AppTalk

One of our favorite columnists, David Pogue at the New York Times, doesn't think much of the new Office for Mac. Read it here: Office for Mac Isn't an Improvement.

Genius Scan is an awesome free app that allows you to use your iphone as a scanner. If you think you're OK with just taking a picture of any document, you'll find out how wrong you are once you start using this. It offers page frame detection, perspective correction, and allows you to send anything you scan as a PDF. It's good for scanning receipts, notes, or any document. Just terrific!!

Actually, of course, it's Google Goggles, which is Google's cute way of saying search by image rather than text. It's now available on the iPhone as part of Google Mobile Apps. (Droid users would have me add the word "finally"--they've had it for about 10 months.)

Once you've downloaded--or updated--your Google Mobile Apps, the next question is how to use Goggles.

You might think it will be listed among the Apps--like GOOG-411--but it's not. Instead, you use Goggles by clicking on the Search button in the lower left corner. There, you'll now see a camera button near the search term field. That's your Goggles.

Before you use it, you'll be able to watch a short video introducing Goggles to you--or, if you can't wait, you can watch it right now.

Here's a nice summary of the ways OS 4.1 improves on 4.0.

Hat tip: iPhone J.D. Jeff Richardson.

This hits a little too close to home, but is hilarious nonetheless.

Warning: NSFW, or for tender ears.

As we discussed tonight, How to Disable Facebook Places is a good page from Lifehacker--a site well worth subscribing to, IMHO--on the new Facebook Places feature, and how to keep yourself from being "placed" without your knowledge or consent!

I am a HUGE fan of Lifehacker, so when they come out with a list of their favorite iPhone Apps, I pay attention. You'll see a number of apps here that we've already reviewed on AppTalk. If you want us to talk about others, just let us know!!

PS--check out Lifehacker's list of fav mac apps, too!

That's right, today the App Store turns two! One year ago there were 65,000 applications available that had amassed 1.5 billion downloads. Now there are over 229,000 applications available that have been downloaded over 5 billion times. That's one big toddler!!

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

I was all gung-ho to get a 4, but now I'm not so sure. Seems like major reports of glitches are streaming in, particularly regarding a yellow band on the display, and decreased reception if you hold the phone by its sides. (Is that why apple came out with its own holder for the first time?)

I think the buy signal just went to hold--as in hold off for a while.

EA Drops Prices on iPhone Games Including Madden, FIFA and SimCity to $1

For those of you with more than a page or two of apps, organization becomes important. There are many approaches, but a fairly uniform suggestion is that you keep your most used apps on your home (first) page. Here are the apps and sites that I keep up front:

First Row: Contacts, Messages, Calendar, and Maps
Second Row: Google Reader, Google Search, Gmail, Facebook
Third Row: Google Apps, The Weather Channel (NOT the iphone weather app), Shopping List (reviewed in AppTalk), Evernote (ditto)
Fourth Row: Calculator, Camera, Settings, and aNote (to be reviewed soon!)

Bottom Tray: Mail, Phone, Safari, and iPod

What apps do you keep up front?

Another solo appTalk--Ron wasn't there again, this time suffering through the boredom of JazzFest. But, we forged ahead nonetheless:

1. Dropbox (free) was mentioned in the presentation on online backups, so we added that it's available for the iPhone as well. It's a great way to share files between computers via the cloud.

2. We pointed out that many iPhone apps are better than their web page equivalents. Facebook (free) is certainly one of those, as is the Amazon (free) shopping site.

3. In honor of April 15 and tax season, we highlighted Milebug ($1.99--also a limited free version available), an app that very nicely tracks your tax-deductible mileage.

4. If the more you use an app, the better it gets, that's a good thing. And that's what happens to Shopping List. You only have to add items to the database once--the next time you shop for the same item, it's already there.

5. And finally, we briefly looked at Dragon, a great voice recognition app. It transcribes what you record, and from there you can copy it to the clipboard, email it, or text it.

"How to Make Your Opera Mini Browser Sing" in the NYT Gadgetwise Blog explains how to fine-tune your new Opera iPhone browser.

That, my friends, is how many apps your iPhone will be able to hold using OS 4.0. Imagine the possibilities! For more details on this and other great changes 4.0 will bring, head over to the apple site, and watch Steve Jobs's keynote.

Opera is available for the iPhone, and it seems half the users think it's Joan Sutherland, the other half think it's Rosanne Barr! I've only begun to try it, but so far, I'm in the Sutherland camp! Tabbed browsing, a home page--heaven!

It's free, so take it for a test drive and let us know what you think!

Before AppTalk, when I and a bunch of other co-workers first got iPhones, I set up an online support group so we could share tips and apps.


Here are a few with staying power:

• When you simultaneously press the iPhone’s home button at the bottom of the screen and the power button on the top, it takes a screenshot of whatever is on the screen at the time and saves that into your iPhone photo gallery. Then you can share that photo like any other from the iPhone.

• The iPhone Help file is pre-bookmarked as a favorite in Safari (as is the Apple App website).

• One of the things that I've found the most irritating about this phone is this: When you connect to your computer, your default photo program (in my case, Picasa) opens, or you get the window asking what application you want to use for the photos on your "camera." Especially when I plug in at work, I have no interest in importing ANY photos.
  I finally decided to find out how to stop that process. If you share my frustration, here's the solution:
  1. Connect your phone to your computer.
  2. Go to My Computer, and right-click on the iphone icon.
  3. Choose Properties.
  4. Choose the Events tab
  5. Click "Take no Action."
  6. Click OK.
  So much better!

• Wow. Point your mobile web browser to books.google.com/m and you can read full books on your portable device. According to The Globe and Mail, Google is making 1,500,000 books, most from the public domain, freely available to you. I tested Google’s mobile books on the iPhone,
  and it looks really good.

• Thinking about a Kindle? Think again--your iPhone may be all the reader you need. Check out this site for a good introduction: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/02/your-guide-to-e-books043.html.

• What apps do you like for toddlers and children? The ones listed below have received the seal of approval from my two-year-old niece Ava. Do you know of any others?
  
  
  • Toddler Flash Cards: 7 categories (foods, animals, things, alphabet, numbers, shapes, and colors). English, French, and Spanish
  • Voice Toddler Cards: Lets you record whats on the flash card in your own voice! If you prefer the card's voice, you can opt for English or Spanish
  • Scribble Lite: Draw whatever you want (even on photos), using different colors, pens sizes--then just shake to erase and start again.
  • ABC Animals (with sound and printing practice).
  • Of course, she also likes "grown-up" games like Paper Toss and Flick Bowling!
  • MiniPiano!! Awesome, and totally

• Ron: Dial Zero: Cut out the recording middle man--go straight to a live person at scores of customer service phone numbers.

• Jim: Drync: Find a wine, Drink a wine, Everywhere a wine-wine!

• Ron: NPR Addict: Your favorite NPR shows streaming to an iPhone near you! (Also check out iTunes podcasts for This American Life--currently number 2 on the overall popularity list!)

• Jim: iTunesU: Don't like any of our favs? Then design an app yourself, wise guy, but first take this popular course from Stanford.

• Ron: Camera Zoom 2: With Camera Zoom, you can now zoom in and out in real-time when taking pictures, by just simply moving the slider. It also lets you take pictures by pressing the volume up/down button on the side of your iPhone.

• Ron: Where's the Train? (free). OK,  it's not really an app, but it's a great site that tells you when the next Metrorail train is due at any station.

• Jim: Red Laser ($1.99): Turns your iPhone into a  barcode scanner. Scan any barcode using your iPhone camera, and the app tells you all the sites you can buy the item, and the price at each.

• Ron: Dinner Spinner (free): Pick a meal course, a main ingredient, and a time frame, and  let the Dinner Spinner do the rest!

• Jim: Reqall (free):  Dictate a reminder to Reqall using your iPhone (or any phone, for that matter), and watch it turn into a text email!

• Ron: Sportacular (free): Rated best app for sports scores and updates.

• Jim: MLB At Bat 2009 UPDATE: Now better (and more expensive) for 2010; see 3/31/10 post. Audio feeds of every game, and at least one free video feed per day!