I know I’ve been posting some really cool conceptual items for the pieces of fabulous, but this week I’m going to come back down to earth and feature something that you can actually go out and buy right now.  This week’s piece of fabulous is – the iPhone 4 Bumper.  I was inspired to write about this wonderful overpriced piece of plastic when I dropped my iPhone 4 for the first time today.  Having heard about the reception issues the day before, on launch day I picked up a Bumper with my new iPhone 4.  Since then the Bumper has hardly left the phone’s side, save for a couple of times I took it off to show people the beauty of the design of the phone itself.  Now the only time I take the bumper off is when I’m in the car and I want to put my phone in my TomTom car kit.  While it’s a pain to pop it on and off, I’ve gotten into the habit of taking off and putting on the Bumper whenever I get in and out of my car.  Well I was in a hurry today and decided to skip putting the bumper back on when i got out of my car to run some errands.  I was walking back to my car when I decided to whip out my phone to look something up, I guess I whipped it out too fast and, in slow motion, the phone began to slip from my fingers, it bobbled around in my hands as I tried to get a grip on it but alas, it dropped to the cement (causing a surprising sound of plastic hitting the ground – I was expecting a glass or metal-on-cement sound). After getting over my initial shock I picked up the phone and inspected it carefully.  The damage was much less than I was expecting, the only areas that were scuffed where the edges of the hard plastic on the back corners of the phone.  ”Hmm”, I thought, “right about where my bumper would have been”.  And that, my friends is how the iPhone 4 Bumper became the Piece of Fabulous for the week.  Yes, it’s overpriced but it provides the most crucial protection – to the sides and corners of the phone.  Add in the fact that it mitigates the antenna issues and you have yourself a fabulous case.  If you recently bought an iPhone 4 and don’t have a Bumper, don’t forget to order by September 30th and you’ll get it for free – thanks Steve!

Do you have an Bumper?  What do you think about it?  What’s your favorite case? Let us know in the comments.

Selena Narayanasamy is extensively involved in all things technology, social media, blogging/writing, entrepreneurship and productivity related. When she’s not dabbling in any of the above mentioned things, you can find her drinking her life substance (coffee) and blogging on Search Engine Journal and her website, Esvienne. Follow her on Twitter- @esvienne and@selenavidya, and like her on Facebook.

How many times are you walking through a store, and you see something awesome that you want? Then you look at the price and see it’s about $40.00 more than you want to pay? This happens to me a lot. Not because I have expensive taste, but because it seems everywhere you look, people are trying to make money and up the prices on items.

RedLaser for iPhone fixes that problem. I spent many an hour scanning things just for the fun of it. It’s impossibly accurate and can literally scan almost anything that has a barcode.

The way it works, is you open up the application and hold the scanner far enough away- so that it hits the left and right side of the barcode. It then scans the item and lets you know what it is.

• From there, you can:
• comparison shop (online and local)
• find books in different libraries
• check for food allergens
• search electronic reviews online.

Checking for food allergens is probably one of the biggest selling points of this free application, mainly because it’s impossible to find ingredients on some foods, and others don’t display everything. If you’re allergic to something that isn’t typical, this application will help you find it and possibly prevent you from eating it and having a reaction.

For books, I always find it nice to be able to find another place where you can borrow the book instead of buying it. I’m not sure how many people actually use libraries anymore (with the nook, e-reader, ipad etc) but I still love to go there and take out a book- because you can risk it being horrible and it’s free

Sometimes barcodes like to be bad- If the barcode can’t be read, for some reason, you can also enter the number in manually.

This app really is a must-have for the shopper. It provides you with so much information to help you make a calculated decision before you accidentally get ripped off buying something. Oh yeah, and it’s fun to scan things for absolutely no reason, too

This week’s featured app is brought to you by the developers at LightPillar.  The Touch LCD Designer Speaking Clock is by and large the best alarm clock app out there for both the iPhone and the iPad.  Recently I did some redecorating in my room, which allowed me to clear my laptop off of my nightstand.  With all that empty space I figured it would be the perfect spot for my shiny new iPad which wasn’t getting nearly as much use as I had originally anticipated.  I also decided to have my iPhone (which was my alarm clock) next to my laptop at night to allow it to charge and sync.  With my old alarm clock on the other side of the room I figured I would investigate alarm clock apps for my iPad.  I came across the Touch LCD Designer Speaking Clock and it was love at first site.  Read on to hear why…

Simple Layout

I love the simplicity of the layout of this clock, you can view it in landscape or portrait mode and can, to an extent, adjust the font and layout of the clock itself.  While the display is simple there are many options and configurations to allow for full customization.  The display is divided into three sections and with different viewing options for each line you can customize your clock to show as much or as little detail as you like.  For example, at the very top of the screen you can set your clock to display the time for your next alarm and the amount of time left until that alarm goes off.  Need to know what time it is in another time zone?  You can set that bar to show the time in whatever time zone you choose.  If you prefer a more simple display you can keep the top part of the display blank.  The middle section is the actual clock, you can adjust how the time is displayed by scrolling trhough the preset designs.  The bottom section is dedicated to showing the date in whichever format you prefer.

Night Mode

I prefer to have my bedside clocks lit all night so I can turn over and get the time at a glance, but one thing I’ve always hated about the traditional digital clocks is the bright light it casts in the room.  Touch LCD Designer Speaking Clock has a night mode to prevent just that.  You can adjust the brightness in night mode and it’s activated with one tap of the screen.

Speaking Clock

Well with a name like “Touch LCD Designer Speaking Clock” you would expect the clock to speak right?  Well not only does this app speak but you can also adjust how and when it speaks to you.  One of my favorite settings is ‘tap to speak’ where all you have to do is tap anywhere on the screen and a nice male computer voice tells you the time.  You can even set how he tells you the time i.e., “the time is 10:30 pm” or “the time is half past ten”.  So now I don’t even have to open my eyes when I need to know the time, I just tap and I hear it.  You can also set the clock to speak at hourly, quarterly and half hourly intervals, it can speak the time when your alarm goes off and you can silence the “speak time” option when the clock is in night mode to prevent unwanted wake ups.  One thing I would ask the developers though is that there is an option of a female voice.

Wake Up Test

Probably one of my favorite features of this app is the “wake up test”.  The wake up test feature requires you to follow a set of simple instructions to turn off the alarm.  How many times have you found yourself accidentally turning off your alarm in your sleep?  I’ve done that far too many times to count.  The wake up test actually requires me to wake up by requiring me to tap numbers in various spots on the screen in order to dismiss my alarm.  While I can easily go back to sleep  after passing the test that requirement wakes me up just enough to prevent me from falling back into a deep sleep.

The Touch LCD Designer Speaking Clock has a plethora of features, far too many to discuss here, if you would like to see a full list of features check out their site (which includes a link to a pdf users guide).  I have to thank LightPillar for creating such a great app, I look forward to more apps from them soon.

Do you use Touch LCD?  What’s your experience?  Do you love/hate it?  Let us know in the comments.

On my quest for a new desktop RSS reader I came across Socialite.  Made RealMacSoftware, the same group who brought us RapidWeaver and LittleSnapper, Socialite is basically a social network aggregator that also incorporates an RSS feed reader.  What originally drew me to Socialite was the ability to combine all of my social network accounts in one place along with my Google Reader account.  I used it for a couple of weeks and really enjoyed it but, it being in beta, I found it to have some bugs that were too obtrusive to ignore.  So off I went again, looking for another solution to my problem.  I quickly stumbled upon Gruml which is now fast becoming my favorite desktop app.

What is Gruml?  it’s a desktop RSS reader for Mac.  You can sync Gruml with your Google Reader account and can do just about anything in Gruml that you can do in Google Reader.   So what makes Gruml one of the best desktop feed readers I’ve used?

Open Tabs in Background

One thing I really didn’t like about Socialite was that when I clicked on any link it would bring up my default browser (Chrome) and open a new tab.  While that’s a nice feature, many times I find myself opening multiple articles in a row to read so having to switch between applications every time I want to open a new link can be tedious.  With Gruml, if I click on the link to an article it opens a tab within Gruml but in the background so I can click on as many links to articles as I want, they open in tabs behind the default view and I can scroll through the tabs at my leisure.

Share to Any Social Network/Bookmarking Site

This has to be one of my favorite features of Gruml, it’s extremely easy to share articles to all of your most used social networks and bookmarking sites.  All I have to do is highlight the article hit command-I and it’s instantly shared to my Instapaper account.  Along with Instapaper you can share articles to networks like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Diigo, StumbleUpon and more.  In total you can share articles to 14 different bookmarking sites and social networks.  

Works with Growl

Any desktop app that has the ability to integrate with Growl gets extra brownie points automatically.  I love Growl and the fact that I can get unobtrusive reminders that one of my feeds has been updated on my desktop is invaluable.  If you’re so inclined, you can pass on this feature by simply changing the settings in the preference pane.

Customizations Galore!

Speaking of the preference pane, let’s take a look at that.  While at first glance it may seem simple Gruml’s preferences allow for lots of customization.  You can customize how the title bar of the article preview looks, and the font and size of the text within the app (for example you can change the way the titles of the articles look within the unread articles list).  On top of that you can customize which default buttons you want on the toolbar and adjust the window pane view to your liking.  I a big fan of being able to adjust apps to work and look exactly the way I want and with Gruml’s preferences I’m able to do just that.

There are plenty of other great reasons to love Gruml but those you’ll have to discover for yourself.  If you’re looking for an effective method of managing and viewing your Google Reader items through your Mac desktop, look no further than Gruml.

Do you use Socialite or Gruml?  Which do you prefer?  What do you like about Gruml?  Let us know in the comments.

Midnight Inbox is the epitome of self organization. So much so, that I’m still learning to use it. I’ve chosen to make this iPad app of the week (and soon, iPhone app of the week- it’s in production) because it really gets down and dirty when it comes to collecting, organizing, reviewing and completing tasks.

Midnight Inbox is not only available for the iPad… ohhhh no it’s not. It originally started out as a desktop version (which is what I’ve attempted to learn on) and I just realized that they pushed it onto the iPad too. I must admit, I like the iPad interface much better. Mainly because they updated the icons so they’re pretty and colorful like this:

What does it do!?

Midnight Inbox gives you the ability to record any kind of thought you have, organize it in any way you want, and acts as a check and balance system to make sure you’re completing them. Asking questions like, “is this actionable?” helps Midnight Inbox decide whether to incubate your task or put it in for review to make sure it’s complete.

I think the best thing about Midnight Inbox is the fact that is organizes your brain for you. If you’re thinking about something really quickly, you have a section where you can write a note and incubate it. It treats it like a backburner idea.

There are so many different screens and features that I can’t possibly fit all of them on here without you completely losing interest. The screenshot above shows a calendar where you can set daily reviews- which will go through tasks day by day to make sure you’re completing them. There’s also a weekly review, which will occur… *gasp* weekly! I know you’re on to this so I won’t go any further.

It also has the ability to separate different task lists- so you can have a review list running for the office, one for home, one for school… or whatever you need it for. This way, you don’t have everything clumped on one calendar. I don’t know about you, but having all my tasks staring me in the face with no distinction from one another makes me want to rip my face off

Do you have a yak?

The “yak timer” has to be my most favorite feature. I must admit that I’ve never been yelled at by my electronic devices until I started using this program. On that note, I’ve never been asked if my attention is elsewhere because I’m shaving a yak.

…I wonder how long it would take one to shave a yak? Perhaps I should put it in my midnight inbox for a fun saturday task.

If you want to organize your face off, you can find Midnight Inbox for your awesome iPad in iTunes for 1/2 off – it comes to $14.99. The desktop version is currently at $35.00, and the iPhone version will be released shortly.

]]> http://www.geekulous.com/2010/07/12/ipad-app-of-the-week-midnight-inbox-touch-1-0/feed/ 0 http://www.geekulous.com/2010/07/05/iphone-app-of-the-week-dropbox/ http://www.geekulous.com/2010/07/05/iphone-app-of-the-week-dropbox/#comments Tue, 06 Jul 2010 02:10:09 +0000 Selena http://www.geekulous.com/?p=366 Selena Narayanasamy is extensively involved in all things technology, social media, blogging/writing, entrepreneurship and productivity related. When she’s not dabbling in any of the above mentioned things, you can find her drinking her life substance (coffee) and blogging on Search Engine Journal and her website, Esvienne. Follow her on Twitter- @esvienne and @selenavidya, and like her on Facebook.

Picture this. You’re at the office, working along happily on some documents. You figure that even though you haven’t finished writing, you can always work on it at home. You plan on attaching it to yourself in an email…

…but wait. If you’re anything like me, you probably forgot to send it to yourself. This poses a big problem- especially when it’s something that’s urgent for the next day.

So what has been saving my life these hectic workdays? A little somethin’ somethin’ called Dropbox. That’s why it’s the iPhone app of the week. So… what is Dropbox?

I discovered this a few weeks ago (even though it’s been around for a while) and it’s a file syncing system that you can use on both Windows and Mac OSX. The other sweet detail about this is that it also has mobile apps for Blackberry, iPhone, Android and the iPad. I can now be a workaholic from my iPhone and iPad. THANKS DROPBOX

The web interface, that syncs files with the app, is pretty sleek and simple. If you’re on the computer where you have Dropbox installed, you simply drag and drop a folder/file into it…and that’s that.

Now, when I start a document at work and stupidly forget to email it to myself, I can access Dropbox 80 billion different ways and completely save my butt.

So why does Dropbox increase your productivity? These are some awesome features that it has:

• Easy drag-n-drop feature for your computer application
• Offline access for the iPhone app
• Changes sync instantly
• Ability to work on the web app if you’re not on your personal computer

If you right click a folder in Dropbox, you’ll also notice that you have the ability to:

• Share file- even with non Dropbox users through public URL
• View previous versions of documents
• Share folders with other Dropbox users- it’ll appear in their own box

On a Mac, you even have an icon in the finder window because it treats it like its own personal drive. You’ll see in my screenshot that I actually have the iDisk icon for my Dropbox  icon. It’s actually not like that originally. If you want to do this (so it looks prettier) follow these steps. It’s pretty simple-

1. Right click Dropbox icon in your finder sidebar and hit “get info”
2. Right click your iDisk icon in the finder sidebar and hit “get info”
3. Click on the iDisk icon in the info window and hit Command C
4. Click on the icon for Dropbox in its info window and hit Command V

Voila! It’s not rocket science but it’s a neat tip that I figured I would share.

If you’re syncing with the iPhone app, you can access anything that you would normally be able to from your computer/web app, as well as “star” them so you can access them if your phone is offline. This comes in handy if you’re getting really awful reception and absolutely need to see a file.

They have a free version which allows you to hog 2GB of storage- as well as paid versions.

I highly recommend Dropbox because it’s made my life so much easier. Not to mention, saved my butt. THAT is why it’s iPhone app of the week!

Ric Dragon is an artist/painter, jazz drummer, and CEO and chief strategist for DragonSearch, a provider of internet marketing services to Loehmanns, Steuben, and many other clients.

Just last week my business partner, Don, was telling me that I needed to acquire the iPad. “Remember how the iPhone changed your relationship to Twitter? Well, the iPad is going to do the same for other things”. I knew that I had a vacation coming up, and that vacations in general can be the best time to get accustomed to new gadgetry. And, when Don talks with that certain conviction-in-the-voice, I know to listen, and heh, who really needs to have their arm twisted to get a new gadget?  So, I got one.

Before I left for vacation, I chatted with Jim Edelstein from 33Oxclove, a neighboring company that produces all of the websites for a major New York museum.  As part of his job, Jim spends an incredible amount of time in meetings with museum curators, vendors, and employees.  You might even say he is a professional note taker.  Jim suggested that I get an app called “Note Taker HD” along with a stylus.  He demonstrated how simple it is to take notes, and send them to others at the end of a meeting.

The stylus actually ended up being difficult to purchase – they aren’t to be found at your local Best Buy, and I didn’t have time for an overnight shipment. Fortunately, there was an Apple store in Holyoke, a town we’d be driving through on the way to Cape Cod.  I purchased a Pogo Sketch Stylus for just about $15.  Any cool points I might have gotten were offset by the fact that the only available color that day was pink – entertaining my son to no end.   While all three of the apps I discuss can be used without a stylus, with it, they are the proverbial “killer apps”.

Autodesk Sketchbook Pro

The first app I downloaded, though, was Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro, a drawing program.  As an artist of over 30 years, the Sketchbook Pro/iPad/Stylus combination is the first piece of technology that has really gotten me excited.  It’s one thing to sit at a desktop with a drawing tablet, another to be able to sit on a park bench and draw.   This is the cat’s pajamas, the bee’s knees, and the best thing since sliced bread.  Oh, and did I tell you, I really like it.

The majority of functions I’d consider to be de rigueur in any graphics program: different brush tips, color selectors, and of course, the ability to erase.  But Sketchbook Pro also has layers, allowing you to build up different parts of an image, and maintain the ability to go back. The only change I would request on this app is that the user be able to switch more easily between drawing and erasing.

A side note: My vacation is being a houseparent at a summer camp my son is attending for string quartet musicians. I can tell you from past experience, drawing at concerts is not usually embraced by musicians – at least not when they can hear that pencil scratching away.  The stylus on the iPad is perfectly silent.

iThoughts HD

I love mind mapping.  I have filled many a whiteboard up with mind maps.  I think there is an element of “media determinism” about it – that is, the media invokes a way of thinking that nothing else quite does.  In mind mapping, you start with a central idea. From there, you stub out associated ideas – and do the same with those “sub ideas”, repeating until you run out of associations.

I could use the Sketchbook Pro tool to draw mind maps, but a real mind mapping tool does something a little different.  That’s why I find iThoughts HD to be so useful. First, it’s easy to move elements around.  There is also a built-in hierarchy of elements, while sometimes limiting, helps me to clarify my thinking.  Also, with this app, you can collapse entire nodes, and focus on other nodes.

The ability to change colors adds a dimension that can be used for a variety of concepts – such as urgency.

Note Taker HD

This is the app about which Jim was telling me and one that he uses daily.  Since I’m away from the office, I haven’t had a chance to field-test this in an actual meeting.  I am, along with most people I know, a consummate note-taker.  With me, it’s the activity of writing notes that helps me, somehow placing those thoughts in a different part of my brain.  On the other hand, it could be nice to reference notes – something I often have a great deal of difficulty doing.  Note Taker HD has a few extra features… notably, an edit screen where you can see the overall sheet of notes (thus rather small), while writing into a close-up view area.  If you work in the close-up view, you can just click “advance” to the next section of the note.

For me, the iPhone really was a game changer vis-à-vis social media.  Tweeting from the desktop was never going to make sense for me – I’m always too wrapped up in other activities.  With the iPhone, it became something I could do in those little moments in-between. Add the camera to that, and you’ve got a veritable social media device.  The iPad lacks a camera, keeping it from being a social-media-killer- device– but with apps like the ones I describe above; it should prove to be a work horse nevertheless.  My problem now is I’m burdened with several devices.  Perhaps I’ll pull out the mind map app and figure this out.

What are your favorite iPad apps?  Do you use these apps, what’s your experience with them?  Let us know in the comments.

iOS4

So, why do I love this thing so much?  Well for all of you who say it’s just a big iPhone lacking the phone capabilites I would have to agree with you, but that’s exactly what I wanted.  So many times throughout the day I’ve found myself looking at my iPhone’s small screen trying to stay up to date on all the goings on in the tech world.  The iPad makes it so much easier, it’s so easy on the eyes, the screen is beautiful and the apps that are being created and updated specifically for the device are, in a word, stunning.  The iPad has not left my side since I brought it home from the Apple store.  As new apps are added I’ll be sure to review them and any other accessories I get for my new toy.  So that’s my take on the device stay tuned for a iPad App of the Week article coming soon.  What about you?  Do you have/like/love/hate the iPad?  Let us know in the comments.