Entries Tagged 'iPhone' ↓

I’m not a morning person. The moment my iPhone’s terrible “alarm” rings, I curse the day. There’s only one reason why I make it to the office, or anywhere besides my bed. Music.

It fuels my life. And those of my friends. We exchange music every day - our drop boxes are working overtime. The Hypemachine, a secret new music service, and some specific friends on Twitter supply us with inspiration for new songs and albums. There’s only one downside.., my iTunes collection is a mess.

In comes TuneUp

Actually, my iTunes collection was a mess. Ever since I’ve discovered TuneUp, I can browse my collection Cover Flow style without being agitated by the lack of covers.

TuneUp is a management tool that let’s you clean dirty tracks (like the ones that have the artists’s name in the song title), find missing cover art, receive upcoming concert alerts, and enjoy music videos.

The PC version is available in French, Spanish, Italian, German, and English, so most of your European folks can use the service in your native language. People from Holland, Scandinavia, and Eastern European countries must remain patient for a while.

Still in beta, we have 50 invites

TuneUp for Mac is still in private beta, meaning it made my Mac crash once and it loads very slowly. But still, my collection looks way better now. So grab yourself one of those Next Web invites to try it our yourself. Send an email to thenextweb@tuneupmedia.com, the first 50 will be invited to the TuneUp Mac or Windows Beta.

The normal program is free for 500 songs/50 album art cleans, and $19.95 for unlimited (Gold version).

The popularity of photography has exploded because of digital cameras. It's easier and cheaper to take and share thousands of pictures, and if you choose a known brand, it's almost impossible to buy a bad camera. But one thing that has suffered is the actual knowledge of the amateur photographer (and from the forums I read, a lot of pros have an embarrassing lack, too).

When you bought an old time manual SLR, there were no automatic modes (those that existed were often worse than useless, easily fooled by simple lighting conditions). You had no choice but to learn about light. You needed to know that 1/500 sec at ƒ8 lets in the same amount of light as 1/250 sec at ƒ16. You had to manually focus before a shot. And if you wanted to remove red-eye, you bought a black sharpie.

Now, I'm all for auto-everything. My cameras scarcely come out of auto mode, although I tweak the recommended settings. But, fancy as they are, a camera is still a box with a hole in the front, and understanding the fundamentals will make you a better photographer. Which is where Photocalc comes in. The $3 iPhone app will help you with all the calculations that the old-hands do in their heads. What's in there?

First, there is a tool to teach you about exposure reciprocation, the rule that if you open the aperture one stop, you need to quicken the shutter speed one stop to achieve the same exposure. This is baked into my head, but I remember it was tricky to learn.

Second, and way more useful, is the depth-of-field calculator. Depth of field is the amount of your picture that will be in acceptable focus. If you focus on a subject, the depth-of-field means that there will be a little area behind and in front of that subject that is also sharp. And the size of that zone depends on the aperture that you are using. A wide open hole in the lens means that the background will be blurred, while a small hole means almost front to back sharpness (this is why pinhole cameras work).

But how do you know how big this area is? Well, older lenses had a scale on the lens barrel to show you. Now you need a calculator, and Photocalc does that. Tell it what camera you have, how long your lens, how far away your subject is and what aperture you are using and it will tell you the depth of field limits, and will give you the hyperfocal distance. Clunkier than lens barrel markings, but still dead handy.

Next, there is a flash calculator. In the olden days, this was all done with math tables printed on the back of the strobe. Now the flash does it all for you. But if you want to kick it old-school, Photocalc will do all the heavy lifting for you. You lock any one of the five values as the one you wish to know and supply the other variables. It's quick and simple, especially if your brain is frazzled and you just need to know the aperture now, dammit.

Next up, and an amazing resource for the n00b, is the reference section. There's a full glossary of technical terms, a page that tells you the sunrise and sunset times today (using the iPhone's location features), a table for using Ansel Adams' Zone System (don't ask), a full rundown of the properties of different films (if anyone still uses them), a list of filters and a guide to the "Sunny 16 Rule".

In all, this little app is a great pocket guide. The interface could use some help -- entering values into the calculators is a little clunky -- but as a learning tool for newcomers and as a reference for old pros, it's certainly worth the three bucks.

Product page [iTunes]

Product page [Adair]

You know how it is: you're camping in the wild, and your iPhone suddenly runs out of juice, just as you get bored stiff with the music selection you've got aboard it. Previously you'd've had to carry a bunch of stuff around to sort this out, but Macally's PowerLink has come to the rescue. With USB plug on one end and 30-pin iPod connector on the other, it acts as a sync cable, but also has a battery inside to give you a squirt of extra power if you're in a pinch. It also packs a 2GB flash drive, but you'll need to get mp3's off that via iTunes, sadly. No info on how long the battery lasts, but as a 3-in-1 gizmo it's pretty useful. Out "soon" for $49.99. [OhGizmo]

The video above is Tom Robinson, one of the 280 North fellas who is smart enough to port Cocoa to the Web, showing us his multitouch "virtual light table" using the JavaScript APIs nicely documented by SitePen, as well as Apple.

His ~100 lines of code uses the new CSS transforms handles all of the touch events: touchstart, touchmove, touchend, touchcancel with code such as:

He also added a nice bridge to allow you to somewhat play from the desktop:

In desktop browsers it uses the previous clicked location as a second “touch”, so you can click a photo then click and drag another spot on the photo to resize and rotate (notice the yellow dot).

Clearly the reverse of this bridge would be even more useful, since iPhone only sends mouse events under specific conditions. The mousedown, mouseup, and mousemove events could be emulated using the touch equivalents to make certain web apps work on the iPhone without much additional work. Of course you would need to either cancel the default actions (i.e. panning and zooming) on touch events, or have some way to manage the interactions between them.

The Xtand is a solid aluminum stand that not only holds your iPhone when your hands have better things to do, but does so in that "I'm an aluminum stand that looks like an iMac stand" kind of way. It's 100% fanboy gear, but we have to admit, the 360-degree rotation and cable management system (aka hole in the back) actually look kind of convenient. No word on price at this time. If only Jeff Foxworthy's career were alive right now, we could end this post with a decent "you might be an Apple fanboy if..." joke. Our condolences to his family. [JustMobile via MobilitySite]