1st Impressions

The folks at pTracker LLC have come up with two apps that are perfect for the news junkie that follows US politics.  The first, and simpler of the two, is the $0.99 Politico Tracker Twitter Edition.  As the name indicates, this app is a collection of twitter feeds from different political figures.  Obviously not every politician understands the internet, much less Twitter, but for those that do, this is the app for following that.

When you first launch the app, you are provided with a  list of  national figures, such as the current President and Vice President, followed by categories by state.  Here in Georgia, ten different politicians are listed, including former Congressman and House Speaker Newt Gingrich.  Upon selecting any of the politicians, you can then add them to a favorites list that is brought up when you tap the little icon in the top left corner of the app.

There are two things I would love to have in the app though.  First, I would love the ability to add the URL or Twitter name of someone to follow that isn’t on the built-in list.  This would allow for the “following” of candidates for politician office and could optionally send that info to the developers for possible addition in the next update.  Second, I would love for there to be a “timeline” kind of view for all my favorites so that I would not have to open each one individually to see if there was an update.  Overall though, the app is very well put together and a great tool for any news junkie interested in US politics.

Before I can get into why you need Voice Central, you need to understand Google Voice.  As a current beta user (because I used its predecessor), let me try to explain it.  Remember the freedom you felt when you signed up for something like Gmail and could suddenly have email that you could check from any computer and it could forward on to a private email address based on search criteria and such?  Email became both portable and powerful.  Well a company came along, Grand Central (later purchased by Google and renamed Google Voice), that did the same kind of things with your phone.  Instead of just having a number assigned to your specific device and location, the number was assigned to the person.  You can give out your Google Voice number and your home, work, and/or cell numbers remain private.  As those other numbers change, you don’t have to contact everyone you know with the change.  Depending on the categories in which you place a contact, they only reach you at certain numbers that you define or at *any* of your numbers.  People don’t have to guess what number to call you at.  They call *you* and Google Voice calls your specified numbers.  You can even set it up so that the number calls all your numbers and you just pick up the call at which ever one you are at.  If you pick it up at work and need to leave for home, you can transfer the call to your cell, talk on the way to the house, then transfer the call to your home phone.  As if this were not enough, you can screen your calls and, depending on who it is, answer it, dump them to voice mail, record the call, or even block calls from certain numbers.  And to quote the late Billy Mays, “But wait!  There’s more!”  Voice mails left at your number are transcribed and sent to you via SMS or email, you can send and receive SMS messages at your number, and these SMS and voice messages can be searched just like past emails can be with Gmail.  You can use Google Voice to initiate calls as well.  Domestic calls are free, and international ones are cheap.  Just tell it who you wish to call.  It calls your designated numbers, you pick up, and it then connects you to the number you are calling.  They get your Google Voice number on their caller ID and not your private personal number.  You can even use the service to conference in up to four calls together or set up a call widget on a web site so that a visitor can put in their phone number and it will connect them with you without them knowing your number.  Finally, when you sign up (as soon as it gets out of beta) you can select a nice number that is easy to remember.  For example, my number is my area code, a 223 prefix, and my four-digit birthday.  And it’s mine for life.  For a video overview of what all it does, check out this YouTube link.  If you are not a Google Voice user and want an invite, they are going out now.  Sign up for one here.

Enough about Google Voice though.  If you, as a prior Grand Central user or future Google Voice user, have access to the service, Voice Central is “the iPhone app for that”.  It is an iPhone interface to your Google Voice account.  With it, you can initiate calls to people in your iPhone address book, listen to your voice mail,  view a history of your calls and text messages, and does all this without some of the issues associated with a similar product.  The nice thing about this product is that it lets you send and receive text messages to someone without giving them your cell phone number.  They get your Google Voice number.  This, in effect, allows you to send text messages from a land line (like your home or office) because if they call you back, it can ring there.  Of course the SMS text messages are actually delivered to your cell phone (as defined in your Google Voice setup), but can also be read and responded to online.  There is something to note though in how this works.  Since Google Voice is acting as a go-between in these SMS exchanges, you are sending messages to them, and it is forwarded to your intended recipient.  This means that Google Voice sets up a unique number for that person for this purpose.  When you get a response from them, it comes from this unique number and the SMS response is preceded with their name as you have it in your Google contacts.  Your message to them is from your Google Voice number, and their to you is from a Google Voice number assigned to their number.  If you call it, it forwards to their cell (the one you sent the SMS to) and shows up as having come from your Google Voice number.  As Google explains it, “When you send an SMS through Google Voice, the SMS appears to be sent from your Google number. When someone sends an SMS to your Google number, and it’s forwarded to your mobile phone, it won’t appear as from the sender’s actual number (e.g., the SMS may appear from 1-406-xxx-xxxx). This is so that when you reply to the 1-406-xxx-xxxx number from your phone, the SMS you send appears to be sent from your Google number and will be saved in your Google Voice inbox.“  While this seems a bit confusing, it is seamless and isn’t really the fault of the Voice Central iPhone app.  It’s just the way Google Voice is set up.

There are two things I wish this app did that it doesn’t do.  I wish there was an option to sync your iTunes contacts to your Google Voice contacts, and I wish that you could access those online contacts to configure what group(s) they belong to and how they reach you.  I’m not sure that the Google api allows for that though.  Perhaps one day Google itself will come out with a interface to do that.  Until then, this is the best we have.

This app is $2.99 in the iTunes app store.  If you are usually at a PC, you can probably get by with the web interface to Google Voice.  But if you are mobile a lot an rely on your iPhone, this app is highly recommended.  So go sign up for a Google Voice invite and, if you find yourself hooked on all it has to offer, check out Voice Central.

Allergies is a $1.99 app in the iTunes store that is a must-have for those of us that suffer from things like the pollen season that can be measured in inches here in Atlanta.  If you and the term “outdoor” are not a good mix, then this is the app for you.  It downloads daily levels from the internet (specifically AccuWeather.com) that shows the levels of pollution, mold, weed, grass, and tree pollen in the air.  Daily reports of these conditions can also be emailed to your inbox each day.

As useful as this application is, I would really like to be able to touch each measured category and have it show the actual level (like pollen count) for the day as well as a graph of what it has been like over the last week and/or month.  Here in Atlanta, a “high” level is a very relative thing.  Anything over a count of 120 is considered “extremely high”.  Yet there are times each year when we exceed 2,500 to 3,000.  So being able to track this at a deeper level of detail would be great.

Overall though, this app provides a nice “misery index” for those suffering from allergies.  It gets a thumbs-up.

Quick News is my new Must-Have $0.99 application. It is a basic interface to ten mobile-friendly national news sites. A default can be chosen, and selections can be made from TV networks, cable news networks, national newspapers, and news services. A little bit for everyone.

I have one suggestion that would make this app perfect. I would love for it to use your local location and include the closest local stations in the mix as well. I prefer to get my local news from local sources. One other thing they could add is links to audio versions of some of these sources.

Even without these wish list items, it is a great and simple app that will stay on my iPhone for some time to come.

Lifecasting is the new name for a really cool app formerly called FunSlides. In fact, the app icon and main scren still use that name. If you like to share photos, this app has a feature set that you are definately going to want to check out. What it does is allow you to create stand-alone slide shows with optional narration from either stored photos or your iPhone camera. The standard mp4 format file can then be viewed on your iPhone, emailed, copied to your computer via wifi, and even uploaded directly to YouTube. Lifecasting offers a lot of functionality for a small $0.99 price. An excelent bargain.

If the iPhone is not your first trip around the PDA block, you need no intruduction to QuickOffice. And the version for the iPhone does not disappoint. It lives up to every expectation. The ability to have Word documents and Excel spreadsheets on the iPhone is great. I uploaded a 60-page document and a 1MB spreadsheet with thousands of formulas in it, and it handled it with no problem.

While it doesn’t natively sync to your documents folder, there is a really slick web browser interface for uploading and downloading files over Wi-Fi. You can also email local or remote files, drag and drop files to your iPhone as a mounted drive, and access what you have on MobileMe.

I’ve only scratched the surface of what this app will do. It is a $20 app and I recommend a visit to the QuickOffice.com web site for all the details.

Pro Camera has been a review that was a long time in coming.  But, as they say, good things come to those that wait.  In short, this app is a Must-Have if you use your iPhone camera much.  Like other of my Must Have apps, this is how Apple SHOULD have done it.

Pro Camera has some awesome features.  First, it cleans up your memory to speed up performance if you are running low on memory.  Once the application starts, the first thing you notice is the “level” indicator in the middle of the screen that uses the tilt sensor of the iPhone to show you when your shot is lined up level.  Can’t tell you how many recent vacation photos had to be edited because my other digital camera (definitely not the photographer!) took crooked photos.  Pro Camera fixes that problem.

You can quickly take a photo by tapping anywhere on the screen.  Once taken, a preview is shown and you can choose to save it or discard it.  If you choose to save it, it becomes a background process and you can continue to take another photo.   If that were not all, it also has an image stabilazation feature.  Touch that icon and as soon as your iPhone’s accelerometer shows no movement, it snaps the photo.  The included self-portrait mode lets you get into the photo as well.

All in all, it is a wonderful app.  Definitely worth the $2.99 price tag considering all it does.

Actions is more than a To-Do list. It is a task manager. And it is EXCELLENT! Not only can tasks (or “actions”) be assigned to project lists, but you can also them to a “context”. The context can be a location or something else. And, as you would expect in a quality app of this type, start dates and due dates for each action can me set. Basically you get a lot of the power of a project management system without the confusing complexity.

Actions also adds a goal of creating a “chain” by linking each day in which you complete a task. This graphical reminder, along with the numerical icon indicator of due tasks, really helps with the procrastination issue. Not only does this $9.99 app make it to my Must Have category, but it also gets moved to my main screen.

My recommendations are few. I’d love the ability to trigger an action context based on GPS location or wi-fi connection. Ability to prioritize actions and link an action to a contact would be nice additions as well. Finally, it would be nice to be able to sync the actions to a desktop and/or online version. But don’t let the “could be better” suggestions distract from the fact that it is a wonderful and fully functional app right now. I’m just excited about where this app may head in future versions.

iRealSMS is what Apple should have included in the iPhone to begin with. When you get a text message, it pops up and allows you to respond without leaving your current application. If you need to contact someone while you are playing a game or something, you can’t launch the app with the volume up button. It searches your contacts as you start typing their name. Once you select one, you can choose to either send them a message or call them. It even counts down your remaining characters as you type out a message.

iRealSMS has its own message database that allows for searches and storage of messages in folders (including drafts and templates) as well as landscape mode. It also allows you to save a sender to your contacts. You can also select to use the default Apple app for messages if you prefer. An unread message count can be displayed in the status bar as well as the app icon. If you don’t need all the features of iRealSMS, there us a iRealQuickSMS version that just contains the QuickSend and QuickReply features. I’ve used both and believe both belong in the Must Have category. If I had one suggestion, it would be to add the character count to the QuickReply box like it is on the QuickSend box. I believe that to be scheduled in the next release though.

Both iRealSMS and iRealQuickSMS require a jailbroken phone. They are 9.99€ and 3.99€ respectively and are available via Cydia. The program also work in a demo mode. A full feature list and community forum can be found at irealsms.com.

This program does a great job of tracking illnesses and doctor visits for the specified person. You can enter pain level and temp for each day, but in this world of micro-managed medicice, I am not sure if this is frequent enough. And while there is a note field for each day, I think it really needs more when it comes to the patients overall medical condition prior to the current illness and how the curremt illness is impacting that. In other words, I see limited benefit for those with complex medical issues. I guess to me it send like overkill for those with rare things to track, but not complex enough for those documenting lots of issues that impact each other. It’s a great first start for those needing more complex medical event documentation though.