Nike+iPhone – (Nike+) Shoes = Flexibility

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I’ve been a fan of the Nike+iPod kit since day one. Although I don’t consider myself to be a runner. I am a  walker and therefore like to keep track of my walking goals and progress. When the Nike+iPod kit first came out it was a two piece kit sold by Apple and Nike. What you got in the box was a sensor that went into a special compartment in the sole of your Nike+ shoes and a receiver that attached to the dock connector on the iPod nano.

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With this combination you got music while you ran or walked, voice prompts let you know your stats and distance to go and stats that would automatically get uploaded to your Nike+ account on the web each time you’d sync your iPod. It’s GREAT!

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I’m an iPhone user though

When the iPhone came out two years ago I wasn’t really interested in carrying both an iPod and my iPhone. After all the iPhone has an iPod built-in. So I kinda got away from using my Nike+ kit. Sure I was still walking, but I just wasn’t keeping track anymore. Well when I upgraded to the iPhone 3GS, I was very happy to see that like the iPod touch (2nd gen), Apple had built-in support for the Nike+iPod integration. Now I could carry just the one device and I would no longer need the receiver attached to the dock connector. Cool! I still have my original Nike+ shoes and I started using them again. This is when I realized that I’m not always going to want to wear these shoes everywhere I go. I have nothing against Nike shoes (you should see my closet), but I just didn’t want to be limited to the one pair of shoes every time I wanted to walk and track my progress.

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Weekend Update

I thought I would share some late breaking updates with you that came out on Friday:

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Adobe Releases the Photoshop.com Mobile App

This app makes it easy for you to do basic editing of your photos including standard cropping, apply effects (including the Sketch effect I used below) and  upload to your galleries on Photoshop.com or send your photos via email. It also allows you to see all of your photos on your Photoshop.com account including the ability to run slideshows. When you’re editing the Exposure, Saturation or Tint, just drag your finger left or right across your photo to make the adjustment! Cool!

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Get the Photoshop.com App here from the App Store. It’s FREE Photoshop.com Mobile

 

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Tweetie 2

Tweetie 2 is a complete rewrite of the popular Tweetie app and Tweetie was my app of choice for doing Twitter. So of course I was interested in upgrading to Tweetie 2. There’s a lot to like here with lots of new options including access to ALL of Twitter’s features and great multiple account support.

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Follow me on Twitter

Get Tweetie 2 here from the App Store for $2.99 Tweetie 2

 Expect more complete reviews of these apps in the not to distant future via my iPhone App of the Week feature each Friday.

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iPhone App of the Week – Camera Genius

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CameraGenius aims to give you more options for using your iPhone’s built-in camera. When you think about it the iPhone’s camera is OK, but limited in features. If you bought a stand alone point and shoot camera you would be able to do things like Zoom, set a timer, use image stabilization, etc.

 

More features for your iPhone camera

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Camera Genius adds some pretty useful features to the iPhone’s built-in camera. The first one that caught my eye was Zoom. This digital zoom feature allows you to Zoom in on the shot you’re taking with an interactive on screen slider. 

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NewerTech 3 in 1 Audio/Sync/Charging Cable + PowerJolt

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A couple of weeks back I did a 3 part series on Travel Tips including some of my favorite gear to travel with. Of course I’m always on the look out for ways to travel with less and travel smarter. One of the tips involved traveling with both a car charger for your phone and an audio cable to take advantage of your rental car’s Audio In port. Now instead of carrying two different cables I’ve been able to consolidate down to one.

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TomTom, $120 for your car kit? REALLY!!?

 

It wasn’t long ago that I reviewed the TomTom Navigation App for the iPhone. At the time the only other app that I had to compare it with was the Navigon app, which came out first. When the TomTom app came out it really wasn’t any better than the Navigon app. Sure there are some things that were nicer like more POIs, but overall the app had basically the same major limitations as the Navigon app. Well Navigon has released two updates since then and in the latest update they gave us TTS (Text to Speech) so that when you’re approaching a turn it says the name of the street that you’re about to turn on. This plus integrated iPod controls an automatic day/night mode and a few other fixes plus a cheaper retail price makes Navigon my app of choice. Check out the Navigon app here on the App Store: 

MobileNavigator North America

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My Live Shoot at the Westcott Booth

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I just wanted to give a quick thank you to all that came to my live photo shoot at the Westcott booth during Photoshop World Vegas last week. During my demo I showed how I use the Spiderlite TD5 daylight flourescent lighting system. When I got to the booth my lovely model was already there and waiting and the one thing I hadn’t considered was what she was wearing. As you can see in the photo she had lovely long black hair with a very lovely black outfit on and we were shooting against a Westcott popup "black" backdrop. In case you haven’t detected the theme here, there was a lot of "black" going on! I could have certainly flipped the backdrop around to the white side or I could have moved everything over to the Westcott uLite green screen setup, but I really decided to accept the challenge of lighting her with the Spiderlites. 

Usually I have time to shoot, make adjustments, shoot, make adjustments, etc. However, in this case there was a crowd of people standing around and I had to make it work quickly. So I just went for it! I set my Nikon D5000 (my new travel DSLR) to 400 ISO at f/2.8 with my Nikon 28-70mm lens. I shot at a 1/60th of a second and my goal was to use just the Spiderlites and a reflector. Of course the shots were imported into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 and minimally retouched using Adobe Photoshop CS4.

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iPhone App of the Week – Occasions

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One of the things that really bugs me about the iPhone’s built-in calendar is that there is no way to set an alert/alarm for Birthdays. They are already present in most of my Contacts. They appear automatically on the "Birthdays" Calendar, yet Apple doesn’t allow you to set reminders for this calendar without going through some workarounds. It wasn’t even until iPhone OS 3.0 that I had a way of subscribing to my Birthdays calendar on my IPhone directly. So there is still a LOT of room for improvement in this area. 

 

Occasions

Occasions is an iPhone app that is designed to overcome this shortcoming. It automatically picks up the birthdays and anniversaries in your Contacts. You can also enter events manually if you need to. It then keeps a running list in chronological order of upcoming occasions. While there are many iPhone apps that do this including the app I was using before "Upcoming Events", this app supports the iPhone 3.0 Push Notifications feature. This means that the app can pop up alerts and sounds without being open! My old app still hasn’t been updated with this important feature so I’ve moved on.

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