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When I posted about the website 1448Apps.com, fellow blogger Elizabeth Christian commented and pointed me to PandoraBox, a free app that lets you do two things: 1) see all the new apps that have just been added — you don't need to go hunting through all 20 categoriesand 2) see all those apps that have just been reduced in price or made free. This is a great way to track those specials that vendors offer when they reduce the price of their app for one day.
The new MobileMe iDisk app is free, but of course it entails having a MobileMe account, which runs $99 per year. I like MobileMe, which automatically keeps my contacts in sync with my contacts on my computer. Add a new contact to my computer, and it's automatically there on my iPhone. I also recently began using MobileMe's iDisk, which lets you store files online, and combined with Apple's free Backup application, lets you automatically back up selected files and folders on your computer. Remote backup is crucial.
In the spring 2009 issue of iPhone Life, I wrote about how to "Lose Weight with the iPhone." The photo that illustrated the piece showed my 11-pound weight loss in two months. I was standing at 199 at the time - down from 210 at Christmas.
I also wrote that the Edibles app said that I'd have to get down to 170 before I could consider myself "healthy." Well, on August 3rd I tipped the same scale at 169.8 pounds! I followed my own advice and did what my iPhone told me I was allowed to do.
This has been a busy week or so for the App Store, so I thought I'd chime in with my observations, as a user and developer.
First, Apple took a major step forward toward enhancing the structure of the App Store, by adding Keywords. Now, when developers submit apps, they must include 100 characters of keywords that will be part of the approval process. Before, Digital Chocolate, a game developer, had the word "ea." as in the abbreviation of 'each', repeated several times in their descriptions. The result was, searches for "EA" as in EA Sports, returned only Digital Chocolate apps! EA complained, and Apple listened.
Since updating the iPhone OS is pretty automatic, you don't likely need to be reminded. But in case you haven't yet installed the latest update, you should. This great article in TidBITS explains what the vulnerability is and why it's essential that it be fixed. Otherwise the bad guys could exploit it and do bad things such as disable your phone, steal your data, make calls, and send text messages.
The Temporary Internet Files folder contains a kind of travel record of the items you have seen, heard, or downloaded from the Web, including images, sounds, Web pages, even cookies.
With some 65,000 apps, it's hard sometimes to find the ones that will meet your needs the best. And it's sometimes hard to sort through the App Store reviews to determine whether the app is worth your time and/or money. Two resources can help. One is the website 148Apps, which has just been selected by PC magazine as one of the top 100 websites, and will appear in the Undiscovered Tech category. This site has great reviews of apps, but also five very helpful Top 148 Apps lists: All time Top Apps, Free iPhone Apps, Free iPhone Games, Top Paid Apps, and Top Paid Games.
During the discussion of my article on YourTube, an excellent plug-in for downloading videos from YouTube, I’ve been asked in a HowardForums thread about the other two, free(!) solutions, the AppStore-based (read: no jailbreaking needed) iWoopie and the Cydia-based MxTube.
In the following, I thoroughly compare these two apps to both each other and YourTube.
Generic pros / cons of the three YouTube downloaders
In today’s updates of the Web browser roundup and the 3G S tidbit article, I’ve elaborated on the following:
- Getting and using a brand new download manager for Safari. It’s not quite the level and quality of iCab Mobile 1.6, but still usable.
- Whether the rumored heat buildup issue really makes the iPhone 3G S useless on hot summer days.
Finally, I’ve also elaborated on some additional experience with games like UniWar and NFS: Unlimited on the 3G S.
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