think differently big

What apps are on the Apple’s VP iPhone?

Anyone using an iPhone must have heard already of Phil Schiller, the senior VP of worldwide marketing at Apple, the first Apple figure that went out and spoke about the iPhone AppStore admission process.

Such people are very careful about getting their names associated with any 3rd party tools, software or anything, so I have found it quite interesting when The New York Times published an blog article: ☞ What’s on Phil Schiller’s iPhone?

Unfortunately if you look at the list that’s extremely short:

• Shazam: the app that tries to identify a song by “listening” to it
• CNN app
• MLB.com at Bat, NBA Game Time, ESPN ScoreCenter
• Facebook app (nb the app with the largest number of installs)
• Best Camera: a photo app
• a couple of games:
  • Eliminate
  • geoDefense

So, no surprises or new discoveries here… You will find more interesting apps in my iPhone apps for geeks series.

What Is the Best Multi-client IM for the iPhone?

It looks like the iPhone AppStore provides plenty of multi-client IM apps from where you can pick your favorite(s). Unfortunately as with Twitter clients, when there are too many choices picking the right one is quite difficult.

So, here is the list of multi-client IM iPhone apps I am currently running in parallel:

• fring: Skype, GoogleTalk, MSN, ICQ, Twitter, Yahoo, SIP, AIM
• Nimbuzz!: WindowsLive, Skype, Yahoo, Facebook, GoogleTalk, AIM, MySpace, ICQ, and a couple more
• Palringo: WindowsLive, Yahoo, AOL, ICQ, XMPP, GoogleTalk, Facebook
• eBuddy: MSN, Yahoo, AIM, GoogleTalk, Facebook, ICQ, MySpace

You can use different criteria to pick the right multi-client IM iPhone app:

• support for the services you are using
• push notifications
• per-account advanced settings
• price: most of the above apps are free. Palringo and eBuddy are the only one that have also a payed version offering a couple more features.

Anyway, I am wondering if you have any favorite(s) you’d like to recommend?

UStream iPhone App: Does It Really Work?

I don’t seem to get it to work (not even over WiFi). Not to mention the search…

I am wondering if at least the new launched Android version works.

Read more articles about working iPhone apps from the iPhone apps reviews series.

Using InstaPaper to Improve Blogging Habits

It has been a while since I’ve looked at iPhone apps that allow access to web pages in offline mode and that’s only because I’ve been quite happy with the combination of ReadIt Later and Yummy (you can read more about how I use them in this post Yummy and Read It Later).

Anyway, in my attempt to improve my blogging habits I thought I should set up a different flow that would allow to stay focused. So, right now I am using a combination of Google Reader (if you are not a regular reader of this blog you might want to check my posts on Google Reader linked in the resources section) and InstaPaper for tracking the topics I’d like to further investigate. think and write about. There are only a couple of days since I’ve started to use this setup, but so far it looks to work pretty well.

Unfortunately due to this error in the AppStore I payed for InstaPaper twice and now I’m wondering if there is a way to donate one of the versions to somebody else (or in the worst case to get a reimbursement). Any ideas?

If you like the idea of a nice editor for writing, you can take a look at Ommwriter: a Mac writer tool, which is a new possible alternative for WriteRoom. And there is always ☞ JDarkRoom alternative.

iPhone Tumblr App 1.1 Finally Available

It looks like the new iPhone Tumblr app version 1.1 is available now on the AppStore. I have already installed it and I’m gonna compare the list of new features with my wishlist.

“

The first missing feature I’ve noticed is the lack of photo upload for text posts. I still had to rely on the old trick of creating a private Image post and then reference that image from the text post (nb getting the image URI might be quite tricky though)

So, here is a quick status update on the features from my iPhone Tumblr 1.1 app wishlist:

1. Custom iPhone bookmarklet that triggers the app: there is a mention of a new bookmarklet for links, but I couldn’t find any additional information. Anyone found anything related to this?
2. Multiple drafts and Queueing posts: these features seem to be present in the Tumblr 1.1 version
3. Editable access: available in this new version (1.1)
4. Sync or Offline mode: not sure this works. Basically it would offer the user the possibility to continue to write posts while the iPhone is not connected and then once online all these updates will be pushed live. There is a mention of “Save for late”, but I’m not sure these are equivalent.
5. Multiple photo posts: not supported yet.
6. Text entry image support: not supported yet

Bottom line, it looks like most of my bets were correct and the new iPhone Tumblr 1.1 app will offer a better experience for the users.

Update: Related to “Save for late” functionality, it will allow you to create 1 offline post of each type, but there’s no support for multiple offline/temporary posts.

Update: Darn iTunes doesn’t allow me to copy text so here is a screenshot of the iPhone Tumblr 1.1 app release notes

Read more articles from the iPhone apps reviews series.

Everything Is Now Augmented Reality

These days if it’s not about real-time web or the next iPhone killer, then it is definitely about augmented reality.

Maybe I am not reading correctly the ☞ ReadWriteWeb post about the junaio iPhone app, but my impression is that the app is just a pure photo enhancing app. And that’s not new at all if you consider apps like Captions ( ☞ AppStore link) have existed for a while.

Continue to read other articles from the iPhone apps reviews series.