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- Freestyle Vocabulary Learning With Keep Your Word
Keep Your Word, produced by Bamboo Apps is a tool for those learning a new language. It allows you to build your own dictionary as new words are discovered, classifying and grouping the terms exactly how you want to, while helping you learn a large vocabulary through various exercise modes.
Features
As someone who seems to lack the talent for learning new languages, I was interested to see how this app could help me to grasp the basics of a foreign tongue. The first thing to note is that Keep Your Word isn’t a tool to teach you a language from scratch. The application functions more as a learning aid as you learn a language elsewhere, allowing you to gradually categorize and build up a dictionary of vocabulary.
Far from being solely a database of words, you are able to create smart groups, add ‘tags’ to easily categorize sets of words and tell the application when you have successfully memorized a word. The main selling point is the collection of ‘exercise’ tools to assist in learning vocabulary. These consist of flash cards, quizzes and the ability to print word lists.
When first opening the application, I was a little disappointed to find a lack of pre-built dictionaries or word lists. The idea of needing to create an entire dictionary for yourself from scratch seemed daunting to say the least. Fortunately, Bamboo Apps have developed Words Parade in conjunction with Keep Your Word, allowing you to easily share and download pre-built dictionaries. At present, only a couple are available — Basic Mandarin and Cantonese — though I foresee more languages being added in the future.
If a comprehensive collection of different languages are gradually added, this has the potential to really take the application to a new level.
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Concentric Hosted IT Solutions and Web Hosting
Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - Mac 101: Photo Booth Tips
When’s the last time you played with Photo Booth? I’m guessing you and your friends had some raucous laughs with it when you first got your Mac, and then haven’t done much with it since. Well I’m here to suggest you bring it out of mothballs and check out a few things that you may not have known before. (Oh, and if you have kids, let them at it and it’ll keep them busy for hours!)
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Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - X-Plane Helicopter & Airliner for iPhone
Laminar Research has recently released two new versions of its X-Plane flight simulator for the iPhone and iPod touch; X-Plane Airliner and X-Plane Helicopter. Each can be purchased for $4.99 from the App Store — around half the price of the standard X-Plane game for iPhone.
X-Plane Background
X-Plane is an innovative application when compared to other flight simulators, as it uses a concept known as blade element theory. Rather than using lookup tables for determining the specific way an aircraft behaves, blade theory assigns independent values to every single element of an aircraft. This makes the software suitable for hardware such as the iPhone as it scales easily. Each download clocks in at under 10MB (incredibly small for a flight simulator).
X-Plane is capable of modeling complex aircraft designs easily, including helicopters, rockets, the Harrier Jump Jet, and the NASA Space Shuttle. There are three versions available for iPhone at present; the standard X-Plane release, X-Plane Airliner, and X-Plane Helicopter. This review will be focusing on the latter two versions which joined the line up in the last couple of days.
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Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - Daily Apple - Update Updates, FFXIII: Awkward Controls, Copywrong, Check Means Yes, & The Vatican
Glitchy 10.5.6 Update Gets Improved - A week after its initial release, Apple has updated their, ahem, update, making it significantly less glitchy. People were experiencing problems with Bluetooth and Mail.app, among others. I jumped the gun, and I haven’t had problems yet, but I don’t generally use Bluetooth, so who knows if I’m fine or just blissfully ignorant.
Square-Enix Brings Game to iPhone/iPod Touch, Forget It Has Touch Controls - Maybe you noticed the new Square-Enix game, Final Fantasy: Crystal Defenders, now available in the App Store. Maybe you, like me, looked at the screenshots and thought “What the heck is that?”. That, apparently, is your on screen joystick, which you use to control the cursor, which controls the characters.
Psystar Lawyers: Maybe OS X Doesn’t Even Exist! - Not quite there yet, but they are claiming Apple didn’t properly copyright the operating system, making it fair game for anyone to use it on any machine. It’s only a matter of time before they claim none of us ever really existed at all.
MobileMe Online Apps Updated - Some much needed updates arrived for the online portion of MobileMe today. One of the most significant updates? the “Keep me logged in for 2 weeks” checkbox now actually does something.
Vatican Backs iPhone App - Yes, iBreviary has received the official Vatican seal of approval. It’s a $0.99 app designed by a Reverend and a web designer that allows users to load a number of different prayers and prayer books. No word yet on Pull My Finger’s still pending application for Papal support.
Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - 12seconds.tv Interview
12seconds.tv is a boot-strapped startup that has been a labor of love for the three founders, Sol Lipman, Jacob Knobel, and David Beach. A host of other characters have helped along the way, influenced by promises of burritos, but the small group hasn’t taken any outside money.
The project was conceived in January, launched in July, and now has an iPhone app ready just in time for the holidays. They got some attention from a write-up on TechCrunch in July and have built a loyal and passionate community of over 10,000 users.
I had a chance to talk briefly with Sol Lipman the other day about the launch of 12seconds for the iPhone and ask about the path they took to get to this moment. It’s clear that 12seconds.tv was built with a lot of passion from both the founders, their friends and colleagues that helped out, and the growing community of users.
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Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - SimCity: Create a Bustling Metropolis on Your iPhone
EA dropped SimCity ($9.99) for the iPhone recently, and I actually almost missed it. I was still buzzing over Hero of Sparta and I Love Katamari, both of which are also recent releases.
Of course, I had to put everything on hold and take a crack at SimCity, since the PC versions of the game had occupied so many of my youthful hours. Plus, I was pleased with Spore Origins, so EA had already begun to earn my trust on the iPhone platform. I really hoped they wouldn’t throw that relationship out the door with as precious a title as SimCity.
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Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - Don't Expect Mass Enterprise iPhone Adoption in 2009
The iPhone has a lot of potential for enterprise use. It’s a powerful device, and it supports Exchange synchronization, and more and more, businesses are integrating Apple computers into their current IT loadout. Still, BlackBerry dominates the business market. Especially in more traditional corporate climates, the impetus required for a shift to Apple’s device isn’t there. At an organization I recently left, they were just undertaking BlackBerry adoption, and cautiously at that. Suggesting an iPhone solution would’ve been greeted by blank stares. Some involved in approving purchasing decisions wouldn’t even have known what one was. Yes, it is possible to be that insulated.
I still used my iPhone for work purposes, but not in a way that was fully integrated or supported by our in-house IT. It’s the type of thing that Forrester Research’s Michele Pelino sees as becoming more prevalent as we move in to 2009. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) like the one I mention, according to Pelino, will see more of the iPhone, since their IT infrastructure is less strict, and open to a hodge podge of solutions supplemented by employees’ own equipment. Because of this, she sees iPhone adoption climbing to as much as 10 percent among SMBs.
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Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - VirtualBox 2.1 Adds Support for Hardware Virtualization On OS X
Christmas has come early for users of VirtualBox, a free and open source virtualization solution from Sun Microsystems. Version 2.1 is a huge upgrade to the product as it includes VT-x and AMD-V hardware virtualization support on OS X and full VMDK/VHD support — including snapshots — putting it on par (at least from a hardware perspective) with Parallels and VMware.
This release also includes support for 64-bit guests on 32-bit host operating systems and experimental 3D acceleration. Networking performance has been boosted and there have been many smaller bug-fixes and enhancements.
VirtualBox has support for a wide range of guest operating systems and there is an extensive number of live, pre-built images (VDIs) that are ready to run.
If you only have occasional need to run Windows, Linux or alternative operating systems but do not want to pay for a full VMware or Parallels license, VirtualBox is a great alternative.
Be sure to check out their Mac-specific forums if you run into any quirks or difficulties. I’ve found the community to be very helpful and responsive and run a few flavors of Linux in VDIs primarily to be able to take them anywhere (VirtualBox is cross-platform). While it does not have as extensive of an integration between the guest and host systems and there is no support for OS X virtualization yet, VirtualBox is a solid product with a promising future.
Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - Scroll Different — Mouse Engineering Moves Up Top
Mouse technology has advanced a lot over the past two decades. The Apple Lisa-derived mouse with its DE-9 connector and thumb screws that attached it securely to my first Mac, a 1988 Mac Plus, was a pretty crude piece of engineering, with an analog ball of course, and a noisy, long-travel, somewhat stiff single button. Everything that came after that was an improvement.
However, most engineering effort with computer mice has been directed toward I/O interface (ADB, USB) and tracking sensor (optical, laser) advances and more recently wireless technologies (RF, Bluetooth), as well as improved ergonomics. Multi-button mice with scroll wheels became the standard configuration (although not with Apple mice) in the mid-’90s, popularized by Microsoft’s IntelliMouse Explorer, but with a few exceptions like the minuscule trackball on Apple’s 2005 Mighty Mouse, scrolling hardware technology didn’t change much between 1996 and 2006 when Logitech unveiled its MicroGear Precision Scroll Wheel.
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Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - Daily Apple: Flash, Code-Fueled Rumors, Netbook Guide, Fonts, & Book-Banning
Flash Comes to (Jailbroken) iPhones (Sometimes) - Not, probably, what most people are looking for in terms of Flash on the iPhone, but if you’ve already jailbroken, it might be worth a look. Apparently buggy, but provides more Flash than the current, non-jailbroken iPhone does, that much is certain.
iMac, Mac Mini Rumors Get a Little More Backing - This recently unearthed evidence is probably a heck of a lot more dependable than unnamed sources. It comes from code strings from the version of OS X currently running on new Macbooks, and it refers to iMac9, 1 and Macmini3, 1. Current models are referred to as iMac8, 1 and Macmini2, 1. Apparently they’ll use the same Nvidia chipsets as the unibody Macbooks.
Brew Your Own Apple Netbook - In case you don’t believe the hype that we may see a netbook at Macworld, and/or you’re just tired of waiting, 9to5Mac posted this handy compatibility guide. Not that we advise this sort of funny business, but if that’s how you roll, hey, that’s how you roll.
Better Font Management - I’m not a huge fan of Apple’s own native Font Book application. Yes, it’s far better than the Windows control panel, but it could be better. Better like Fontcase. The program is now in a limited beta, but you can get access by signing up for the developer’s newsletter. Not too steep a price.
Apple Bans Book - Just when it looked like they were lightening up, what with all the farting you can now emulate via your iPhone, they go and ban a book. The reason for the book’s rejection was “objectionable content”, since it contained an f-bomb. The book is a detective thriller written by CNET reviewer David Carnoy called “Knife Music”. Yes, that is really what it’s called.
Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - 12seconds.tv Brings Video Recording to the iPhone…Sort Of
12seconds.tv has just launched a new iPhone app ($0.99) in the App Store that allows you to output video files from your iPhone and share them with your friends on the web. It’s just not the video that you had in mind. This clever little app lets you take three photos, or pick them from your photo library, and then add a voice note over a nicely animated slideshow, complete with Ken Burns effects.
The name of the service comes from the maximum length of any video, just 12 seconds, no more (and no less either, at least from the iPhone app). The videos are uploaded to the 12seconds.tv community site where you and your friends can view them, link to them, or embed them in a web page.
The 12seconds iPhone app has a very different feel from staring into a webcam. The ability to select the photos and have some control over the composition of the video before recording the audio creates some distance between the author and the video. The result is something that still feels intimate and personal, but has a stronger sense of telling a story, even in 12 seconds, than you might get from talking into the camera.
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Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - 'Twas The Night Before Macworld
'Twas the night before Macworld, when all through the blogs
Every pundit was asking "Where is Steve Jobs?"
His stockings were hung at Mascone with care,
But it seems his last keynote was for MacBook Air.The attendees were not yet settled into bed;
All concerned that we only get Schiller instead.
Will there be dazzling products? What can we expect?
And will somebody get Phil a black turtleneck?
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Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - iTunes Tip: Remembering to Rate Your iTunes Music
My life is busy (and yes, if you’re wondering, it is all about me), and frequently I tend to rip or download music without taking the time to apply ratings to it. Since ratings are one of the best methods for determining the usefulness of your playlists, neglecting to add that information to your tracks can really handicap the power iTunes offers.
Some pondering of the issue (and a putrid burning smell) led me to come up with a Do It Yourself kind of solution that everyone can institute without spending anything more than a little time. If this sounds like something useful to you, feel free to follow along at home.
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Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - DIY Magi: Great (and Free!) Gift Pack for New Mac Owners
With both shopping days and budgets running short, you may be wondering what to get your friends and family members who have either just purchased or will be receiving a new Mac.
With 1-8GB USB flash drives having a street price of ~$6-$15.00 and a plethora of highly useful free software for the Mac ripe for the picking, here is a guide to putting together a relatively inexpensive, yet most invaluable gift that will definitely keep on giving. If you have suggestions for items to include, post your ideas in the comments (it has to be free, remember!).
While TAB cannot distribute a pre-loaded DMG with these items (many have license “click throughs” before downloading and/or mounting), we can get you started building your present with this handy pre-built DMG file (ZIP), complete with custom disk image, background image and folder icons, all pre-layed out for you.
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Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - 2008 Best App Ever Awards: Your Vote Counts!
iPhone news and review site 148apps.com has announced the launch of Best App Ever, a new site which allows you to nominate your favorite apps and games in any one of thirty categories.
- Most Innovative App - The most innovative app on the iPhone OS platform
- Most Useful App - The app you just can’t live without
- Best Free or Ad Supported App - The best free or ad-supported application - must currently be free in the US App Store
- Best 99 Cent App - The ‘I can’t believe this only cost $.99′ app - must currently cost $0.99 in the US App Store
- Best iPhone WOW App - The app makes your friends jealous (and want to buy an iPhone)
- Best Productivity Enhancer - The app that helps you get it done in half the time
- Best Productivity Killer - The app that prevents you from getting it done
- Best Feel Like A Local App - The app that helps the traveler find the local hot spots
- Best Outdoor Use App - The app that enhances travel, outdoor exploration or transit use
- Best Musical Instrument App - The app that turns the iPhone into a musical instrument, and you into a rock star
- Best Social Networking App - The app that keeps you connected on the road
- Best Photography App - The app that turns iPhone photography into masterpieces
- Best Kid Distraction App - The app that keeps your kids happy (for a minute)
- Most Creative Use of iPhone Hardware - The app that does things with the iPhone hardware that the Apple would never have dreamed of
- Best Use of Location Services - The app that uses the core location services in new and innovative ways
- Most Original User Interface - The app that redefines interface design
- Best User Interface - The app with the best user interface in an application or game
- Most Innovative Game - The game that has shown the greatest innovation on the platform
- Best Original Game - The best game that is original on the iPhone platform
- Best Game Port - The best game adapted from another platform or system
- Best Casual Game - The game that is easy to pick up and play while you wait for your coffee to brew
- Best Long-Play Game - The game that sucks you and won’t let you go until your battery dies
- Best Free or Ad Supported Game - The best free or ad-supported game - must currently be free in the US App Store
- Best 99 Cent Game - The ‘I can’t believe this only cost $.99′ app - must currently cost $0.99 in the US App Store
- Best Game Graphics - The game with the killer graphics
- Best Game Controls - The game with the best use of the iPhone hardware for a game controller
- Best Arcade Game - The game that rocks the arcade or action genre
- Best Puzzle Game - The game that makes puzzles exciting again
- Best Traditional Game - The game that celebrates tradition — card, board, casino, etc.
- Best Racing Game - The game that gets your adrenaline pumping
- Best Kids Game - The game or educational app you want your kid to play
- Best Strategy Game - The game that keeps you one step ahead
- Best Word Game - The game that lets you exercise your vocabulary
You can submit your nominations at the Best App Ever main site by clicking on the category and entering the information for the application. On December 31 the nominees for all categories will be posted and polls will open. The winners will be announced on January 7, 2009 at Macworld Expo.
This is a great opportunity to give your favorite iPhone developers a chance at some additional recognition for a job well done.
Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - Brain on the Fritz? Give it a Boost With the Speed Brain iPhone Game
The folks over at Lumosity are serious about the brain. Some of the leading neuroscientists in the world have come together to create a brain fitness program to improve your brain’s health and performance. Although the full Lumosity brain training program involves many other online games and costs $6.60 to $9.95 per month, their new Speed Brain iPhone app costs only $0.99 and will help keep your brain in tip-top shape!
The concept is simple: you’re shown a series of pictures and asked if each one matches the one before it. If you get it right, your score goes up. If you get it wrong, your iPhone or iPod touch vibrates to let you know. If you can answer fast enough you can earn bonus points for speed. And when you’re done, you will have hopefully flexed your brain enough to improve your processing speed and reaction time. My first time through I scored a pathetic 840, but after getting a handle of the concept I was able to chalk up a 5,190 on my second try.
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Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - Google Calendar Sync: We Have Choices
A little while ago, Google released a free iCal-to-Google Calendar sync tool called Calabaration. I don’t believe that Calabaration works very well, given how it generates a new calendar group within iCal and has limitations on how the Google Calendar can then sync to MobileMe. So, I reached out to BusyMac, the makers of BusySync, and Spanning Sync, makers of the Spanning Sync application, to see if they wouldn’t mind me reviewing their products. Both companies happily agreed. Here is what I learned…
Commonalities
Each one:
- Installs as a preference pane in the System Preferences.
- Is very easy to configure.
- Has fantastic support. Also, hats off to both developers for answering so many of my questions and for helping me to diagnose some key problems with sync services.
- Doesn’t appear to have any tangible impact on system performance.
- Works with MobileMe, enabling you to view/edit your Google Calendar within iCal, on the MobileMe web site and via an iPhone.
- Has excellent instructional videos, tutorials and documentation.
- Let’s you perform a reset of the application so that you can start over with clean settings.
- Has exceptional logging so that if you do come across a problem, it is easy for the developer to help resolve it.
Click here to save cost on your IT demandsПереслать - Mac Clones: Where Does Apple Draw the Line?
With all the hoopla surrounding Psystar these days, a few other companies have jumped on board the Mac clone bandwagon. In some cases they're using somewhat, shall we say, unique, methods. Still, the intent is clear: skirt Apple's EULA and sell a solution that allows Mac OS X to run on generic PC hardware. In other words, swipe Apple's IP.
Wired has a piece that discusses the cloning and how Apple may be powerless to stop it.
What bothers me most about cloning is the sheer hutzpah of those doing it. For example:
“We certainly don’t want to get into a legal battle that’s over a couple thousand dollars,” an EFIX USA spokesman said. “Potentially Apple could have a legal issue there. They may not have a legal issue, but with all the money they have they might try to make one.”
Apple could have a legal issue? Oh please.
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