Don’t forget the free app that promotes the Trek movie. It has the new phaser.
Two new apps I have been monkeying with:
Fluid: Falls under the “Oh-ahh” category. It is just cool. Makes your iPhone into a pond. Nicely demonstrates the touch interface.
AAA Discounts: Simply put, for the cheap bastard in all of us tells you the local establishments with discounts. I have found several surprising ones, “The pharmacy? Seriously?” If you are already a AAA member this one is a no brainer.
I do actually use the ipod touch for music, but I do love my apps too. Some game apps that I’ve been toying with that are pretty useless, but fun to play with when you’re bored (some are paid and some are free. Not sure which ones are which, though):-
Oregon Trail - So cute to see it all animated like that.
Leaf TBone - very much like Ocarina, but they have this online function where you can play for people online and they can score you on how well you play a song (and vice versa)
NYT is a must for everyone, even though it’s still slightly buggy from time to time.
CrunchFu - Now I don’t have it on my ipod, but a friend does. It’s kind of stupid but pretty funny to watch. Basically you put your ipod on your chest, and it counts your situps (and tells you if you’re going too fast or too slow) for each session. Yes, pretty funny to watch.
Knots - It’s Twister with fingers. Fun to play with others.
PicBrowser - I find it to be pretty fast in searching for images online. CoolIris is pretty good too.
Now, Q. I’ve come across all these SMS apps, and I really want to try it on the ipod, but I was wondering if anyone has any idea which program works the best for sending SMSes on the ipod.
I just picked up “Frotz,” an implementation of the Interatctive Fiction reader for the iPhone/Touch. I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet, but if you remember “Zork” fondly, it’s probably worth a look. It don’t cost nothin’.
Just a bump to say, it is OSSIM!
We now return you to you regularly scheduled GWC.
The new top-down shooter Star Trek game for three bucks is pretty doggone sharp. Does tend to freeze, but all you gotta do is restart the phone. Also love Centipede and Missile Command with new and original versions. You guys hear the rumors about the next iphone model? 32 GB, records video, cut and paste. I think it still won’t send a picture message, but either way, I kinda wish I’d just waited. Wonder if the dimensions will be the same and my cases will all still fit. Hope Apple has a trade-in option (which you know they won’t).
Given our newest shiny OS upgrade I want to start sharing the little cool things that have been upgraded beyond, “Oh! Cut and paste!”
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Encrypt backup (new checkbox in iTunes, although I can’t seem to make a password it likes)
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When listening to a podcast you have a new option to either email a link to a friend or speed up/slow down the 'cast
That’s what those new icons are!!!
New wifi hotspot auto-logon works great with AT&T hotspots (McDonalds, Starbucks, etc.). No more entering in your wireless number, checking the box, hitting “ok”, getting an SMS, clicking on that link to get logged in. You only have to log in once now, and you’re good to go for future visits to that particular hotspot.
Oh, and that “go back 30 seconds” icon for podcast listening is very handy!
Ooooh, and I forgot about a biggie: you can now email multiple photos in a single email! Use the copy button, select the photos you want, go to the Mail app and paste! You can also “Share”, but that only allows up to five photos.
Just tried this one out. Wow.
Even my bargain-queen coworker was stunned at what it found within just a few miles of where we work.
The Mobile Me Stuff is awesome. If I misplace or lose my iPhone I can send a message to it with contact info or anything I like. I can also have it make a noise so it is easy to find or even wipe itself if lost to protect the info from getting into others hands.
On a related note from another post, I posted my latest iPod Touch painting here.
Let me just say that I covet all that an iPhone can do, I looove my Touch.
That’s beautiful. Nice work!
wow! Very cool. How long did it take you to do this?
So, is the new OS worth upgrading? I guess I can understand why iphone users don’t need to pay (since they have some kind of a mobile contract with a phone co) while ipod touch users do (I don’t have a mobile contract, but I do have a wifi subscription to a phone co, so…), but 10 bucks doesn’t seem quite fair at all. Grrr.
Oh, and Kindle for the ipod/iphone is a program that I love using at the moment. Very useful.
OK, read through a BUNCH of reviews of the 3GS phone, and we may be upgrading from our 3.0 capable OG iPhones. Andy Ihnakto’s review is pretty much the one that sold us. It’s not the most informative one on a feature-by-feature basis, but it seems to capture the user experience pretty well.
Precious…
A colleague of mine whom I share iPhone news with recently had hers die on her. She ran over to the Apple store and they fixed it with a hard reset. They told her it was a good idea to give the iPhone a hard reset once a month.
Has anyone else heard of this? I have not noticed my iPhone to be sluggish in any way, but I went ahead and gave it a hard reset. Don’t see a difference.
A hard reset FYI is when you hold down the main button and the upper right hand button until the iPhone reboots. Ignore the “Swipe here to shut down” message.
Never heard of it. I occasionally got locked up (earlier OS versions seemed prone to it, but not recently) and would do the reset*, but as a preventative measure? Seems like overkill.
*The GF would do it more often, but that’s a matter of impatience. When they were locking up, they would often fix themselves if you gave them time. Problem was, it could take five minutes or more.
That’s what my gut told me. It may be my imagination but my 3G seems a little sluggish after the 3.0 upgrade. Probably just projected 3Gs envy.
I haven’t heard of it as a maintenance thing either. I usually do a soft restart at least once a month plus occasionally with the installation of new apps (which I have scene recommended by several sources).
I did a soft reset when I had the initial problems with Tweetdeck adding all the people I am following. No large change then but I just did a hard reset and it feels much quicker now. Tweetdeck still crashes when I try to add someone to another group. Probably just a program glitch.
Even before the upgrade, I’ve noticed my phone feeling more sluggish lately. As in typing a sentence and waiting several seconds before the letters actually appeared. At first, I thot it was just Twitterfon, but I’ve seen it in the email and browser apps too. Weird.
Admittedly I’m upgrading from a 2G, but my new 3G S seems a lot faster performing general tasks like opening apps, handling email, Twitter, etc. Most notably, mobile Safari seems to render web pages way, way faster, indicating to me that the speed issues I had were less related to network data transfer and more to page rendering. Browsing the web is now surprisingly easy.