Category: Apple

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iPhone App of the Week – Business Card Reader

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Business Card Reader is an amazing app that takes advantage of the iPhone platform. Put simply this app lets you take a photo with your iPhone and then OCR (optical character recognition) the contact info and then add it to your contacts. 

You have to see it in action to believe it so I'm just going to show you with this video:

 

The Bottom Line 

This app utilizes the Macro Lens features of the iPhone 3GS. So while it will work with the iPhone 3G or 2G, you will need to get a Macro lens attachment to physically put on your iPhone such as the Griffin Clarifi Protective case with built-in close-up lens case for iPhone

Clarifi | Protective case with built-in close-up lens for iPhone 3G by Griffin Technology

 

There is no magic involved – OCR is OCR, so it will only be as good as the source card that you are using. If there are smudges, script fonts, logos that run through the type, etc. Business Card Reader will not be able to recognize those words. Also note that there currently doesn't appear to be a mode for vertically oriented cards.

You can download Business Card Reader here from the App Store:

Business Card Reader

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My Learn the Creative Suite App has been updated to 1.2.1

 

I've been getting great feedback on my app for the iPhone and iPod touch. Of course I've been getting feature requests too and I have been feeding those requests to the developer. 

So 1.2.1 now offers:

A Star Tab

You can now mark your favorite episodes (this is directly from your feedback), or just mark episodes you want to come back to later, with a star. The starred episodes are accessible from new third tab in the app.

 

Offline (off Wi-Fi) mode

There is now the option to download starred episodes and play them when you are offline or on slow mobile networks. Getting on a plane? download a few episodes to enjoy right from your favorite show's app.

 

Bug Fixes:

App-wide usability updates and graphical tweaks.

 

Thanks for you support!

The "Learn the Creative Suite with Terry White" app is available for both the iPhone and the iPod touch. You can get it from the App Store for $1.99 here:

Learn Adobe Creative Suite with Terry White

Of course if you already have the App 1.2.1 is a free update.

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MobileMe is working for me (now)!

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In light of yesterday's post about ratings, I decided to return to a product/topic that I wanted to give everyone an update on. With each iPhone OS update that has come out since Apple switched .Mac to MobileMe I've tried to use it to wirelessly sync all my data between not only my Macs, but my iPhone as well. Each attempt in the past has lead to problems. One of the most frustrating problems I had over and over was the loss of ringtone associations with the 50+ contacts that I assigned custom ringtones too. Since you still can't assign ringtones to a group of contacts, I would have to manually go in and reassign them each time. I would typically get so frustrated that by the 3rd time this would happen, I would go back to syncing manually in iTunes. 

 

Now it works!

Apple has been tweaking (ie. fixing bugs) MobileMe all along. So I tried it again when the iPhone OS 3.0 update came out. It's been working fine ever since. I've not once lost my ringtone/contact associations and it's been syncing flawlessly between my iPhone 3GS and various Macs. For me, it's finally working as advertised and I'm happy! 

Much too often people are quick to tell you that something doesn't work! So I thought I'd take this opportunity to tell you that MobileMe does work.

 

Yes, there is still room for improvement

Although MobileMe syncing is now working for me as advertised, that doesn't mean that the service itself couldn't be better. For example, I'm still stunned that to this day the iPhone doesn't support syncing of To Do items in iCal/Outlook without a 3rd party App (I use ToDo) and even more stunned that although you can finally sync Notes from Mail, that you can still only do so via the USB cable and iTunes. Notes themselves seem to sync up to the MobileMe cloud so why is it that we still have to plug in to get them to sync on the iPhone/iPod touch?

I could go on and on about things I would like to see implemented or improved, but for the most part I'm happy that it finally works the way it's supposed to.

You can get MobileMe here at a discounted price. It works on both Macs and PCs.

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iPhone App of the Week – OneTap Movies

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I've tried a lot of different movie showtime apps!  I do really like the features in Flixter, i.TV and the others. However, recently I went back to the first Movie Showtimes App I ever used. 

 

What do I want in a Movie Showtime App?

All of the good Movie Showtime Apps out there all basically do the same thing. They are location based, they can show you the movie theaters in the area and of course show you the show times of movies playing in a particular theater. Beyond that each one has a feature here or there that the others don't have. For example, some let you buy your tickets right in the app. Some will offer Netflix queue management. Many will let you rate the movie after you've seen it and of course play trailers.

They all miss the point! When I go to look for movie showtimes I've pretty much already decided on what I want to see. I've already decided where I'm going to see it (usually the same theater near my house 99.9% of the time!). So the only thing I'm interested in knowing is WHAT TIME(S) DOES THE MOVIE START? Sadly, In every other app I have tried to date, it's usually 2-3 taps minimum to get to this info. They usually want to start you with an Ad! Then you see a list of movies. Then you have to find the movie you want tap, it to get to the list of theaters. Then you finally get to the times. Of course they are not all this bad, but usually it's two or more taps to get to the one thing I want to know. 

What time does the movie start?

 

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iPhone App of the Week – BF Deals

BFdealsicon

It's almost Black Friday! The day of madness and retail shopping. Actually with the economy the way it is, I welcome it this year. Go out and buy stuff PLEASE!

Of course you probably want to know where all the deals are. So I thought I would get you ready by giving you an iPhone app to use to keep up on all the potential savings. 

BF-deals    .BF-deals2

BF Deals

BF Deals is an iPhone/iPod touch app that dynamically pulls in the RSS feeds from all the popular Black Friday Websites. Well that's not really all that exciting. You could do the same thing with your own RSS reader. However, this app goes over and above by providing lots of useful features.  First off you can enable Push Notifications to see the deals as they come in.

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Creative Ways to Showoff Your Photography – Gelaskins

Yesterday I talked about showing off your Photography with Moo Cards. Today it's all about skins. My guess is that you have a cellphone, mp3 player, laptop or gaming device if not all of the above. So why not add some custom bling to your electronic devices.

gela

Gelaskins has been around for a while selling all kinds of creative looking skins for your various devices. Honestly I'm not really a skin kind of guy. The reason is that I usually don't find an image that I like so much that I want it on a device that I use/look at every day. However, once I found out that they now allow you to use YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY, I couldn't get the site fast enough. 

gelaskins-c

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Blockbuster, it’s the internet stupid

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When I saw this story come across my RSS reader, I almost spit out my drink. It seems that Blockbuster (in an attempt to remain relevant) is trying all kinds of new things. Let's face it! Netflix kicked your butt and you're in a fight for your survival. I get it. However, you have to realize that while you were hell bent on charging me obscene(more than the movie cost) late fees back in the day that someone (Netflix) figured out a way to eat your lunch by letting customers keep their movies as long as they wanted for one flat rate. Netflix continued to grow their business by moving BEYOND THE DISC (MEDIA) MODEL and partnered with every company they could on delivering (TiVo, Sony, Microsoft, etc.) streaming movies.

The fact that one of your newest ideas involves customers walking up to a kiosk and downloading a rental or getting a rental on a memory card shows me that you still don't get it. The "drive to my local movie rental store to pick up media" model has a very short life ahead of it. Maybe it's just me, but I think you should be investing more towards getting movies into the hands of your customers via the Internet and on mobile devices. You made a great first step by hooking up with TiVo. Although I'm happy with Netflix and iTunes I did cheer for you. You should really continue in this direction!

 

iTunes isn't going away!

The fact I can rent a movie right on my Apple TV in my living room should make you guys really nervous. Partner, Partner, Partner. This will be the key to your survival. Look at the boxes people are buying and hooking up to their HDTVs and do whatever it takes to get on those boxes at a reasonable price to your customers. Competition is great! Compete!

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What I want in a digital picture frame

My buddy Dave Moser asked me the other day for a recommendation on a digital picture frame. Luckily it was over email and text messages and therefore he couldn't see the blank look on my face. I have a few digital picture frames in my house, but sadly none of them really stand out or come to mind as something I'm so excited about that I would joyfully recommend. The problem is that I haven't seen a digital picture frame yet that is GREAT! I haven't even seen any yet that are really good. The current selection of frames out there that I've seen are just "OK".

 

What I want in a digital picture frame

The problem is that when it comes to a digital picture frame it not only has to have great technology in it for loading images and seeing them, but it also has to be aesthetically pleasing because this is something that is going in your home on display. And therein lies the problem, I haven't seen one yet that's a good enough blend between art and science. So I thought I would build "my" perfect digital picture frame here. Hopefully it already exists and one of you will point me to it and if not, someone will read this and build it some day. So here goes:

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My New MacNews blog

As many of you know I'm a Mac user and usually a fan of Apple's products. There a many times that I would post more about Macs, iPhones and such here, but I try to keep an even balance because I realize that there are a fair number of Windows users here too. So unless it's a hot new product introduction or major update, I tend to just let it go by. 

Back in August of 1986 (yes that's 23 years ago), I founded MacGroup-Detroit. I've been the president of this organization for 23 years. It's a very active Michigan based users group with roughly 500 members. For the last 20+ years we've had a monthly newsletter called "MacNews". About a year ago we went from a printed publication to a PDF online only publication. This was working OK, but the more I thought about it the more I started to wonder "why?" Why go through page layout just to deliver electronic information electronically? So a couple of weeks ago the monthly newsletter was converted into a daily blog. This way, the writers can post content whenever it's ready, the information can be more timely and the members can subscribe via their favorite RSS readers.

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