iPhone Apps

Yesterday in the comments JP asked about iPhone applications that I recommend. It's still early days for iPhone 3rd party apps, but a few stand out so far. My two most favorite applications would certainly be NetNewsWire (RSS reader) and OmniFocus (productivity Getting Things Done application), but both of those are probably only interesting if you use the Mac desktop versions. They both sync so that you can move easily between the desktop and the phone and manipulate the data in either place. After those my favorite is the Apple Remote. If you have iTunes, an Airport Express, or an Apple TV you can now use your iPhone to control that music source. You can browse music, set volume, and if you do have an Airport Express you can select which speakers are in use. I used this over the past weekend at Game Day to control the music playing in two different rooms and it worked great. Again, if you don't use iTunes in some flavor it won't do much for you, but if you do you should definitely check out Apple Remote. Other freebie apps that I've been impressed with are Twitterific, Yelp and Shazam. Yelp is a front end for Yelp (big surprise), and Shazam records a snippet of a song, then sends it off to some internet server and about 80 - 90% of the time it comes back and tells you what song it is. That's really cool. Mocha VNC Lite seems to work as advertised (and it can control a Mac with "Back to My Mac" turned on if you open the firewall port for it). I've downloaded but not yet tried the Wordpress app. Tap Tap Revolution seems pretty fun, but the no-name music is a bit of a bummer. Obviously if it played from your music library it would be a good bit better. I've used FileMagnet to put a couple of PDF files on the phone and that seems decent. It isn't free, but if you want to read PDF's on the phone it's worth $5. The only app that I paid for so far that I find disappointing is Super Monkey Ball. The camera interacts poorly with the tilt controls and the game requires you to play something like 10 levels at go without saving - which is very un-iPhone-like. If you shut it off after only five levels when you come back you need to play those five levels over again. I just bought Cocktails today and I like it for what it does, but it seems really short on tiki recipes (it doesn't know a Shark's Tooth or a Blue Hawaiian for example). I haven't really used it enough yet to pass opinion on the database, but it looks like a nice enough application. Plus it will Twitter what drink you're making!
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With Technology Figit

Good Lord, I've been as criminally negligent of this blog as it's possible to be criminally negligent of a personal blog. It's time for Technology Catch-Up(tm). Part the first: I bought Wii - I've had it about a month now. One part the Penny Arcade guys gushing over Boom Blox, one part some other technology fooling about making me realize that if I reconfigured the home theater just *SO* I could squeeze a Wii to the existing input and cables, and one part it finally being in a local store when I called and asked them. Verdict? Well, it turns out I can improve the sloppy control I complained so much about - set the sensitivity to "5" (the max) and it helps a lot. I still feel very strongly that you don't feel like you're pointing at the screen due to the ergonomics of the remote and you're driving a pointer around. The visceral "I'm pointing at the screen" doesn't work right, and whenever you need to do that it seems like there's a fair amount of "Just wave the remote until you get a cursor and then adjust from there." Boom Blox is a lot of fun despite that, and I've played an awful lot of Super Mario Galaxy in the last month. I still think it's a gimmick overall and I can't see it ever dethroning my 360 as my main console. But as I said in the comments here I don't think they are even competing really. I don't regret buying one, but I don't regret not having one for the last 1.5 years either. I haven't bought Zelda yet, but by the end of the summer I'll have blown through the back catalog and then the Wii will be like the Gamecube - hardly ever used except when Nintendo released a game every six months or so. That's not all on the technology parade. I'm going on vacation next week and I decided I wanted a new laptop before I went, so I got a 15" Macbook Pro. It's smaller and lighter than Kool-Aid, both of which will make it more airplane friendly. Kool-Aid needed at least a new battery, and it couldn't run the iPhone development software (needs an Intel Mac), and it was just getting a bit old for what I wanted to do. I'm still installing and configuring software but I like it a lot. As an odd aside Karin bought it with her educator discount and we got a free iPod touch in the bargain. Which brings us to the iPhone 2.0 software. I don't have any real desire to upgrade to the iPhone 3G as I already own a GPS and most of my iPhone network usage is via WiFi anyway. But the new software is full of awesome. The App Store is great and a lot of new applications are fantastic. I should post more about this. My biggest surprise so far is to realize I actively prefer reading RSS feeds on my phone and I opt for it even when I'm at home and could use Tiny God and the twin 24" screens. The phone forces me to triage more from article title and so far I'm not missing anything but getting through more items in less time. There's a lot of good stuff in the App Store. A metric shit-ton of crap as well, but there it is. The phone seems much less stable as well. I crash it several times a day now, as opposed to less than once a month. Most crashes seem to be right around app launch and it recovers gracefully but it's still a sour note.
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A REAL 360 DRM fix is incoming

Yay!
There have been some high profile complaints on the web about how difficult it is to transfer things like XBLA game licenses to replacement 360s in the wake of an under warranty hardware failure. Would these changes to DRM policy address these issues, letting people who have experienced such failure re-license their purchases on their new Xbox so they don't have to be connected to Live to play? Are there any other sorts of changes to DRM policy being made here that would affect the end-user experience? Yes, this new tool will officially launch next month on Xbox.com and will allow you to be able to consolidate these licenses onto one box so you can access things like Xbox LIVE Arcade games and TV show you have downloaded even if you are not online. Because this involved allowing users to re-download licenses for content that belongs to our partners it has taken some time to work out the agreements with them to allow this, but we have heard the concerns from folks about DRM and are happy to announce that everything is nearly in place to roll this out in June.
From an interview with Marc Whitten - Xbox Live General Manager It also notes they are going to start "delisting" Live Arcade titles, they upped the size limit for XBLA titles, and there is no spring Dashboard update this year.
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1Password on sale

I just got an email about a one day sale on 1Password that is a pretty good deal - over 40% off for today only:
Hello everyone, I am not sure if you remember but in case you didn't know -- today is my birthday! It has become a tradition and to stay true to our roots today together with MacZOT we are holding a huge 1-day sale on all our products. If you do not own a copy of 1Password or know someone who needs it then today is the best day to buy it: http://agilefolks.com/s/15083762e I spend most of my waking hours working on and discussing 1Password, so I want you to be part of the festivities! Please enjoy some cake and ice cream with me and enjoy the bargain price too! Cheers! --Dave Teare Now 33-year old Co-author of 1Password Everyone is Switching to Mac! http://switchersblog.com
I've been meaning to write about 1Password. I've been using it for a few months and it is a really great application. The basic idea is this: each and every website gets its own strong password (say 20 random characters with numbers and punctuation). So now A ) you aren't using weak dictionary passwords on Amazon or your bank or whatever and B ) if scrubsite.com has their passwords hacked it's not the same password as your Amazon 1-Click. There are toolbars for each of the major browsers to easily input your saved passwords, and the whole shebang is locked in an OS X keychain, behind a single version. A native iPhone version is promised, but even now there's a trick with a Javascript bookmarklet that lets you store the passwords on your iPhone as well. I highly recommend 1Password. It does all that password security that you know you *should* do, but can't really bother with in real life. If you don't have it and you're a Mac user, think seriously about taking advantage of this sale!
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