MarcForrest.com

Category: Apple

  • Navigon MobileNavigator South Africa

    Screen shot 2009-09-21 at 4.47.04 PMWell, this isn’t technically a South African developed iPhone app, but it is designed primarily for South African’s. Navigon brings you their GPS navigational software, Mobilenavigator, with South African Maps.appstore_button

    After Tom Tom announced they would be bringing their software to the iPhone earlier this year, everyone has been hanging on waiting for it. They have released the software around the world, but South Africa have yet to feature.

    I haven’t yet downloaded the new Software from Navigon, because I just can’t seem to justify the $74.99 (±R560) price tag, when all I need to do is get to work and back. Sure I have my GPS lying in my car but it hardly gets used. This app will be fantastic for visitors to South Africa, and I’m glad to see we cracking the nod ahead of other countries round the world.

    Screen shot 2009-09-21 at 4.55.01 PMScreen shot 2009-09-21 at 4.55.16 PM

    You can download the software from the iTunes store here. If anyone does take the plunge be sure to let us know, by leaving a comment below, what you think of the software

  • Win a copy of SimplyTweet

    The guys over at Simply Tweet have released their updated version on this awesome app. You will remember a while ago, I did a quick look at Simply Tweet and version 2.3 has really upped the stakes in the iPhone twitter app market.
    For me the biggest selling point for this app is the push notifications you get whenever you get a Direct Message or @Reply in your twitter stream. The notification is instant, so you always know whats happening on your twitter stream .I also love that it I can use Posterous for my Picture hosting, as this allows me to upload to all my other services instantly. Another great feature for me, is when you send a DM, even if it over 140 characters it will spilt the DM up into separate DM’s. All in all this is THE best iPhone Twitter client.

    The dev are also fantastic and listen to your requests. Just after I first downloaded it I asked, on twitter,  about possibly changing the date format, and I can happily say, this was implemented in the 2.3 release. for updates on whats happening with SimplyTweet you can follow the dev team on twitter at @SimplyTweet.

    Here are some of the awesome features of SimplyTweet:

    • Push notification support for Direct Messages and Mentions, showing new messages in the application badge
    • Configurable push notification sounds
    • Themes
    • Saved views (create groups of friends, etc)
    • Photos search
    • Saved notes for accounts
    • Multiple accounts support, with quick switch support
    • HootSuite integration: importing of Twitter accounts from HootSuite
    • Support for updating user profiles from within SimplyTweet, including profile picture
    • Bookmarklet Support
    • Landscape drafting mode (both Tweets and DM)
    • Landscape view for builtin web browser
    • Tweetshrink support (both tweets and DM)
    • URL shortening
    • Send direct messages longer than 140 characters
    • Unread tweet indicators for all themes
    • Instapaper Support
    • Posterous Support (multiple photos and video upload) with hashtags converted to Posterous tags
    • TwitPic support (multiple photos)
    • yfrog support (multiple photos and video upload)
    • img.ly support (multiple photos)
    • TwitrPix support (multiple photos)
    • TwitVid support (video upload)
    • Browse conversations – display the reply chain of a message all in 1 screen
    • Browse conversations between you and another person – display the tweets between you all in 2 screen
    • Bigger text option

    Some of the cool new features to be added in Version 2.3 include:

    • UI changes across every theme, including re-arranging the account view
    • Every theme now has (the same) unread indicator
    • Re-arranged settings in Settings app
    • Various screens, including contact pickers, followers/friends lists and tweet/DM drafting views now has a dark background when using Twilight theme
    • Miles instead of km will be used in proximity search if your system-wide setting is as such
    • Better push handling – upon startup, if there is an application badge, meaning there was a push previously and SimplyTweet was not launched), the mentions and DM timelines will be autoloaded
    • Support for Twitvid.com
    • You can now configure a sound to play when you receive a push
    • You can configure a sound to play upon sending a tweet/DM
    • You can now send DMs longer than 140 characters. They get broken up into shorter DMs in reverse order so it reads nicely anywhere. And in SimplyTweet, it tries to concat them together into a long DM. Try it!
    • Post.ly (Posterous) links now display inline if it is short enough.
    • Add support for TwitLonger viewing, similar to inline view for post.ly links
    • Updated icons
    • Favorited tweets are now indicated in timelines
    • When you add a link to Instapaper, the tweet text is now set as the summary
    • You can now delete attachments while drafting a tweet/DM. Hint: press the cancel button

    These are just some of the changes and cool features in this fantastic app. The app is $4.99 in the app store and is well worth the price. You can buy it from the app store here. If you want some more info on SimplyTweet, be sure to check out http://motionobj.com/simplytweet/


    WIN A COPY OF SIMPLYTWEET


    Now for the fun part, the Dev team at MobtionObj have kindly sponsored 3 promo codes for the SimplyTweet app, and you can get a FREE copy of this app, by simply leaving a comment below on this post. The competition will close on Wednesday 23 September 5pm SAST.Winners will be chosen randomly using http://www.random.org/. The codes are ONLY valid in the US iTunes App store (To get a US iTunes account follow the steps here https://www.marcforrest.com/2009/08/06/5-iphone-tips-tricks/).

    If you would really like to show some support, and help increase your chances of winning, spread the word by tweeting the following message as well :)

    Win a copy of SimplyTweet by leaving a comment on @MarcForrest blog -> http://ow.ly/q9Kr. Please RT

  • Flickr iPhone App

    FlickrApp 002The guys from Yahoo & Flickr have just released a new (Open iTunes), which enables you to easily share the photos you’ve captured with iPhone’s camera, geo-tag them, and add them to sets. chart

    FlickrApp 003

    You can also view your Flickr contacts pictures, as well as view recently uploaded pictures by your contacts. You can also comment on your contacts pictures & videos, as well as an option to search for photos from within Flickr.

    FlickrApp 004

    FlickrApp 006

    Overall the app has a very easy to use interface, which allows users to control their Flickr stream and activity from the iPhone. I also enjoy the slide show on the front page, which shows your contacts (who have the app installed) Flickr stream in a slideshow. Very cool to watch

    FlickrApp 005

    To download the app, click here, or you can scan the QR Code at the top for a direct link

  • iPhone Home Screen Icon

    apple-touch-iconA cool little tip I came across for the iPhone earlier today was how to get your own personal icon on the home screen on the iPhone. What I mean is if you have a website, that you want your users to view on an iPhone, you can create a customised icon for them to use everytime they want to access your site. It looks like an application button on the homescreen as well.

    So for example, if you visit my site on your iPhone Safari browser, you will see a rendered mobile site, using the MobilePress WordPress plugin. Now if you really like my site (*hint* *hint*), you can add an icon to your home screen on your iPhone, by clicking the plus button at the bottom of the screen, and then selecting “Add to Home Screen”.

    iPhone2

    This will then add an icon to your home screen and  allow you a one touch “click” to my site.

    iPhone 003

    Now if you have a site that you would like this nifty little feature, you need to follow the 3 very simple steps below:

    • Create a PNG file, which is 57×57 pixels big. This can be any image you want.  Don’t worry about the rounded edges and glossy icon. The iPhone takes care of this for you.
    • Save the file as “apple-touch-icon.png”
    • Upload the PNG file to the ROOT directory of your website, and then visit your site on your iPhone to test it out.

    A very simple little trick if you want to ensure your visitors come back to your site over and over :)

  • Apple’s latest cat, should I adopt it?

    This is a Guest Post from Steph Reinstein, who has been a fantastic commenter on my blog, helping answer loads of questions related to all stuff Apple. Steph takes us inside his latest Apple Journey, upgrading to Snow Leopard. Enjoy. Please feel free to leave comments, and I’m sure Steph will gladly answer.

    Apple released their latest software offering, OS X Snow Leopard,  towards the end August, and I thought I would give you my personal review of this fantastic piece of software.

    What’s new?

    Apple has branded this upgrade as “evolutionary not revolutionary” and that is what is waiting for you.

    New exposé & Stacks

    I have always been a big fan of exposé and it just got so much better. You can now quit apps, quick preview windows, see all windows open of a specific app, all with a quick  Cmd + Tab. It can now be activated on newer Macbook & Macbook Pro with a 4 fingers gesture on the touchpad, and you can also now browse inside folders in stacks(this used to be a big annoyance for me, not being able to do so)

    It is clear to me that SL has been taking in account the much rumoured Tablet Mac. The way exposé behave now is so “finger friendly” and it seems that Apple have  learned from the Newton fiasco, and is making sure that the OS is ready for the hardware.

    64 Bit

    All Intel Core 2 Duo Macs are 64 bit capable,  but unless you are a proud owner of one of the newer Macbook Pro, Mac Pro, iMac (roughly 2008 onward), your kernel will boot in 32 bit. However even in a 32 bit kernel, 64 bit apps will refer to RAM faster and you will see a marked improvement. Apart from the  DVD player, all Apple apps that come with SL are now 64 bit.

    Grand Central Dispatch

    It takes out the onus of the developer to thread tasks to different cores of the CPU. In other words, the OS will now maximise the CPU cores it uses. Not much in there for the end user, perhaps a faster app, but to the devs a huge time gain if they do address multi-core processes.

    Quicktime

    After a bit of a facelift, I think I will give it another shot now that the “PRO” version has disappeared. But the smokey theme makes it look like a non Apple app, very strange.

    Safari

    Previously, most of the time when Safari crashed, it was due to plug-in. You are now able to carry on browsing even when Safari has detected an error on the page.

    Exchange

    Finally,  you can now get rid of Entourage (Microsoft is doing it for you anyway) and the long awaited Exchange support is built in.

    The less visible features

    Finally,  Eject – actually ejects … the device will become grey while doing so, but now at least you know something is happening

    Malware scanner – Only scans for two known worms, and only from downloaded files. Anything on a thumb-drive, USB disk, NAS, network won’t be scanned.

    Preview – Is becoming slowly a full featured app with tools.

    No more groggy Mac – with a much improved faster wake up time from sleep.

    Space saver – After my SL upgrade a save a healthy 6.2 Gigs on my machine.

    The services menu – after a few years of installing and deleting apps my services menu has grown ridiculously big and obsolete. It seems it has gone through a bit of a crash diet now!

    Print drivers are now also updated via the Software Update.

    Battery Monitoring- ALT+click the battery icon and it will tell you when it is time to spend R1,5K for a new one

    Better Wifi – Faster reconnect, ALT+click gives you more info

    Should I Upgrade?

    Pro’s

    The improved features are worthwhile, and I am a bit vain in that matter… If I can afford it I like to have the latest …

    The pricing of the upgrade is very attractive (R329.00) The most annoying part of my upgrade was actually Sandton traffic to get to the iStore.

    I heard reports that the DVD will upgrade from Tiger as well, but I can not confirm that.

    Con’s

    It is an Intel only club .. Older machine are unwelcome

    Incompatible software – This is a biggie to not upgrade or to wait.

    Apple has caught many developers by surprise with the early release of SL. There is a list on Apple website of software that will not run in their current version work on SL –http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3258

    The big one for SA customers would be the  software provided by Vodacom & MTN for their Datacards (VMC, etc.): they are made by Novamedia, and  are basically a branded version of Launch2net, which has not been upgraded to the latest version yet. If you use the Vodacom or MTN MAc software, you may want to hang on a bit before upgrading to Snow Leopard

    Plaxo plug-in, Growlmail, forklift, 1password are  also incompatible at the moment. 1 Password & Forklift have however released early betas to overcome this issue.

    UPDATE : Applejack is not yet compatible with SL.

    I hope you take the plunge and upgrade to what seems to be a revolutionalry upgrade from Apple. Please feel free to comment,ask questions. I will try my best to answer them promptly.