Macgasm

My favorite games are really those strategy games that make you think long and hard for your next move. Frenzic (iTunes link, $2.99) does a great job at this, though you can’t always look long and hard! The goal of the game is to fill the circles with the corresponding piece — they look quite similar to trivial pursuit pies, as you can see. If you get a solid color pie, you are eligible for extra lives and bonuses. If not, your best bet is to fill that pie and empty it as soon as possible so that you can try it again.

For a simple but addictive game, the graphics are phenomenal. They’re not too minimalistic but they’re not over the top either. It’s like you’re playing a neon arcade game, quite frankly.

The gameplay is short enough that you can squeeze in a game or two while waiting on line (and when you’re hooked, you might want to play elsewhere as well to squeeze in every possible moment!) The strategy is frustrating — especially when you have a pie piece that does not fit into ANY of the pies — but it’s a game that you know you’ll want to keep going back to since it’s just that fun. There’s also the ability to see your personal best scores, the all time best players, best players today, your best local scores, and your friends’ best scores, thereby encouraging you to keep at it to beat the competition. I can easily say that Frenzic is now one of my favorite iPod touch apps.

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In this episode, Grant and Josh talk about Skype in Canada.

[02.9 MB] [0:06:20] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner]

Mobile disk solutions for the iPhone have been popping up all over the place since the iPhone was announced. Using your phone as a storage device is a logical extension, that until recently involved some third party applications or a jailbreak.

Apple changed that today by releasing the MobileMe-iDisk application for their mobile line.  It’s free and early indications are that you need a mobile me account to use it which is a huge missed opportunity (gDrive anyone).  It would have been nice if they went the same route as the AirSharing app and allowed us to connect over a wireless connection (That would probably duplicate functionality though, and Apple would have to yank their own app!  Huzzah!).

Anyway, it’s free, so if you have mobile me go check out the application.

I love it when I’m looking for an article idea and magically one appears out of the middle of no where.

The writing should have been on the wall when with the Apple TV version 2.0 software you could no longer use an AOL account to purchase media. Since it’s such a small market nobody really noticed too much. Well, today things got even bigger. The iTunes Store in general no longer allows the use of AOL accounts to purchase media.

Apple has been allowing AOL screennames to be used on the iTunes store since December of 2003. So, I wonder what changed to have Apple decide to make this policy change.

I went looking for an article to write, thinking I was going to do an iPhone application review I went to go and purchase one and was presented with the following screen:

Was I surprised, well a bit, yes. Was I concerned, no. Since I own an Apple TV (yes, I am that much of an Apple shill) I already setup an account with an email address. I also have an Apple ID that I use for everything. So it was not a big deal, just a little surprise.

I thought I’d go through the process so I naturally clicked on ‘Update Account’ and was shown the screen below.

Ok, nothing out of the ordinary here. So, I clicked on ‘Continue’ and was presented with the popup.

What the heck is going on at Apple.

I was able to bypass this error by doing the following.

1. Click on your current AOL screen name in the upper right corner.
2. Click on Continue when this screen appears.



3. You will now be presented with the update Account screen, as shown below.
4. 

Here’s where the some interesting stuff happened. I already have an account by that name because of the Apple TV, as stated before. What would happen when I attempted to use the same e-mail address… Well let’s find out.

I was presented with the following error

I decided it was time to switch iTunes over to my Gmail account. I have a feeling that this will be the beginning of changing them all over.

When you enter in the email address and verify the information click on ‘Continue’. You will be presented to update your payment information. The one thing I did not realize is that you can use a Paypal card to pay for your iTunes purchases, quite interesting.

Click on Next. That should be everything. Once the conversion is complete you should see a screen similar to the one below.

That’s exactly how simple it is to convert your iTunes AOL Account to use an email address. If you already have an alternate Apple ID you can use that and just let the AOL Screen name languish.

When you love your laptop so much, you want to treat it like a member of the family. You want to give it the best care, the best software, and the best accessories out there! I think I’ve found my 13-inch macbook the prettiest, coolest, and most original sleeves and cord pouches from Lollington on Etsy. The green dino sleeve is seriously cute and for the girlie girls out there – the migratory birds sleeve is one to squee over. They’re always adding new stuff so keep checking back for new colours and designs, and as they say: “Don’t be shy about asking for custom listings.” Maybe I should be worried that I know my boyfriend will absolutely love the pink unicorn netbook sleeve, but they’re all so darned cute to care!

I have a newborn son (he’s two months old now) and have felt overwhelmed with the various things I have to do around the clock for him — literally. New parents need to keep track of diaper changes, feedings, sleeping patterns, and more. So how do they do it? In the old days, it was all about traditional pen and paper.

Today, it’s all about your iPhone or iPod touch.

As a geeky mommy, I’ve been able to review three applications for the purposes of parent monitoring. In this post, I explore all three of them.

Total Baby

Total Baby (iTunes link, $4.99) is one of my favorite applications for tracking baby’s growth and development (and the application supports tracking multiple children, especially if you have twins — and I hear the app developer actually has those to account for ;) ). You can specify how much food your baby has taken per feeding, chart his vaccinations, document doctors’ visits (both past and upcoming), monitor his wet and dry diapers (and specify whether the bowel movements are normal or different — here, you can note exactly what was different as well, be it seedy, watery, or whatever else), monitor when he last bathed, observe his growth (weight, height, head size), and even keep track of his allergies. There’s also a field for “other” just in case there’s something else to acknowledge (like playtime, perhaps, but it all depends on how you want to use it).

Two improvements I note that can be made relate to allowing parents to specify when children start and stop feeding, especially when they only feed from bottle. Right now, you can set a global option that marks when the feeding actually started (or ended, depending on how you want to handle it), but personally, for me, I’d love to know how much free time I have to explore my own pursuits. Of course, this is an app about my baby, though, so I can’t have everything both ways and would totally understand if that feature isn’t implemented.

The second suggestion is more of a feature request, however. Bottle feeding is not assumed at all — the application immediately assumes breastfeeding is done, which is a bit frustrating since not all mothers are able to easily and successfully breastfeed (and trust me, this mother would love to have had it easy). It would be more practical for there to be a general setting for “default feeding,” be it the bottle or breast, so that I don’t manually have to add a bottle for every feeding, especially since I’m still feeding about 20 times a day.

Still, those who breastfeed will definitely appreciate the functionality that Total Baby affords mothers who need to keep track of the specific breast her baby last fed from. And the timer features are awesome.

Baby Log

Baby Log (iTunes link, $4.99) operates in a similar fashion and has the benefit of having a single screen where you can view statistics and email them off as well. Baby Log takes in data for diaper changes, feedings, sleep times, baths, and anything else that might be important and notable (such as how much breastmilk you may have pumped).

I really like Baby Log’s timer screen where you can see all the statistics in an easy-to-digest format. It also shows statistics for the last week, which is also helpful. I found a few things confusing or difficult, though, like deleting an item once I added it (accidentally) to the log. It seems that the only way to reconcile this is to actually manually edit these accidental entries and apply them to a past or future action. So for example, if I accidentally click “Feed” at 7:15 and I’m not feeding the baby, I normally will have to wait until, say, 8:45 when I actually am feeding the baby and then I will be able to edit the 7:15 entry for that 8:45 feeding. In that sense, it’s not very intuitive — and perhaps I’m missing something, but I can’t for the life of me find out where to remove these accidental entries. Update: You can delete the entries with a one-finger swipe, so I retract my previous statements.

It’s great to be able to track more than one baby as well, but I think the interface should be a lot more intuitive to be a killer app.

Baby Brain

The final app I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing is called Baby Brain (iTunes link, $4.99). This app most closely resembles Total Baby as it lets you record your breastfeeding from left to right breast, add a bottle and specify the feeding amount (which may vary from the default entry you choose in the settings of the program), monitor diaper changes, though not with detailed bowel movement statistics like the previous application, and record when the baby went to sleep.

You can then review the statistics in a daily, weekly, or monthly format, which is a feature I especially appreciated. These baby events can also be shared with friends and families via email.

The one thing about Baby Brain that can be easily disabled but is a bit annoying at first is that it has constant reminders that tell you how to do something. Unless you click “Don’t show this again,” it’s a bit intrusive. My suggestion is to have a “hints” section where you can learn how to do everything and to learn how to take full advantage of the app. But all in all, Baby Brain is a solid iPhone application.

I think that the email feature makes this app awesome. It’d be great to automate that process somehow though, but I don’t know if Apple’s SDK would allow for that.

The Verdict

If I could choose a baby logging app from the above, I’d go with Total Baby given that it has the most features. But if you’re not looking for a full-fledged application, both Baby Log and Baby Brain are very good at what they do. However, now that I’ve reviewed the other applications, having some feature-rich enhancements would be ideal.

The ideal baby logging application should have, at the minimum, the following:

• It should be easy to add and remove entries for feeding, diapers, and sleeping schedules.
• It should have an “at a glance” view for weekly/monthly milestones.
• It should not show that it prefers mothers who feed a certain way (breast versus bottle).
• Allowing statistics to be shared via email would be great.
• If the application tracks height and weight changes, it would be super if that data can be charted somewhere, similarly to the growth chart given to parents by the child’s pediatrician.

Altogether, though, these applications fill these voids — except for the growth chart feature — but overall, I am liking the most comprehensive package.

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In this episode, Grant talks third party applications interfacing with the iPod application.

[01.8 MB] [0:03:50] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner]

Lets think this through, shall we?  Apple pulls Google Voice for no apparent reason, and everyone’s tossing blame at AT&T for the application’s yankage.  While I’m no fan of Telcos, there’s probably more evidence that it’s a spat between Apple and Google than there is AT&T pushing the panic button.  Lets take the blinders off for a second.

1. Apple approves applications that use Google voice technology.
2. Apple’s Phil Schiller personally approves one of these applications.
3. ?
4. Apple yanks Google voice apps because it duplicates iPhone functionality.

I’d really like to know what step three was because something smells rotten in the state of Cupertino.  The simple answer is to start hurling poop at AT&T for putting pressure on Apple to remove applications that are directly conflicting with their phone services, and while that’s a logical conclusion, putting all the blame on AT&T is a little bit unfair here.  The history between Google applications on the iPhone offers us a little bit of a window to look through here.  Does Google have any application on the AppStore that isn’t just a web portal to their services?  The obvious answer is no. Can we take a quick gander backwards here and look at the facts surrounding the original Google App snub by Apple?

Here’s a timeline of some Google news from the last ~ year

2008:  Apple throws some hurdles at Google for their Application, and google ultimately needs to create a web portal because they broke Apple’s rules.

July 7, 2009 – Google Announces Chrome OS.

July 23, 2009 – It’s reported that Apple tells Google that they need to make Latitude a Web App instead of a native iPhone App.

July 27, 2009 – Apple yanks GV Mobile (Unofficial Google Voice App)

July 28, 2009 – Apple flat our rejects the Google Voice App.

Noticing a trend here?  It seems like Apple and Google have had quite the spat going on for a while despite a member of Google’s team being on Apple’s Board of Directors.

Google does something, then Apple reacts harshly, as if they’re punishing Google.  Google breaks the rules with there very first iPhone app, Apple turns around and tells them they need to make it a web portal.  Google announces Chrome OS, Apple tells them Latitude needs to be a WebApp, yanks GV Mobile, and Rejects Google Voice.

While correlation might not equal causation here, there is a possibility that this whole thing has to do with Apple protecting itself from the threat of Google.  We don’t like it, and frankly it reeks of desperation, if it’s the case, but to immediately blame AT&T, given the previously stated history, would be a little more than presumptuous at this time.