christyxcore

Seriously, it’s not fair! We should pay the amount we actually get. Haha.

Want to share this with all of you. Grimmace is a bit weird, right? Or creepy? Or something like that. Well, this strip just totally proves it, hah! Gotta love these guys at explosm.net

Yes, I believe this is one of the best explosm webcomics ever. If I was drinking something I really would have probably spit my drink all over my computer.

Where can I buy such glasses?

Well, seems like Apple has done it. 1 billion apps have been downloaded (but how many were that offensive Baby Shaker app? Hah!). Apple will be announcing a winner of the contest soon, where the lucky person will win a $10,000 iTunes gift card, a MacBook Pro, Time Capsle, and plenty of other Apple goodies.

Wonder who the winner is…hope it’s me! Hah, I wish. We’ll see soon.

Remember the days when notes were scribbled onto napkins for sudden spurts of inspiration? Seems a bit odd nowadays in the digital age to be seen scribbling on restaurant napkins, but if you’re the nostalgic type, there’s iNapkin.

iNapkin provides the user with a digital napkin, where your ideas, scribbles, and doodles can be captured freely without limitation. The magic with the canvas that is not seen in other apps is that the napkin can be in three different sizes and you can zoom in with pinch gestures with the Hand tool. This enables the user to be able to zoom in to write notes or even create a sketch with finer details. With this, a user can put as much info as they need on a single napkin without really worrying about how cramped the napkin will be.

But how do you fit the entire napkin on the screen? Well, you can’t have the entire napkin in one view of the screen, but then why would there be three different sizes of napkins? Because iNapkin’s Hand tool enables the user to also pan across the napkin canvas as well as zooming. So if you’re out of room on the first space of the napkin, you can move to the other empty spaces and continue scribbling. So if you choose the Large size (960×960), there will be plenty of blank space for you to jot down more.

Since this app is mainly to replicate the old method of quick jots on napkin paper, the pens available do not have adjustable size and are only the basic ink colors of blue, red, and black. Pretty basic, but so is the entire idea behind the app: napkin notes. There’s also a small or large eraser in case you make mistakes. Are you done with your napkin? Then you can tap the icon representing a hard drive to save your note to your photo library.

This is a pretty neat note taking app that replicates that feeling of napkins pretty well. If the other note taking apps don’t fit your bill of being able to freely sketch out ideas if you need visuals or graphs, then this may be a keeper. Get it for $.99 (limited time, regularly $2.99) in the App Store.

4/5

Believe it or not, I’ve created and bought a Pro account over at Squarespace.com. If you haven’t heard of that site yet, check it out! It’s a blogging service that provides hosting for you as well, with a monthly fee (as low as $8 to $50).

I’ve decided to create a dedicated Apple blog on squarespace as well as using it to upload episodes of my podcast, AppleX!

So please check out apple.ism and let me know your feedback on the blog (still being worked on) and the podcast episodes. PE=Pilot Episode.

http://appleism.squarespace.com/

Sure, Mobile Safari is a great built-in web browswer that simply beats the browsers on other mobile devices, but it still lacks some features. Like a clean interface, that would enable one to have a full screen dedicated just to the web page they want to see. This is where the Arachnid web browswer for the iPhone/iPod Touch comes in, brought to you by Bugeye.

The main feature of this web browser app is that it utilizes the entire screen for pages, so that there is much more real estate room on the screen for viewing online content. If you use Mobile Safari, you will notice that the top of the screen is taken up by the address bar and Google Search. The bottom of the browser will be taken up by back/forward buttons, add bookmark or home page button, and bookmarks, along with viewing all current Mobile Safari windows. All of these bars takes up room on the screen, which leaves the user with less content available to view at once. When compared to the Arachnid browser, this becomes a very noticeable difference.

Of course, to say that this uses the entire screen space for a page, how does one navigate around within the browser? It’s simple with a small translucent spider logo in the lower right corner of the screen. This logo will have a spinner to show that pages are loading, but also has another use: tap it to bring up address bar, settings, back/forward, “Send to Safari/Mail”, and bookmarks. Another tap on it will make all the bars go away, showing just the webpage.

When you tap on the address bar and start typing in an address, it is like Mobile Safari. It will bring up visited pages if you start typing something that was previously visited. This is especially useful with a rather long URL, or even with just how iPhone typing is, saves seconds wasted typing with the keyboard. Adding bookmarks is also similar to Mobile Safari; tap the book icon and hit + to add a new bookmark. Make sure to tap the star next to the URL, for this ensures it will show up in the bookmarks. You can also search within your bookmarks to enable easier access to your favorite pages if you’ve accumulated quite a large list.

Some features besides full-screen viewing that make this app worth a look is the Lock Orientation setting. You know you’ve been surfing the internet from Safari in bed, while on your side. Ever deal with the accelerometer of the device changing the orientation of the webpage without you wanting it to? Now, when you change the setting to Lock Orientation, the app will lock itself into the current orientation when you put the setting in effect. No more unwanted orientation changing!

Also, Arachnid seems just a nanosecond faster than Mobile Safari, but the difference is not that noticeable unless compared side-by-side (there are video reviews available on youtube that show this). It’s unknown what makes Arachnid just a smidge faster than Safari, but it’s barely noticeable. Not a major deciding factor, but one should be aware of this.

Arachnid is a good web browser, but that isn’t to say that it has no flaws. Unlike Safari, you can only view one page at a time instead of separate windows. So you can’t jump around on different sites at the same time, which is a shame and would be a wonderful addition in future updates if possible. Also, I have had some issues with logging in to personal banking accounts, such as WaMu. There was an update that supposedly fixed login issues with Google accounts, which is true, however that doesn’t apply to my banking account. Just a warning (at least for WaMu/Chase bankers). But I suppose you can easily remedy this with the option to ‘Send Page to Safari’ if you have login issues like I have. This will save time rather than clicking the Home button and then going to Safari.

Overall, this is an enjoyable web browser to use, especially because web pages look much nicer without all the clutter that Mobile Safari brings along. If you value your screen space, then you should definitely give this browser a try. I bought it when it was $2.99 in the App Store, however, now you can grab it for yourself for $1.99; well worth the price in my opinion.

4/5

In this day and age, the easiest way to keep up with news from anywhere in the world, straight from the source, is by RSS feeds. There are RSS feed readers for the desktop, or web services that allow you to keep track of all your newsfeeds. What about some RSS readers for the iPhone? Well, there are several slick RSS apps, but the one that stands out the most is Newsstand.

The interface is clean and simple, with no gimmicky looking UI but rather, what iPhone apps should look like. View all unread items with the button at the top, or even flag articles and view them later with the flagged option. The app comes preloaded with several popular feeds, but you can easily get rid of them and add your own, with the simple Edit button at the top. For easier ways to delete feeds, swipe across an item and a delete button will appear, much like in Mail.app.

While Newsstand can be a standalone reader, you can also use it to import your feeds from other services as well (Google Reader, Bloglines, or OPML files). With an import, you will get all of your feeds as well as the folders that you organized them in, that is, if you organize them at all. There is even an export option, which will create a new email that you can send to yourself or another Newsstand user. This allows one to restore subscriptions later or even transfer them to another device, which is pretty useful if you know you’re going to need it. Not necessary, but nice to have anyways, just in case.

Please keep in mind though, that the ‘Import’ feature is not a SYNC. It merely imports the feeds to the app itself, but WILL NOT sync with your Google Reader or Bloglines. Also, there won’t be options such as Starring, Sharing, or Commenting [for Google Reader] because it doesn’t sync. So if you were looking for an app that will perfectly sync with Google Reader, this may not be what you were looking for.

The lists and articles are flexible with viewing, allowing both portrait and landscape modes. So if you prefer the wider screen with landscape then you can have it. Don’t like landscape? That’s cool too; stick with portrait mode. One neat little thing with Newsstand that you won’t find with any other RSS iPhone app is an actual ‘newsstand’ when viewing your list of feeds and folders in landscape mode. Blogs become digital magazines and newspapers that you can scroll through, and open up like a real magazine or newspaper.

However, even though the shelf view is pretty cool to showoff to friends and just flick through for fun, it isn’t exactly practical to actually do all the reading with that mode. The small digital booklet will be split in two; left side will be the list of all available articles for that feed, and the right will be the article itself. If there are pictures in the article, you will have to scroll around to view all of it due to small and limited screen space. The text is pretty small and hard to read, although I suppose some people wouldn’t mind. Overall, a nifty little mode that’s nice to showoff, but not great for practical use.

In normal viewing of an article, you have options at the bottom: Flag, Themes/Font Size, Share, and View [the webpage]. Flagging will result in the item getting a flag, and thus viewable when you click the Flagged Items option at the main screen. Themes will bring up several different themes to choose from to view articles, and you can also change the font size to your personal liking. Share allows you to send the piece via email, Delicious, and even Twitter. The Twitter integreation is pretty awesome; not many other RSS apps include this (from what I’ve noticed). The view webpage seems to be a standard among many iPhone apps (not just RSS readers) so it’s not really anything that special.

Also, when viewing the list of pieces, there will be an option at the top that will allow you to share the entire list of articles by email, which will include links to the original website and the beginning of each article. Useful if you want to share a new blog with someone that isn’t aware of it.

If you’re overrun with feeds and can’t go through them all, the check at the bottom means ‘Mark All Read,’ which will allow an easy escape from the hundreds or thousands of items that you would otherwise have to waddle through.

When fetching new items, Newsstand will allow simultaneous downloading from multiple feeds. You can increase the number of simultaneous dowloads from Settings.app, however, be aware that the more you set the likelier the app will freeze or take longer to be responsive again during downloads. The default setting is for 2 simultaneous downloads, which I personally think, is enough. Refreshing items is quick and painless with the tap of the circular icon, which will then go through all feeds to check for anything new since you’ve launched the app.

Overall, this is a very nice RSS reader for the iPhone. Only complaints I have is the no sync and tedious reading with the digital booklet version. Other than that, this app is great for reading RSS on the go!

4/.5/5

I had said in my review for Framerz that my phone locked up while trying to use the camera within the app. It has been brought to my attention that this is actually a bug with the current Apple SDK.

I had the same lock-up issue when I was trying to add a photo to a contact from within the Groups: Drag and Drop Management app. Tried to take a photo and it looked like it was saving, but then the phone locked up and I had to do a reset again.

This is because the current SDK makes it so that when the camera is used within an application, the camera is taking too much memory and resources, thus resulting in extremely sluggish performance and eventually (or looking like) a freeze, requiring a reset (Home + Sleep for 10 secs) to get out of.

With this in mind I change my rating for mobile Framerz to 3/5. More cool frames, please.

iPhone 3.0 is going to fix this SDK issue, according to a Twitter friend that is using 3.0 beta.

Ever have a moment where you want to add a fun frame to a relative or a friend’s photo? Or just a moment where you feel a special frame would capture the essence of the moment just right? Then you realize that you can’t because the iPhone doesn’t give you spiffy frames in the camera app, or even any default photo editing where adding frames is an option. That problem can be solved now with the Framerz app!

This nifty little app provides you with six different categories of frames: HaHa, Player, Hey Sexy, Party, Ways You Are (I had to correct it from the ungrammatical way of ‘Way I Are’, sorry devs), and BFF. Each category has about 5-7 frames to choose from.

When a frame is chosen, you can either choose to take a photo with the frame in place or import a photo from your camera roll or library. When the photo is in place, you can use the pinch methods to zoom in or out of the photo for a better fit within the frame. Move the photo around in the frame as well to get that desired fit. When you have the photo aligned with the frame in the way you desire, you can send the photo or save it to your camera roll.

You can even view an online gallery of photos that users have submitted and get ideas for your own, or just get a laugh in or two.

Overall, this is a fun little app to add a little flair to your photos. However, that is not to say that there aren’t some things that are wrong with the app.

When you launch the app, there is a splash screen with animation that takes about five seconds or so to complete before bringing you to the main screen. This splash screen and animation seem a unnecessary and only take longer for the user to get to the usefulness of the application. Get rid of the drawn out splash and it’s fine.

Also, there are plenty of frames in the app, but that isn’t to say that it is enough. Devs, if you’re reading this, perhaps include new frames in future updates?

Another thing I’d like to point out is that after a bit of extended use while reviewing this app, while snapping a photo with it, my phone had completely locked up and I had to do a hard reset (home + sleep buttons for 10 seconds) of my phone in order to get it back to working condition again. I’m not sure if it was just my phone, but this is just a warning: your phone may lock up after using it for a while.

A decent app for adding a bit of flair, but not without side effects. If you use it, use it quickly and not for an extended time. Needs some improving with future updates to get rid of addressed issues.

2.5/5