Worldwide Coin Toss Review

Chocolate or Vanilla ice cream? Burger King or McDonalds...Worldwide Coin Toss (WCT) aims to help you make those tough decisions in life by randomly or NOT falling on heads or tails. Worldwide Coin Toss simulates the tossing of a real coin, except you have a choice of coins from over ...

Bluetooth Keyboard Paired with Hacked iPhone

Waypoints: Another way to see where you’ve been

Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store

Hard on the heels of my review of Geotags, some of our readers suggested we take a look at Waypoints, [App Store link] which has some similar functions and a smoother interface. Waypoints, which is US $2.99, can save any GPS location you choose, and allow you to access them with your desktop web browser, or it can download GPX or Google Earth (KML) files for the waypoints you've visited. It runs on the iPhone and requires iPhone software version 2.1 and above.

You can view any waypoint in Google Maps on your iPhone, and you can email locations including latitude, longitude, elevation, and any notes you add to the description. The software also embeds a hyperlink to open Google Maps at the spot you bookmarked. There is also a feature to share saved locations with people on the same wireless network. The usefulness of that feature will depend on how a person wants to use the software.

Waypoints will work on an iPod Touch, but with limited usefulness because there is no on-board GPS in those devices and the WiFi/Skyhook location services aren't really precise enough to take up the slack (nor are hotspots prevalent out in the backcountry).

Read on for more impressions, or check out the screenshot gallery:

Continue reading Waypoints: Another way to see where you've been

Waypoints: Another way to see where you've been originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Waypoints: Another way to see where you've been originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Concept: iTunes-based Solution to Manage iPhone Apps

‘I am Richer’ app appears in Android store

The essentially useless “I am Richer” application has appeared in the Android market, after a similar one was pulled from Apple’s App Store.

Apple to use iPhone’s GPS to geotag locationless photos?

The GPS circuitry in the iPhone 3G could be used to do more -- a lot more, in fact -- than it currently does, and it looks like Apple might have an eye on an angle most people wouldn't have considered (in other words, something other than turn-by-turn). Digging through iPhoto '09's innermost sanctums has apparently revealed references to some sort of asynchronous geotagging capability, whereby selecting locations from an app on the phone (or iPod touch, as the case may be) could be transferred directly to iPhoto and associated with events -- perfect for shooting with, say, a real camera while toting your phone in your pocket. Of course, the capability is purely vestigial for now -- no announcement has been made, and there's no way for users to access this directly -- so Apple could've spiked it or has it queued up for a future firmware update. Time will tell.

[Via iLounge and Ars Technica]

Filed under: Cellphones, Digital Cameras, GPS, Handhelds

Apple to use iPhone's GPS to geotag locationless photos? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Review: Attendance for iPhone

With its intuitive interface, Attendance is a must-have app for mobile-device toting educators who need to keep tabs on who’s in class.

Would You Rather Manage Your iPhone Home Screen Icons in iTunes?

Interesting concept video for using iTunes, rather than the iPhone itself, to manage home screen icons and layout. Single icon, multi-icon selection, icon and space lock and unlock, whole screen moving, sort by name, sort by last usage, etc. are all visualized and it makes a rather compelling case.

Would you rather (or additionally) handle icon/app management via iTunes? As we move to more wireless/over-the-air syncing and operations, do we want to have more reasons to stick with the tether, or could a MobileMe-like service include it?

Also, while it looks solid on 2 screen, what if you’re rocking 9 screens, will it scale?

(Via MobileCrunch. Thanks to Phil from WMExperts for passing it along!)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Would You Rather Manage Your iPhone Home Screen Icons in iTunes?

Best Buy offers $99 iPhone to some reward members

Best Buy is offering its Premier Silver Reward Zone members a chance to buy iPhones for $100 off retail price, but the deal has plenty of fine print.

AT&T Mobility CEO Speaks: Outages, Dropped Calls, App Store, Competition, and More!

Engdget Mobile scored an interview with Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility. Our favorite carrier CEO (for recently telling Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Nokia’s CEO, and Euro-haters that “99.5 percent of the industry is trying to copy the iPhone”), shot from the hip on a wide range of issues, including AT&T outages, reports of iPhone reception problems, the success of the App Store, and the competitive landscape now that Google and Palm are (back) in the game.

Perhaps the best news for iPhone users on AT&T? He anticipates future firmware updates will continue to increase reception and reliability:

They’re continuously looking for, and we communicate with Apple and say, you know, if we tweak this it would work better, so they’ve been very good about working with us and making sure that as we look at things to do the drop calls there, they’re going to implement it.

Strangely, no word on dropping data rates or throwing in tethering gratis…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

AT&T Mobility CEO Speaks: Outages, Dropped Calls, App Store, Competition, and More!

Screenshots of Latest Snow Leopard Seed

World of Apple publishes screenshots from the latest Snow Leopard developer build revealing some of the changes we've detailed over the past few weeks. Specifically, the site shows off the new ability to drill down into sub folders in Stacks and al...

The (real) $99.99 iPhone: this week at Best Buy

Filed under: Retail, iPhone

Remember the pre-Macworld buzz about a $99 iPhone 3G? Well, how about a $99.99 iPhone 3G?

Several sharp-eyed TUAW readers have let us know about a deal that Best Buy is offering for Reward Zone members. If you're a Reward Zone Premier Silver member, you can buy an 8GB iPhone 3G for US$99.99 through February 28th. The 16GB model is available for US$199.99. If you're a regular Reward Zone member, you pay just US$50 more for your iPhone 3G -- US$149.99 for 8GB, US$249.99 for 16GB.

Best Buy notes that you must be an existing Reward Zone member as of February 21, 2009, to take advantage of the special pricing, so you can't sign up for the program today and expect to get the discount. A two-year activation is required as well. If you're eligible and interested in getting a new iPhone 3G for a penny less than US$100, click the "Source" link below for details.

The (real) $99.99 iPhone: this week at Best Buy originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The (real) $99.99 iPhone: this week at Best Buy originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Found Footage: Swing yer iPhone ’round and ’round with Danglet

Filed under: Accessories, Found Footage, iPhone, iPod touch

For those of you who have been anxiously awaiting a way to hang your iPhone or iPod touch from your neck or wrist, your wishes have been answered! There's a new accessory called the Danglet that plugs into the dock connector port on the bottom of your favorite device, then clips onto a wrist or neck strap. The neck strap in particular would be an excellent accessory for anyone who needs to have both hands free, yet have immediate access to their iPhone (geocaching, anyone?).

Towards the end of the video above, you can see the obviously unpaid actors swinging their iPhones around by the straps. Personally, I kept expecting to see one of the phones flying off into the trees or pavement. Much to my relief, the Danglet mechanism appears to be well-designed and kept the devices from becoming projectiles.

The Danglet retails for $14.99 and includes both a hand strap and neck strap. Do not use your Danglet to turn your iPhone into martial arts weaponry. Thank you.

Found Footage: Swing yer iPhone 'round and 'round with Danglet originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Found Footage: Swing yer iPhone 'round and 'round with Danglet originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Best Buy shows membership has its benefits, offers up to $100 off new iPhones

Would you like to save $100 on a new iPhone? Sure, we all would, and Best Buy giving its Premier Silver Reward Zone members the chance to do just that; to knock a full Benjamin off the price of any 8GB or 16GB model. Meanwhile other, non-premier members (anyone who didn't drop $2,500 at Best Buy last year) will have to make do with $50 off. This is in addition to the other discounts you'll get when signing up for a new plan, and is a nice bonus either way -- assuming you're already a Rewards Zone member. If you're not and still want to get in on the action, tough cookies. You should have joined prior to the 21st, when the retailer opened the window on this deal. It closes again on the 28th.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Best Buy shows membership has its benefits, offers up to $100 off new iPhones originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Android vs. iPhone, Open vs. Closed, Love vs. Chocolate…

Our pal Casey over at Android Central, launching off the latest ruminations of GigaOm Malik, on the relative advantages and disadvantages of open source vs. proprietary software models, as straw-man’d into the current tech darlings from Google and Apple: the Android and the iPhone, says:

We can’t deny that the iPhone is wildly successful in spite of (or because of?) their closed, proprietary nature. It’s essentially the dilemma that iPhone users have been trying to find the balance to–the iPhone’s closed nature creates a clean, seamless and synergetic user experience but it often comes at the expense of the freedom of choice. You have to trust Apple enough to play nice and take a leap of faith with the direction of the iPhone.

And the GigaOm-ster sums up:

The reality is that openness is just an attribute -– it’s not an outcome, and customers buy outcomes. They want the entire solution and they want it to work predictability. Only a tiny minority actually cares about how or why it works. It’s little wonder, then, that the two device families that have won the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of consumers, developers and service providers alike (i.e., BlackBerry and iPhone) are the most deeply integrated from a hardware, software and service layer perspective.

Our take? Depends on your baggage. Are you coming at it as a philosophically determined developer or tech pundit who wants to tinker, toggle, and/or get all Stallman/Jobs on it? Or are you the mom of such an individual, someone who thinks FOSS is what you use to clean between your teeth and OS X must be on late night cable for pre-verts? They just want the most basic real-world functionality to work (i.e. make calls, show off baby pics, and play the latest episode of Murder She Wrote (heh)).

Personally, I’ll take the best of both, thank you very much. Let them continue to propel each other ever-forward to the benefit of consumers like us. (And like the Androids, bless their trackball+touchscreen+keyboarded little central robotic cores!)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Android vs. iPhone, Open vs. Closed, Love vs. Chocolate…

iPhone user concocts app management concept

For those whose iPhone apps have gotten out of control, one user has come up with a potential solution for managing the proliferation.

Deal of the Week - Best Buy Reward Zone Members Save on iPhone 3G

There is a new email promo floating around from Best Buy (got mine last night). Their Reward Zone and Premier Silver members are being offered a pretty enticing discount when purchasing new a iPhone 3G. Here’s how it works: Reward Zone members purchasing a new iPhone 3G will be lucky enough to have $50 knocked off the regular price while Premier Silver members get a even more generous $100 off of a new iPhone 3G.

Keep in mind this offer is only good until Saturday February 28th and you must sign your life away to AT&T for two years. So, if you are out shopping for a brand spanking new iPhone 3G and you’ve been a Reward Zone member before February 21st… head on over to Best Buy!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Deal of the Week - Best Buy Reward Zone Members Save on iPhone 3G

Geotags for iPhone is a good start

Filed under: Software, Freeware, iPhone, App Store

Geotags [App Store link] is a free map-based application for the iPhone. Its purpose is to keep a geographic diary of sorts, letting you mark maps with tagged information you'll want to explore again.

You can geotag your car so you can find it again, or a favorite hunting location, or a cave. I tested the app by recording some favorite spots in a nearby state park that were good photographic locations.

It's a bit like Places in iPhoto, but it is portable. You can add photos to geotags, or an audio clip (2 minutes max recording time for each clip) that describes it, and of course some written notes.

Once you have built up a database of tags, it can all be exported to Google Earth for sharing with friends, or just to use yourself.

I found the app is a really good start, but it feels more like a beta than a finished, polished program.

The icons chosen for different functions are a bit arcane, and this is not an app you can use as soon as you download it. Expect to spend some time in the help file, which, happily, is built in. Geotags uses Google maps for data, and it pulls the maps into the Geotags interface.

There doesn't seem any way to sync the tags to your computer, so if you lose the iPhone, or buy a new one, you have to start again. I don't think this is a limitation of the Apple SDK, and it would be a good idea for the developers to support standard sync through iTunes. If you really start using this app, losing everything would be pretty dreadful.

I don't like to complain too much about Geotags, because it is free and pretty much works as advertised. On the other hand, it seems a few versions short of a really useful product. The concept of the wheel interface, with icons that are hard to understand, needs a thorough revising. I also noticed that the maps and features were constantly refreshing, which can really get old fast. It stops the app dead while that is going on, and frankly, I don't know why it is constantly doing it.

There isn't too much on the market exactly like this program, so give it a try at no cost, and hang around for some updates. The developers have improved the application since it was released late in December and they seem open to suggestions in their community forums.

With a little cleaning up, especially of the visual aspects, I think Geotags will eventually be a winner. I found some good uses for it the first day out, and I think many others will too.

Here are some screen shots:

Geotags for iPhone is a good start originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Geotags for iPhone is a good start originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The iPhone Blog Week in Review for February 23, 2009

Every week I will be bringing you what I think are the week’s biggest stories and articles. Let’s get started, after the break!

Review: Dockster case for iPhone

Looking for a dockable case for your iPhone 3G? This might be for you!!! Hey, and it’s even leather…

iPhone Adobe Flash on its way… again?

Yeah, Adobe has basically said it is coming. Apple is tight-lipped. What do you think?

Universal charging solution?

The industry is moving to micro-USB for a standard on mobile devices… Apple hasn’t said what they will do? That 30-pin connector is rather handy…

Documents to Go demoed for iPhone!

I can’t wait for this! Docs look good, spreadsheets and presentations. Release date? 2nd quarter of 2009!

CEO- snap!

You want a good laugh? Read the dialog between mobile CEO’s at MWC 2009. Too funny. What is more funny? Apple isn’t even there…

MobileMe file sharing is here… finally!

Finally the functionality we were promised many moons ago is here! Read on for more!

Offline Gmail?

At MWC 2009 Google demoed and HTML5 driven Gmail web app that works offline, cool!

Genius recommendations in the App Store?

What do you think? Adding Genius recommendations to the App Store should help in picking apps, no? I mean with over 20,000 apps out there, me thinks there is quite a selection!

Todo app showdown!

In our forums there is a showdown on what is the best app? What is your favorite? Take a look!

Are you still using iPhone Apps?

Studies show that users buy an app, then stop using it. What about you?

2009 TiPb’s Reader’s Choice Awards

We have the list! Want to know who wins in each category? Read on for more!

TiPb Giveaway- Movie Challenge!

Like movies? Like your iPhone? Want to win an app that brings them together? Read here to find out how!

Leaked photo of Google Latitude?

Could be? Ah, who cares, we know it’s coming, but when? I want my firmware 3.0 already!

Phone Different Episode 34

Rene and Chad are steering the ship this week. Dieter is returning from MWC 2009 and Mike was mowing the lawn. What do Rene and Chad have to say about this weeks news? Take a listen!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

The iPhone Blog Week in Review for February 23, 2009

Review: MobileFiles Pro for iPhone

MobileFiles Pro can open and edit Excel files, and serve as a mobile file manager, with full MobileMe integration, as well as file transfer via wireless network.