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iSoft makes you pay for landscape keyboard for SMS
It is very inconvenient for the iPhone to only have a landscape QWERT keyboard in Safari and not in any other mode. For over a year nothing has been done as far as updates or application to remedy the problem. iSoft has been the first to set out and bring ...Microsoft’s web-based Office Suite will work with iPhone Safari browser
Microsoft is going to launch a web-based version of their office Suite sometime in 2009. This web-based version will include full versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote. Users will be able to access this service from anywhere with a web browser. All the popular web browsers will be compatible with ...iPhone Buzz Week in Review - Week 46 2008
This week we had a chance to review Say Who, the voice dialing application that will search for contacts in your address book or dial numbers for you. We loved how easy and responsive this application was. It worked just about every time.Recent studies done by SquareTrade show that the ...Google delivers voice search free to iPhone owners
Google has done it again; this time adding sophisticated voice recognition technology to an iPhone application. So far this technology only works with the iPhone, expect to see it for free in the App Store sometime very soon. With this application users will virtually be able to ask their iPhone any ...Control your Rovio with your iPhone
Many of you iPhone owners will not be able to control yourself when you see the new Rovio by WowWee on store shelves. This radio controlled beast is more for adults and offers many fantastic features such as live video camera and even allows you to speak through it. With no ...Apple gets hit with another lawsuit
Apple is facing yet another lawsuit because of the new iPhone 3G. Its been a lot time since reports of the new iPhone 3G having construction issues causing the back casing to crack. This problem was more easily detected in the white version than the black. The lawsuit also lists ...Get ready to race with Pocket Jockey
Warren Stringer has created a new multiplayer horse racing game for the iPhone and iPod Touch. If you just cant seem to get away from the racetracks this application will hold you over till your next visit. Shake your iPhone to make the horse run faster. By the end of a ...iPhone Dev Team says don’t upgrade to 2.2 yet
As always the iPhone Dev Team is warning about blindly installing the new firmware without instruction from them first. They have gone out explaining the pros and cons of immediately installing one of these updates without knowing all that it is doing to your phone. With all the security measures that ...Cheat the law with NMobile
For any of you out there that have trouble avoiding speed traps, NMobile is the application for you. This application shows you the location of speed traps, red light cameras and radar locations. All of these locations are then displayed on a map for you. Using your internal GPS in conjunction ...Apple Trying to Offer More DRM-Free Music on iTunes?
According to CNet (via Apple Insider), Apple is in talks with the remaining 3 out of the Big 4 record labels who still refuse to allow iTunes to sell DRM-free music.
Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony BMG currently provide DRM-free music to rival services like Amazon MP3 as a way to promote competition to iTunes, though the lack of availability of these services outside the US, along with iTunes continued (and growing) dominance in digital music, may be causing them to rethink that position.
EMI, of course, has been offering DRM-free music via Apple’s iTunes Plus service since it launched, and at double the bit rate (quality) of the regular music.
Hopefully we’ll soon see the day that big music decides to stop treating their customers as de facto thieves and realizes offering quality goods at fair market prizes is the only real way to stop piracy. Or am I the crazy one?
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
Apple Trying to Offer More DRM-Free Music on iTunes?
Crosswords vs 2 Across: iPhone App vs. App
I love me some crossword puzzles. You can keep your silly Sudoku, I played enough logic games getting my philosophy major from a department that didn’t go for them crazy postmodern language games (seriously, the folks at St. Thomas love them some logic). I love having crosswords on my smartphone because it’s the perfect ‘quick game’ app: you can spend two minutes or twenty on them, there’s many new and free ones available every day, and they fend off cognitive decline in old age (Seriously, speaking of Catholics, look into the “nun study“).
Anyway, point is I want my crossword puzzle app to be awesome. So this week’s App vs. App is crosswords. Today’s contestants: 2 Across (1.2.2) by Eliza Block and Crosswords (1.13) by Stand Alone, Inc. Which one will better serve your word-puzzle fetish? Read on!
Getting Puzzles
Both 2 Across and Crosswords allow you to download around a dozen different free crossword puzzles, many updated daily. These puzzles are in the .puz format — which I know because I spent many an hour hunting for .puz files back in my days as a PalmOS Treo user (full disclosure, the best PalmOS cross app is developed by Stand Alone). It’s a standard crossword file format that can be made available for download by any crossword app and can either be free or by subscription (i.e. both can download the NYT puzzles if you’ve subscribed).
Both apps allow you do download these free puzzles as often as you like and also give you access to download a nearly unlimited number of puzzles by going backwards in time. 2 Across gives you a decidedly-standard-iPhone method of selecting a source, drilling in, and then choosing the date you want to download. Just press the “+” button at the bottom center and away you go.
It’s a simple system that’s very iPhone-esque in its UI and methodology (remember that, it’ll be a trend).
Crosswords has the same functionality — the ability to download any single puzzle from essentially the same sources and also the ability to download from previous dates. But Crosswords improves on the whole process in two ways. One: instead of using the standard iPhone ‘dial’ date picker, it presents you with a month view, allowing you to tap multiple dates very quickly. You find these by pressing the “+” button in the upper-left of the puzzles list. Two: the best thing about Crosswords is that there’s a big old “Get Todays’ Puzzles” at the top of your puzzle list every day. Quick, convenient, and automatic. Love it.
Managing Puzzles
Both 2 Across and Crosswords have a nice, clear list of your saved puzzles. Both show your progress — 2 Across uses a pie-chart and Crosswords a status bar. You hit the edit button to delete puzzles. Here again, 2 Across utilizes familiar iPhone elements and is clean and simple.
Crosswords listing also uses some iPhone UI elements, but it’s not as ’standard’ as 2 Across. For one thing, there’s that “get puzzles” button I mentioned. For another, there are a lot more buttons on the Crosswords listing. This can be a little jarring for some, but once you figure out what everything does (note that one of the buttons is ‘help’), it’s pretty great. You can sort by date or by last played. The last crossword puzzle you were playing is always indicated by a checkmark, and those status indicators are nice.
Doing Puzzles
Turns out you use a crossword app for more than downloading, tracking, and managing puzzles! Both apps have great crossword-playing abilities, though again you’re going to run into some differences.
The same theme I’ve hit in the above sections applies to the crossword itself. 2 Across utilizes some very standard iPhone elements and has an immediate and intuitive feel to it. You can pinch-zoom, it has a standard iPhone keyboard, there’s buttons for useful bits like looking at all the clues, looking at them in split-pane, switching to ‘pencil’ mode, and so on. You can show and hide the keyboard, enter multiple letters in a square, and you can even swipe in the ‘clue area’ to jump between clues
In all, you’ll spend perhaps more time than you might like zooming in and out and so on, but here again I find this to be like standard iPhone apps. It might not be the most efficient way of doing things, but it’s certainly intuitive.
Crosswords, on the other hand, is the polar opposite. I hated Crosswords in its 1.0 version because its default way of doing things were very un-iPhone-like and it also seemed to suffer from crashes. At 1.13, however, things are noticeably improved. Where 2 Across uses the standard iPhone UI bits, Crosswords uses them and also tosses in all sorts of other options.
The downside here is that you really need to take a half dozen visits to the settings when you first start using Crosswords, because the different options can be confusing and some of the defaults are annoying (I’m looking at you, compact keyboard option). That said, once you know what all the options and features and widgets are, you simply enable the ones you want and disable the ones you don’t. After that, Crosswords can do, erm, crosswords in pretty much any way you like from the intuitive, iPhone-esque methods that are similar to 2 Across to a more traditional method that utilizes a floating directional pad for switching between clues.
There are also tons of nice and useful touches like the clue view showing you the letters you’ve already entered for a word. Unfortunately, I did run into more pauses and slowdowns in Crosswords than I did in 2 Across, so there are some bugs yet to be tracked down from that 1.0 release.
On the other hand, landscape mode! There’s not as much functionality when you’re in landscape mode, but it’s a neat option and a nice alternate view.
Conclusion
2 Across is $5.99 and Crosswords is $9.99, but for a crossword junkie like myself (Jai Alai!) 3 bucks is much less important than playing my puzzles quickly and easily. In that regard, both apps do make the grade. In point of fact, after several weeks I still can’t fully decide which one I like best and haven’t banished either from my iPhone. I don’t recommend this method, however.
The good news is that both apps have a ‘lite’ version which you can try for free to see which you like better before you lay your money down.
The thumbnail difference is this: 2 Across is intuitive, iPhone-like, and easy to use. Crosswords is a little too complex and option-heavy, but more powerful. I consider myself a ‘power user’ with smartphones (but not Crosswords, yet. I’ll get you, Sunday New York Times!), so Crosswords is likely to get the ’stay’ on my iPhone.
2 Across
Pros
- iPhone-like UI
- Snappy
- Simple to learn
Cons
- Have to manually download puzzle-by-puzzle and day-by-day
- No Landscape mode
Crosswords Rating
Pros
- Landscape Mode
- Lots of options
Cons
- Some occasional lag and missed-taps
- Lots of options
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
Crosswords vs 2 Across: iPhone App vs. App
[Sponsored Post: SmartphoneOutlet.com - Accessories at the Lowest Prices!]
Sponsored Post: SmartphoneOutlet.com - Accessories at the Lowest Prices!
Did you ever wonder what happens to the items that were returned to a store after the box was opened? BIG SAVINGS is what happens!
TiPb iPhone Store proudly annouces the birth of it’s newest SPE sibling, Smartphone Outlet! All products sold through SmartphoneOutlet.com are Open Box products. These products were returned for one reason or another from a customer or are overstock from a manufacturer. Our opened returns go through a rigorous check to assure that our customers are getting what they pay for. All items are tested, sanitized, and repackaged for sale.
Take a browse through SmartphoneOutlet.com today for smartphone accessories at the lowest prices! You’ll want to bookmark this one and visit often - you never know what you’ll find in store at deep discount prices!
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
[Sponsored Post: SmartphoneOutlet.com - Accessories at the Lowest Prices!]
Walmart will sell iPhones starting Dec. 28
Filed under: iPhone
Walmart will be taking a pass for most of the holiday shopping season with one particular item: the iPhone. It will begin selling the handset December 28, according to Jamie Townsend, of research firm JRPG.
Boy Genius Report also notes that the phone will be sold in some Sam's Club stores as well. The blog broke the news about Walmart's talks with Apple, but originally said the smartphone would hit shelves last Saturday.
Walmart seems to be capitalizing on post-holiday shopping fervor, with BGR's Zach Epstein speculating, "Won't people be happy when they find out Apple's handsets popped up at discount prices three short days after Christmas?" It depends on how meager Christmas is, I suppose.
The handsets will apparently be activated in-store. No pricing details were released.
Walmart will sell iPhones starting Dec. 28 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Walmart will sell iPhones starting Dec. 28 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Round Robin: Help Android Casey in the Forums for Another Chance to Win an iPhone 3G!
[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]
Another day, yet another chance to win ONE of FIVE shiny new Smartphones! That’s right, TiPb is giving away an iPhone 3G and for yet another chance to win, each and every day you post in our special forum thread, you get entered for another chance to win! So what are you waiting for? Go help AndroidCentral’s Casey Chan learn to re-love his iPhone!
(Psst- Our sibling sites are also giving away a Blackberry Bold, Android G1, Treo Pro, and HTC FUZE, so head on over to each and every Smartphone Experts Round Robin thread you can find!)
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
Round Robin: Help Android Casey in the Forums for Another Chance to Win an iPhone 3G!
