Top iPhone Resource

Barnes & Noble App - A Book Lovers Companion

shriya — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:31:23 +0000

Barnes & Noble is one of my favorite book stores here in town. I just recently checked their iPhone app and I was very impressed.

B&N Bookstore is the name of the app in App Store should you search for it. Let’s see how this free iPhone App measures up beyond the basic functionality of searching for books, music & dvds.

In the first screen you’d see a bookcase where you can swipe to see book covers like in a carousal. Under that is the area where you see different sections like Recommendations, Bestsellers, New Realeases, Review & Studio. This is tagged as the Discover section and is like virtually strolling through the bookstore.

I was looking at the Bestsellers and you can see the online and list prices there. Nice.

One of the newest features is that now you can read book reviews right from your iPhone! Extra nice!

Now comes the cool factor for you iPhone owners. Let’s say you have a book in front of you that you want to check a price for.

Go to the ‘Search’ page and click on the green camera button. Take a picture of your book cover and the app will find your book from the millions of books in the store!

Amazon’s iPhone App has had this feature for a while but I was still impresses with how accurately and swifty it found this Drupal Book for me.

And the Stores page lets you quickly find a Barnes & Noble around you with a simple click of the familiar ‘Locate me’ button near the search box.

B&N Bookstore App is a must have for a book lover, IMHO. Plus, the the price can’t be more right - Free.

iPhone OS 3.1 is Seeded - Hold Your Horses If you Wanna Unlock

shriya — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:00:03 +0000

Apple has seeded iPhone OS 3.1 to developers with a few new features.

Voice Control activation from a Bluetooth Headset
iPhone vibrates on moving apps on the Home Screen
Modem firmware updated to 5.08.01
OpenGL and Quartz improvements
Cut, Copy, Paste functionality in Dial Pad of Phone App
Non destructive Video editing - option to trim your clip then “Save as copy…” instead of replacing the original clip.
APIs to allow third party apps to access videos and edit them

But, OS 3.1 might leave some iPhones out there completely disabled for ultrasn0w per Dev Team. Here is what they are saying:

You’ve seen us give this warning before, and there are only so many ways to say it or come up with a clever title But here it is: ultrasn0w users must stay away from any firmware updates past 3.0 (including today’s 3.1 beta) until we release the tools that let you update the firmware without updating the baseband. For most phones out there, baseband updates are irreversible and you’ll lose ultrasn0w.

The 3.0 jailbreak was one of those (rare) times where both the jailbreak and the unlock coincided (the only other time was 2.2). It’s important that people realize that *most* firmware releases aren’t like that, and you need to take steps (via the tools) to separate the firmware update from its included baseband update.

This warning does not apply to the iPhone 2G, which uses BootNeuter for the unlock, not ultrasn0w.

This does not affect iPhone 2G so if you have a 3G or 3GS and want to unlock your iPhone, hold your horses - as always.

However, you can jailbreak your iPhone 3g with redsn0w right now.

Wordpress iPhone App v1.3 is Live

karthik — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:31:24 +0000

My favorite iPhone blogging app WordPress has updated to version 1.3. It gets complete OS 3.0 compatibility along with a bunch of bug fixes.

I couldn’t find a list of new features from the iPhone WordPress blog but you could get details by looking at the blog.

Also, you might see that the version is shown as 1.21.1 in the About section but be assured you have 1.3 if you see it.

How to Sync Google Calendar & Contacts to iPhone?

karthik — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:01:59 +0000

Shriya and I use Gmail and Google Calendar extensively. iPhone’s native Calendar is nice but Google Calendar lets us access our events from our computers as well. Plus, I have tons of contacts already filled out in my Gmail that would be nice to have them in my iPhone.

With Google Calendar, you can also subscribe to other Calendar (CalDAV) compatible services like Remember the Milk, Anyvite, etc.

How to Sync Google Calendar with iPhone?

With this little tip, you can integrate Google Calendar right into your iPhone Calendar using Google Sync. I am going to assume you have upgraded to OS 3.0 and get to 2.2 later.

iPhone OS Version 3.0

Open Settings in iPhone
Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars
Tap on Add Account
Select Microsoft Exchange
In the Email field, enter your full Gmail address
You can leave the Domain field empty
In Username, enter your full email address
In Password, enter your Google password
Hit Next and enter m.google.com in Server field
Press Next
Select the Google Services you want to Sync - only Calendar & Contacts supported at the moment
Choose ‘Keep on my iPhone‘ to keep your existing contacts and events in your iPhone.
And you are done!

Gotchas

Google Calendar and Contacts will automatically sync if you have Push (Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data) enabled. Push settings can also drain your battery faster so play with it and see how your battery holds up with various intervals.
You can choose which of your Google Calendars to Sync by going to http://m.google.com/sync in Safari
You can only create 1 Exchange ActiveSync account. So if you already use one for work you are out of luck. Thanks Apple!
After the Sync is done, you chose to see All Calendars or just specific Calendars in iPhone
With iPhone OS 2.2, you won’t see the screen where you can chose to Keep your existing Contacts in iPhone. You have to heed the warning that you will lose your iPhone data and hit Sync twice.

Hope you were able to set up your Google Calendar and Contacts in your iPhone with these instructions. Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll try to answer them.

iPhone Game: Wild West Pinball

shriya — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:02:33 +0000

For all you pinball fans, there is good news!

Wild West Pinball is an excellent pinball game with crisp graphics and excellent game play. If you are used to going through a couple of screens before you start playing a game, you will appreciate the simplicity in Wild West Pinball.

As soon the game loads you just tap the screen to get started. I noticed that this game had dropped from $1.99 to FREE at lunch and loaded it up. You can see I didn’t score much but I was really impressed by the way the screen zooms in the area where the ball is and then comes back down just in time so you don’t lose it.

Wild West Pinball boasts of

Full hi-res 3D graphics
40 fps frame speed
Camera effects
Live scoring table
Realistic physics
Shake your iPhone to shake your pinball table
Pause/play game play anytime

Wild West Pinball is an excellent pinball simulator game!

Available in: App Store

Price: $1.99 -> Free

TiR Gets A New Design

karthik — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:37:12 +0000

Our love affair with iPhones takes on a new life with the arrival of a 32GB black iPhone 3GS in our family.

To celebrate that, we have given our site a makeover and released a new design last night. We welcome you to take a look and let us know your comments.

There are still little bugs creeping around under covers and we need your help in finding them. Please let us know either through the comments or the contact form if you come across any. We will deeply appreciate it.

Internet Explorer/Safari bug

At present, the picture carousal (one of the cool things in the new design) isn’t working in Internet Explorer and Safari. It works fine in Firefox & Google Chrome and we are working hard to fix it.

2 Open slots for Guest Bloggers

We are opening up 2 slots iPhone fans to guest blog here. If you like to review iPhone apps, accesories, share your tricks and tips with fellow iPhoners, this could be your chance to reach a wide audience. We get over 60,000+ pageviews a month and growing.

Unfortunately, this is not a paid gig but you will get some good exposure (link to your site and a brief bio in every post). And as the site turns profitable (we are working hard on it) we have plans for adsense profit sharing, etc in the future. If you are interested, shoot us your bio and why you would like to write for us. We will send you more details following that.

Advertisements

We try to keep the advertisements to a minimum. In fact, we love our regular readers so much we don’t even show in-post ads to you. As much as we hate ads on sites we visit too, they are a vital source of revenue to keep the site running and make it better as well. So, only new readers visiting us through search engines see the in-post ads.

However, we do appreciate if you do take a look at our Sponsors (in the side area) and see what they are about if they interest you.

As a final word, thank you for visiting and supporting Top iPhone Resource. I won’t bore you anymore with these site information but we were so excited to let you know the plans we have for our beloved site.

More great stuff is in the air here. Back to regular programming now.

Animoto Videos App Gets Updated

karthik — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:46:57 +0000

Animoto Videos is an excellent app for quickly creating 30-sec videos from your pictures with a background music of your choice. It comes with professional looking transition effects.

You can read our Animoto iPhone App review here.

Animoto’s current version adds a bunch of new features

It syncs with your Animoto account
Lets you create longer videos
Save videos to your iPhone to watch it later even offline
Better image timing/fitting in video
Lots of new song options

If you get a chance, check out the web-based Animoto as well as it offers lot more options. With the 3MP camera in the new iPhone 3GS, creating videos from your iPhone pictures can’t be easier.

Also, I had great luck with creating better Animoto videos with these tips.

Random Posts

iPhone 3GS Availability Checker

shriya — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:23:02 +0000

A week after the launch of iPhone 3GS if you are in the market for one, you can check the availability online now.

Apple has a little utility here that shows you the iPhone3GS availability by State, City and also by iPhone 3GS model number by Color for 16GB/32GB models.

For eg: at present the Grand Rapids, MI store shows that the black 32GB iPhone 3GS is unavailable! It will be handy to have this information so you can go to the store that has your model in stock.

Here’s the current status info from Apple:

The Apple Retail Store likely has your iPhone 3GS in stock. You can check the most up-to-date availability right here. Shipments of iPhone 3GS arrive most days and availability is updated hourly. The 8GB iPhone 3G is currently available in all stores.

Which one are you looking to get? If this is your first iPhone, you will definitely be blown away by its versatility!

Random Posts

iPhone 3GS Jailbreak and Unlocking Looks Promising

karthik — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:02:11 +0000

Dev Team just passed on the good news for those with a iPhone 3GS or waiting to buy/sell unlocked iPhone 3GS.

In less than a week from iPhone 3GS launch (has it just been a week?), they have been able to verify that an exploit used to jailbreak iPod Touch 2G, dubbed 24kpwn, is still applicable to the bootrom of the iPhone 3GS!

If you are familiar with jailbreaking iPhone 3G with redsn0w, the same technique could be used to jailbreak iPhone 3GS. The iPhone 3GS bootrom seems to have been cut in August 2008 timeframe so this exploit is still valid which is great news for us.

And another great news is that Ultrasn0w - the iPhone unlocking tool can be used as such to unlock iPhone 3GS without any modifications whatsoever!

That said, Dev Team says there are still challenging aspects of iPhone 3GS that needs to worked into their tools. With this coming in less than a week from launch, I am more than hopeful that we will be seeing Redsn0w for iPhone 3GS very soon.

Stay tuned for more updates on iPhone 3GS jailbreak and unlocking.

Excellent work, Dev Team!

[via Dev Team blog]

iPhone Tip: Quickly Access iPod Playback Controls

karthik — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:10:57 +0000

If you have used a previous generation iPhone, you are probably aware of this little trick.

If you are a new iPhone 3GS user, you might not have stumbled on this yet and will appreciate it.

While listening to music on your iPod (iPhone), if the screen locks out you don’t have to unlock the screen to skip, forward, pause etc. Just quickly press your Home button twice. The iPod screen will be overlayed in your locked screen. It lets you

Skip to previous song
Skip to next track
Shows you album cover
Adjust volume

If you use the Apple’s earphones, you can do this right in it. If you use some other earphones like I do, you might like this handy little way Apple has provided us.

Also, did you know that Apple has been renaming everything in their site from iPhone 3G S to iPhone 3GS? I like it. Do you have a tip to share of your own? Hit the comments section.

Top iPhone Resource

Barnes & Noble App - A Book Lovers Companion

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iPhone OS 3.1 is Seeded - Hold Your Horses If you Wanna Unlock

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Wordpress iPhone App v1.3 is Live

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How to Sync Google Calendar & Contacts to iPhone?

How to Sync Google Calendar with iPhone?

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iPhone Game: Wild West Pinball

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TiR Gets A New Design

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Animoto Videos App Gets Updated

Random Posts

iPhone 3GS Availability Checker

Random Posts

iPhone 3GS Jailbreak and Unlocking Looks Promising

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iPhone Tip: Quickly Access iPod Playback Controls

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