For those of us that have a knack for words, Scrabble has long been a favorite. Many of us enjoy the challenge of sparring one another with our wits and knowledge. In today’s mobile world there was little chance of us playing Scrabble until now.
Recently I’ve found the pleasure of a mobile Scrabble app called Words with Friends. This app replicates everything I remembered from playing Scrabble with my family that I instantly became hooked. Words with Friends has an amazing number of additions that truly define this powerhouse of entertainment.
For starters you are able to connect two of the most popular social profiles, Facebook and Twitter. This will not only announce your scores but also invite your friends to join you in a game. Furthermore the app has the built in ability to run more than one game at a time. When I started playing, it was not unusual for me to be playing four to five games at once. Definitely something you could not do with a Scrabble board.
Here at Crenk we love to talk about iPhone applications and here is 7 iPhone applications that you might not have heard about that could really be useful in everday life.
$4.99 As soon as this was available I bought it. It is the first (and I think only, as of this writing) word processor in the App Store and it works great. I use this for typing articles when I am not near a computer. When I am finished I email it to myself from within the program.
Free. If you don’t know what Evernote is, you should. It is a great program/service for sharing notes and documents between computers. You can install Evernote on mulitple computers and sync notes back and forth between computers. This is the portable version for the iPod Touch and it works great. The Evernote service is free, or you can pay for more options.
$6.99 I don’t know if this is the section I should put this in, but I am going to anyway. Air Sharing turns your iPod Touch into a portable drive for transferring files. You connect to your Mac wirelessly and the iPod shows up on the desktop as a drive. You drag and drop files to and from the drive. It is as easy as it sounds and works great!
Free. I use the desktop version of NetNewsWire for reading RSS feeds from a bunch of sites. This is the mobile version. It has a few bugs, but it syncs with the NewsGator feed and keeps all of your subscriptions in sync from computer to iPods.
Free. Sure there is the built-in weather application, but I like Weatherbug better. It not only give mores information, but it provides up to the minute weather information, and you can set it up for more than on location.
$1.99 My wife uses this app every morning to check the traffic report for her drive to work. It is extremely accurate, and even works with Google Maps to give you a view of the problem areas. You can set it to give reports within a certain mileage range from your location. This app is definitely better than sitting around waiting for the traffic report on TV.
Pingdom provides the basic principle of alerting website owners when their website or server goes down, therefore the best addition would of course be push notification on the iPhone. Today Pingdom has announced a new 2.0 version of their iPhone application. New features are push notifications and graphs, so here are examples.
Downtime alerts as iPhone push notifications
Graphs let you examine trends
The new Pingdom iPhone app has also added graphs that let you examine trends in the uptime, downtime and response time of your site. These graphs are similar to the ones you can access in Pingdom’s regular online control panel, but now you can play around with them right on your iPhone.
The graphs can be shown for any date range, so you can examine a specific day closely, or view trends over several months.
You’ve finished work on Friday night, you’re in the pub and you want to find out what bands are playing near you tonight. These iPhone apps are here to solve your problem: Gigzee will use your phone’s GPS positioning in conjunction with Google Maps to tell you who’s playing up to three days in advance at venues within a certain radius (default is 2 miles, but you can set it to be whatever you want). The app draws down information from Myspace, as well as from user submissions, but only a small minority of bands are using it, mostly in the US, so don’t expect a comprehensive service. That said, it’s free and easy to use, so you can’t lose out, and if you visit their website, they’ll give you a list of gigs in your area over a much longer duration. A smart thing to do might be to ask the venues in your area to sign up to the service and update their myspace profiles sensibly, but that’s a bit proactive for all but the most dedicated music fan.
Bandloop approaches the problem from the opposite angle, asking you to add a set of bands that you’re interested in, and then feeding you information on when they’re going to be where – a band based rather than a geography based approach. They also make a Strong Badreference on their site, so they can’t be bad! This is another free app, supported by ads.
The Jambase app allows you to approach from either perspective, with the same current-location GPS functionality as Gigzee (although you can still put in a different area code if you want to know who’s playing elsewhere), and the ability to add favourite artists to a roster that will update a gig calendar for you. It also features music samples dragged down from LaLa.com, and links to ticket-purchasing sites, although this only really works for major artists.
The most pro-active (read laziness enabling) app in this field is iConcertCal, which will scan through your iPhone (or iTunes) and figure out who your favourite bands are based on the plays they’ve had from your catalogue, and then auto-generate a list of the gigs that they’re playing in your area. The plug in seems to work pretty well, but since it’s based on your iTunes list, you’re a bit stuffed if you use Spotify Premium or any other apps that bypass the iPod’s official-Apple-product contents.
Any one of these products should help you avoid this kind of disaster:
I find it funny how Snoop Dogg isnt allowed in the UK or Australia, but he could potentially be in your car. The world famous rapper Snoop Dogg has brought his hilarious “-izzle” speak to TomTom.
The firm behind this is Locutio Voice Technologies which offers novelty sat nav voices, and Snoop Dogg will fit in their stable very well.
According to the firm, Snoop’s navigational wisdom includes:
Take tha third left, and while you’re at it, put in some of that Snoop Dogg!Turn around when possible and keep it ‘G’, ya d-i-g?
Keep left ahead, and you’ll be bonafide.
Snoop’s own brand manager, Nick Adler, assures us that “celebrity voices for GPS are a hot new content category”.
“Snoop is the first real megastar to lend his voice to GPS navigation. As Snoop is a trendsetter, he just had to have his voice tell us all where to go!” he added.
There is a very big novelty factor here, but im not too sure if someone would actually purchase this item more than once! Im curious to see who they can bring on next to top Snoop Dogg, I really would love to hear Yoda or the Cookie Monster direct me through London traffic.
For those of us in the business of online marketing, brand building, or building web strategies for companies, Jeremiah Owyang is a familiar name. His innovative thought leadership has defined the world of online web strategies and how companies interact with audiences.
His blogs have been a ranked as one of the top sites in Technorati, and his career board has increased the number of visitors to his website simply because of his strong belief in connecting people. Jeremiah “strives to define and deliver user and community needs, business goals, and web technology to craft and deliver long term successful web programs for companies.”
Most recently the web strategy guru has released a mobile app that now allows fans and followers to keep up with what’s happening on the blog and career board via their iPhone or iTouch. MotherApp’s creative innovation has brought to life a clean and intuitive application to life. Via the interface you get access to his thoughts via the blog, his Twitter stream, and the ability to favorite tweets or blogs posts you find interesting.
If you’re into online marketing or strategizing web initiatives, check this app out. I’ve found that the information on here is useful and applicable immediately for just about any brand you develop for.
With content accessible on our mobile, it’s become more common for us to be productive with our mobile devices to get more work done. Cell phones and other mobile devices have become the digital leashes that collar us to work, but at the same time it also keeps us connected to life’s information flow. As we become a more connected community via socialmedia tools, it’s always useful to hear how others have made it work for them.
Recently, Nokia (perhaps foolishly) released a video of their new N900 smart phone running an SNES emulator playing some classic titles. The video had a voiceover which clearly amped up the phones gaming capabilities for classic emulators:
“There’s already a bunch of great retro gaming emulator apps available for you to download,” says the video voiceover which clearly shows options to use emulators for consoles such as the NES, SNES and GameBoy.
SO Nintendo got a little angry. But to be honest, I think they’re taking this too far. If anything, they should be considering releasing emulators for old-school games on smart phones like the have with the Wii. There’s definitely a market there and people would definitely jump at an official emulator rather than a third party one which is difficult to set up.
Tracking mentions online is a huge market that has yet to turn any profit. Still, there are a lot of sites out there that track mentions on Twitter, Facebook, various social sites, and a few blog sites as well. Knowing what trending topics are hot and when your name or brand is mentioned is important and becomes a focal point of tracking your web presence.
Regator is both a web app and a mobile app that allows you to keep up with what is happening in the blogosphere without missing a beat. The unique addition of the mobile app ensures that you never miss a mention. They pay app ($1.99) is a functional addition to any mobile media person’s toolbox.
Regator does little to stop you from jumping right in. Search for keywords, browse the web from within Regator, search real time trends, and even set up a blog monitor for specific names and keywords for daily reports when those words are mentioned.
I also found the ability to favorite posts, entire blogs, and/or topics to be useful for when I needed to come back and read up more in depth later.
Regator definitely explores millions of posts thousands of the best sites out there. I found it an interesting tool for media, business, writing, and news professionals. But just about anyone can find a great use to keep up on their specific keyword choices or trending topics.
Whilst most other smart phone companies have got their app stores well and truly grounded such as Apple and Android, Blackberry are only now catching up. The latest most notable addition to their store is the official EBay app.
This cool app will allow people to bid, watch and pay for items on EBay right from their smart phones. However, that’s not that impressive because you can do that from a mobile browser. What is impressive is how it looks. As you can see from the screenshot below all the auction information is combines into one, easy-to-use screen.
Also, the app is integrated with the phone’s other features such as the calendar. Say you have a bid on an item and the auction is ending soon. Well an alarm will be set from the app on the phones colander and it will notify you if it needs and interaction on your part. It will also tell you if you won or lost the auction right away.
Unfortunately, the only method of payment using the app is PayPal – which i guess is for security reasons.
Many of you may be aware of an existing third-party EBay app for the Blackberry and wonder why you should bother with this one. Well this one doesn’t cost $10 – it’s free!
Israel based company Fring have been offering VoIP calls from your mobile handset to their own users, but now they’ve introduced the ability to make video calls over your compatible mobile phone’s data connection. More than this, you can also video call people on Skype, Facebook, Google Talk and a few other video clients, as well as co-ordinating all your friends via their online buddy list. Once you’ve got your friends together on a list, you can also tie in IM conversations and posting web clips to people via Fring’s interface.
Fring video calls are currently available on Nokia X6, N97 mini, N97, 5800, N95 8G and N95 devices as well as Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile, J2ME and Linux devices, and the company plans to launch video calling on the iPhone (the VoIP app is already available on the iPhone, but it does not yet include video). Of course, while the VoIP protocol will mean you use less of your contracted minutes, it will burn through your mobile data connection; make sure you are in range of your Wireless router, or go for the unlimited bandwidth option if you’re going to rely on Fring to make calls.
Here’s an example of their application in action.
If all you want to do is get all your IM friends in one place, you could also go over and check out EBuddy, who run a pretty good service.
The other day we profiled Swype here on Crenk, letting you know that it would be preloaded on the Samsung Omnia II. Now, I discovered that the popular video streaming service Qik will have an app that will come as standard on the second incarnation of Samsung’s Omnia smart phone.
Until recently, Ustream was the go-to service for streaming video. Celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher use it to broadcast live to their fans. By making this app standard on the phone, allowing people to easily stream video onto the web or other people’s phone, the balance may shift.
I think this is a good idea – and an addition that will improve the overall appeal of the phone.
The only other phones with Qik pre-loaded is the Nokia S-60 based phones. If the Omnia II is anywhere near as popular as the first version, Qik could be seeing some serious user numbers heading their way.
For those of us that have a knack for words, Scrabble has long been a favorite. Many of us enjoy the challenge of sparring one another with our wits and knowledge. In today’s mobile world there was little chance of us playing Scrabble until now.
You’ve finished work on Friday night, you’re in the pub and you want to find out what bands are playing near you tonight. These iPhone apps are here to solve your problem: 
Recently, Nokia (perhaps foolishly) released a video of their new N900 smart phone running an SNES emulator playing some classic titles. The video had a voiceover which clearly amped up the phones gaming capabilities for classic emulators:
The other day we profiled 
