaper.

First, you have to download the free version of Instapaper (or get the paid one). Registration takes about a second as it doesn't require much information from you (you don't even have to give your email address!). The app uses a JavaScript bookmarklet, which you have to manually tweak to make it work on the iPhone. I imagine later versions will be easier to install. Basically, it creates a bookmark on your iPhone.

When browsing the web and finding an interesting article, simply go to your bookmarks and use the Instapaper bookmarklet. It will instantly save it so you can read the text offline later.

Additionally, you can use it on your own computer by adding a bookmarklet in your toolbar. Every time you click this bookmarklet, it saves the article for offline reading. Then you can go back to your iPhone and sync your computer activity with your iPhone. In other words, you can save web pages from your iPhone or your computer and sync them.

At this point, I am not sure why you would need the paid version. The free one is just perfect. I was able to save over 30 pages for offline reading (it was supposed to save only 24!).

You can view the saved article as text or as "web". The "web" version is very buggy and caused the app to crash every single time I tried to use it. The text version is just as good as what I would expect anyways.

Your queue of saved articles Reading a saved article

This app is a must-have for anyone slightly interested in saving web pages for later reading. It is simple, yet efficient, and... it's free! Don't you love free?

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Mind Maker Mindmap application for iPhone/iTouch

Guest Author ∙ Updated January 28, 2019

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.

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Podcaster available on Cydia

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated March 9, 2016

The fact that Apple rejected the Podcaster app from the App Store won't stop the company from making this great app available to the general public; well, at least to the jailbroken general public. Indeed, Podcaster is now available in Cydia. Oh, and it comes with a 14 days trial. After that, it will cost you $4.99. Take that, Apple!

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But I still want to check out the new iPhone Apps!

Guest Author ∙ Updated March 27, 2017

If you are like me, i was looking in App Store at least once a day to see what new apps were out.  I would go to the iTunes Store and click on App Store in the left hand column.  I would then click on "All Iphone Applications" and sort by "Most Recent" so that I could look at all the latest updates and new apps.  When I logged on the other day and couldn't find the All iPhone Applications option, i was a bit shocked. However I have figured out a few ways to still let me get my new app fix.  Here is my advice to those with the same OCD need to see what is new.

1)  Use the View Menu/Show Browser Feature in iTunes to see a list form of apps. From there, click on the App Store list item in the iTunes Store listing.  Click on "Release Date" column header in the browser row area.  Now click on the different Category list items to see a sorted list by date of all the applications in that category.  It is a bit slower than seeing all categories at once, but maybe we can convince Apple to put in an All Category option here.

2) Subscribe to the Pinch Media's New Application RSS feed. These are really useful app store feeds.  They also have a feed for free new apps and one for updated apps.  Here is how they describe this great service:

We’re happy to announce today the release of a few new RSS feeds which provide a way to view activity in the Apple App Store without having to load up iTunes or the App Store on the iPhone yourself. The first two feeds are the most recent stream of new and updated applications added into the App Store updated hourly.

Check it out.

Either way, I can still get my fix.

3) Follow our New Apps & Games category :-)

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Using the iPhone for traffic reporting?

Guest Author ∙ Updated January 9, 2017

I know that Google Maps for the iPhone lets you see traffic data in certain areas, but it is very limited by the quality and quantity of available data.  With the huge number of iPhones and there wide geographic dispersion and with its GPS and "always on" internet capabilities it should be pretty easy to to actually capture traffic data with an iPhone app.  This data could then be shared and distributed back to other iphone apps.

There have been other GPS's with this approach, but it would pretty simple to create a simple app that has a "Traffic Start" button and a "Traffic End"  button that would then use the GPS coordinates and the time between the two points to calculate the location and amount of congestion. This very small packet of data could then be sent to a traffic data base (and maybe validated by other reports) and then retransmitted back to the other worthy iPhone users.

It would have to be something you could do while driving so I am envisioning a very simple screen tap to turn on and off.   Also it would take some data finess and number crunching on the server side, but wouldn't it be cool!

Maybe we could just get Dash to write the app for us.

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iPhoneBrowser

Sébastien Page ∙ September 28, 2008

I wrote in the past about iPhoneBrowser, this neat little piece of software that allows you to browse and manipulate your iPhone files without jailbreaking it. After updating to 2.0, iPhoneBrowser didn't work anymore so I kinda forgot about it until today.

I checked the Google Code page of iPhoneBrowser and realized it was recently updated so I decided to download it again. Boy, it's as good as ever! I like iPhoneBrowser for one good reason: it's much faster than SSH. When using SSH, you have to turn on SSH on your iPhone and open WinSCP on your PC whereas you just need to open iPhoneBrowser and plug in your iPhone to access your files when using iPhoneBrowser. Furthermore, downloading a large file from the iPhone to your computer is much faster using iPhoneBrowser too as it transfers the file through the USB port of your computer. One thing SSH does that iPhoneBrowser doesn't is let you change the file properties. For example, if you want to set different properties for a file, you will have to use SSH. Not a big deal as I personally don't touch file properties very often.

So what can you do with iPhoneBrowser?

drag and drop uploading to our phone automatic and manual backups of files on your phone previews of text and picture files and very cool icons create "favorite" path to your most used locations
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Tap To Unlock slider replacement

Sébastien Page ∙ September 28, 2008

I really like the User Interface of the iPhone. It is very simple, intuitive, in other words, it is very user friendly. When I first got my iPhone over a year ago, simple things about the UI were amazing me. One of them was the "slide to unlock" feature. How cool is that that you can access the springboard by the slide of a finger!

Quickly, this "slide to unlock" thing started to annoy me for one single reason: it didn't work all the time. Well, it actually works all the time but sometimes my finger doesn't starts sliding where it should, forcing me to repeat the gesture to get it to work.

I had a good surprise a couple days ago while browsing the apps available in Cydia. I cam across this "Tap To Unlock" application that works with Winterboard. I Installed it and it works great. Now instead of sliding my finger across the screen, I can access the springboard by just taping it.

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Trism, Band, Pianist, Guitarist are on sale

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated March 27, 2017

With the increasing amount of new apps coming to the App Store every day, it's getting harder and harder for developers to be noticed and to potentially make thousands of dollars, like Trism developer! A good way to get some free advertising is to have an "app sale". See, it's working, I'm already talking about these apps...

Trism, Band, Pianist, and Guitarist are currently on sale in the App Store. So if you were on the fence about buying any of these apps, this might be the right time!

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