I was crazy excited about the prospects of Nike+ coming to the iPhone, having used the fitness tracking program with a nano for over a year. But that didn't happen; instead, RunKeeper did, and it's even better. We've covered RunKeeper (along with another Nike+ alternative) once before when we detailed how to roll your own Nike+ iPhone for free, but RunKeeper has since seen some excellent updates worth pointing out.
Tagged With iphone 2.0
One year ago, Apple opened the doors to the iTunes App Store. We've been wowed with some of the apps, left longing for others, and we've got a (relatively) small wish list.
iPhone only: A bad sync, or a few clumsy finger swipes, can leave you with missing, duplicate, or otherwise messed-up iPhone contacts. iDrive Lite is a free app that stores contacts in the cloud. It's a simple app that exports your contacts to a space at the previously reviewed iDrive, a web-based file storage site. Hit "backup" to upload, "Restore" to download, and "Share" to share a contact or two via SMS. It doesn't seem to actually require an account with iDrive to backup, and I had a hard time finding details of what format the backups take. Still, for skipping the bill from MobileMe or anyone lacking an Exchange server link, iDrive Lite might provide free peace of mind. It's free to download, requires an iPhone running at least 2.0 software, and doesn't require a sign-up. iDrive Lite
iPhone/iPod touch only: The Rowmote iPhone application turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a full-fledged Apple Remote capable of controlling Front Row, iTunes, Quicktime, DVD Player, and Keynote over your Wi-Fi. As Gizmodo points out, Rowmote actually one-ups your Mac's IR remote in a couple of ways. For example, your Apple Remote requires line-of-sight to control your computer. Since Rowmote works over Wi-Fi, line-of-sight isn't an issue. It also works as a cheap replacement if you've lost your tiny Apple Remote. Rowmote only offers the simplest of controls (the same ones available on the Apple IR Remote), so it's not terribly robust. If you only need to control iTunes, for example, you'd be better off sticking with Apple's free Remote app (which makes for a helluva multi-room wireless remote). If you want to control any of the other apps, Rowmote looks like a great option. Rowmote works with your iPhone or iPod touch, will set you back $US1 in the iTunes App Store. Once you've downloaded Rowmote, you'll need to install and run a companion app to get it working.
iPhone/iPod touch only: Free application HearPlanet plays audio tracks of Wikipedia articles based on points of interest surrounding your current location, turning your iPhone or iPod touch into an audio tour guide. HearPlanet uses your iPhone's location awareness to find places of interest near you. When you choose a topic, HearPlanet loads up a screen with both the text and audio of the Wikipedia article in question. If your iPhone or iPod touch can't find you, HearPlanet offers a search option in which you can enter a search topic and location. That means that even if you don't want the audio tour guide, you can still use HearPlanet to listen to Wikipedia articles on the go—if you don't mind a little robot voice, that is. HearPlanet is a simple but smart app with a nice look and feel. As TUAW suggests, integration with maps and phone numbers would be a great addition in time. HearPlanet is a free download (for a limited time) from the iTunes App Store, works on both the iPhone and iPod touch.
LogMeIn Ignition lets you remotely connect to and control your Windows or Mac PC from your iPhone. The catch: It costs a whopping $US30—expensive by any standards, especially in the iTunes App Store. LogMeIn may be the most popular remote desktop tool on the market, but it seems unlikely that it's $US30-for-your-iPhone good. LogMeIn users, let's hear what you think in the comments. Alternately, check our previously mentioned Mocha VNC Lite for free (but perhaps less simple to set up) remote control.
iPhone/iPod touch only: Microsoft has made a surprising leap into the iPhone app realm, releasing a mobile viewer for its super-high-resolution Photosynthservice. Unless you're familiar enough with the previously mentioned Photosynth tool to create your own in-depth, virtual-tour-ish images, you'd likely use Seadragon as a kind of low-lag image viewer, which it seems to work quite well at. Seadragon comes pre-loaded with some pretty eye-widening images from NASA, the Library of Congress, maps, and intriguing shots from Photosynth, but you can also add your own RSS image feeds—such as those from Flickr, and get similar super-zoom features, up to a point. It's also worth noting that while Photosynth previously required a Windows-only plug-in, it's recently opened up a Silverlight-based viewer that should work for Mac clients as well. Seadragon is a free download for iPhones and iPod touches running at least the 2.0 firmware. Seadragon Free
iPhone/iPod touch only: VLC Remote Free lets you play, pause, and skip tracks on the mighty VLC Media Player on any computer from your iPhone or iPod touch. Its (currently) 99-cent sibling, VLC Remote, gives you full playlist control. Both are fairly simple to set up on your computer and hook up over a wireless network, and work well in conjunction with the new playlist features in the latest version of the open source player for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Setting up remote access requires only a quick plug-in download on all three platforms, and the Free edition can then skip forward and backward on a pre-loaded play list, as well as control the volume and move around a video or audio file. The full app, however, allows selecting playlist items, and even remotely browsing your system's entire hard drive for media. Read on for a walkthrough and screenshots of both VLC Remote versions.
iPhone/iPod touch only: Amazon released a new mobile application for the iPhone and iPod touch today, ensuring that you can now get your online shopping fix no matter where you are. Not only does the Amazon app provide an excellent interface to search, buy, or add items to your wishlists, but if you're an iPhone user, the application's Amazon Remembers feature identifies any product you take a picture of—sort of like previously mentioned SnapTell. When you snap a pic, the app uploads the picture to Amazon, which looks for a match among its products. If it finds one (it can take anywhere between a couple minutes and 24 hours), it'll send you an email and update the Amazon Remembers tab. So far it's worked like a charm with all of the products I tested. I expected that my iPhone book might throw it for a loop, considering it has a picture of an iPhone on it, but even it was correctly identified within a few minutes.
iPhone only: As its name suggests, free iPhone application Voice Dialer adds voice dialing to your iPhone. More accurately, though, Voice Dialer is a contact search-by-voice app that also does autodialing. The difference: You can easily autodial any contact by saying "Call John Smith at home"—and Voice Dialer is great at recognising matches—but if you don't say "Call" before the contact's name, Voice Dialer will simply pull up matches. From there, you can also check out a contact's full contact card to quickly compose an email, send a text message, or launch Google Maps at your contact's address (the video demo illustrates these features nicely).
Apple releases a list of the most popular free and paid iPhone and iPod touch apps in the iTunes Store with Pandora, Shazam, and Remote leading the charge in the free section. Compare to our list of what's good (and free!) in the iTunes App Store which we posted shortly after the App Store opened its doors.
iPhone/iPod touch only: Television and movie streaming service Joost officially finds its way to the iPhone and iPod touch. Joost started out as a desktop application, was quickly overshadowed by online offerings, then recently moved to the web in an attempt to keep up with the competition. With its new iPhone/iPod touch application, Joost is back in the drivers seat, beating the likes of Hulu to Apple's popular mobile devices. Joost still doesn't offer as much popular content as Hulu (not that Australians can use that - AU ed), but its 46,000 videos—which include 400 TV series, 1,200 movies and short films, and 18,000 music videos—are a pretty good start.
Danny Gorog at APC has picked out ten of the best Australian-developed applications for iPhone owners. There's a useful emphasis on local information, with applications for travel information, weather and postcodes. We'd have thought there could have been a shout-out for perennial favourite Remember The Milk, but regardless there's lots of stuff here you'll want to be adding to your iPhone. Ten apps for Aussie iPhone users
iPhone and iPod touch only: A free, "lite" version of previously mentioned email composition app TouchType—which sells for US 99 cents in the iTunes Store—is now available. TouchType offers landscape view (and wider keyboard) for composing email on your iPhone or touch, and even better, can save and load reusable text snippets to reduce your typing and make sending repetitive emails a matter of a whole lot fewer taps. The two differences between the 99-cent version and the free Lite version? Twitter integration and spell check. TouchType Lite is a free download for the iPhone and iPod touch running the 2.1 software.
iPhone/iPod touch only: With Mocha VNC Lite, iPhone and iPod touch users already have a tool for connecting remotely to their desktops, but what about those who like to get things done over a command line? Free iPhone app TouchTerm provides SSH-encrypted terminal access to any Linux, OS X, or even Windows system running a server, making mobile rebooting or service starting over Wi-Fi or EDGE/3G connections possible. The app supports landscape mode, a must for serious two-thumb typing, can save connections for easy access. The $US11.99 pro version adds advanced gesture and copy/paste support, amongst
Jailbroken iPhone/iPod touch only: Free application vlc4iphone ports the popular open-source media player VLC—voted as one of the best desktop media players by Lifehacker readers—to your iPhone or iPod touch. Apart from supporting virtually any media type you throw at it (I'd recommend using an app like previously mentioned DiskAid to get media to your iPhone), the VLC port streams internet radio, and can even stream media over your network. If you're dying to play unsupported file types on your device and aren't eager to transcode them to do so, vlc4iphone can do the trick. vlc4iphone is free, requires a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch. The app is still rough around the edges (some playback was buggy for me, and there's no landscape mode), but it's not a bad start. Thanks Niranjan! vlc4iphone
Leaked screenshots of the upcoming iPhone 2.2 firmware update show a cleaned-up interface for the App Store, but, more importantly, the ability to download podcasts directly to your device over Wi-Fi or 3G. Direct downloads will be limited, however, to 10MB or less, so jailbreak-required apps like Podcaster still have a decent half-life.
When the iTunes App Store first opened up to eager iPhone and iPod touch upgraders (and iPhone 3G buyers), one of the first types of applications to show up was the to-do/task manager. From simple check-box lists to voice-transcribing tools, there's a bewildering number of apps, many of them free, that promise to help you keep track of your necessary actions and projects while you're away from your computer. Today we're checking out five of them, all free except for one requiring a "Pro" account, and comparing their features and functionality side-by-side, as well as asking which app you use to keep their busy lives together. Read on for the full show-down.
The upcoming iPhone 2.2 software update, currently in beta, has already been jailbroken by the iPhone dev team. That means that when the iPhone 2.2 software update is officially pushed out, you probably won't have to choose between your jailbroken apps and new features like Google Street View, emoji icons, and auto-correction toggle for long.
Inspired by Nathan Barry's iPhone alarm clock stand, do-it-yourselfer gbzphoto also used the plastic mold his iPhone shipped in to mount the phone horizontally, and installed the Alarm Clock app to display the time. Using the 2G clear plastic mold that shipped in the box, a stray piece of wood molding, and a furniture sticky, this version is a nice alternative (though it doesn't have room for the charging plug, like this version). Finally, for more iPhone stand goodness, the Voltage Blog runs down in photos how to turn a paperclip holder into an iPhone charger—the end result can still hold clips, too. Thanks, Wade!
