Thursday Things
There are a lot of cool new today so let’s get right to it.
- Microsoft is allowing everyone to publicly beta test their MobileMe competitor, called Live Mesh. Both Windows and Mac users can use the Beta version. You can sign in on the beta using your Windows Live Id right at Mesh.com.
- Scott Kelby posted on his blog today his review of the new MacBook Pro. If you are thinking about one, head over there to read what he has to say.
- It’s been confirmed that the new 2.2 Firmware update of the iPhone will bring podcast downloads on the fly with it. Very welcome thing to be able to download podcasts on the go. In the beginning only for podcasts that’s 10 MB or smaller, but it is something!
- Another iPhone goodie. Check out the cool app called Fake Calls that will allow you to plant a fake call at a time to your phone (it won’t actually call you) so you can escape an unwanted situation. Pretty innovative app. Check it out in the app store.
- Finally for today, Terry White has posted his annual Holiday Gift Guide where he suggest some stuff that he likes that you could give to a techie for Christmas. Go and check it out. I have my annual in the works but it’s gonna be due out soon.
Wednesday News
Here are some news for this Wednesday!
- A great little iPhone application called RunKeeper, that helps you keep track of your exercise has gotten a price change. The old price with $9.99 and it has been dropped to be free! It’s a great application, especially now that it is free!
- A new version of Open Office has been released, now bringing it up to version three. The most exciting news for Mac users is that it will now be running native on the platform instead of running it on X11. Other new features include ODF 1.2 support, Office 2007 import filters, improved crop feature in draw and impress and support for displaying custom error bars and regression equations.
- Microsoft has released an update for Microsoft Office 2008; 12.1.3. The update provides security fixes and bug repairs. It weighs in at a pretty mighty 154 MB. You can get it by either running the auto update from any office application, or download a DMG file.
Still recovering a bit from the announcements made yesterday. Also got quite a bit of work do to, so until tomorrow, take care!
Thursday Morning News
It’s a semi-early Thursday morning here and I’m yawning my way through work before it’s time to get up. Here are the news:
- A couple of days ago a very cool application called Fring was released in the App Store for the iPhone/iPod Touch. What makes it remarkable is that it’s the first one to allow Skype calls (while on WiFi). It doesn’t only work as a normal skype ID client, but it works with skype out and skype in numbers alike! Get it in the App Store, for free!
- Microsoft has decided to extend its support for Windows XP through July 31, 2009 which is a full six months more than they originally planned! Good news for all still on XP who don’t want to move over to Vista.
- If you’re looking for a good provider of online training classes (and I mean 1+ hour ones) then go and check out the Kelby Training website where they offer some really great classes for only 19.95 a month. Also if you like seminars then go over to the Adobe seminar page where you can sign up for city tour events but more interestingly for eSeminars. If you don’t have the time to be available for an eSeminar, take a look at their long list of OnDemand Seminars that you can just load up and watch!
- CS4 is coming closer to being released by every day. Just a reminder, if you recently purchased a version of any of their programs that will update in CS4, contact them and check your eligibility for a post-announce upgrade (free upgrade) to CS4!
iPhone Photo Contest
As a launch event for their newest update to the iPhone Book, Scott Kelby and Terry White is holding a contest. The whole idea is that you take a photo with your iPhone that you submit to either of the three categories which then goes to voting for the winner. You can enter as many as three photos in total. Below is an output of how it works that Scott wrote on his site.
- You can enter up to three photos (total) taken with your iPhone (doesn’t matter if it’s the original model, or the new 3G).
- There are five different categories; Friends, Pets, Family, Fine Art, and Office. The winner in each category gets a $100 iTunes Gift card and a copy of “The iPhone Book” 2nd edition.
- The Grand prize winner gets a $500 Apple Store Gift Card, and a copy of “The iPhone Book” 2nd edition.
- From the photos submitted by the deadline of Oct. 24, 2008, Terry and I will choose three finalists in each category, and then the public gets to vote for the winner in each category (the one getting the most votes wins). Then, from those Winners Terry and I will choose a Grand Prize Winner on November 3, 2008.
- This may seem obvious, but of course, the photo has to be taken with your iPhone’s built-in camera.
- You can edit your photos using any iPhone application available from the iTunes Apps Store, or any other image editing application, but no other non-iPhoto photos may be included in your entry (so you can’t take your iPhone photo and composite it with a photo taken with your DSLR, point-and-shoot, or a stock photo).
- You may not give your iPhone to Jay Maisel, Joe McNally, or Moose Peterson. Not even to make a phone call.
- There is no entry fee, and the contest is open to everyone; You do not have to buy “The iPhone Book” to enter, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt.
- Whining of any kind, about anything, is strictly prohibited.
- You can submit your photos, and learn more about the contest at the official contest site (here’s the link).
It’s a great contest and a great book. Get the full contest scoop at the official site, and get the book at the Amazon.com ($13.95). The book is an update to their previous bestseller of the iPhone book (now updated to include the new iPhone 3G) with tips and tricks on how to use and get the most of your iPhone!
Friday News
We’ve come to this wonderful point of the week where it’s almost the weekend.It’s just putting in these final hours, and the weekend is here!
- There’s been a lot of buzz lately over a small tool that Michael Tapas (from RAWWorkflow.com) together with Imagenomic (makers of Noiseware) created. It’s called Instant JPEG from RAW and does what the name suggests; it extracts the preview jpeg files that are embedded into the RAW files. You can also check out a video demo of the tool in action.
- Chris Coiyer from CSS-Tricks has a great screencast this week, talking about how you design for the iPhone. It’s an important topic nowadays and he covers it in a good way. I really recommend that you view it if you want to start out with desining for the iPhone.
- Smashing Magazine has again released a coolr resource. This time it’s an icon set called Dellipack 2. It’s a high quality set with 15 icons in many different resolutions. You can use this for free in both commercial and personal products as well.
- I have one more piece of news, that I think deserves its own blog post, so check the post following this for the scoop of a cool contest!
That’s it for this Friday, have a good day!
Long awaited Friday News
Skipping the pirate talk for this post. I call these long awaited for several reasons. Firstly, I haven’t had time to post much news the past days and secondly, it’s Friday which means it’s soon time for a nice weekend!
- A couple of days ago now Apple updated its Remote app for the iPhone/iPod Touch with the functionality of now letting you create Genius playlists and create/edit playlists in iTunes. It’s a free download from the iTunes App Store.
- Adobe has released Camera Raw 4.6 RC (Release Candidate) and the DNG Converter 4.6. It adds support for the Fuji Finepix IS Pro, Nikon D700, Nikon D90 and Nikon Coolpix P6000. Also in is preliminary support for Canon Rebel XS, Canon 50D, Olympus SP-565, Sony A900 and the Sigma DP1. The reason that it is a release candidate is that they want some more community testing before they consider it a final product. Note: Release Candidate is a step beyond beta.
- Marketcircle has updated their Billings application for the Mac to version 3. Billings is a time tracking and invoice software. News in Billings 3 is a much more streamlined interface, client groups, chronological accounts view, instant overdue invoice notifications, recurring invoices and some general reports and tracking updates. Of course it’s gotten its share of bug fixes. The application costs $59 for a new license. An upgrade from a 2.x version will run for $35. A full working 21-day trial is available at their website.
- I’m working on some new reviews, tutorials and other goodies that will be coming soon. Keep looking for them all!
That’s it for now, have a great Friday!
iPhone Homework App
Everyone that’s in school (me included) have a long school week ahead of us tomorrow and I thought I’d take some time today to write about a good Homework organizing program. Now granted, there are many other apps than this one but I’m liking this one a lot and have been using it for a couple of days now.
About the App
The app is called Homeworkr, runs for $2.99, and helps you manage your assignments, tests, finals and quizzes sorted in courses and teachers. It’s built up so that ideally you first add a teacher (from your address book) then add a course that the teacher runs and then add assignments to the course. You can easily insert the information for each assignment and easily mark them complete when you’ve done them. When it’s two days before being due, a little indicator light turns yellow and then at the same day, red to help you see which ones need doing, I do wish I could set the date limit for the lights myself though.
My Wishlist
As with any app there are things you’d like to see. For me it is mostly small things in Homeworkr. I’d like to see a separate notes field so that I can insert more information about each assignment than in the title field. I’d also like to be able to add new homework types. As I mentioned above, being able to change the time before due when the indicator lights change colour would be great. When it comes to listing the homeworks, I’d love to be able to have more advanced sorting. Being able to sort away what’s due a long way from now and only see the current week would be helpful. Seeing a high number in the homescreen isn’t the best mentally, even if they are due in a long time.
My Verdict
I really do like the app and feel it is definitely worth the $2.99, no question about it. It helps me manage my homework in yet another way and does indeed give me an excuse to get out the iPhone during class. It needs further bug fixes and some small design and feature enhancements, but it still is a great app that I plan to continue to use to manage my homework but hope similar features will be included soon as it would make it all easier!
Friday News Quickies
Here are the news of today:
- Apple has released software update 2.1 for the iPhone. It fixed a lot of bugs and is a bug and performance release, not adding new features. I downloaded it earlier today and I really must say it’s a lot speedier and faster in both app launches and backups. Download it through the Download Update button while syncing the phone with iTunes 8.
- If you are developing themes for WordPress it can be great to get some posts set up to be able to make sure you have all possible formatting styles included. WP-Candy has made a great post xml that you can import and use as a sample post to demo your styles and see that you have every bit in there.
- A big shoutout congratulations to great guy R.C and his wife Jenn who at Thursday morning had a adorable baby – Sabine Annabel Concepcion. Talk about being born to some community eh
All kidding aside, all well wishes and congrats to RC and Jenn!
After the listing of Apps – what happened?
I must say the listning of the ten favorite iPhone apps of mine had not the intention of getting any response from developers. I have though gotten notices from the developer of Homeworkr and also from the CEO at Palringo asking which bugs I’ve encountered so that they can fix those, also with questions if there are any new features liked to be seen. This is dedication to the App in my opinion. I hope the bugs I had with Homeworkr will be fixed soon and I know that the bugs I had with Palringo are fixed in the latest upgrade which means I’m back with using it as my IM client on the iPhone and really like it (and they have more goodies in store for future updates).
So I wanted to extend a little thank you to the developers that kindly addressed the issues I and many were having to continue and develop such great products, that definitely is on my top ten list.
Thursday Dailies
- Adobe has announced that they are going to have a screencast showcasing the upcoming Creative Suite 4 on the 23rd September. It’s a free signup so Signup Now!
- If you’re like me and like WordPress and install it for a lot of clients, you will be interesting in this article over at WP-Candy on Five Ways to Familiarize Clients with WordPress. It might be a pretty simple content management system but can look very daunting at a first look. The ideas are really good and will work for anyone who install WordPress for clients.
- I’ve you’re at Photoshop World right now in Las Vegas, you are probably right in the opening keynote and viewing something cool. Hopefully all of us who can’t be there will hear about some of the cool things really soon and as soon as I do, I’ll post the stuff right up here.
- Yesterday when I posted about my ten favorites iPhone apps and I wrote about some bugs in Homeworkr. Now after I get an email from the creator of the app asking about the bugs so that he could fix them. I just wanted to acknowledge that they are keen on hearing from you if you have any bugs or feature requests for the app.
That’s it for now, hopefully I’ll be able to post up some Photoshop World news later.
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