All Entries Tagged With: "Utilities"

Sparrow lands on the iPhone

Sparrow, my favorite mail client on Mac OS, has finally been released for the iPhone.

Sparrow is an iPhone mail client designed with love to provide you with an efficient and pleasant mailing experience. With its pane navigation, its new threading system and many new features, you’ll never look back.

Similar to the pane interface found on the Facebook app, you can use swipe gestures to reveal mailboxes, labels and folders. Swipe on a message and you can star, add a label, archive or delete a conversation. I’ve used Sparrow on my iPhone briefly and so far, am completely loving it (goodbye Mail app!). The one big downer is the lack of push notifications, which can be a deal breaker for some. Personally, I can live without it for the time being, seeing how this is the best 3rd party mail app I’ve used thus far.

And if you missed it earlier, Sparrow for Mac is still currently on sale at $6 (via StackSocial), though only until for another 12 hours or so. Check out the promo video and app description after the break.

 Sparrow, Sparrow, – $2.99

WinZip makes its way onto iOS Devices

WinZip on the iPad

WinZip, one of the most popular file compression softwares for Windows (Mac support was added in 2010), has landed on the iOS platform. Countless have relied on the utility for compressing/decompressing files, data backup and even file encryption. And now, as per app description, the mobile zip file management app can:

- Open Zip files and Zip attachments from email
- Browse and view Zip files, including multi-file attachments
- Open encrypted Zip files
- Copy the contents of Zip files to the clipboard
- View Zip file attachments from webmail (Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc)
Zipped file types that can be previewed:
- .txt, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx, .rtf, .pdf, .key, .numbers, .pages, .htm, .htm, .jsp, .bmp, .jpg, .jpeg, .tif, .tiff, .png, .gif

WinZip isn’t nearly as sophisticated in terms of its feature-set as ReaddleDocs, but for the price of free, there’s really not much to complain about. You can download the universal app now on the App Store for your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

 WinZip Computing LLC, WinZip, – Free

Air Dictate for iPhone 4S uses Siri to type for you on a Mac

Avatron, the company behind the excellent Air Display (TMA Review), has released Air Dictate, an app that lets you use your iPhone 4S’ speech recognition and turns it into text on your Mac computer. It’s quite to similar to the recently released Vocal app, though Air Dictate’s sole purpose is to act as a personal transcriber. You’ll need to have Air Dictate installed on your iPhone 4S, the free Air Dictate Receiver app installed on your Mac and have on the same WiFi network. Then:

On Mac:
- Launch any app that allows text input. For example: TextEdit, Mail, Pages, Microsoft Word.

On iPhone 4S:
- Launch the Air Dictate app.
- Choose your Mac from a list of nearby computers.
- Press the microphone button, speak for a while, and press the button again to stop.

Air Dictate’s a pretty simple app, though for those who’d rather “type” with their voice rather than an actual keyboard, Avatron’s latest utility will get the job done. The app’s also only sale now for intro price of $0.99, so if you have an iPhone 4S and want to check it out, you may want to pick this up sooner rather than later.

 Avatron Software, Air Dictate, – $0.99

[engadget]

LogMeIn goes Free, IAP of $39.99/year allows HD video streaming

LogMeIn, the company behind Ignition (TMA Review) – a fantastic app that lets you remotely control your computer – has just released LogMeIn and it’s completely Free. Users can now access their PC/Mac on their iPhone or iPad and it won’t even cost them a dime. Also new is the ability to stream HD video and sound from your computer to the iDevice (available for Windows while coming soon for Mac). This sweet feature is included in the premium Ignition app, while free LogMeIn users can have video streaming, file transfers, My Cloud bank integration and remote printing via an annual in-app purchase of $39.99.

Vocal for iPhone lets you control your Mac vocally

Vocal, the newly released app for the iPhone, lets you control your Mac via voice commands. When used on an iPhone 4S and free Mac client, you can tell your iMac or Macbook to do things like open iTunes, send a tweet, print a page and even search amazon for a specific book.

Vocal lets you send commands and dictate straight to your Mac!
Using the voice recognition feature on the iPhone 4S (and manual text entry on other devices), you can navigate and use your computer using just your voice.

Vocal can control any application on your computer through command recognition, and uses a powerful system called Vocal Chords to do so. Want a new command added? Just send us a message and we’ll add that command instantly, over the air, to Vocal for Mac.

Vocal sells for $1.99 and it should be noted that voice commands only work on the iPhone 4S. If used with any another iDevice, the app will still work, though you’ll have to manually type out the commands instead of using your voice. Check out the demo video made by developer Matthew Roberts after the break.

 Matthew Roberts, Vocal – Vocally control your computer, – $1.99

BatterySense by Philips gives you the lowdown on your iPhone’s battery

With the iPhone 4S and iOS 5′s reported battery woes, it’s no wonder then that you’ve keeping a close eye on the battery meter. The 5.0.1 update that should address these power zapping issues is still 2-3 weeks away from general release. In the meantime though, you can rely on Philips’ BatterySense iDevice app. Like many battery monitors for iOS (Battery Doctor Pro for instance), BatterySense provides users with the estimated hours remaining for talk time, internet use, audio/video playback, gameplay etc. based on the current charge of the device. What’s unique with BatterySense is its “What if?” feature. By dragging the power meter up or down, the app will give recommendations on how to achieve extended usage. So if you wish to add an extra hour to watching videos, it’ll tell you to turn down screen brightness and turn off WiFi. There’s even a “Tips for Better Battery Life” page that gives some nice advice on maximizing your i-juice.

Aside from having one of the cleanest interfaces among battery apps, BatterySense is also a free download. Every iPhone should have one of these utilities installed, and Philips’ is good place to start.

 Philips, BatterySense by Philips, – Free

BigMail Uses iCloud for sharing your iOS photos and videos

Indie dev Thomas Baltruschat, the man behind Twitepad - one of the very first Twitter clients available for the iPad when it first launched – has released BigMail for iOS, an app that utilizes iCloud for sharing your photos and videos. Unlike Apple’s restriction of only allowing users to send 5 images and 1 video at a time via email, BigMail essentially lets you send as many as you wish with several taps. The way it works is that you select the photos/videos you’d like to send off, choose whether you’d like them to in low/med/high resolutions and the app uploads the goodies into your very own iCloud account. BigMail then creates an email with the download links to the files for the receiving party. The advantage of this is that the email won’t fill up the inbox of the recipient with attachments and it will bypass any incoming size limitations the email provider may have implemented. For those who send plenty of pics and videos to their friends/family, BigMail will save you time and reduce the multiple emails into just one.

 Infoxenter, BigMail, – $0.99

Freebie Alert: The World Clock now Free for limited time

Do you travel across different time zones and/or find the built-in World Clock function lacking on your iPhone? If so, you may want to check out The World Clock. Now free for a day (down from $1.99), TWC is a universal app that features alarm functionality, scrollable map with day-night visuals, time converter and a database of more than 192,000 cities/towns from 230 countries. I was first recommended this app several months ago by a colleague of mine and with all the traveling I do for work, TWC has been a trusty sidekick on both my iPhone and iPad ever since. Considering how the iPad doesn’t even have its own stock Clock app, The World Clock is definitely a good pick up at this price point.

 Orlin Kolev, The World Clock, 34.9 MB – Free

GPlayer in Review – Dual-core video power to the masses

Devoid of decent multimedia players for the longest time, the iOS saw a tidal wave of such apps hit the App Store with the release of the iPad and iPhone 4. With the hardware finally up to the task of managing the real-time decoding of the wide array of video formats available today, we’ve seen everything from UPnP streaming AirPlayer to the short-lived incarnation of the crossplatform legend VLC, to the jailbreak-only XBMC. But one thing still out of reach has been smooth HD playback, especially for MKV encoded video. Until GPlayer hit the scene that is.

DropCopy in Review – Sharing Your Stuff

Sharing stuff is a common need for anyone who uses a computer, iPhone, iPad or have friends/family with these devices. For example, I may want to use my iPad to read a pdf file on my computer, copy some text from a document on my iPad to a friend’s iPhone, or share a picture I just took with my wife. There are loads of apps available today that can transfer pictures, files, clipboards, URLs and other things, e.g., Bump, between devices, but is there anything that works well with all this media – and has a user interface that’s comprehensible to the average user?

Let’s take a look at one of them. DropCopy is a universal app for iOS devices and Macs (sorry, no PCs yet). It has a fun and unique user interface and works well with transferring most types of media.