Ever since I graduated from college with a degree in Journalism, I have tried to keep track of which newspapers have the best writing. Consistently near the top of that list has been The New York Times (for the record, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, CNN, and the AP Newswire round out my personal top five). So, I was pretty excited to find the New York Times app on my Palm Pre.
Tonight is Friday, which means it is the start of the Jewish holiday Shabbat, which is the Sabbath. It begins at sundown on Friday and runs through sundown on Saturday. Shabbat can be a very ritualistic holiday, with certain prayers and other activities which occur at specified times. Of course, since nothing can ever be too easy, these times change based upon when sundown occurs.
It is like a shared ritual. We have all been there. Your friend, mother, mother-in-law, or another random visitor is coming into town for a visit. Your job is to meet them at the airport. Unless you live across the street from the airport, this requires an incredible feat of timing and coordination. Otherwise, your friend ends up standing outside baggage claim for half an hour…or you are driving around the terminal in endless circles (don’t even think about pulling over to catch your breath). What you need is some app which will give you the status of any flight. …
This quick tip may be obvious to many but it is easy to forget (as I did) so I thought I might share it with everyone. It is especially useful for iPhone 3G and 3GS users but really applies to anyone using a data connected phone and living on the edge… of a 3G signal. Here’s the story…
Since late May, my main phone has been a Nokia E71x. It is my first Symbian phone, but I owned Nokia feature phones before and had good memories of them, so I was quite excited to get to know a smarter, fancier Nokia. I’d read good things about Symbian as well as bad ones. Universally, the hardware was praised, but the software reception was a good more lukewarm. My E71x and I have good days and bad days; last week I was ready to sing its praises to the world, this week I’m a bit more annoyed and seem to…
Time to take a look at another game for the Palm Pre, Blackout. Sadly, this is number four of five. Like many of the other games available for the Pre, it is a good concept, but an underwhelming exhibition of what this platform can do.
We have taken a look at SplashID several times before. This is one of the great apps coming out of SplashData, who seems to have now come full circle. They started out developing for PalmOS, moved on to Windows Mobile, iPhone, Nokia, and even several desktop platforms. Well, now they have come back to their roots with Palm and their WebOS. This is SplashData’s second app on the Palm Pre, following Infopedia. Now, some of you may recall that last week I briefly mentioned how I had tested SplashID and found it to be terribly buggy. Heck, it would not…
I had other plans for this article tonight, but as I mentioned earlier, there were a few new releases this weekend, rounding the App Catalog off to an even 35. So, I thought it would make sense to take a look at one of these new apps.
I have become increasingly disenchanted due to the nonsense being pulled by Apple and AT&T with regard to the iPhone and applications for it. Time and again they have actively limited the device reaching its potential by intentionally crippling or rejecting apps that make it more useful. When the Google Voice apps were pulled from the App Store — and Google’s own app rejected — I started looking around to see what other device options might be available. Ultimately, the HTC Hero seemed to be the best option. Sure, it lacks the US 3G but then again, I spend the…
When I was younger, my whole family was big into comic books. We’d buy all sorts of titles. Although we didn’t think about it much back then, today we recognize the work and effort and artistry that goes into comics. The problem is, however, comic books have not translated well into electronic formats. ebooks, in general, have had a difficult time making the transition (mostly due to the policy decisions of publishing houses, i think), but comics have an extra hurdle – the graphics. Not only are they bigger, but you have difficulty deciding how to handle viewing them. If you…
If you have the travel bug and enjoy sharing your adventures with your friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, etc., then GPSed is definitely for you. If you are a hiker, runner, or biker and just want to track your journeys in real-time, then GPSed is for you. In fact, just about anyone needing to show their location via GPS, archive their trips, or keep a log of their where they’ve been on GoogleMaps will likely find something useful with the many features in Shape Services‘ GPSed.
I have to admit that I am not terribly interested in social networking. Email is usually enough for me, though there are a few sites which I do find to be particularly enjoyable or useful. One of those sites is LinkedIn, a social networking site for business connections. As much as I enjoy LinkedIn however, I have always found their mobile versions to be a bit lacking.
Open Table is pretty similar to Good Food, which we looked at yesterday. Like Good Food, just enter your current location (either by city name or using the GPS). Open Table will then pinpoint affiliated restaurants in your area, which you can view either on a map, or in a list view.
By default the iPhone limits the user to a total of 11 visible springboard aka home screen pages. Dayna from PHP-Princess has discovered a way around this limitation. Yes needing more than 11 pages of applications (180) is truly for the hardcore iPhone app user, but there are a lot of them floating around. This was a trick I discovered while moving around my icons. First, you have to be an app-aholic and have 11 pages of iPhone apps (and more hidden ones since they can’t be displayed). Then move some of the default apps you do not use like…
We are going to quickly tackle two apps in one tonight. I was planning to bring you a look at SplashData’s SplashID, the only secure information manager available for the Palm Pre. Unfortunately, I had terrible problems with SplashID on the Palm Pre and could not get it to load at all. Every time opened it, it froze. I know others have had much more success with this program, and I have enjoyed it on other platforms, but it just would not work on my Palm Pre. So, that is all I have to say about this one. If you…
I reviewed Sherpa yesterday. While it was very good, it was slow as molasses. Where GPS, or what most of my friends just call Where, is an app that does a lot of what Sherpa does and more. It does it very fast. At the core, Where utilities your phone’s GPS in almost every aspect of its operation. You can manually change to any location by entering in a Zip code, so you can use this for trip planning as well. When you first launch Where, it asks if you are still where you were the last time you ran…
Audible provides audio books. Customers can download the audio books to their computers or mobile devices — including iPhone/iPod, a variety of MP3 players, and BlackBerry devices. Last week, the Audible team released an upgrade to their BlackBerry application (version 1.4.2). It is no secret that I was less than thrilled with the first release of the Audible application. Performance was painfully slow (when it worked), and the process proved — for me — to be more cumbersome than simply plugging the BlackBerry up via USB and dragging the audio book over manually via Mass Storage Mode and playing the…
One of the complaints I heard (and voiced) about the Palm Pre before its release was the lack of support for PalmOS apps and games. It felt like Palm was missing an opportunity to feature an enormous, ready-made library of apps. Additionally, with the large (but admittedly shrinking) army of devoted Palm users, it seemed like there was an almost built in path to an automatic upgrade. By not supporting those apps, it seemed as though many users might choose to stick with their current devices rather than risk giving up significant functionality with an unknown operating system. Apparently, Palm…
What do you get for around a dollar? A donut or some candies and change? Maybe a drink? For around a dollar you won’t get much that lasts long. Except maybe an iPhone app, and even that is not guaranteed to last very long or be useful. Proto from Tobias Batton’s Game Studio costs around a dollar, and I think it is worth every cent.
Cable Jive makes some really simple but very ingenious products for the iPhone and iPod. They were kind enough to send along their iStubz charge and sync cable as well as their Dock Extender Cable for review. These two cables serve different purposes and both provide a great solution for your iPhone or iPod charge and sync as well as overall daily needs.
One of the most touted apps on the new T-Mobile myTouch 3G is Sherpa. Sherpa gives you a unique way to discover things near your current location. Geodelic, the company behind Sherpa has put a lot of work into its interface, and it’s a very beautiful app for Android based phones. It is also now available on the Android Marketplace, so I installed it on my G1 and gave it a spin.