A Taste of Tech Lust
September 13th, 2008 ryanPlans for the Renegade Fair got put on hold early this morning due to inclement weather. They continue rain or shine but I totally pussed out due to the waterlogged death cries of Chicago’s public transit.
So I busted out the beat to shit sand-tempered laptop and cleaned out my decrepit XP install best I could while putting my phone through the rigors of the 2.1 update. With success returned the full functionality of Cydia (which I was lacking from my last patch for whatever reason) as well as Installer and the ever-growing App Store.
Anyways here’s the current App list:
Pandora via App Store – Free internet radio app, uses artist style attributes to recommend and provide a streaming play list. It’s a niche app I tend to use when my laptop and it’s bulging library isn’t available/convenient. Never bothered with the full blown computer client.
Cycorder via Cydia – No coincidence on the name there. Offers what is probably the best video capture the device is capable of. Currently free with not-too-invasive ads. Biggest complaint others have is how to get the .mov files off the iPhone. Of the ways I have tried the next app proved easiest.
Netatalk via Cydia – Enables quick, easy GUI transfer of files between device and apple machine. As pictured, the device will simply show up under SHARED. There’s a default password to use with “Connect As” and that’s it. Likely a massive security risk but we’ll worry about that later.
NES emulator via Cydia – I guess it’d be nice to have around if I wax all nostalgic for Final Fantasy or something but the touch screen doesn’t really give the amount of control I’d need to rock out Contra or any other side scroller. ROMs are not provided, and the install process involves dropping the files directly on to the device. Netatalk made this a breeze.
Palringo via App Store – I’m not huge IM whore and yet I have 4 accounts I use from time to time. Palringo lets me access ICQ, AIM, and gTalk which is nice if the laptop’s not around. There’s a whole lot more going on with the service that involves voice messaging and the like but I went with it since it covered more than AIM alone. It’s worth noting you’ll need to set up a Palringo account on install but you can do it all from the device.
Quake via Cydia – It’s fucking Quake. On a phone.
Evernote via App Store – This app is like that hot hipster chick you run in to twice a week, once at the book store and then later at the gym. She’s clearly in shape, smart, uses cloth bags at the grocery store and chews the ends of her glasses when thinking real hard. She has everything, somehow touching on just about every area you could come up with and excelling at each.
The iPhone app is but a single facet of this currently free gem (with a limit on bandwidth usage). There are Windows/Mac clients, the website, and straight up e-mail access for voice, text, pictures – all of which are taggable for metadata filtering. I plan on doing a proper write up at a later date over at The Weekly Geek because she deserves it. I mean, damn.
TwitterFon via App Store – It’s likely I’ve tried every fucking free twitter app that’s available for the iPhone. This one is straight up and stripped down, free of gimmicks or location tracking et al. It’s just a slick, fast client. Though I did like pinging a 25 mile radius with Twinkle.
PageOnce via App Store – I tread lightly with any and all account/password aggregators. PageOnce allows access to a bevy of sites one would check online, from Cell carriers to Banking to Flickr. Honestly most of the non-customizable information displays aren’t that useful, like Twitter or Public Storage, but I do like the one T-Mobile has.
DashBuster via App Store – This offers access to either one’s Blockbuster or Netflix queue. You can search titles as on the site but can’t add anything unless you go with the $3.99 version. The old installer app, which I haven’t seen pop up in recent updates, used to allow adding and modification so it’s likely someone one will offer a free alternative at some point (if they don’t already). Great if you hear of something and want to add it on the spot.
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Every one of the apps I use, not to mention the fabulous PwnageTool from the Dev Team, is completely free. One of these days I’ll part with the bucks for Intelliscreen (I started on smartphones with a customized Windows Mobile Today screen so this is the first thing I looked for when I changed to the iPhone) but one of the reasons that I’ve fully embraced this device is because of the vigilant dev communities that have rallied to its cause.
Just about every hack and mod was done within minutes via GUI. When I first got my phone back in March it was mere minutes between unboxing and full SIM-unlocked functionality, free of charge.
It’s refreshing that a device can be so open and so customizable. It’s not like this “hacking” has hurt sales, quite the contrary.
This is the first device I’ve ever felt really maximized the potential of a handheld.
Now if it could just hook up to a BT portable keyboard for on the go writing…
or connect to my DSLR for mobile backup.
EDIT:
Not sure how it happened but Yelp and Hahlo got left out there.
