Posts tagged App
WhatsApp Messenger for iPhone
92 years ago
I’ve been trying to find the perfect push notification iPhone-2-iPhone messaging solution. An app that falls between instant messaging and SMS, without the cost of SMS. The two top ones on the App Store are Ping! and WhatsApp. I reviewed Ping! recently, but I just had to try out WhatsApp to see how it compared.
WhatsApp differs from Ping! in that it uses your phone number and your contact list rather than a PIN/username, so there’s no signing up or having to pass a username onto friends – and no need to add new contacts – your whole iPhone contact list is available within the app. If you have friends with an iPhone then all they need to do is download WhatsApp [iTunes link] which is currently absolutely free, then when you open the app you’ll see which of your contacts already have the app installed by looking through the Favourites list. You also have the option to send an invite to your other friends so they can download the app and interact with you.
The advantage WhatsApp has over Ping!, for me, is the timestamps are correct. You’d have to take a guess when a contact had sent you a Ping! message as the timestamps would read whatever they wanted at any given time. The UI in WhatsApp is also far more attractive than Ping! – and the icon is a lot prettier. That matters. On sending a message you get a little notification tone, much like in the default SMS app on the iPhone. You can also see when one of your contacts is online and composing a reply – ‘typing’ will be displayed under their name at the top of the messaging window.
In WhatsApp you can set a status from the ones given as default such as Available, Sleeping, Busy, In a Meeting and many more, or you can create your own such as ‘iPhone docked and charging’ – a status which indicates that I am unable to reply right away…and something I find myself using a lot! In the settings you can switch status notifications on so that you will get an instant push notification when one of your contacts changes their WhatsApp status.
I can see many people using Ping! alongside WhatsApp. Ping! is the better alternative for chatting to online friends who perhaps you don’t feel comfortable about giving your phone number to, but WhatsApp is probably more suited to those that you do know and trust enough to share your vCard with.
WhatsApp is currently free so there’s no excuse for you and your iPhone friends not to check this one out.
[rating:5/5]
Manage Multiple Gmail accounts with Notify
42 years ago
For a year or two I have been using Gmail’s Notifier app on my Mac to keep a check on new mail. It sat in my menu bar and would give me a Growl notification when new mail was awaiting me. Now I’ve found another menu bar app that does the same thing, but oh so nicer.
Notify is a beautiful free app that sits in your menu bar and auto-checks your mail accounts as often every 1 minute or up to 15 minutes. Notify also has Growl Integration and will handle up to four Gmail accounts, unlike many others out there.
This has completely replaced Google’s official Gmail notifier for me. Elegant and beautiful, Notify feels right at home on the Mac.
Manage Your Cameras
62 years ago
How many times have you docked your iPhone and cursed iPhoto for popping up and getting in the way? For me it’s one of the most annoying actions as 99.9 percent of the time I head straight to that little red circle in the top left corner of the window to close it right back down so I can get to the app I want: iTunes.
Now there is a way to silence iPhoto when you plug in your iPhone, with a neat (and free) little system preferences pane called Cameras. You can manage what happens when you connect your Digital Camera(s), iPhone, Digital Media Writer and any photo device.
Upon installing Cameras you plug in one of your devices to get started and the app will ask you what want to do. As you can see from my image above, I have asked it to Open iPhoto for my Digital Camera but to Do Nothing for my iPhone.
Now all we need is a clever little plugin to stop iPhoto going into slideshow mode when we press play on our Apple Remote which was intended for a song….
Sold in 300 seconds
73 years ago
Yesterday Tweetie for Mac was released. It was the application many of us Twitterers-on-a-Mac fanatics have been ancitipating following the sneak-peek video posted on their site a few days ago. It didn’t disappoint and within 5 minutes of downloading and testing, I had purchased it for $14.95.
My requirements for a desktop Twitter client have always been pretty simple: the ability to quickly see @ replies and Direct Messages and search the public timeline within the app, the way one can in Tweetie for iPhone. I regularly miss @ replies in Twitterrific unless I scroll through the list of tweets. With Tweetie I’ll never miss an @ again thanks to the blue indicator shown in the left hand menu bar of the client window.
Of course, Tweetie for Mac comes with many more features. Things I never thought I’d need but of course now that I have them I’m wondering how I managed without them, such as the viewing of images without having to crank up Safari or leave the app itself, view my contacts credentials and see whether they are following me back, all by simply double clicking their icon…
I can even stop following that person within Tweetie, not that I’d ever want to stop following the lovely @chrisdejabet, mind you 
There’s not much about Tweetie for Mac that needs improvement, in my eyes, apart from a refresh button without having to go to the menu bar > Twitter > Refresh. I’d also like to see what the current refresh rate is. I’m thinking 3 minutes but it’s a bit hard to tell and there’s no way of changing the default.
Tweetie for Mac is $14.95 for a 2 week introductory period, until May 4th. After that you’ll pay $19.95. You can, of course, download and use the app completely free, as long as you don’t mind ads. The great thing about purchasing Tweetie is the license which allows you to use the app for all your Twitter accounts on as many computers as you (personally) own. How awesome is that?
You can view all of the features on the Tweetie for Mac site. If you have any questions about the app before you buy then feel free to drop me a line in the comments section.
Read All About It: Newsstand app for iPhone
73 years ago
by Sam
in Applications
Since moving back to NewsFire RSS app on my iMac from the very flaky NetNewsWire, I haven’t been able to keep up to date with my RSS feeds on the iPhone. This largely hasn’t bothered me as I use my iMac more than the iPhone and even when I did have the syncing ability between NNW on my Macs and iPhone I never checked them.
Because I will be iPhone exclusive in a couple of weeks I suddenly remembered that I won’t be near my RSS feed on my Mac for a number of days. Being delivered the feeds I subscribe to on the iPhone during my Mac and wifi timeout will be one of the things I’ll look forward to as no doubt I’ll be beating a lot of boredom.
Last night I searched through the iTunes App Store for an app that would allow me to access my feeds by importing my OMPL file. Syncing wasn’t high up on my list, but something that performed well and looked good was.
Newsstand is arguably the most elegant RSS feed app in the App Store at this moment. Not only can you view and organize your feeds in portrait mode but flip your phone into landscape mode and this is where the app shows it’s true beauty, turning into a beautiful shelf of newspapers that you scroll through with a flick of your finger.
To open up a feed in shelf mode just tap the screen twice and it flips that feed open like a newspaper.
To add subscriptions to Newsstand you can import your subscription list from any Bloglines account, OPML file on the web or Google Reader. I imported my OPML file by uploading it to my webspace first. You can also add your OPML by uploading it to a free service such as opmlmanager.com You can also manually add new RSS feed URL’s at any time, aswell as share articles from Newsstand via E-mail, Twitter or delicious.com bookmarks. Be sure to check out the video here.
Newsstand is a beautiful app that is well worth the price at £2.99 [iTunes link] Newsstand will elegantly tide me over until NewsFire is available in iPhone app style with syncing abilities. I culled my RSS subscriptions list to around 22 recently, so when I’m back to my Mac I shouldn’t be too overwhelmed by unread feeds.
FStream on the iPhone
203 years ago
One of the ways I get through my day is by listening to the fantastic DI.fm House radio station via iTunes on my Mac. Now with an app I discovered yesterday I can listen to that same station on my iPhone when I’m away from my Mac.
FStream is a brilliant free app in the iTunes App Store. Once downloaded you can select from hundreds of stations in the Presets section or add your own in by going to Favorites > Edit > Add new webradio then fill in the Name, URL, Format and Bitrate.
Thanks to a review in the App Store I was able to add in BBC Radio One by inputting the following:
Name: BBC Radio One
URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/wm_asx/aod/radio1.asx
Format: WMA
Bitrate (kbs): leave this empty
BBC Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4 are all available, so if you want Radio 2 then simply change the URL to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/wm_asx/aod/radio2.asx or 3 or 4, whatever your listening preferences are. If you want BBC Radio 6 then do everything as above but the URL is different: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r6.asx I am a very rare listener to any of the BBC Radio stations, but it’s good to know I can get them. And the best part about FStream is you can even record what you’re listening to on the radio!
My discovery of FStream came from a retweet posted by O2UKOfficial on Twitter – the only re-tweet I have ever received that has actually been of benefit/interest to me in some way. I guess one out of a million had to in the end
NewsFire
123 years ago
A year ago almost to the day I switched from NewsFire to NetNewsWire when the latter was released free of charge and came with a killer feature: syncing. I’ve been using NNW exclusively since then but experienced a few niggles that didn’t have me 100% sure this was up to the job.
Syncing across my Macs and iPhone with NNW wasn’t always a perfect art, but the worst was discovering recently that some of my favourite feeds weren’t being delivered, including that of a friends blog that I hadn’t received stories from since the end of last year. So, I blew the cobwebs off NewsFire and tried my friends feed in there. All of his 2009 posts turned up, whereas NNW just still didn’t want to know.
I was prepared to sacrifice syncing if it meant my feeds would be delivered to my main desktop app quickly and reliably, not hours, days or even weeks after they were published. I have now made NewsFire my default reader and have to admit it’s good to be back – I’ve always been impressed by it’s beautiful sleek UI. Syncing, while nice to have there as an option, is a feature I can live without given that I don’t follow any more than around 35 feeds currently.
After reading through the NewsFire developers blog this evening it looks like a little something-something is heading to the iPhone. Since his other iPhone app is so sleek looking I have high hopes for this. If the future NewsFire iPhone app includes syncing then I think I made the switch back just in time for (hopefully) some exciting things ahead.
What’s your chosen RSS reader on your Mac/PC/iPhone…?
Shake it like a Polaroid picture
83 years ago
I found a fun little app for the Mac today which turns your digital photos into Polaroid-like pictures, called Poladroid. Here’s one I made earlier from one of my photos of my favourite bookstore in Newcastle upon Tyne…
Once you’ve downloaded the application you simply drag your photo onto the polaroid camera icon where it will make all those realistic noises, then spit out your photo and you can either wait a few minutes for the it to develop or you can even shake it as you would a real polaroid.
Poladroid have a Flickr group where you can upload your creations to.
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