Articles by Casey Chan
Imagine this scenario: You’re in a hotel room and you bring your iPhone, Macbook, External Hard Drive, Camera, and another iPod cause you’re nasty..but they’re all in need of a charge. You run and send a search team for the nearest available outlet, to your utter dismay it only provides two outputs. You reason you can live without a couple of those items but then you can’t fit two clunky chargers at once. You’re left with just charging one device.
We’ve all run into hotel rooms that just don’t seem to have enough power outlets. With the Belkin Mini Surge Protector with USB that problem is pretty much solved. How does it perform?
Read on for the rest of the review!
Have you checked out our forums lately? The community is growing and the commentary is getting better and better each day. Unconvinced? I’ll bring out a thread, a post, a topic, or a comment directly from the forums and post it on TiPb’s front page every week to prove it to you. We here at TiPb love the interplay, quid pro quo, repartee with our readers, so step up your creativity and tighten up your diction, you could be next!
This week we have a great tip from our moderator extraordinaire Bad Ash! We all obviously know that MMS is missing in the iPhone and even though we may have differences in opinion about MMS (it being a limited technology, for one) but the fact of the matter is that MMS has become the pseudo-standard for sending pictures on cell phones.
So, how can we send MMS pictures if we’re using the iPhone? Well you’ll have to check out Bad Ash’s post won’t ya! Hint: It involves attaching the phone number to a carrier specific e-mail address. E-mailing that address will send the picture via MMS. It’s easy as pie!
Go check out Bad Ash’s tip on how to send MMS to other cell phones!
So the news isn’t that iPhone 2.1 Beta 4 has been seeded to developers, no that’s expected. With a (hopeful) September release, iPhone 2.1 should be receiving its finishing touches. What the news is, is that the much ballyhooed feature of push notification is missing. As in gone. Not there. Removed. iPhone 2.1 Beta 4 removes the push notification feature from the test version.
Should we begin to worry? Push notification has been present in iPhone 2.1 since the very first beta. Apple says its been removed for further internal development. Obviously, the removal of the push notification feature would prevent developers from understanding the animal that is push. But then again, we at TiPb would rather prefer a delayed polished product than a rushed buggy one (ahem..MobileMe).
Before we say anything about the app, Simplify Media, go download it. Like right now. The first 100,000 iPhone users who download Simplify Media will receive it for free. After that, they’ll be charged a cool $3.99. Who doesn’t like a deal? Okay, good.
Simplify Media is an app that uses the desktop version on your Mac or PC to wirelessly stream your iTunes Library to your iPhone. So essentially the storage cap for music on your iPhone is essentially removed. Plus, it also works over EDGE and 3G and you have the option of listening to 30 of your friends’ iTunes Library as well. In other words, Simplify Media is oozing and dripping with potential.
Here’s to hoping you got a chance to be one of the first 100,000 users to download! As soon as we get things running, we at TiPb will let you know how well Simplify Media actually works!
Ever miss the good old days of buying an iPhone? Well, you can get one step closer if you’re an AT&T Premier member since you can now order the iPhone 3G online and wait for it to ship to you! The process takes 7-10 business days while a Direct Fulfillment Order made in the brick and mortar stores take around 2 weeks. Combining this method with the recent Best Buy Mobile news, it looks the iPhone 3G is going to be available to a lot more people now.
We at TiPb have always been wondering why the iPhone 3G was never made available through Apple’s and AT&T’s online outlets. Filling out an online form with the necessary information, waiting for the iPhone 3G to arrive in mail, and activating with a ‘last step’ on iTunes seems simple enough to us. But we guess Apple is in the business of the spectacular. Long lines FTW.
Enigmo is a 3D puzzle-based game for the iPhone developed by Pangea Software that has been met with rave reviews, even earning a “Best iPhone Game” at WWDC 08. The basic premise is to put water droplets in the water container, oil droplets in the oil container, and lava droplets in the lava container using the specific materials given to you. The materials can range from sponges, springs, slides, or even laser guns and it uses basic physics to determine where each droplet will land.
Enigmo is already a popular game on the Mac, but does it translate to the iPhone? Is it worth your $9.99? How does it perform?
Read on for the rest of the review!
Apple’s Headquarters in Cupertino caught fire overnight. A three-alarm fire burned in the building known as Valley Green 6. The Santa Clara Fire Department received reports of smoke at about 10 P.M. Pacific Time. No injuries have been reported and the building was cleared. At about midnight Pacific Time the fire dispatcher was still uncertain on when the fire would be contained.
We’re not exactly sure what goes on in the Valley Green 6 building but the obvious joke would be that it houses MobileMe. On a more serious note, we at TiPb hope that the firefighters are able to contain the fire and get home safe. Hopefully, everything and everybody will be okay.
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We had originally reported that the iPhone was the most popular camera phone on Flickr, the popular photo sharing website, way back in May, pre-3G. Well, it lost that title for a brief moment and only re-gained it recently. I’m only guessing but it probably had to do with the 3 million iPhone 3Gs that took the market by storm. Either way, the iPhone being the King of Flickr should force Apple to take notice and improve the camera already.
Where’s my auto-focus, zoom, better resolution, better lens, video, etc. !? I think Apple is severely underestimating the appeal of a great camera. Hopefully, they’ll recognize the iPhone Camera’s limitation and create an industry-leading device. We here at TiPb like to dream big.
What do you think?
Can’t find a Bluetooth Headset that fits your ear? Struggling enough with the headset that it defeats the purpose of being ‘hands free’? Well, the Motorola MOTOROKR T505 Bluetooth In-Car Speakerphone ($99.95) is ideal for you. It is essentially a Bluetooth speakerphone, keeping your hands free and your ears clear while driving your car. Unlike a Bluetooth headset, the Motorokr T505 is meant to be used strictly in a car setting. How does it perform?
Read on for the rest of the review!
So you’ve been running on iPhone 2.0 (hopefully, 2.0.1) for a while now. And you’ve all enjoyed the plethora of quality apps at the App Store, but did you know how well the App Store was actually doing? Well, according to one of those old reputable printing press companies, pretty darn well.
The App Store holds a current pace of earning a revenue of over a million dollars a day, which roughly translates to $360 million a year. Steve Jobs issued some resounding statements about the App Store saying,
“This thing’s going to crest a half a billion, soon,” he added. “Who knows, maybe it will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time.” and also said, “I’ve never seen anything like this in my career for software”Though the WSJ doesn’t believe Apple will be able to derive much profit in this current 70/30 split since they only make enough money to cover credit card transactions and maintaining the App Store itself, Jobs believes that having such a direct pipeline of apps will be able to sell more iPhones much like how iTunes enabled more sales of iPods.
So yeah, that App Store is doing great. Who would have thought an easy-to-use, iTunes-like interface would revolutionize the mobile software industry? Best of luck catching up RIM, WinMob, Android..
