The iPhone Blog: 2011

Saturday, January 29, 2011

App review: VLC Streamer Free from your Mac or PC!

iOS Universal

Sit anywhere in your house and watch movies or TV shows on your iPhone, iPod or iPad.
✔ Streamed over wifi
✔ Directly from your computer (Mac or PC)

❛Can these guys do no wrong? Seriously, if only other app devs knew how to make apps as well as these guys, the world would be a better place. Or at least my device would be less buggy. I was just watching a Full HD copy of Avatar Extended Edition being streamed from my PC on my iPod Touch 2nd Generation and it looked and played amazingly.❜
- UK Reviewer

This is a free version of VLC Streamer which is supported by adverts.

VLC Streamer uses the power of VLC to stream your movies to your device. You can watch anything from your movie collection. No need for complex conversion processes. No need to manually transfer movies to your device.

There are a huge number of movie formats, and VLC can convert most of them - but it can't convert everything. If you have any doubts, then please try the free version of this application first.

• Features include •

- Supports Windows, XP, Vista, Windows 7
- Supports Mac OS 10.5 and above
- Free helper app gets you streaming quickly
and allows you to Browse local drives, and Windows network shares
- Support for multiple resolutions and streaming quality levels
- Live streaming of video after a few seconds of processing
(assumes a reasonably powered computer)

• Response to feedback •

-If you do have any problems streaming movies, then please just check the help instructions in the app. Feel free to drop me an email (my personal mail is in the app) if you need help.

- VLC Streamer will not play DRM protected videos. Videos from the iTunes store do include DRM.
- VLC Streamer is designed to work on your local network, and the free helper app has to run on your Mac or PC.

Enjoy!

Friday, January 21, 2011

How-to: Make Custom IPhone Ringtones Without Paying Apple $$$s

Make Custom iPhone Ringtones for Free

So you bought an iPhone. You love the phone and all its features, but wish you didn't have to pay for your songs twice to get a ringtone. There are plenty of songs in your music library, but no way to make ringtones from any of them. Or is there? Actually, with a little bit of trickery (nothing illegal), you can create ringtones from any one of your non-DRM songs in your iTunes library easily and for free. This works on both Mac and Windows PCs.

*Please note: There may be differences among all the possible combinations of iTunes versions and operating system versions (see Tips for a way to work around the syncing issues).

Instructions:

Open iTunes.

Find the song that you want to make into a ringtone.

Listen to the song and find the part of it you want to use. The chorus may be a good place to start.

Write down the start and stop times of the clip.

Right-click the song and select "Get Info."

Click the "Options" tab.

Type in the start time of your ringtone in the text box next to "Start Time" in the minutes:seconds (i.e., 2:01) format.

Type in the end time of your ringtone in the text box next to "Stop Time." Make sure the ringtone is no more than 40 seconds long.

Click "OK."

Right-click your song again and select "Convert Selection to AAC." Wait for iTunes to convert your song. It will create a duplicate version.

Right-click the ringtone and select "Delete."

Click on the "Keep Files" button.

Find the file. It's usually in your User folder under "Music > iTunes > iTunes Music" and under the band's name. It will have an extension of m4a.

Replace the m4a extension of your ringtone with m4r. You can either double-click slowly to rename your file, or right-click and select "Get Info" on a Mac or "Rename" on a Windows PC.

Click "Use .m4r" or the PC equivalent when the system warns you that the change may affect the use of your file.

Double-click the ringtone file. ITunes will automatically add it to your ringtones folder in your iTunes Music Library.

Connect your iPhone and sync your ringtones.

NetTalk iPhone app offers free US/Canada calls

netTalk, a VoIP service provider, has released an app offering free calls to the U.S. and Canada on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. netTALK is known for its DUO product, a device that transforms your broadband internet connection into a phone line allowing you to use a traditional phone connected to your router or to your computer via USB to make phone calls, which was released earlier this year. The free netTALK app hit the App Store this week and works on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch running iOS 3.1 or higher.

The app’s full feature list is as follows:

Free calling to the US and Canada
Connectivity through WIFI/3G/Edge
Record conversations
Import your contacts from your phone
Receive customized support through 611
Dial 2663 for FREE conference calling bridge
Free 411 Directory Assistance
Integrated contacts from the phone
Favorite Contacts

netTALK promises that low-cost international calling is coming soon. Users of the company’s DUO product will also be able to link their DUO phone number to the app in order to receive calls through it.

Using the app requires you to sign up for a free netTALK account – you’re directed to Safari to create it and you’ll receive an email with a verification link to activate your account. Once this is done, you can make free calls at will through the app. In-call options include speakerphone and mute as well as a call recording option. Recorded calls can be accessed within the app via the call history list in the Recents tab.

We tested netTALK briefly on our iPhone 4 and iPad on both Wi-Fi and 3G networks and the app works generally as expected though call quality wasn’t perfect. Note that calls made using the netTALK app will show up as “unknown” or an unidentifiable number through Caller ID on the receiving end.

Source: http://appshopper.com/blog/2010/10/29/nettalk-brings-free-calls-to-iphone-and-ipad/

NetTalk iPhone app offers free US/Canada calls - a must have!

The app’s full feature list is as follows:

Free calling to the US and Canada
Connectivity through WIFI/3G/Edge
Record conversations
Import your contacts from your phone
Receive customized support through 611
Dial 2663 for FREE conference calling bridge
Free 411 Directory Assistance
Integrated contacts from the phone
Favorite Contacts

Source: http://appshopper.com/blog/2010/10/29/nettalk-brings-free-calls-to-iphone-and-ipad/

Thursday, January 20, 2011

App review: Google Latitude iPhone App

Google Latitude has been available for the iPhone since July 2009 but only as a web app instead of a native iOS application. Now, after briefly appearing in the App Store

last week, and being quickly pulled, the iOS Latitude app is finally available in all its glory.

Version 2.0.0.346 of the app – a slightly odd version number for a new application, revealing how long it took for the app to be ready for prime time or for Apple to approve it – brings exactly what you would expect: it displays a map telling you where your friends are.

The app requires iOS 4.0 or later and works on the third and fourth generation of iPod touch, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4.0, as well as iPad.

Read more: http://mashable.com/2010/12/13/google-latitude-iphone-app-available/

App review: Adobe Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone

We all know the iPhone camera isn't the best, we also know that chances are you take pictures that are good, but maybe need a little help on the improving side. Yep, there is an app for that. But has the imaging software company cracked it, or is this one Adobe app you shouldn't bother to download?

Available for the iPhone, the app is currently free, however isn't available in other countries like the UK. You can however get it on Windows Phone handsets.

Fire it up and you are presented with three main options: edit a photo, view your online Photoshop.com gallery and upload your images to the service.

Opt for the editing process and you can either select a photo from your camera roll or take a fresh photo to then edit. Once you've got your photo loaded you can then start manipulating it. There are a plethora of options from cropping (1:1, 3:4, 4:3 ratios or custom) to rotating your image to flipping horizontally or vertically.

But it's not just about cropping out the random dude in your photo, Exposure, Saturation, Tint and Black & White are also available to you. All the editing features are controlled via your finger simply by moving it from one side of the screen to the other. The editing process is incredibly easy and luckily Adobe has thought to add a numbering or colouring system to each editing filter so you can achieve the same settings each time on different pictures. You can't punch that in as a number, but at least you can replicate it.

All that's good, but where would a photo editor be without the ability to create crazy image effects? Here you get a range of them. Two - Sketch and Soft Focus - will actually change the image drastically, with the Sketch option making it look like a drawing. The other photo effects are based on colour washes, most of which are fun rather than useful. We can't really see you wanting to "Rainbow" or "Pop" many pictures (see images for example), however used on the right photo and Black & White, Warm Vintage, and Vignette Blur could be very handy.

Once you've created and edited your work of art you can then save it to your Camera Roll as a new image or chose to upload it to Photoshop.com, Adobe's picture service. As you would expect the app gives you access to that space so you can view images stored on the service and you get 2GB free with the option to add more storage at a price.

Uploading is simple but limited as you can only upload your image to the Photoshop.com service. There is no social networking functionality, no Flickr support, no Facebook support, no nothing. It's a shame because if you want to do upload anywhere else you have to come out of that app and then start up another app (i.e., Facebook) to get the job done. It's no biggie, but it would have been nice to have been able to do it from the one application.

With live access to your Photoshop.com galleries you can then bore the world with your favourite images from the palm of your hand and you can play albums and images as a slideshow, but you can't play it back to music or anything.

On the PC or Mac you can access the site via a standard browser.

Verdict

The Photoshop Mobile for iPhone app is impressive when it comes to editing your images, especially as it is free.

The big catch is that it is isolated to the one service, something that makes this more of an advert for Photoshop.com rather than an all powerful imaging app that will make you dump all the others you've downloaded on your phone.

If that doesn't bother you and you just want a basic image editor with some fun features then you might as well give it a spin, after all it's not going to cost you anything.