sustaining word » web/tech

my favourite 10 iPhone apps

jazzmetalman — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 10:07:05 +0000

It’s a new year, and I thought that I would list down my 10 favourite iPhone apps from 2009 and going into 2010. To keep it to 10, I have excluded the twenty or so apps that form part of iPhone OS 3.1.2 – for the record I only have a an iPhone 3G bought on the day of its release in Australia in July 2008.

In no particular oder, here they are:

Tecarta NIV – even though the NIV is not my Bible of preference, this is a great app to use during messages/study with it’s integrated note taking facility, from which you can email to yourself or friends. Four stars.
Drop7 – a really simple, addictive game that allows me quick breaks during the day. I don’t know what it says about me when I describe it as simple and addictive! Four stars.
Tweetie 2 – for me the best app for Twitter – great display of timelines, DMs etc. It’s used all day. Five stars.
Boxcar – push notifications for status updates from Twitter, Facebook etc. I use it for Twitter updates to see if I want to follow up in Tweetie 2. Four stars.
Kindle for iPhone – great companion for the Kindle. See my post on my initial thoughts on the kindle. Four stars.
Olive Tree Bible Reader – in my opinion, the BEST Bible app available. I have a number of versions, NKJV, ESV, HSCB and NLT, plus a heap of books (before I purchased the Kindle) – powerful searching, easy to use, good study tool when away from my laptop and home desktop. It has come in handy too many times to recount. Five stars.
Sygic Mobile Maps – I don’t use GPS navigation that often, but when I need to, Sygic is excellent. Hardly any lag time; good text to speech; and an always improving interface and product. Four and a half stars.
1Password – 1Password is a great app on the Mac platform, and this is the companion app for the iPhone. Stores web passwords and other key information such as PINs. Can also be utilised to generate extremely strong passwords for additional protection on the web. Four and a half stars.
Flight Control – a great game from a small Aussie developer. When you have a spare 5 to 15 minutes, the goal is to try and land planes on a series of different landing strips – an island, an aircradft carrier and outback Australia are three of the challenges. Great fun. Four and a half stars.
Evernote – a really good use of cloud computing. Online storage of documents at no charge for a reasonable monthly upload limit. Great to have 24/7 access to important documents. Four stars.

Other notables that didn’t make the cut are the official Arsenal app, Word Press 2.0, Things and CricInfo. These missed out as they are not essential, but they are great apps regardless.

first thoughts on the kindle 2

jazzmetalman — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 13:09:32 +0000

It’s been now two days since I received my Kindle 2, Amazon’s eBook reader. It’s early days, but I am extremely happy with it so far.

These are the really pleasing attributes of the Kindle 2 (International Version):

The speed of the transfer from the Kindle Store to the device
The management of titles on the Kindle; both those purchased from the Kindle Store and those transferred from previous purchases on other devices
The integration with the Kindle for iPhone app, whereby books are synchronised over both devices for ease of continuity of reading
The iPhone app is as good an eBook reader for the iPhone that I have used – easily on par with Stanza
The reading experience is pleasant and better than expected
It’s lightweight, easily held and controllable with one hand
Unobtrusive style, with clean lines that don’t distract from the reading experience
The good level of third party software to assist in managing your Kindle and its library. The best that I have found is Calibre
Lastly, with the addition of a Gelaskin cover (mine are in the photos here), the Kindle is easy to hold, and looks really good.

As it has been only two days, I haven’t yet used the included dictionary or the note taking features but they look promising and both appear functional and practical.

However, not all things are perfect. In my opinion there are a few issues that need to be addressed in the future (I have no doubt that Amazon will address these).

The synchronisation between the Kindle and the iPhone appears only to be functional for books purchased from the Kindle store – titles loaded locally do not show up on the iPhone
The quantity of titles available for international users is significantly less than those available to US users. In fact, I was unable to buy Nancy Wake, a book by Australian author Peter Fitzsimons, yet I could purchase this book if I lived in the US.
Computer usage is restricted to Windows based PC’s at the moment. Kindle for Mac is coming, but no date has been given for it’s release. This is only an inconvenience as you can run Windows on any Intel based Mac. Having a Mac based client however, will complete the Kindle experience for me.

An interesting footnote is that eBooks outsold physical books at Amazon over the Christmas period.

posting to your wp blog from tweetie 2

jazzmetalman — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 10:32:25 +0000

Mashable reports that WordPress has now a built-in integration that works with a Twitter api. Basically, if you use an iPhone Twitter client such as Tweetie 2, you can post a Tweet that will become a blog post – not bad if all you want is a short, succinct blog post of less than 140 characters.

The only problem that I haven’t sorted out is that it works with my wordpress.com hosted page, but not this particular blog that is built on WordPress 2.8. Hopefully this will be sorted out soon.

The Mashable article can be found here.

tech 10 commandments

jazzmetalman — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:25:16 +0000

While on the 10 commandments, here is a fairly old one from the Joy of Tech – but still relevant today.

twitter 10 commandments

jazzmetalman — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:19:43 +0000

Found these whilst I was stumbling around the web. You may have already seen them, but they’re worth a laugh or two.

If God Texts the Ten Commandments – by Jamie Quatro (here is where I found them)

no1 b4 me. srsly
dnt wrshp pix/idols
no omg’s
no wrk on w/end (sat 4 now;sun l8r)
pos ok – ur m&d r cool
dnt kill ppl
:-X only w/m8
dnt steal
dnt lie re:bf
dnt ogle ur bf’s m8, or ox, or dnky. myob

m, pls rite on tabs & giv 2 ppl

ttyl, JHWH

ps. wwjd?

make an audio book from any text source

jazzmetalman — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:49:00 +0000

I was reading a blog that I regularly visit yesterday and stumbled upon instructions for creating audio books from any type of text file. It was so awesome that I put it out on Twitter early today and have been requested to “fill in the blanks”.

First and foremost, credit goes to Rick Mansfield and his blog This Lamp. Unfortunately for you users of PC’s and the multiple variants of Windows, this will not help you, but if your a Mac user you will find all the instructions here.

The example that Rick describes is converting a christian resource book into an audio book. Yet this method works for anything that contains text – I have created audio books from pdf files, Word docs and Pages docs, the list is endless.

One last thing that Rick doesn’t mention is that when you have your new “Text to Speech” file in iTunes, you can then convert it into iTunes audio book format by running a script called Make Bookmarkable by Doug Adams and you can download the Apple Script here.

Rick in his post mentions how little time it takes to create an audio book from scratch. One of the ones that I created was The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson. The final product was an audio book that would take 10 hours and 54 minutes to listen through – total time to prepare and convert on my MacPro was about 8 minutes.

It’s an absolutely awesome way to get audio books onto your iPod or iPhone. The possibilities are endless – I can see myself converting some of my daughter’s Uni text books next year so she can listen to them as she commutes to Uni, rather than having to carry them with her.

I hope you enjoy exploring these unlimited possibilities. If you’re a Windows user and you know of a way to do it on that platform, I’d love for you to share the secrets.

Happy audio book listening!

bible study options

jazzmetalman — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:32:00 +0000

I’m a Mac user, and proud of it. When I made the switch from Windows in 2004 the biggest challenge that confronted me was what bible study software would I use. For all of my Windows life (from 3.0 to XP) I had used various versions of QuickVerse and it’s associated atlases and dictionaries.

Unfortunately for me, QuickVerse only came in a Windows version, and PC emulation at the time was terribly slow, so it was not an option for me to consider. I therefore had to find a new bible study software – there were a number of free/cheap options, but the standout was Accordance.

Now using Accordance was more a paradigm shift compared to switching to Mac and something that took some time to come to grips with. It was frustrating as it limited my ability to study and prepare messages, but over time I have come to appreciate it more and more – it’s power in compiling searches from a huge array of resources is awesome. To me, Accordance, makes the complex simple – a bit like a great teacher of the Word.

Five years on, after attending a training seminar in Sydney, I love Accordance. Yet now, Logos has recently released Logos4, clearly their best offering yet.

The Mac version is currently in Alpha mode and it’s fun to be a part of software development, whereas the Windows version is a complete release. With the advent of exceptional Windows virtualisation programs such as Parallels and VM Fusion, running a Windows bible study application is no longer a chore for Mac users.

The Windows version of Logos4 certainly has a Mac feel to it, but not quite. Yet is a great tool and has a great interface for students of the Word – powerful searching and great layout of resources for viewing. A neat bonus from Logos is that they have released an iPhone App that will sync your library with the phone – unfortunately, no information is presently able to be stored on the iPhone – it must by streamed over Wi-fi or 3G phone networks.

It’s a great position for the modern Christian to find themselves in – two great bible study apps for either of your operating system of choice.

For me, I will use both as they do different things in some ways better than their competitor. But if I had to choose one, it would be Accordance, as there motto says, the bible is central.

So if you’re in the market for new software, please consider Accordance and I Know you won’t regret it. Go ahead, make the switch!

PS – if you don’t want to leave Windows, Accordance provides an emulator so you run run Accordance on your Windows based machine.

which web browser are you

jazzmetalman — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:01:00 +0000

Here is an interesting table highlighting speed performance of browsers IE8, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera.

What becomes most interesting is that the weakest performer, IE8 and it’s older siblings, is still the one that most people use. The fastest, Chrome, still has a small share of browser users. So why has IE8 still got the greater percentage of users? Is it ignorance or apathy, because clearly all others are way faster, others (Firefox & Safari) are more secure and there is less bloat on IE8′s competitors. Clearly Firefox is gaining on IE8, and in some statistical surveys, has surpassed it in market share.

I am amazed by some people who wouldn’t even consider trying other browsers for no apparent reason than they have been using various versions if IE since Netscape’s Navigator met its demise. For me security and speed are the key factors in determining my browser of choice, closely followed by a substantial set of features.

My browsers of choice are Safari (Mac OSX) and Firefox 3.5 when I’m running Linux or Windows. What are yours?

socialnomics

jazzmetalman — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:19:00 +0000

For an old bloke like me, the ever expanding impact of Socialnomics is amazing. Baby Boomers and older Gen Xers may struggle to comprehend the logic behind the rapid growth and influence of Social Media sites/tools.

If you would prefer to watch it on YouTube, then you can do so.. Whether you’re in business, a leader of people, a Christian church or ministry, you need to embrace and adapt to this phenomenon.

Be amazed, be very amazed.

to tweet, or not to tweet, that is a question

jazzmetalman — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:18:00 +0000

I was thinking recently that Twitter seems to me a good tool for guys to share their thoughts as it is quick and easy. Facebook status updates come with so much clutter and other info about how people have scored in some game that is meaningless to me. I like Facebook for the status updates, but let’s leave it at that.

So, what I want to know, is “Am I alone in this world in preferring Twitter to Facebook for the simplicity of the information sharing that it provides.

Your thoughts please.