iPhone App 4 That

GPS Promo Code Giveaway!

iphoneapp4that — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:04:00 +0000

How to get your choice of promo code:

Option 1:

Post in the comments which app promo code you want and why? Ex. what feature you like and need the most, what will be your main use of the app, etc. (please use an approved account or leave your email or copy and paste your submission in an email to me so I can contact you if you win)

Option 2:

Follow Me and your app developer of choice (the app you want the code for) and tweet:

Win a promo code from @iPhoneApp4That for @Garafa, @MotionX, @iPhoneTrails at 150 followers. More details at http://tiny.cc/qlcP5

After either or both of these options (enter both options for more than one chance to win) are completed wait for the random, yes random generated selection that will begin when I have 150 follower on twitter or 10 comments on this post. There will be as many winners as needed till the promo codes are gone, your choice of app, while supplies last.

To help you decide which app is for you read the rest of the post:

Each of these apps have features that the others don’t, so if your in search for the best Garmin Replacement App for your iPhone just take note of the above table and figure out what features are more important to you. I would also look to the developers web sites, facebook pages, or twitter accounts as they tend to mention what features they are planning on adding. I would also like to invite the developers to contact me with a possible feature roadmap, that I would love to add to this post. Having said that, I have immersed my self in these apps enough to see what I like and don’t like so the following is a list of Pros and Cons according to me.

GPS Kit

Pros:

-Google Terrain Maps:

First and foremost I love google terrain maps, they are critical for outdoor use, hiking, mountain biking, geocaching, and just anything outdoors that you may need topographic maps for. But these aren’t regular topo maps. Check them out.

- Fast User Interface:

GPS Kit also has a lot going for them on there user interface (UI), they use a default iPhone scheme leaving the tabs at the bottom and tool bar up top. What this does is make all the pages easily, one click, accessible from any other screen. I must also mention that I love the Dashboard tab as it lets me customize (many customization options) the dashboard with the info I want depending on that activity I am doing. Overall a very friendly UI.

- GPX Import:

Each user of GPS Kit gets there own web space to upload and store tracks and waypoints. No Limit. And can easily access those from within the app.

- Hidden Radar Feature:

GPS Kit is currently testing and improving a feature called Radar that will show your position to your friends, and vice versa, that are on the same channel as you (channels are much like channels on a two way radio only with more channels). You will be able to see there live position, display name (and associated color), and current speed. Of course this feature is still in testing but does work quite well, and obviously only when a network connection is available.

Cons:

- Bug:

The current app store version has a bug that causes it to crash.

- Cache:

Not sure if this is the same bug as above but I have found that if the map cache has about 10MB or more in it the app will crash at times.

Note: Garafa has mentioned that the infamous Apple has rejected there last revision and that is what is causing the delay to fix the bug.

MotionX GPS

Pros:

- Maps:

Has so many options for maps it isn’t funny. Why is this good, well the other day google maps were down and in a pinch what do you do? In MotionX all you have to do is select the Bing or Open Maps.

- Compass:

If MotionX were to make the compass page in this app its own app I would buy it, and it would be the best compass app in the app store. The compass lets you choose three different bearing modes, magnometer (3GS only), Auto mode (3GS only), and a mode for all iPhone taking data from the GPS chip. the Compass also shows the distance to the selected waypoint along with other essential stats. Also has the option to change from Manetic to True North, and from Rhumb Line to Great Circle navigation.

- iTunes controls:

While I thought all my music needs were handled with the double click of the home button, I was mistaken when I saw the itunes controls in this app! I can select playlist and even make my own for the right outdoor mood!

Cons:

- User interface:

While I enjoy the clean and polished looking UI that this app has, I find navigating it to be slightly slower than desired. To navigate to the next page it is just one click which is perfect but if the page you want is two or three away then you have two or three click to get to it. They do have a click and hold on the arrow button that remedies this but still not as fast to navigate the UI as some may like.

- Display info:

I like my GPS data displayed in on place, or as few as possible. MotionX has split a lot of the data into three pages. Compass page for direction (etc.). Track Recorder page for speed and distance info. GPS Status page for location info, altitude, accuracy and other stats. I feel that they could easily skip the ‘Tips’ box and shrink some large buttons and display boxes to give all the GPS data on one or two pages.

Trails

Pros:

- Track Editing:

Anyone that wants to edit there track, not just waypoints but edit the tracks, this is the app for them. I love the ability to name a waypoint in my track, Trailhead or whatever it may be, to further describe the track for later use. Great feature.

- Elevation Graph:

Ok now I thought I didn’t care for much to have this feature but Trails implemented it so well I feel that I can’t live without it! The graph is a small tab on the side on the screen that when touched scrolls out for an overall graph of the tracks elevation. This is great for outdoor activities in which you are following a track or just want to know how much you have ascended and descended and the end of the activity. One thought would be to allow the phone to rotate landscape and be able to see the graph fullscreen and possibly with more details.

- Track Import:

I have grown to love the ability to import the track by just searching from one of the built in sites. EveryTrail, MapMyRun, Bikely.com and Other URL. Much faster and easier than finding them on the computer and getting them on the phone.

- Tuning:

Trails allows for the fine adjustment of how often data is collected. This feature is why I marked the above table showing a low power mode for this app, by changing the amount the app collects data the battery will last longer.

Cons:

- Information:

I find that Trails is missing much of the needed GPS data. It only provides, distance, altitude, speed, pace, and duration on the navigation screen. No compass or bearing data or anything else. Note: it does give slightly more info about the track once not track/recording you position.

- Lack of Compass:

No compass view or page in this app.

- User interface:

I do not like the ability, or lack there of, to navigate to a different page or tab when this app is tracking you. To change a setting or download a new track or waypoint you must stop tracking.

Final Thoughts:

While I have kept an open mind while reviewing each app separately without comparing it to the others I feel I owe the readers my honest opinion as to what app I would choose. As a self proclaimed GPS Guru I purchased GPS Kit about the time it first came out and have never looked back. I paid full price for the app and while it has had its bugs I do not regret my purchase. It has a simple but powerful UI that is fully customizable with the maps, google terrain, that work best for my needs and desires. So while I will keep testing out all the apps I will primarily be using GPS Kit for all the new and exciting outdoor adventures.

GPS Kit Promo code giveaway! (via Twitter)

iphoneapp4that — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:59:00 +0000

Promo codes are awesome, I covet them but don’t hate me you want them too or you wouldn’t be here reading this. And while a promo code for a $.99 app is great a promo code for a $9.99 app is the shiznit, the bomb, awesome, sweet, groovy (yes I am aware that Earth Worm Jim is coming to the iPhone, love it!).

Being a huge user of GPS Kit, and GPS in general, and due to the fact that GPS Kit 3.2 (current App Store Release) has been somewhat ‘crashy’, I contacted the developers. After providing them with some crash logs they told me that they are aware of the bug and have pinpointed it to the iPhone OS 3.0.1. They seeded me with the current beta build and then in a follow up email they gave me some promo codes to give out. While the current version does crash on long trips, for example on my 3GS it crashed twice on my 20 mile mt. bike ride but on my friends 3G it crashed much more often. So, the promo code will get you the ‘crashy’ app but it will be updated as soon as the bugs are ironed out, and that is a $9.99 App for Free, honestly no string attached.

How to enter:

1) Follow me on twitter and watch for the promo codes to be dropped at 100 followers.

While you are here take a look at my ideas for future GPS Kit releases and give some feedback and post your ideas.

Most new features are self explanatory – in app camera, instant waypoint drop, elevation graph, and instant iPod controls on a three finger down/up swipe so that they are always available on any screen! Once again these are just my ideas and most likely will not be implemented but if you have any ideas send them to my email or twitter them to me and I will post them and hopefully just maybe some of these features will show up in future GPS Kit releases!

And no need to remind me of my crappy photochop job, I am in the middle of moving and have not found the box with my mouse and am not an experienced trackpad user!

MR: Modern Combat: Sandstorm

iphoneapp4that — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:04:00 +0000

Ok so Modern Combat: Sandstorm (MC:S) has been in the app store for just over a day and I have had the chance to play it, feel it, and taste it.

I started playing this game very differently from most games I play, instead of playing the whole thing on easy and beating it real fast, but getting board and never playing it on the normal or hard setting. Thus with the intent on prolonging the game life I started my first game on hard but attempt after attempt I failed, apparently I am not much of a gamer. I continued to try till I gave up and set the difficulty to normal. Now I was getting somewhere, still I die and have to take the tome to hide behind object to pick people off instead of just rushing out like a crazy loon with a gun.

CONTROLS:
So with my initial game play from hard to normal I was able to play with and test out all 3 of the control schemes. Coming from Brothers in Arms I really wanted the to like and use the second control set up, known as Screen Tap, as it leaves nothing permanently on the screen to get in the way but shows the controls where and when you touch the corresponding side of the screen. Now there is a small bug or quark in this set up as shooting is somewhat difficult or better put just plain wrong. At times it confuses the left side of the screen with shooting, just play it awhile you will see. The default setup is the best but far from perfect as the fire button is place in the spot that I would naturally use to move the gun sight so I end up shooting on accident, make it smaller and move fit slightly left. The 3rd setup, Virtual Sticks, has no quirks but is too slow for me to keep up with the game play. All the setups have a sensitivity slider and the option to invert the controls.

STORY:
MC:S has the standard story line that includes the occasional cutscene, typically at the beginning of a mission but sometimes is park of the game play. I am not much for story lines so the story line was sufficient for my interest but nit so much that it annoyed or subtracted from the game play.

GAME PLAY:
Aside from a few control hiccups the game plays smoothly. I do have the 3GS so as expected the game should run flawless. Though I did notice that when I selected a playlist and started the combat again the game was very choppy at first. Other than that all the specs for the game can be found on the iTunes page. Great graphics, game play is good as you can approach the same spot in a few slightly different ways to get a somewhat different out come, so I wouldn’t consider this game to be on the rails.

STORY:
MC:S has the standard story line that includes the occasional cutscene, typically at the beginning of a mission but sometimes is park of the game play, like planting bomb and the occasional cut scene to advance a mission. I am not much for story lines so the story line was sufficient for my interest but nit so much that it annoyed or subtracted from the game play.

OTHER NOTES:

Ok so I have a pet peeve when it comes to landscape games on the iPhone and that is when the game forces you to rotate the phone to the left putting the volume controls down and right where you hold the phone. This left rotated screen not only puts the volume right where my fingers are but it also makes increasing or decrease the volume backwards and it just makes sense to rotate the opposite way. I understand this as many developers most likely use an ipod touch to test the game and this issue never arrises and when they first started hearing about it they would enable it so the game could be rotated either way which was an ok fix as some would make it so you would have to switch it in the setting each time or add auto rotate that would cause the screen to flip on you when you shook your phone (Brother in Arms) but now Gameloft has the forced rotation set to be to the right in this game and still gives you the option to go left in the settings. One less annoyance!!

There is another bug in the settings>controls screen. To recreate it just slide to either the first or third control scheme and then slide your finger across the screen as if you wanted to slide to the next control scheme (don’t start the slide on the small arrow) to confirm he bug the audio will go crazy and if you got that far click the arrow again and it will show that you changed the controls scheme but the same control scheme is still there. Not a huge bug but kinda wierd.

Overall a great game, no I haven’t beat it yet just got a good feel for it and on to play Resident Evil 4.

Resident Evil 4 on SALE!

iphoneapp4that — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:43:00 +0000

I have added a few desired apps to my Bargain Bin App and though I did not get a pushed message from the app, as I set my watch price too low, I was still able to find Resident Evil 4 on sale this morning through my RSS feed for all price drops on my Byline App. So go check it out and get in on the sale before it is too late! As far as game play I had to finish some class work and I was busy playing Modern Combat: Sandstorm, but expect a few reviews soon on both RE4 and MC:S

Snow Leopard is here and on SALE!!! UPDATE

iphoneapp4that — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:06:00 +0000

Best Buy has never really been the best buy in my opinion, unless you price match of course. But Snow Leopard released today is on sale for a few dollars less – $25.00 instead of $29.99.

Some may say so what save $4.99 but to me that means I get the New Mac OS X operating system for the price of tax! Yes that is all but you have to have a Best Buy Reward zone card and coupon for $25 like I do. But either way in this economy $5 bucks is a meal, about 1.35 gallons of gas, new socks, or even a new toothbrush! Ok if you can think of something better to get with the $5 saving let me know but either way it is money saved!

Well I am off to get Snow Leopard for Free! ($25 if you don’t have a coupon)

UPDATE: With BestBuy Reward Zone coupons they don’t charge tax! Makes sense, cause they aren’t getting money so I paid nothing for Leopard and am up all night doing a clean install!!

SimplyTweet 2.0 with PUSH has it all!

iphoneapp4that — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 02:52:00 +0000

At first use I shied away from SimplyTweet due to the fact that I assumed “Simply” was meant to mean simple or lacking in features, and I love features in my iPhone Apps. But as can be seen below SimplyTweet is everything but lacking in features. After heavy use of the application I can highly recommend this app to everyone that wants the most out of a easy to use twitter app on the iPhone.

Push support is what I find to be the best. I am not totally and completely consumed in twitter and I like it that way and with SimplyTweet I am able to leave twitter and do things that are productive and useful without missing a response or DM cause it is all pushed to me on my iPhone.

While twitter is loved by some and hated by others, SimplyTweet has made an app everyone can love. SimplyTweet is chalk full of features to fully integrate twitter on your iPhone or iPod touch. Features like:

- Push notification support for Direct Messages and Mentions, showing new messages count in the application badge
- Themes
- Browse CONVERSATIONS – display the reply chain of a message all in 1 screen
- Saved views (create groups of friends, etc. Note that anyone can be added, as long as their updates are not protected)
- Saved notes for accounts
- Multiple accounts support
- HootSuite integration: importing of Twitter accounts from HootSuite
- Swipe-to-reveal shortcuts
- Perform search
- Saved searches
- Proximity Search
- Photos search
- Favorites support
- Trends support
- View your Friends timeline and Mentions timeline
- View the public Twitter timeline
- Load older tweets and direct messages
- Unread counts display
- Scroll to last read tweet
- Post tweets, RT
- Landscape drafting mode (Tweets and DMs)
- Reply to multiple people at once
- Delete tweets
- Reply to tweets
- Tweetshrink support (both tweets and DM)
- Direct messages, including browsing list recipients and autocompletion
- Saving of drafts
- Support updating of user profile within SimplyTweet
- Follow and un-follow
- Built-in web browser (including landscape mode browsing)
- Instapaper Support
- Configurable image compression for uploads
- Posterous Support (multiple photos with hashtags converted to tags)
- Posterous support for long tweets
- TwitPic support (multiple photos)
- yfrog support (multiple photos)
- TwitrPix support (multiple photos)
- img.ly support (multiple photos)
- Bookmarklet Support
- Option to change the timestamp display format
- Built-in photo viewer
- Address book access when drafting tweet and direct messages
- Opening a user profile directly (Go to User)
- Remembers most recently used hashtags across sessions

And that is just the current version. The developer Hwee-Boon at MotionObj has seeded me with the current beta version and the features list grows even more:

- Add support for uploading video (single video, optionally with

multiple photos) to Posterous and yfrog

- Built-in photo viewer now allows you to view the video (button in

toolbar) in a Posterous post

- Built-in photo viewer now supports MobyPicture

- Add support to view a user’s favorites from the account view

- Add support for search for replies (@whoever) to a user from the account view

- After picking/taking a photo for updating the user profile picture,

you are now asked to crop it to a square (since Twitter crops it

anyway, might as well do it yourself)

- If you take a photo while drafting a tweet/DM, the photo is

automatically saved to your camera roll

- When posting a picture together with a DM, the picture post will no

longer contain the DM text

- Swap the Done and Stop/reload buttons’ position

With a swipe of a finger you can reply to a tweet or choose multiple tweets to respond to. With that same swipe you can view the conversation associated with the tweet. View links in the in app web browser. See all your followers and friends with the ability to un-follow and see there details. Multiple account support, easily change between your accounts by clicking on the account name in the top navigation bar and selecting the account from a list. I can go on and on about the great features in SimplyTweet but what truly speaks for itself, in any app, is the support offered. Hwee-Boon is constantly seeding betas with new features and bug fixes, requesting feedback and support via twitter.

All in all with 3GS video support soon to be in the App Store release SimplyTweet is the right choice for every iPhone/iTouch user!

SimplyTweet $4.99

SimplyTweet Free

iPhone App 4… well not that!

iphoneapp4that — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:01:00 +0000

After all the buzz about GV Mobile and Voice Central getting pulled from the app Store and Google’s own Apps being rejected I decided to be a participant and hope you all will too by submitting a complaint!

How:

-Complain to Apple:http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

-Complain to AT&T: 1-800-331-0500

Here is my complain I lodged with Apple:

Under enhancements:

I have an idea for the app store in that apple does not limit what can be put on the iPhone, by this I mean that you stop pulling apps and rejecting apps that so called “duplicate functionality.” Many apps in the app store duplicate functionality of the built in features but they still exist why pull apps such as GV mobile and VoiceCentral, to name a few. Plus you are killing the developers, what are they to do when they get no feedback as to why it is pulled and what they can do to pass your approval process. If this keeps up I am afraid that quality developers will leave the iPhone for another platform and then I will have to leave the iPhone do to the new apps not coming out for the iPhone but for other platforms – I will get that other platform! As the App Store content is the only reason I currently dedicated to the iPhone.

I would appreciate feedback on this as I am in the process of leaning to code for the iPhone and would like to know if my efforts are being wasted.

Please feel free to notify Apple and At&t on this matter!

Easter Egg in GPS Kit 3.2 (click opens in itunes)

iphoneapp4that — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:57:00 +0000

So what is this Easter Egg:
-First off it is called “Radio” – it is a new settings option in the settings of the app. And when enabled it will ask for your consent to share your location with others, kinda like Loopt (I think I don’t use Loopt) but more of a live updating position, track, and speed shared with others.

-Name & Color Select – Change your screen name and color for your Arrow Navigation Icon and that will also be the color of your track from now on (others see the color and name also, keep name under 5 letters).

-Channel Select – from 1 Million channels, because you don’t really want to share you location with just anyone.

What else:
-You are also able to click on someone else then click the user name and send a message to them, I find this to really show how beta it is as it may take some time to get to the recipient, or just never get to them – so yes keep in mind it is a beta item.
-You can also see there current speed.

Enable It:
So just go to the setting icon in the upper right corner of the map tab and you will see a bunch of toggles and a space below the last toggle – now slide your finger back and forth without lifting several times right below the last toggle all the way across the screen (most the way across the screen) without touching the the Proximity Sensor setting or the units at the bottom. You should eventually, see Radar with a blue arrow and a toggle. Just click the blue arrow and change the settings, user name, color, and channel, Note Channel 0-0 is the default thus if you want to see others and be seen leave it on that channel, or if you have another iphone to play around with the features just set both to the same channel.

Please note that this is hidden because it needs more testing so now that more people know about it problems may arise, but I have been using if for about 4 months now with 4 other friends and aside from a few hick-ups it works, must have a connection to be able to see the location of others and to be able to broadcast your location, guess I shouldn’t have to say that but someone is bound to ask if it transmits the location over the GPS, no it doesn’t and can’t, it uses the cell or wifi signal so this feature is only operable with a signal but everything else works without a signal.

“Please restart the Phone after enabling the Radar.”

Please don’t post bogus reviews on itunes because this part of the app may not function 100%, as the dev’s did not promise these features to anyone yet, once their itunes page lists this as a feature and if it does not work then, then you can post a review about this feature. Just post here and I will see if I can figure it out or get in contact with the dev.

[CADer]