Macgasm

Wouldn’t it be great if you could ask your iPhone what time Avatar is playing this Saturday evening at your local theatre?  Or, you might want to ask your iPhone to make a reservation for you at your favorite restaurant?  Well folks, the future is here.  Now you can do this plus more, with the new iPhone App Siri.  Siri employs multiple background web services to provide you with everything you need to have a full voice and web experience on the iPhone.

Voice recognition is a key component to this app.  Siri employs Nuance voice recognition software.  You simply speak into your iPhone’s mic and it will pick up your voice, and in text form show you your voice command.  Select the “Tap here when done button”, and then select the “That’s right!  Go” button to proceed.  It’s that simple.  The only draw back I found was with a lot of background noise, it sometimes misinterpreted what I said.  Not sure if this is an issue with the App or my iPhone.  In the App Store it states that Siri is designed for the iPhone 3GS.  I have the iPhone 3G.  I’m not sure if the mic in the iPhone 3GS is better at picking up your voice in noisy areas, or not. I also tried to use my Bluetooth to speak the voice commands, and it did not pick up my voice.  When Siri doesn’t recognize a command; it displays a cartoon of a person speaking directly into the iPhone’s mic.

Making restaurant reservations with Siri couldn’t be any simpler.  Siri utilizes Open Table to check table availability of local restaurants, and then makes the reservation for you.  Now that’s simplicity at its finest.  Speak into the mic and say, “Reservations for two at the Salt Creek Grille in Valencia, CA at 6:00pm.”  It then returns with a reservation time for the restaurant.  From here you can modify your reservation, or select “Find a Table”.  If in the event the restaurant doesn’t offer reservations, Siri will give you contact information and directions to the restaurant. One more thing before I forget, make sure you setup your Open Table account in the Settings.  If you don’t have an Open Table account, you can set one up through Siri.

Siri is also great for checking out local events in your area.  No longer do you have to look through the Calendar section of the newspaper; just ask Siri and have all the events right in the palm of your hand.  You’ll get dates and times for the event you would like to attend.  You can also purchase tickets for the event right through Siri.  Your credit card information will need to be stored on Siri’s systems.  This is all powered by eventful and StubHub!.  For a complete list of partners click here, and for information on Personal Context Awareness click here.

I highly recommend Siri as a must have app for your iPhone.  I know I’m going to be using Siri a lot.  How about you?  Download Siri from the Apps Store for free and try it out.  I know you’ll be hooked just like me.  I would love to hear what you think of Siri.  So, drop a line in the comments section, or hit me up on twitter.

App Photo Provided By My iPhone

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In this episode, we talk about VOIP over 3G.

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In this week’s episode of the Macgasm videocast, we take some time to discuss a cloud-based iTunes and what it means for the future as well as the release of Aperture 3, and Lisette and I discuss AppleCare.

We also decided to do two 30 second app reviews (iBomber and BomberDove).  If you love what we’re doing please subscribe in iTunes and drop us a comment.  We’d love to hear what you think!

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On the heals of being labeled the new IE6, Mobile Safari is going to be facing some stiff competition soon. That is, if Opera has their way, and Apple decides to let the application through the approval process, which is something that the Opera community Manager Espen André Øverdahl is a little skeptical about. He’s so skeptical that he’s decided to comment about the application possibly not even making it to the appstore because Apple won’t allow it.

Apparently I’m not the only one that finds it a little bit funny that a company as successful as Opera has decided to start circling the wagons before their application has even been submitted. I know there’s still a lot of kinks to be worked out of the approval process, but a lot has changed since the last mobile Opera fiasco two years ago. At one end of the spectrum the Opera folks could be preparing their die-hard fans for a possible disappointment, but on the other, they could be trying to increase pressure on Apple for their closed practices, and their lack of allowing applications that compete with Apple Inc’s core programs. Whichever it is, there will surely be some fallout in the coming weeks as Opera submits their program for review.

I’m a big fan of competition in a market, so I’d personally welcome Opera to the iPhone. Hopefully it can push the medium much like Firefox pushed Internet Explorer.

Via Opera Blog

First, we should say that lagged sales doesn’t mean a loss of sales. Music’s continuing to be sold on iTunes, and corporations are still making a boat load of cash, the increase in growth however has stalled a little.

Correlation does not equal causation.

Everyone and their brother are reporting that an increase in prices are directly resulting in a stagnation of growth, and while that may be true there could be a host of other causes that are wreaking havoc on the growth rate. For instance, what about the recession, the fact that there are fewer new users to iTunes these days, or what if music today just tends to suck more than it did in the past? All excellent reasons for why market growth could slow down. I’d like to personally blame the problem on crappy music, but truthfully it’s probably a combination of the three.

See what’s happening here? There’s a lot of reasons why sales growth might be stagnating, and surely price may be one of them, but to drop the entire problem on the fact that labels were given the option to price a song anywhere between $1.29 and $0.69 isn’t the sole cause. If it was about the money only, wouldn’t we see a sharp incline in sales for tracks that are $0.69?

How’s this going to play out with e-books?

Peter Kafka, writer for All Things Digital and Silicon Alley Insider, thinks this lesson can be directly applied to the eBook market and that the publishers believe that it makes the most sense to get the price points you want in the beginning so that you don’t have to increase your prices later, and risk the sales stagnation.  It seems like a logical conclusion to make, but the big executives at these firms need to ask themselves an important question, and be completely honest with themselves; would the iPod have been as successful as it has been if an album cost the same amount on the iTunes store as they did in a brick and mortar store?  In order to sell digital books people need to adopt a digital device to read them, and the only way people will adopt a digital device is if the prices of said device provides economic benefits.  If given the chance to buy an ebook for 15.00 or a normal book for 15.00 I’ll take the real book every single time.  There’s no romantic feelings surrounding ebook readers, and it’ll do everyone some good if executives realized that.  Until people start to embrace the technology on a mass market level, having your prices on par with normal books is a bad idea.  Normal books will win.

Via Peter Kafka

When you’re a heavy Mac user, you will accumulate a lot of crap. You’ll end up with a lot of unique settings and auto-launching applications. Sure, these might make your life simpler in the short-term. That “Super sweet” Web 2.0 screen-pod cast-streaming widget might sound like a great addition to your computer now, but it might not be so great nine months from now when it delays your start up by ten seconds while it launches.

So, how do you get back to a less cluttered system without reinstalling your OS? Just create a new user account. It won’t be a magic bullet, but it certainly will make for a snappier system. Most of those quirks you’ve accumulated on your system are unique to one account. When you start a new account by going to the Account pane in System Preferences, you essentially get to start fresh. All of your apps remain the same, but you get to go at it with a blank slate.

If you’re worried about keeping all of your data without re-entering it, that isn’t a problem. The easiest way to move over your bookmarks is Xmarks. Google has got you covered for calendar and address book syncing, and you have all of your mail waiting for you on your server if you’re using IMAP. Also, a few quick cut and paste keystrokes will have all of the files from your old Home Folder moved over to your new account.

At least for a while, you’ll have a shiny new account to run around with. It’ll load faster and take up less resources until the inevitable slew of auto-launching apps creep back into your life. Luckily, you can just switch accounts again in a few months. Trust me, we’ve gotta stay ahead of ourselves in the world of computing. It might seem like a hassle, but thirty minutes of switching things around every six months will make things a lot better. Waiting around for useless background processes to start really irks me.

Photo Credit: Redvers

When it comes to my work flow I find myself struggling to keep files organized. Generally I spend most of my day saving my files to the desktop, for easy expose access, and then once I’m finished with them I move them to the appropriate locations. The only problem that I tend to face with this approach is that when I get super busy the first thing I neglect to do is move my files to the appropriate folders. Next thing I know, I’m spending a good chunk of time cleaning up my mess. File My Files, helps to alleviate this problem of mine.

File My Files is an application that automates the clean up process. You can set up a series of folders, assign them a file type, click a button, and the files will start to sort themselves into appropriate folders based on file extensions. This application absolutely shines when you send it to work on your downloads folder.

Don’t be mistaken, this isn’t a replacement for Hazel. Instead of filing your files into already precreated folders, the application instead creates a bunch of new folders within the folder you’re organizing.

For me, it worked well in my individual client folders. They always remain a mess for me, code intermingled with Photoshop files, and image files. File My files is meant for a job like this. It’ll keep a particular folder organized. So if you’re planning on giving the application a try keep that in mind. It does not move file types between multiple folders.

They do give you the ability to schedule a cleanup session, as well as “pack up” particular files or folders, which is their way of backing up a folder to another location.

The Downside

They’re not kidding when they say it’s a one click solution. They present you with information in a backwards way, and if you haven’t set up your folder settings manually, the application will just use the defaults. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but the application only gives you the ability to select a folder you want to organize, or click a button File My Files. You can manually set up your own filing system, but you have to go to the application’s preferences (labelled setup) in the menu bar. It’s not a big deal, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I mistakenly clicked the File My Files button, hoping to get a setup option, instead it moved all my desktop files. This is not fun if you’re in the middle of working on a project.

The application will set you back $19.95, but it does have a trial period.  I’d recommend testing it out before you make the purchase.

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In this episode, we talk about serial code managers.

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