Category Archives: Gadgets & Apps

All posts that don’t obviously fit in one of the sub-categories go here.

Is it iPhone friendly?

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While we’re getting more and more information online without ever visiting a website (at least the home page), I think this is going to be an increasingly important question.

Before getting an iPhone, I really didn’t worry that much about how the websites I worked on looked on a mobile device. That was a mistake.

I did give it some thought as I moved smays.com from Typepad to WordPress and chose a theme that displayed reasonably well on a small screen.

We might be nearing the end of my Breakfast Reading Evolutionary Cycle. And it’s an iPhone propped up against a napkin dispenser.

All I need is this bowling ball. And this ash tray.

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Steve Rubel lists five ways in which he is simplifying his technology:

  1. Eliminating any bookmarks, software/webware that I haven’t used in the last seven days
  2. Cutting back to two devices for everything – a laptop and a cell phone. Period, end of story
  3. All critical data seamlessly syncs between these two devices. If a service doesn’t allow me to sync stuff via the cloud and access it both online and off, it’s toast
  4. He’s dumped tons of of stuff: RSS feeds and virtually every email newsletter
  5. Setting up lists on Friendfeed to help me find signals in the noise

That sounds really good to me. I’m feeling more cluttered every day. Too many atoms, too many bytes (bits?)

  • #1 will be a snap for the bookmarks. I’ll have to nut up to kill some of the software I’m not using. Wish me luck.
  • #2 is equally appealing. I could get by with my MacBook and my iPhone. But the big iMac at work belongs to the company, so… and the Mac Mini at home really gets very little use.
  • #3 The whole Mac/Mobile Me experience has made me very reliant on sync’ing. I have a couple of apps that don’t but not many.
  • #4 is pretty easy to do. Got my RSS subscriptions under 50. If I add one, I’ll try to find one to delete
  • #5 I’ve never been able to get with the Friendfeed thing. I’ll take another look but…

Mobile Media

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Hard to beat the iPhone for audio and video if you want immediate and easy upload to YouTube. The stills are not as good as the Casio delivers. (Can you guess which took the photo below?)

sunset

Posterous is fun and easy but not sure that it gives me much that Twitter does not, especially since YouTube now talks to Twitter. There is something about seeing the media nicely presented, in-line on the Posterous page, but you have to get folks there. I’m looking forward to seeing how Tweetie gets video from the iPhone to my Twitter stream.

It all gets a little confusing with literally too many choices. But I do like being able to share the media quickly, even a some sacrifice in quality. I’m guessing I’ll wind up using Twitter, YouTube and Mobile Me for on-the-fly. The blog will get posts like this, after I’ve had a time to reflect and look more closely at the available media.

Sheryl Crow Posterino

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I started playing with Posterino a couple of weeks ago and finally got around to creating my first poster. More on that in a moment. For those that missed the earlier post, from the Posterino website:

“We shoot a lot of marvelous pictures, bury them deep down in the file system of our computers and most of them never see the light of day again. The solution is simple: Compose a “best of” poster every couple of months and pin it on the wall in your hall.”

For my first poster I decided to use images of Sheryl Crow. I’ve collected a bunch over the years, almost all taken by others. (You’ll recognize your photos, I hope)

posterino-sherylcrow500

With enough time and patience (and Photoshop), you could create this montage one image at at time. With Posterino, you decide the size and layout of the poster… pick the group of photos you want to use… and hit go. If you don’t like the result, you shuffle. I didn’t spend a lot of time arranging image. I liked the randomness Posterino provided.

Then you just send the image off to a print site and you have a nice poster to hang on your wall. I sent this one to uber-fan Ann (who took some of the non-Sheryl pix in the group).

Oh, one more thought on this. While lots of people have some of the images included in the poster… nobody has them all. Except me. And, now, my friend Ann.

My first iPhone video

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Forget for a moment that I have the iPhone in portrait orientation, and check out the quality of this brief walk through the newsroom. I’ve uploaded videos to YouTube from all kinds of cameras: Sony Camcorder; Flips; my beloved Casios; the MacBook iSight.

But I don’t think I’ve ever ended up with a clip that looked and sounded this good. I know, could be some Cupertino Mind Trick but I think I’m correct on this point. And the iPhone has YouTube option built right in.

iPhone MobileMe

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iphone-returnI got a brief look at the new OS for the iPhone yesterday and must say I was impressed. Copy and paste works smooth as buttah. And a bunch of other stuff I didn’t get to play with but the feature that made me squeal like a 12 year old girl was one I had not heard about. From the iPhone website:

“If you misplace your iPhone, MobileMe can help you find it. Log in to me.com to view a map that shows the approximate location of your iPhone. If it’s nearby, have it play a sound to help you find it, or display a message on the Home screen to help someone return it to you.

Your iPhone contains information you don’t want in the hands of a stranger. So if you lose your iPhone and displaying a message on it hasn’t resulted in its safe return, you can initiate a remote wipe and restore factory settings. If you eventually find your iPhone, you can restore your data by enabling your MobileMe account on iPhone.”

How about this option? If you know your phone is stolen and being used by the thief –or someone he sold it to– you turn the phone on and make it play a pre-recorded sound clip: THIS TURD STOLE MY IPHONE! Over and over.

My new phone arrives this Friday and I confess I’m a little giddy with anticipation.

PS: If you click the headline of this post it displays the “related posts” feature we added yesterday. One of which is from a year ago, titled: “Why no iPhone for smays.com.”

World’s first Bluetooth webcam

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webcam“The new Ecamm BT-1 combines high-quality video and sound with complete freedom from wires. The new webcam integrates advanced technologies to allow video and sound to be sent through the air to most any Mac. The BT-1 streams 640×480 H.264 video and AAC audio to video applications such as iChat and Skype, taking advantage of Mac OS X’s rich media capabilities to provide a seamless wireless webcam experience.”

This rascal is about half the size of an iPhone. As for video and audio quality? We’ll take her for a test-drive in the morning down at the Coffee Zone.

TweetSpin: “set it and forget it”

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TweetSpin, a new Twitter application designed by a radio programmer named Rico Garcia. Among other info, TweetSpin can post "now playing" data from a station's website.

Here's a couple of snippets from a review in R&R, a radio trade publication:

From KHOP PD MoJo Roberts: "TweetSpin allows us to constantly have 'what's playing now' on our status and set appointment tweets to go out so we can set it and forget it."

In addition the "now playing" feature, Garcia is more excited about built-in scheduling that allows stations to set up hourly, daily or weekly messages to encourage listening appointments.

Hardly surprising that an industry in the process of automating itself out of existence would look for a way to automate social media, too. Of course, if there's really no one at the station…

11,000 channel “radio”

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“The VTech IS9181 is a Wi-Fi music streaming device, designed to make accessing the near-infinte variety of Internet radio as easy as traditional radio.”

“The IS9181 connects to any wireless network (802.11 b & g) and lets you access more than 11,000 free Internet radio stations worldwide. It also lets you access audio files (MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV, Real) stored on you Wi-Fi-enabled computer (PC or Mac). The IS9181 also offers localized weather (based on zip code).” (via Podcasting News)

My first thought was, “If I’m running a radio station, it better be one of the 11,000.” My next thought was, “It better be one of the ‘best’ of the 11,000.”