Rave: Cool iPhone Apps

In light of the new iPhone 4 coming out next week i wanted to rave about my favorite apps that I have on my phone. Some may change next week after OS 4.0 comes out. Most of these either are or were free.

Geocaching: This is one of my favorite games. People hide stuff and leave the GPS location and you can go find it. It is fun when you have some spare time, or just want to explore outside. It is a bit pricey but I think it was worth the cost, it is seriously the only app I have ever paid money for. Here is a free version that shows you the closest three caches.

WHERE: Find out what is near by. I use it for the cheapest gas prices around, even if Cheap Gas! is a bit simpler.

Fandango: How can you go wrong with knowing what movies are at the theaters near by, and if you want even order tickets.

Movies: Flixster and Rotten tomatoes got together to make this app. It gives pretty good movie rating and so much more.

Kids In Mind: I have used this web page for a long time to know if a movie will be crude or not. If you want the explicit details of how bad a movie, or just want to know the exact amount of F words used, this is an app for you.

Convertbot: If you every need any conversion possible this app is for you.

TuneWiki: Have you every just wanted to sing along with your music. This app has scrolling lyrics that move with the music, so kind of like your own free karaoke app.

CheckPlease: A really nice tip calculator, I use it every time I go to a restaurant.

ShopSavvy: If you every are wondering if you are really getting a deal at a store, pull this app out, scan the bar code and find out what other pricing there is locally and on the internet.

Urbanspoon: This app is just fun for going out to eat, shake it, and it will tell you where to eat, including reviews and a price gauge.

Bump: The coolest way to exchange contact info. They even have it for Android now, it works with almost any smartphone.

SoundHound: Everyone has heard of Shazam this does the same thing but better. Shazam works for music on the radio, but SoundHound can also pick up songs you sing, which helps to find out who sings that song that is stuck in your head. The only downside is it is kind of expensive for an app so they have a light version that lets you try five songs a month.

Pageonce Personal Finance: This tracks all your money and bills so you know what is due and when, with alerts, and even when your checking account is running low.

Meebo: By far the best chat app on the iPhone. It looks beautiful, and it is always logged in, so you will get push notifications for the rest of your life if you want them. eBuddy, Nimbuzz, Palringo and fring are okay in that order, but Meebo beats them all out of the water.

Speed Test: is nice to find out if you are imagining it or if you internet is really laggy.

Here are a few cool church apps:

Gospel Library: If you are LDS, or Christian in general, you should have this app. It give you access to scriptures and anything else you could want, Sunday School manuals or even General Conference Talks.

LDS Hymns: When you need a hymnbook this is always here for you. There is even a Spanish Version.

Mormon Channel: This app lets you listen to the Ensign, Conference talks, Scriptures or the "Mormon Channel" which is some radio station put on by the church.

Lastly everyone has there favorite games. These are mine:

:Shift: If you get easily dizzy this isn't for you. This is the best use of black and white I have seen in my life.

Parallelus: Test your coordination while trying to collect hearts and avoid bombs at the same time with two parallel screens, one for each thumb.

Tunnel 3D: Just fun use of the accelerometer in your iPhone.

Falling Balls: Use your accelerometer to avoid getting crushed. Super basic graphics, but downright fun.

Action Heroes 9-in-1: A good small fun collection of games.

I have gone through tons of apps, and those listed are my favorites. I know I am forgetting some that everyone has (lightsaber, facebook, FS5 Hockey, IMDB, Pandora, iHandy Level, Remote), some just good reference (Background Check, iTranslate, Dictionary, Google, Zillow, Computing Assistant, Pi Cubed), convenient ones (inside redbox, Dropbox, Air Files, GPS Box, Apple Store, scanR) or ones to just show off (iSeismo, SnapTell, Koredoku, Remote Pad).

While linking all of those I noticed that some are no longer in the app store. Also a lot of them have gotten pretty expensive, but you can use a apps like apptizr or PandoraBox to find apps on sale (aka free for a limited time).

Let me know if you have any favorites that I missed.

Rave: Google Voice, GVMax and Meebo

Google Voice is probably the best service that google has, which is quite the statement, but I still think it is true. The basics of google voice is that you get a new number and it redirects to whatever phone you want, and passes your texts to your phone too. It has some really cool features like transcribed voicemails, choosing a time of day not to be disturbed and being able to block people you don't like. Other cool features are things like the widget that I have on the side of my page here, where you can call me without actually knowing my number. My favorite use of it is giving out that number on craigslist so I don't get calls for the rest of my life.

Since getting google voice sometime last year I have been trying to do something good with it, especially text for free on my iPhone, or even call over VOIP using it. As of today I can do both.

I have been trying to text with Push notification on my iphone for a while, and until today I have used apps like TextNow Lite or Messagey which did let me get Push notifications, but I could not respond. I would have to then open the gv web app and respond from there. It got annoying. I have a work around, it isn't the coolest ever, that would take jailbreaking my phone, but for those of us who want to be legal, her is what I do. You will need an app called Meebo and a google talk account (which you have if you have gmail, even if you didn't know you did). Go to the GVMax web site and set it up. GVMax will do a lot for you first, and most importantly it will forward all your texts to a your google talk messenger (as long as you had click the option in google voice to have it send texts to your email.) Now open up Meebo and sign in with your google talk account. I choose Meebo for two reasons: it has push notifications, and it pushes forever, no auto-logout ever. This is important if you want to use it for texting. Once you have that all set up you can text for free forever, as long as you have internet. (This work with an ipod touch and wifi.)

One thing that a lot of people want with google voice to make VOIP or SIP calls. There was something called Gizmo5 which made it simple and work. Problem is google bought the company and who knows when it will be released again. I will give an update when it is re-released, but till then I have a work around. Remember this is a work around, so it isn't the best, but for the time being it works. So a few days ago I stumbled across this web page that tells how to set up a number for incoming calls using PBXes.org and IPKall. If you follow that tutorial you will end up with a new phone number that receives calls. If you have an iPhone this is great, just download an app that work for SIP calling and set that account up. I have tried NimBuzz and Fring. I use Fring because it worked better on my phone, but the setup is about the same on both.

The tricky part of the whole process is for outgoing calls. This is when once again GVMax helps us out. Nimbuzz and fring let you log into google talk so you can use the chat thing I told you about before. There is an option for GVMax what when in a chat with someone you can type ggc and it will call that person. There are more options which GVMax has, but the chat inside the app that makes it possible to have it wall work, and not need to multitask (iPhone's biggest flaw).

GVMax also does something that I have been try to do, mass texts through google voice. Google Voice blocks you to only text 5 people at a time, to stop you from using their service to spam people, GVMax goes around this. It uses google's contact groups, and text to an entire group, using their cool chat feature. The best part is, you don't even need an iphone or anything, you can just use the chat in the side of your gmail.

I have spent a lot of time trying to get everything working, and have found some other useful things. The one I will talk about now is Voice Central Black Swan. This is a web app, so you don't have to go through apple, just go to their page through safari after you sign up and it will tell you how to make it into an app. I don't think Black Swan is the great, because it doesn't have push notifications and it has adds, but it does one thing that the google web app does't. Black Swan lets you choose which phone you want it to call. For all you iPod Touch users, you now have a way to call people without using the GVMax chat work around.

Point of the story is that if you have Google Voice you can make all the calls and texts you want for free, it just takes some work. There are other ways to use it, this is just my preference. If you don't have it and are a student click here and get an invite within 24 hours, if not click here and wait. Good luck!

Rave: Dr Horrible

Today I felt like re-watching Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, so I did. It was as good as the first time I watched. If you like singing along and funny stories this is for you. I don't want to spoil it, but this is the birth of a super villain and the end is necessary if you don't like it. Here are all three parts if you want to watch it.

Rant: Stalkers

Funny story, I now have a nemesis. Here is the story. There is a girl in my ward that kind of likes me. I think she is an awesome friend, but not looking for a relationship with her. She met this boy some time ago, that had no friends, so she decided to befriend him. Bad Idea. He fell madly in love with her, and didn't take it well when she rejected him a few weeks ago. My part in the story starts last night. He moved into my ward a few weeks ago, I guess to be closer to her, some people just thought it would be to try and make new friends because he didn't have any in his other ward. Well last night at FHE at the Bishop's house, he met my roommates. When he mentioned how much he loved her, they mentioned that she and I had something going on, I guess he threatened me, and they said they had my back, thinking he was joking at the time. As the night progressed he said he wanted to fight them and even started cussing at them. Luckily they are both men of patients and didn't beat him, because they are both way bigger and stronger than him, he just has some problems. Well this morning I get a surprise message on facebook from this stalker saying "I hate you, if you are dating... we are going to rumble" followed by one calling me a coward for not responding. My first inclination was to respond with "I'm a lover not a fighter" but I did not want to provoke him, so I just didn't respond. The story gets worse. I was telling a coworker about this, who decided to message the kid saying that a threat to me is like a threat to him. *Note: I have really great friends.* That really got the guy mad, and he started cursing at my coworker through messages saying he had nothing to lose and that he wanted to fight and such, and even made a hit at his wife. My coworker being the army guy that his is, was not very pleased, but had to go to class so I didn't get to hear more. His next message to me was "coward! I know ur dating... now ur an enemy of me! I dont care if u get ur friends on me. as long as i can get a finger in one of their sockets and pull one of their eyeballs out!" Like I said he is crazy. So now I am at a point to thinking should I get a restraining order, should I call the cops on this guy, should I just hope he cools down. The worst part is not me being worried about what he is going to try to do to me, but what he might do to her, because supposedly after the meeting with my roommates last night, he may have threatened her too. Also I am pretty sure I am about a foot taller than him, so I am not real scared I just don't know what to do about crazy.

Moral of the story: Stalkers suck!

Rave: pushme.to

Anyone who knows me know I have way too many iPhone apps. I might not use them all daily, but I have used them all at least once, and the ones I like I keep on my phone, the ones I kind of like I let stay backed up on my computer in the chance that I may need them later, and the ones I don't get deleted. Pushme.to has made it onto my phone and stayed for over a month, that means it has made it through at least three purges of apps I no longer use. I think that I am one of the only people out there that use it, but I like it. It is very simple for any iPhone user that in some random case would like something pushed to their phone, and not want to give out their phone number, or use a text, this pushes it for you. It is actually a free way to chat between iPhones if that is what you want it for, or just for the occasional message it works it. My favorite part is that they make you a widget (example below) where you can have people send you messages for the good old internet that go straight to your phone. The app is still in it's first form so there are some problems like you cannot delete old messages, but all in all I think it is pretty cool.

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Rave: Skydeck

If you have ever talked to me on the phone you are a lucky person. I personally just usually am not a phone person. Texts, I do way too much, but talking on the phone is a social skill that I am still working on. What does me talking on the phone have to do with Skydeck? Well Everything. Skydeck is a really awesome webpage that tracks who you call, and does so much more. I don't remember where I heard about it, but I think I was one of the first because it has changed so much since I joined. Among things that are possible through Skydeck you can send texts or it will transcribe voicemails, so you don't have to listen to people's long messages. All that aside everyone who talks to me on the phone knows why I like it, it uses your phone company bill to follow every call or text that you make. Why is that cool you ask? First reason is that means I have a permanent list of anyone who I have every talked to on my phone. That means if you called me a year ago then I still have your number. I have used that to fine the number of a mom of a friend when my friend's cell phone had died. I personally wouldn't want her mom's number in my phone, that would be weird, but having it accessible on Skydeck means if I did need to call her I have the number, just in case. Those are all cool features, but here is my favorite, they arrange your contact list by who you call most. How cool is that! For my friends that I actually do call it has sometimes been a race to the top. My mom usually is in the top ten, and hopefully girlfriend at the time makes it up to number one, but who knows. I just think it is fun to see who you actually do call. They make it fun too, by including graphs on what time you usually call them, and actually recording the number of texts, or minutes you have actually spent time talking. I would have never known that my mom calls me twice as much as I call her, and that most of our calls happen between 6pm and midnight. Compare that to a girl who I call four times as much as she calls me, and our calls happen between 6pm and 4am. Even funnier is the girl that I have only talked to on the phone four times, but she is still near the top of my list because I text her more than anyone else I know. In summary Skydeck is awesome, and if you have a cell phone, you should check it out. Sadly T-Moblie recently change their bill system and no longer lets Skydeck touch it, but if you have any of the other carriers I totally recommend it. See who you talk to most, or tell your friends how they moved on the weekly email they send. I know it was a completion for a few friends of mine to make it to the top. Take this opportunity to see who you are actually spending all your minutes. Also they have the best customer service if that is important to you, they always respond to my emails and fix things, nice people.

Rant: Facebook Updates

Every now and then facebook does come out with something that is kind of nice. I do enjoy the chat feature, and the feed did completely change it, but there are just some things that are so stupid and annoying. Today I saw a new feature. They changed the home page to get rid of your picture and just have an icon that says "Live Feed" next to it. I rather liked having my picture there, so I would know that it was me signed on, and to just know what other people saw. I can live with that I guess, but the newest addition to the "Feed" really annoys me. They now show when a friend of mine adds a new friend, who I don't know at all. I guess if I had friends in common that would be kind of cool, maybe, but just telling me that a friend of mine is a friend of a complete stranger doesn't help me in anyway whatsoever, and I don't care. They best part is, that you cannon hid those notifications like you can with any other app. Sometimes facebook just goes overboard on things that they want to show you about your "friend."