5 iPhone Apps you Need: App 5

This is the last post in a series of five. Read the fourth post here.

I don't have to go over it again. But I will. So you're managing your money, cooking, listening to music, and traveling to the Chumbe Islands, now that you've done all this, you probably want to sit down and relax. And share pictures of your new-found stacks of money, your beautiful onion soup, you dancing around to that new band you just found out about, and of course, the wonderful vacation you just had. There's an app for that.

Instagram, recommended by my friend AJ Goren of TechLand, is available, for free, from Instagram.com. Instagram allows you to take photos with your iPhone or iPod touch's camera, and, after putting the photo through one of the many vintage filters, post it for all to see.

Instagram is not only a way for you to share photos, it's also a great way to find beautiful photos that others have taken, either by following a specific person, or by just browsing the popular section. You can also easily export your photos to Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter.

One of the biggest parts of Instagram is the filters. Although you can keep a photo "normal" there are also many filters that make the photo look like it was taken before today's technology existed.

You can download Instagram at Instagram.com, or directly from the AppStore. I hope you enjoy Instagram, and I hope you enjoyed this entire five part series.

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5 iPhone Apps you Need: App 4

This is the fourth post in a series of five. Look out for the fifth on Thursday, July 14th. Read the third post here.

Now that you're cooking, managing your budget, and listening to music all at the same time, it's time you took a break and traveled to Chumbe Island in Zanzibar (Where else?). Now, when someone goes to Chumbe Islands, they want to do it right. The right flights, the right hotels, and the right rental cars. All at the right price. Kayak is here to help.

From Kayak.com, this free app allows you to look for hotels, flights, rental cars, as well as keep track of your trip with their My Trips feature, although some features require a free Kayak.com account.

When you first launch the app, you see a list off features to take advantage of. You can look for hotels, flights, and rental cars, as well as look at your planned trip agenda (which you set by emailing your booking conformations to Kayak). You can also track flight times, get price alerts on rates, and call airlines directly from the airline directory.

Although Kayak does not do the booking itself, it allows you to book a hotel, flight, or rental car either directly from the company, or through a few booking services.

If you're traveling anytime soon (even if it's not to Chumbe Islands), you might want to check out Kayak. It's free, and you can learn about it from Kayak.com, or download it directly from the AppStore. Free's always good, so check it out.

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5 iPhone Apps you Need: App 3

This is the third post in a series of five. Look out for more every Tuesday and Thursday. Read the second post here.

So, in this series we have dealt with money management, as well as cooking. Now we're heading on to something less important in everyday life, but still something done by most people in the world, and that is listening to music. There are thousands of apps in the AppStore that are designed for doing just that. Some are paid services, some you just pay for the app, and some are completely free. This one app, called Pandora, is available for free from Pandora.com, and is one of the best apps dedicated to listening to music.

Pandora allows you to type in a song, an artist, or a genre, and it will automatically create a "radio station" based on what you entered. The station might play the song you entered first, and then go on to something of a similar style, or something by the same artist, every song has a thumbs up or thumbs down button, and Pandora will learn, as you go along, what kind of music you like.

Pandora has a clean and simple interface, one that looks very iOS-like. However, the only negative of Pandora is the ads. Advertisements appear when you open a station. Audio ads also come up every few songs played. If the ads really bother you, you can sign up for a premium account, and completely eliminate the ads.

Pandora is a great, free way to listen to music, and discover new artists and tracks too. If you aren't already using it, no better time to start. It can be downloaded from the Apple AppStore. You can also find out more at its website.

There are two more posts to this series, that's two more apps, any of which can be your suggestion. Leave a comment below telling me about your favorite iPhone App, and it might make it to the next post in this series. Plus, if you leave your name, and any website you want me to plug, I'll put it in in the post. Comment below!


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5 iPhone Apps you Need: App 2

This is the second post in a series of five. Look out for more every Tuesday and Thursday. Read the first post here.

Search on Epicurious

The first app was one that helped you with your finances, something that really applies to everyone. This app will also help you with something you can't avoid: eating. Of course you could eat in some restaurant for breakfast, lunch, and supper every day, but if you want to go the cheaper route, you've gotta cook. This free app from Epicurious.com will help you do just that.

I find it really fun to stop once in a while and cook. And for that you need recipes. And for that you need Epicurious. Epicurious.com has been around for a while, and packs in thousands of recipes, as well as articles, cooking videos, and user polls. The Epicurious app only deals with the recipes, but it does it well. Very, very well. The Epicurious app allows you to look for recipes by many categories, including the basics: lunches, dinners, and sides, but there are also some sometimes more useful categories, including I Cook like a Pro, I can Barely Cook, and Quick and Easy. 


Another cool feature is the advanced search option, where you start off choosing a main ingredient from a list of many options, listed in alphabetical order. You can then choose a meal or course, a cuisine, dish type, season or occasion, and even dietary consideration. All of this is presented in a beautiful and intuitive way, and is really fun and easy to use.

Epicurious is available at it's homepage, as well as on the iTunes AppStore. Thanks for reading, I have to go check on my Devil's Food Cake.

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Amazon.com Offering Buy One, Get One Free Video Games

It's July 4th. Independence day. You are probably grilling some burgers outside, getting ready for a party, or planning to see some wonderful fireworks tonight. Although that's all good and fun, when it's done, some of you might just want to curl up with a good first-person shooter. Amazon.com, the widely popular online marketplace, wants to help you out.

From today, July 4th, 2011, until Saturday, July 9th, Amazon.com is offering a list of games and and gaming accessories which are all available on a buy one get one free basis. The special deal doesn't apply to every video game on Amazon, but there is a nice selection of around 270 games and gaming accessories to choose from.

To take advantage of this deal, just put two of the select items in your cart. The deal will be applied at one off the last stages in the checkout process, and will deduct the price of the less expensive item from the total price.

This is a great deal, and although not everything in the list of 270 or so items is something you'd actually want, you're sure to find a charm (or two) in there somewhere, and who doesn't like free? Make sure to go to the Amazon video game page by the end of this week, and catch this Independence day deal. Happy 4th!


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Gmail gets New Look, How you can get it Too

It seems that Gmail, Google's free email service, is taking on the new look that Google.com got recently. It seems that this new red/grey look that Google.com, Google Maps, Google Calendar, and now Gmail, are all getting, is in celebration of Google's newly announced social network, Google+ (Google Plus).

Although Google+ is in an invite only stage, it is not a secretive project, and so we do know that Plus was the first service to receive the new Google look, so we can assume that Plus was the origin of the new theme.

So know that you know why Gmail looks different, you probably are wondering why it doesn't look different. Any change can scare users, so, at least for now, the new Gmail theme is a choice. In my opinion, a good choice, which is why I'm going to give you the simple steps to make this choice.

1. Log on to your Gmail account at mail.google.com. 
2. Look in the top right corner of the screen, where you will see a gear logo. Click on that.
3. A few options will come down. Click on Mail settings. 
4. A settings page with many tabs will appear, close to the right of the page, you will see Themes. Click on that.
5. The bottom row of themes will have Preview and Preview (Dense) in them. Dense is more compact, but both of them will give you the new look. Choose one, and click.
6. Viola! You are now seeing the Gmail's new look. Enjoy!

(To undo, follow these same steps, but instead of clicking on Preview or Preview (Dense), choose another theme.)

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5 iPhone Apps you Need: App 1

This post is the first in a series of five. Look out for more every Tuesday and Thursday. Read the second post here.

So you just got a new iPhone. Or you've had an iPhone for a while, but you haven't really gotten into the hang of the app thing. Or you've had the iPhone for a while, and you've been downloading apps, but you just haven't heard of these. No matter what your situation is, you have an iPhone or iPod touch, you need to check out these cool apps.

The first app in this five app series is Mint. From mint.com, this free app is available in the App Store.

Mint.com

Once you become old enough to live by yourself, you're bound to be confused with all of your financial responsibilities. Be it the mortgage, your college loan, or the groceries. Mint.com's free app is here to help. Although you might feel worried giving Mint.com all of your personal finance information, Mint is using the same service to keep the information as most banks do, so you aren't really giving any information you haven't already given. Once you put in all of your info, Mint will help you create a budget, and really manage all of your  finance needs. Mint is free, safe, and a definite download for any iPhone user.

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Google Revamps it's Universal Web-App Look

The new Google.com Interface

Are you tired of that simple looking Google homepage? Do you wish Google would get rid of it's simplistic design, and make it more exciting. Well, thanks to the new Google web-app revamp, you are still out of luck.

The new Google.com design also applies to all of the other Google web-apps, and basically makes Google look simpler, although the Google experience hasn't changed much.

The new update puts the links Google.com all at either the top or bottom of the page, making it easier to see the blankness of the rest of the page. The Google logo is now slightly smaller, and this also makes is easier to see the blankness of the page.

It seems that the new Google color scheme is red and black. Although the actual Google logo hasn't changed, the bar of links to various Google services that hovers above most Google websites has gone from a light grey to a dark black. The site you are currently visiting is overlined nicely in red, and when you mouse over a link, the boxed area around it becomes a dark grey.

This red/black color scheme is more obvious on the actual page of search results. When searching for a word or phrase, the updated Google, like the older version, shows search results in the main area, and has a sidebar on the left side which allows you to search exclusively for images, videos, blogs, ect. This sidebar has changed in a few ways, most of them, in my opinion, for the better. As pictured below, the sidebar's few default search refining options are now spaced slightly further apart, and, while remaining the same font as the previous interface, are now dark grey. Instead of becoming bold when selected, the options now change to the nice shade of red used throughout the site. The icons are now grey instead of colored, and are changed slightly from the previous versions. When mousing over an option, the area around it becomes a shade of light grey.

The search-box area is also slightly changed in this new interface, as it is now boxed in grey and the search button is now a nice, rounded blue button, with a magnifying glass icon instead of the actual word "search". The Google logo on the left of the search box is now slightly smaller.

The new red/black theme makes the Google experience feel much more elegant, as well as simple, but it also makes it feel that the Google logo shouldn't be that colorful. Google has been using it's red, green, yellow, and blue color scheme as a base for it's new services, but some of the latest additions have seen a slightly different color scheme.

The new search interface

Overall, the new Google interface brings a cleaner interface, a simpler experience, and ultimately, more eye candy, something that was not in the early search engines, and has kind of become a new thing. Google was earned a +1 for this one.

It seems that the bar of links on top of most Google websites appears updated for everyone, but the newly designed home and search pages have not yet rolled out to all users.

Read Google's blog post here.


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Hulu Plus: Now Available on Android

If you wanted to watch movies or TV shows on your phone, but had an Android device, until recently you were mostly out of luck. Not too long ago, Netflix, the popular paid video streaming service, announced their Android version of their mobile application. Most probably due to issues of video piracy, it was only available on a few Android devices. Now Hulu Plus is following suit.

Hulu.com is a website that allows you to watch clips of movies and TV shows, or even entire movies or TV shows for free. One can also sign up for Hulu Plus, which, at $7.99 per month, brings some more content, as well as allowing users to access Hulu from more devices, instead of just being able to watch from a browser.

Hulu Plus was available for a while on the iPhone, Playstation 3, and XBOX 360, but the latest addition to the app lineup is Hulu Plus for Android. However, like the Netflix app for Android, Hulu Plus for Android is only available on a select six devices, with more devices coming later on. Hulu Plus can be downloaded from the Android Market.

Overall, it's great that Hulu is expanding their application platforms to include Android, but it would be really nice if the app was available on all Android devices, instead of just six. If you are on Android and want to access video content, look into Netflix, as Netflix price is equal to Hulu Plus', and definitely has more content, with no advertising.

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Apple Unveils iCloud, iOS 5, Shows off Mac OSX Lion

It's that time of year again! Apple holds a developer's conference every year in San Francisco called WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference, discussing, usually from more of an app developer's point of view, some of the new products or services that Apple is creating. This year's event was sold out in less than ten hours, and tickets weren't cheap either, so we'll see what they paid to see.


Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO (Currently on medical leave), with the help of some fellow Apple employees, announced three new products/services, and showed off one more, that had already been announced. None of these three products are actual physical products, but they are just as interesting.

Apple's iCloud logo

iCloud: The first product announced is called iCloud, and is an online service similar to the current, and slowly phasing  out, Apple service Mobile Me. iCloud is an online service that stores and syncs "your music, photos, apps, documents, and more", as written on the Apple website. The service then syncs all of that data with any other internet-connected Apple device. iCloud will also work on a Windows 7 or Windows Vista device will iTunes. Best of all, it's all free, for up to 5GB of storage.

iCloud will store any music bought via the iTunes Store, but you will also be able to store music you got any other way, be it a ripped CD or the Amazon MP3 store, for $24.99 a year. iCloud does this by scanning the song and matching it with an existing song in it's library of over 18 million songs. iCloud now knows you have the "rights" to the song, and will stream it at your command. This won't work for any song not in the library of 18 Million, so if you have music you created yourself, or an unpublished remix of an existing track, this won't work. One of the major benefits of this service, though, is the fact that if you have a song saved as a very low quality track, iCloud will play it back as the 256Kbps quality that iTunes currently offers.

iCloud in Action

iCloud also will take any picture you take with your iPhone, upload it to the cloud, and sync it with any of your other devices. The service lets you see your already purchased apps, and allows you to download an app again, for free on up to five devices. iBooks will also be synced between devices, as well as any documents created with iWorks, which apple just released the iPhone version of.

Another really important feature, iCloud backs up all of the data on your iPhone or iPod touch over the air, so there is no need to connect your device to a computer.

iCloud will be available for free this fall, along with iOS 5, which will be discussed later in the post.

Mac OSX Lion: After discussing iCloud, Jobs handed over the presentation to Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, who talked a little bit about the latest edition of Mac OSX, called Lion.

Mac OSX Lion will be available as a 4GB download from the Mac App-Store, and will cost $29.99. Most of the new features in Lion, at least the ones that Apple showed off, were already talked about, and you can read my post about those here.

iOS 5: The last service talked about at today's keynote was iOS 5. iOS, Apples mobile operating system that's used on the iPhone and iPod touch, is updated every so often, but a major release, like iOS 5, is released only around once a year.

iOS 5 will be available in July as a free update for your iPod touch or iPhone, and will many new features. One of those is the "Notification Center".

The notification center is accessed by simply swiping down on the screen. This will show a list of notifications, including email, text messages, and notifications from other apps on your phone. Notifications will also no longer interrupt everything you are doing, rather they will just slide in above the app you are currently using, and disappear quickly. Notifications are also accessible from the lock screen, and you can easily respond to a notification from the lock screen.

Revamped Notifications for iOS 5

iMessage will replace the SMS app for the iPhone, and will also be available on the iPod touch. iMessage allows users to send text messages via their 3G data provider, or they can send free text messages over a data connection to anyone else with an Apple iOS device. Messages can also include pictures, sound, and video.

iMessage for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch

Newsstand, one of the new additions in iOS 5, is the iBooks for magazines. Newsstand differs from all other apps, because instead of opening up like a normal app, it opens as a regular folder currently in iOS would. The folder differs from a regular folder, as it contains digital magazines, instead of apps. The background in the Newsstand folder looks like the wooden bookshelf currently found in the iBooks app.

Newsstand, a folder of magazines

Reminders is a new app that will be found in iOS 5. Reminders allows one to set reminders for himself, and organize reminders in to do lists. Reminders syncs with iCloud, Outlook, and iCal, so your to do's will be everywhere.

Reminders for iOS 5

Although Twitter already has an iOS app, with iOS 5, it will be integrated as an app that comes with the device, similar to what Apple is doing already with YouTube. Twitter will now be integrated into many of the apps Apple already has on their devices, such as Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube, and Maps. One will be able to tweet directly from any of those apps.

Twitter, integrated into iOS 5

The camera is now accessible from the lock screen, so if you ever have a photo you really need to capture, and fast, your iDevice will help you. The camera button on the lock screen even bypasses any passwords set on the device, so your camera will be ready when you need it. The camera also has a new grid that you can use for better alignment while taking a photo.

The camera app, accessible from the lock screen

The Photos app will also be improved, with new photo editing features such as crop, rotate, enhance, and remove red-eye. The camera app also allows you to organize the photos in albums right on your iDevice. Of course, with iCloud, your photos will be synced to all of your other Apple devices.

The new photos app, now with editing

Safari, Apple's built in web browser, is also improved with new tabbed web browsing, a reader function that strips out all of the junk from a website, and just shows you the content you want to see, as well as a reading list that allows you to save articles for reading later. Procrastination at it's finest.

Safari with tabbed browsing

With iOS 5, any iDevice is completely PC free, no computer is needed to set up the device, or to put on music movies, or anything else. The new iCloud service takes care of backup, so you can easily restore a device wirelessly.

Some of the smaller improvements include some new features for the Mail and Calendar apps, an update to GameCenter, Apple's gaming social network, which allows users to set a profile picture, WiFi sync, which allows you to sync music, podcasts, and videos wirelessly with your computer over a WiFi connection. Apple also added multitouch gestures to the iPad, which allow you to swipe through apps by swiping your fingers across the screen, etc. The iPad 2, with the iOS 5 update, will be able to mirror the image you are seeing on it's screen wirelessly, instead of using the HDMI cable currently available.

I myself got extremely excited when writing this post, because this update to iOS 5, along with iCloud, really takes care of many of the problems people had with iOS devices. The only negative is that iOS 5 and iCloud will only be available in the fall, so we've got a while to wait.

The reason that Apple announced these products so early is because they need developers to write apps for these platforms, which takes a while. Apple developers have access to Lion, iCloud, and iOS 5 now, and can start developing for those platforms. If these new products really have you salivating, you could shell out the $100 is costs to become an Apple developer, but you have to own a Mac computer.