Posts Tagged ‘apps’

Kinda pushing it a little close, here, but an iPhone app for the San Diego Comic-Con just arrived.

It's basically a mini version of the SDCC website, with a bit of interactivity. You get a countdown, the latest news (which opens the SDCC site in a browser instead of using RSS feeds or anything configured for an iPhone), a program list which allows you to select favorites (but not to call up a list consisting of only your favorites), a list of exhibitors, and maps of the different levels and exhibits. But the search function is only marginally useful, lists and the maps are not at all connected and the maps are simply graphics instead of Google-map-type programs.

All in all, a good first try. But it needs a LOT more interactivity to truly be useful. If I pull up an event, I want to be able to add it to my iPhone calendar, find it on an interactive map, and create a personal to do list. Hell, this is the iPhone, I should be able to select all the events and exhibitors and guests I'm interested in and be presented with a personal schedule with mapping directions to get me where I need to be, when I need to be there.

Maybe in the 2010 version.

Bookz Pro, on the many ebook readers available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, just updated to be fully compatible with the 3.0 OS, and it's added some functionality. Version 2.6 now includes auto-rotation, a search bar in your library, and the ability to read from ZIP files. This is added to a decent list of ebook reading tools for a program that has set out to be the easiest native text document reader for the iPhone. Bookz Pro has a built-in dictionary, multi-language support, it opens large text files extremely quickly, and it even allows you to password-protect specific books. Bookz Pro is $4.99, the free version (without the dictionary, password protection of appearance mods) is, well, free.

All well and good. But when they updated why did they change the app's icon, which was cool and distinctive (see above left), into something that looks like an "I Can Read!" book? Clipart restrictions? Aiming at the children's iPhone market? Lost a bet? I don't recall offhand if the pro and free versions had different icons before so perhaps this is a way to make the difference more obvious, but jeez.

A century ago, when times were tough (as they are now) and jobs were scarce (as they are now) and people needed inexpensive entertainment to get through their days, the pulp magazines were born. They were filled with lurid tales of adventurers and detectives, ape men and wild women, science fiction and romance, true crime and fantastical yarns. Science fiction was born here, and noir detective stories. Readers were transported to deep jungles and cursed pyramids, desert islands and mad scientist lairs, and they got to forget their lives and all the uncertainties of a post-world-war world for a little while.

Now, things are getting tough again. And we could really use some cheap entertainment again…*

Enter "Steampunk Tales." This collection of 10 stories by award-winning authors takes you back to the days of Victorian inventors who never used muscle when a gear would do, and never met a piston they didn't like. Steam-powered computers, mechanical men, dirigibles and anything that can be thought up by a human mind and realized in brass, iron and leather.

As for the stories themselves – like in the original pulp magazines, some worked for me, some didn't. Some, like  "Project Moebius-5" and "Tempus Fugit," had great promise but ended abruptly and poorly. Some were experimental and had excellent passages, if not plots, like "The Anachronist's Cookbook" and "The Man and the Robot." "Benedice Te" was a rollicking good adventure, "A Grain of Sand" was a decent inventor's tale, and the world of "The Reanimation Emporium" is one I'd like to read more stories about. One or two of the rest I didn't finish, but overall it wasn't a bad evening spent.

"Steampunk Tales" will be published monthly, and will only be available for the iPhone or iPod Touch. Once the 3.0 OS comes out, you'll be able to order new issues from within the app. Just $1.99.

* OK, yes, "cheap" doesn't include the pricve of the iPhone/iPod Touch itself, but work with me, here.

I'm still deep in the "add 5 cool apps, delete 4 after trying each one once, immediately add 5 more" phase of my iPod Touch love affair. My little mini-desktops are constantly spinning with apps that zoom in just long enough to wiggle the others aside before I bore of them and consign them to iTunes hell.

And yet, even with the amazing time-wasting bonanza available to me through the iTunes store — and that's not even counting the new world open to me if I ever hold my breath and jail-break the thing — there are still whole categories of applications I can't find. So, with a hopeful hint to restless programmers who just need a direction, here are the apps I want.

RealTip

I want to enter the total of my dinner and get the amount of the tip. But, and this is important, only after I check off boxes to describe my waitperson's performance, which would then positively or adversely affect the amount of the gratuity. Did she smile and remember everything, but spill ketchup on my wife's head? Was the food present, warmer than room temperature, and more or less on the plate? Were we treated to unwanted dinner theater involving our waiter and his ex-girlfriend-who-still-lives-with-him? Were we left waiting less than the time it would have taken to hunt, kill, and prepare the food ourselves? RealTip should take it all into account and give me a total I can live with.

GeoPerv

Not sure about your new neighbor? Shivering whenever you walk by your new babysitter? Wondering why your date seems so creepy? Snap a surreptitious pic of him and GeoPerv will instantly compare it to the local sexual offenders database (determined by geolocation) and "To Catch a Predator" reruns.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sure, you want to send your Facebook buddies a beer or a bouquet or a box of chocolates or a plant or a pet or any of a zillion other virtual items available through the many Facebook gift-giving apps, but who can afford them?

Times are tough, and even free gifts might be too a little too much for your strained budget. Fortunately, I can help.

Depression Gifts allows you to send economy-appropriate presents to your friends. Pencils, apples, sticks, and more easy-to-afford items are available, with more coming. Your friends will appreciate the thought and your wallet will appreciate the break.

Depression Gifts. Available wherever lots of sad-looking people stand in line, in black and white.

“Paul, I have to say your review doesn’t look so good this year.”

“What? Mr. Jenkins, you’ve never complained about my work before.”

“Your job performance is fine, Paul, that’s not the problem.”

“Our company won awards for my work this year!”

“No, Paul, it seems the problem lies in your people skills.”

“What?”

“It’s here in your file. There have been issues with how you deal with those around you, and we take that sort of thing seriously at this company.”

“Someone complained about me? Who complained about me?”

“I really can’t divulge—“

“Just tell me. Was it Lucille? Did she complain about me? Anyone could have dropped the mustard bucket on her at the picnic, it was just dumb luck I happened to be—“

“No, it wasn’t Lucille, I can tell you that much.”

“Then who?”

“Let’s just say there are people in your network who are unhappy with how you deal with them.”

“How I—I barely deal with anybody, I usually stay to myself. Heh, about the only time I see anyone I recognize is on my Facebook page…”

“Yes, well.”

“…You’re kidding me.”

“I did say in your network.”

Read the rest of this entry »