Let me also tell you that while I am a scrabooking moron several of my family members (my wife, my mother, several in-laws) are scrapbooking geniuses. They frequently participate in Creative Memories parties and in fact are reps for that company (I know we have several cases of stamps, card stock, stickers, and more around the house). I only mention this to let you know that I have actually seen how pages are supposed to look and how much fun they can be to share.

So, I am not the scissors, paper, and glue type of guy so my only hope of doing something like this is either on my Mac or on my iPad. So, when I saw this application of course I wanted to give it a try (so I have something to show off at family get-togethers as well). I do have plenty of pictures on my iPad so my bases are covered there.

So the application itself is really well integrated with the iPad making it easy to grab pictures and drop them on the page. As you would expect from an iPad app you can grab, rotate, and resize by just using your fingers (try doing that with paper and scissors). You can add text, borders, and more to each page and then when you are done you can save it to your iPad, email it, or post it on FaceBook. That’s a really great feature!

I am definitely looking forward to the next family get-together so when the binders come out, I can just pull out my iPad and show them what a scrapbooking moron like me can do with a ton of help from ScrapPad.

Want to have a blog on the web?  Well luckily for you there are hundreds of ways to do such a thing.  One of these ways is to use a service called Posterous.  Posterous is an internet-based service that allows you to post updates to your Posterous blog via email.  Another way to send updates is with Posterous’s very own app for the iPhone.

Posterous for the iPhone sports a very standard user interface.  Once your blog is added, a list of your current posts is shown.  You can then add a post with images from your photo library, or by taking one then and there.

Once finished hit the big green SEND button and your post is whisekd away into the digital blogosphere!

Posterous for the iPhone is simple and light-weight.  It does exactly what it’s supposed to do and nothing more.  Features like the ability to manage multiple blogs is also a plus.  Posterous is a free online blogging service available at posterous.com.  The iPhone app is available for free at the AppStore.

Install

You know some Mac apps use installers and others are standalone executables that you just drop into your applications folder and rock on. This application uses an installer which isn’t better or worse, just how it is. The install process went smoothly and nothing sensational to report there. However, they also install a removal option in the application folder and we appreciate that VERY much!

Start Up Safari

Okay this is where we encounter our first glitch. Upon installing Free YouTube Downloader for Mac we now get greeted with an error message every time we start up Safari 5.0. The warning looks like this:

We are not going to lie… that’s pretty annoying! However, it seems attributable to a different plug-in that up until installing Free YouTube Downloader for Mac, was working fine (iPlace).

Downloading from YouTube

So, even though Safari now complains a little indeed the Free Youtube Downloader plugin seems to be working fine. we went to YouTube and for test purposes just cruised through some Mac versus PC ads because generally we think they are hilarious. Next to the YouTube video is a nice download button/image and as soon as we clicked on that the download began in Free YouTube Downloader for Mac. We went about our business and sure enough it downloaded the video and we could replay it perfectly. Here is a screenshot:

So from an ease of use perspective, this is about as simple as it gets. You just navigate to a video you are interested in and download it. In order to convert the video to another format you have to upgrade from the free application so if that is what you are after you will want to look at Wondershare’s other products or upgrade this one from the offer inside the application.

Review Summary

In general we think this is a good application that definitely works as advertised, but it would be good if they could help us figure out why it conflicts with and/or triggers problems for the iPlace plugin. When the next update occurs, we would be happy to update this review.

What’s it Like?

EA’s Tetris on the iPhone is a 2 dimensional remake of the original. Like the original, as far as what you can normally do (excluding the tapping part), tapping the screen on opposite sides makes the Tetrimino rotate in the corresponding direction. To put in simpler terms, tapping the right side of your iPhone’s display will rotate the Tetrimino to the right while tapping the left side of the display does the opposite. The same pieces exist in the game and there aren’t any new ones. To soft-drop a Tetrimino, drag and hold your finger while the piece is falling. For a hard-drop, flick your finger downward and piece will slam in place. You can hold pieces by tapping the hold box in the upper left corner of the display. The game is written with 15 levels in which, as you may know, progression through the levels equals faster falling Tetriminos, giving you less time and making harder for you to see which space is right for the piece you have to set in place. There are two modes, Marathon and Magic. Marathon is your typical game of Tetris “ to see how far you can get. Thin of it as Survival mode . With Magic mode, the game gives you a set number of lines to make. As you progress, you are granted new magic tools to help in your progression of the game.

What sets most Tetris games apart, though, is the features they implement and this version is no different. In the game, there are a set of tools or “magic” you can use to aid you into gaining the high score and not make you build get too high. One of the tools turns your builds into bubble wrap where you can tap the screen and pop tetriminos that can create gaps to help you get Tetris combos. There is another ability that presents itself as a wrench and allows you to pinch your Tetrimino into a single Mino to fine grain your comboing. The marker magic, which is probably the second most fun tool, allows you to draw the piece that you desire and replaces it with the current one. You can smash your way to success with the hammer magic. This tool cleans up any gaps in your build that you have, creating multiple combos in an instant. To use the hammer magic tool, you literally have to shake your iPhone in a hammering motion. Playing the game first hand, this is probably the tool that you will choose first to get you out of most of your pickles.

What’s Missing?

Nothing is really missing with this make of Tetris. It is fun and the magic tools are very cool and work like you would expect them to. We would have liked to see them add some 3D elements to the game or give it that 3D look, so to speak. However, it’s no biggie for us, it’s just looks cool to see two dimensional and three dimensional aspects coexisting on a game.

In The End…

Tetris is a classic that is redone time and time again. Each reiteration provides it’s own twist and set of features that are unique to their creators version. EA has brought their own spin of the original and the game is solid. Plenty of fun tools and the controls to the game just work. This game will definitely have you on your iPhone frequently. Check out the app. It on the App Store for $4.99. Some clips of it in action are on the world famous YouTube. By the way, Happy belated birthday YouTube.

What’s It Like?

Pocket Tanks is a 2D aim-and-fire shooter. Object of the game is, obviously, to eliminate the other tank. Many of the weapons that you remember from school are still present, the Spider, Super Star, Gamma Ray, Chain Reaction, all are still here. They have implemented Apple’s touch interface very well. You pinch to zoom in and out and you use your finger to slide the nozzle of the tank for the best possible aim at your opponent. The developers also gave you the option to use a slider and a button that you can tap to allow you to add single intervals to your coordinates for you enemy. There are two versions of the game, a free version and a paid one. The free form of the game leave out a few features. There are only 35 weapons you can add to your arsenal. When you buy the full experience with Pocket Tanks Deluxe, you get well over 50 (105 in total) weapons to choose from to decimate your rival with. The game also presents options in which one of them alter the explosion radius. You can increase or decrease it to add or lessen more land damage. There is also a two player option for you to play against one of you friends on your device. We didnt find any multiplayer function where you can play people around the world in this old school application, which we were really hoping for.

Whats Missing

There are one or two things that could have been done to make this classic even better. Sure its a classic, but I personally like it when creators use the same elements of their classics with a whole new modern look (like street Fighter IV. A combination of 2D and 3D would have been awesome. Also, some scenery in the game would have been good. However, these are no biggies being that the game feels way better on the iPhone OS than it does on the PC. If you really look at the game back then and now, nothing has really changed. Its like it was waiting for something like the iPhone OS to come along. As we have mentioned before, no online multiplayer.

In the End¦

Blitwise really resurrected Pocket Tanks and the iPhone OS seemed like the perfect catalyst for it, Touch controls work great, its easy to get the hang of, and tons of weapons at your disposal. We wanted to see some 3D elements implemented as well as some scenery to replace that dusk (or dawn) setting in the background, but we are not bothered by that too much (we still want it though) as the game provides much variety. We really wanted some online support for the game and go head to head with someone in Japan. Try this one out on your iPad, iPod or iPhone. The paid version is $4.99, but before you make the commitment to buy the game or Google-ing the net looking for some video on it, test the game out for yourself for free.

How It Works

When you download the application, you have to create an account with Meebo at meebo.com. All of this, conveniently, can be done on your iPhone, iPod, or iPad with the Register button located at the bottom of the sign-in screen of the application. After you complete that task, go back to the application and then enter the asked for credentials that match the listed information in the account when you were registering for service. You can select from the several different networks (Facebook, MSN, MySpace, ICQ, Yahoo! etc.) you want your Meebo service to synchronize with. The application will then keep track of any current and new conversation that come your way on the network you have chosen.

Whats It Like

The software performs wonderfully! It utilizes Apples Push Notification API and delivers messages as soon as you get them on your networks server. With Push Notifications, the app doesnt even have to be open for you to receive new messages from users in your circle. It notifies you when new content is available by badges, visual alerts and alert sounds. It can also keep track of multiple conversations and stores them as long as youd like “ from multiple networks as well. The user interface is something reminiscent of Apples own creation with the iPhones Messages application. There is even a dedicated menu for expressions located on the right of the typing field. Just like the built-in Messages app, you can use Meebos messenger in either portrait or landscape. Your conversation is even updated on the server itself, so when you open up your Facebook chat on the actual Facebook website, for example, youll see the entire conversation that you had on your iPhone. Copying of text is also enabled in the software. You can swipe through the conversation right within a conversation you are having when the software notifies of a new message waiting for you. Lastly, there are none of those advertisements that quit the app when you tap on them, which we give brownie points to (which I personally wont mind the new iAds Apple is embracing with the new iPhone OS 4 coming soon).

Kinks + Whats Missing

Meebo is a great application with only a few things missing. One of the few is the ability to send images. Few, but not all, of the chat servers out there allow you to send images over conversation exchanges. Meebo doesnt currently support this, however. As for bugs and kinks in the software, we have only been able to document one and it isnt even that serious. When you rotate iPhone to landscape view on launch, sometimes the text wont render with the text bubbles, but when you send a message to your target, the bubbles appear again properly. Like we said, its not a catastrophic mishap.

In the End¦

If you are looking for an application that can keep track of all of your messages on all the networks you are a member, Meebo does the job greatly. Complete synchronization, highly responsive (thanks to Apples Push Notification service), Conserves space on your iPhone OS home screen (which wont really matter after the iPhone OS 4 update), and it presents your content very cleanly and neatly. We recommend you pick this one up and try it out on your iPhone, iPod and/or iPad. The app is free people, so you literally have nothing to lose…financially anyway.

- Choose from 16 Apple-designed templates including Budget, Travel Planner, and Running Log.
- Organize your data with great-looking charts and tables.
- Use an intelligent keyboard designed to enter dates, formulas, text, or numbers.
- Assemble formulas with over 250 functions, including built-in help.
- Create a form from any table for quick data entry.
- Instantly summarize data in full-screen view or swipe to see a chart.
- Navigate your document with ease using tabs to jump from one sheet to another.
- Quickly add photos and videos from the Photos app with the Media Browser.
- Your documents are saved automatically every time you make a change.
- Use the Undo button to go back through your work even the next time you open your document.
- View and edit existing documents by importing Numbers 09 or Microsoft Excel files from Mail attachments or the web.
- Share your work by exporting it to Numbers 09 or PDF and emailing it to a colleague. Or publish to iWork.com public beta.
- Transfer spreadsheets between your Mac or PC and your iPad using File Sharing in iTunes.

– Choose from 12 Apple-designed themes including Gradient, Showroom, and Portfolio.

- Arrange the objects on your slides by simply dragging them on the slide canvas.

- Create sophisticated animations by using Magic Move, which automatically

animates objects across consecutive slides.

- Choose from over 20 professional-quality slide transitions including Anagram, Page Flip, Mosaic, and Twist.

- Quickly add your photos and videos from the Photos app with the Media Browser.

- Organize your data with beautiful tables and charts.

- Skim through your presentation, add new slides, and reorder slides with the slide navigator.

- Your documents are saved automatically every time you make a change.

- Use the Undo button to go back through your work even the next time you open your document.

- Show your slides on a large screen by attaching your iPad to an external display or projector with the optional iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter.

- View and edit existing documents by importing Keynote 09 or Microsoft PowerPoint files from Mail attachments or the web.

- Share your work by exporting it to Keynote 09 or PDF and sending it to a colleague via Mail or iWork.com public beta.

- Transfer presentations between your Mac or PC and your iPad using File Sharing in iTunes.

The iPad version shares the same dark theme that the iPhone and Mac versions have but the extra screen space on the iPad makes it feel like an entirely different application.  In landscape mode the right half displays your timeline and the left half let’s you navigate between replies, lists, trends, and more. If you rotate your iPad to portrait mode the entire screen is used to display the timeline. Tapping a button in the top left will display the same menu that is shown on the left in landscape mode. There are also buttons along the top to refresh, view your profile, and post a new tweet. When you post a new tweet the keyboard slides up with a window to compose your tweet in. There is a small black button in the corner with options to shorten URLs or clear all text if you tap it. If this is a reply, the message that you are replying to will be shown below.

Each tweet in the timeline is given a very large space. On the right side of a tweet you can tap a star to favorite it, or tap an arrow to reply or send a direct message. Tapping the tweet will open a popup with options to view the conversation, view other replies, translate, email, or retweet the tweet. Tapping a user’s avatar will open their profile.

The iPad version of Twitterrific is a great Twitter client, but it is also missing many important features. There is currently no option to upload an image using a service like TwitPic, but this will be coming in a future version. You also can only browse lists that you created, not lists that you are following or included in, and you can’t edit these lists in the application. Finally, there is no way to save drafts of your tweets. This would be a great feature if you are not connected to the Internet, but think of something you want to post later. Most of these features will probably be coming in later updates, and Twitterrific is still my preferred Twitter client on my iPad.

While Twitterrific is missing a few popular features, it is still one of the best Twitter apps currently available on the iPad. There is a free ad-supported version available. If you want to use multiple Twitter accounts and get rid of ads you can upgrade to the “pro” version with a $4.99 in-app purchase. Twitterrific for iPad is currently available on the App Store.

The idea behind Gas Cubby is fairly simple.  Every time you fill up your car, bring along your iPhone.  You’ll be prompted to enter a variety of information — your odometer reading, the price you’re paying for gas, how many gallons you’ve filled, etc..  As soon as you save that information into Gas Cubby, it will tell you the exactly how many miles per gallon you got on your last tank.

But just how can that single number be helpful?  If you’re like me, you’re probably looking for every way to save a penny that you can.  After every fill up I try some new tricks to improve my mileage.  Tire pressure, braking style, different brands of fuel..  the list goes on and on.  Gas Cubby gives me a perfect picture of how the changes I’ve made have impacted my car’s performance.

Gas Cubby also tracks other information that can help you figure out what’s what.  Remember my mentioning tire pressure and different brands of gas?  I can enter that into every fill-up record.  Different octanes and station locations too.  There’s even a separate function that will let me track services like oil-changes and whatnot.  It has all the bases covered.

The app will save all of this data entry after entry and display it both as a list and as a graph, giving you an at-a-glance impression of your vehicles performance.  Want to make your own graph?  No problem — Gas Cubby can export the data as a CSV.  Own more than one vehicle?  Gas Cubby supports that too.  It even offers a km/L option for Canadian drivers like myself.

The only real complaint we had here was that, while Gas Cubby provides a great tool to track your mileage, it doesn’t really offer any tips to improve it.  We would have loved to have seen something simple included — like 10 tips to improve mileage, or mileage improvement tips popping up every time you loaded — but there was nothing to be seen.  To use Gas Cubby to its fullest, you’re really going to have to do some googling to find mileage improvement tips that can work for you.  It seems like such an obvious thing to include — how did they miss that?

It also seemed a little strange that entering the data takes you through a 12 step process.  It’s quick to do, but the whole thing could have been streamlined much more effectively.  When you’re standing at a pump punching data into your iPhone, you’d like to get back in your car as quickly as possible so that other cars can come in.  Spending 30 seconds or so jumping from step to step can feel like forever under those circumstances.

There’s a paid version of Gas Cubby available for $6.99, but don’t be fooled — the free version offers all the same features.  The only difference is that the free one is ad-supported, and since the ads aren’t in any way obtrusive, it would be downright silly to shell out nearly $7 when you could have it for free.

After all — you wouldn’t be downloading Gas Cubby unless you were frugal-minded in the first place.

Simply Being, a paid application by Meditation Oasis helps you to relax in any setting, which is why it’s a great application to have on your iPhone. It features a calm, female speaker to guide you through your meditation and the option of music as well. The music is a great way to incorporate daily meditation in your commuting routine (provided you aren’t driving) and the volume controls for each allow you to determine how big of a role the music should play. The application costs $0.99 and is definitely worth the price. Many, according to their Web site and application, also use the longer meditation to fall asleep or unwind after a long day.

Here are some images:

As you can see, the volume can be changed for both the voice and music when the with music feature is selected. Additionally, the music will continue for a few seconds after the application has stopped the guided meditation in order to allow you to come out of your meditation slowly and safely.

The Web site also features a podcast that you can download and a course on meditation if you are interested. Additionally the podcast is available as it’s own paid application, for $2.99.

Deceptively simple, DJ Jones will play a song from somewhere in the middle of the track and you’ll have to guess which song it is from 5 multiple choice possibilities.  Both the song and the possibilities will come from your own iPod music library, so the game can’t possibly throw you any curveballs.  When you fail a song, DJ Jones kicks you out of the game and into it’s own music player, letting you enjoy the rest of the tune to better get to know your collection.

The gameplay doesn’t offer much beyond those basics.  Scoring is based on how long it takes you to answer, and the game ends after you get a wrong answer — it’s as simple as that.  Since version 2.0 was released back in October, DJ Jones has been Plus+ enabled.   This means you can earn achievements and compete for high score against other music junkie friends with ease.  And if you’re looking to test friends and family on your musical tastes, you can create your own custom playlists to put their ears to the test.

Once you’re in the app’s music player, a number of smart on-screen controls will let you cruise through your music collection with ease.  Swiping left will take you back a tune, swiping right will move you a head.  Swiping near the top of the screen will adjust the volume.  It’s the sort of simple, intuitive controls that you can’t help but wish the native iPod music player offered.

If you’re going to complain about the bare bones gameplay in DJ Jones, you’re probably missing the point.  DJ Jones is less about being a game and more about helping you to rediscover the music you didn’t know you have.  If you’ve ever been the kind of person who built a playlist out of tunes you hardly know just to see what’s worth keeping, DJ Jones just found a way to make that adventure fun.

This is what the application looks like when you first open it. It generally takes a few seconds to load.

This is the friends screen. When you add friends with the plus sign in the upper right hand corner, you are asked to go through your address book to add iPhone users“remember it will only work if you add iPhone users.

This is the settings panel and it shows your account information, which you are prompted to set up the first time you use it, and then it shows your messaging settings. The “renew subscription” button refers to the pricing listed on their Web site“the application is free for 30 days and then it’s $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year to continue to use the service. All in all a great application for covering your tracks.

Today’s claim to fame is a feature which many iCal users have been looking for for quite a while. It’s a small application that lives in your menu bar, and with a click, brings up a small window displaying today’s (or another day of your choice) events from one, some, or all of your calendars. To-do’s are there, (but called Tasks in Today) as well as your major scheduled events. It’s great for two reasons. One, as I mentioned before, you don’t have to have iCal open all the time. I’d much rather have this little guy open than full-fledged iCal for simply viewing events and tasks. Two, sometimes seeing too much into the future can be counter-productive to your day. This single-day approach; seeing only what you need to be productive TODAY– is a great one for productivity-minded folk like myself.

Another one of Today’s major features is full support for actually creating new events and new tasks. New events and tasks created in Today are automatically added to iCal. There is full support for alarms and even saving new ones for frequent use, however the options for running a script or opening a file at a set time are absent. Today 2.0 also brings with it support for the popular iCal alternative BusyCal, giving you the same experience you get with iCal syncing.

In the settings department, you have a good amount of customization options. Tasks can be sorted by calendar, title, priority, and due date, and you can choose to see only tasks due today, or all tasks due in the next 3, 7, 14, or 30 days. A new feature in this, the second iteration of Today.app, is the ability to display tomorrow’s upcoming events underneath today’s. Window transparency can also be set- useful if you’ve enabled the option to keep Today’s window on top of all other windows.

Something I do yearn for in a future iteration of Today, is the ability to scale down the size of the window to a truly tiny size. In order to actually view all of my upcoming events in the app in one view on my 13″ MBP, the window takes up valuable real estate. That being said, it’s just as easy to close the window and reopen from the menu bar (you can also set keyboard shortcuts), but i’d love to be able to dedicate a smaller portion of my screen to it permanently. Also, it isn’t possible to display To-do’s from a certain calendar while not displaying that calendars events. It’s either all or nothing.

All in all though, the minute I tried Today, they had me. It’s the closest you’ll get to MyDay (Microsoft’s version for it’s software suite), and provides a very rich experience for such a small app. It has the “just works” simplicity you expect from a Mac app, without any overkill. Price sits at just $21.95 for a single user. 5-computer family packs are $34.95, and upgrade licenses start at $11.95. If you’d like to try it out, a complete 14-day trial is available for download along with the full version over at Second Gear Software. Requires Mac OS 10.5+

Tidy Songs is an Adobe Air app that loads to a simple welcome screen which lets you get started pretty quickly. There’s no setup to do. Just click Start and you’re whisked off to the Main Menu where you select from 4 options: Add Album Art, Find Duplicates, Fix Your Songs, and Organize Genres. They’re all pretty self explanatory, so let’s get right into it.

Add Album Art works like a charm. It looks up the songs in a selected playlist (you can choose to scan your entire library as well) and checks them against it’s sources (I’m assuming one of them to be Amazon). When a discrepancy is detected, it presents its findings to you and you can choose to keep the current artwork, add the new artwork, or input your own URL where the correct artwork is located, and it will download it for you.

Find Duplicates worked well in my tests as well. There is the option to automatically delete these duplicates according to bit rate and song length, however this one you’ll probably need to manually approve each change, especially if you have a lot of live albums where song titles are exactly the same.

Fixing songs themselves proved to be a little tricky for me. To test this functionality, I made some changes to my song titles and documented each change. All of my semi-popular music was recognized and fixed without a hitch. However, my problems arose when summoning information on more obscure bands, and if you have a lot of this kind of music, you may have to use the Manual mode here as well. I don’t fault Tidy Songs for this, as I would think this is a problem with the tracklist and information in the public database it is querying. However, if you’ve got a lot of well to semi-well-known artists in your library, Tidy Songs should have no problem clearing up any weird titles and information. Speed-wise, if you’re going to let it do its thing automatically, and depending on how many songs you have, I’d let it go overnight. In my own library of a few thousand songs, it took quite a few hours to complete its scans and fixes. Also, you can’t listen to music through iTunes while it’s cleaning, so either do it while you won’t be home, or fire up Pandora and check out some new music while you wait.

Probably the feature I found the least use for was Organize Genres. It simply allows you to change all of the variations on a genre to one. For example, I have varying genres of Rock in my library such as Alternative-Rock, Alt-punk, Indie, Indie-Pop, Rock/Pop, Indie Rock¦you get the picture. It offers to take all of these and combine them into one category of its or your choosing.

While fixing, you can tell Tidy Songs to skip songs with certain words as well, giving you an added “Don’t touch” filter. All in all, the app works great. Compared to TuneUp, my experience was above and beyond what I ever expected it to be, and that experience comes with a price tag. $39 to be exact. Worth it? I’d say yes. Especially if your library is big and in rough shape. You could spend days retagging and reorganizing a large iTunes library- let Tidy Songs do it for you.

Once Things is first launched, the first thing you will notice is different folders to store items to do. The categories are set up for when you think of something you need to do you can just put it right in a category for easy organization, for instance if you need to complete something on a later date you can input that in the scheduled folder. Once something has been completed you simply check it off, Things will move it to the Logbook folder, Things keeps a record of all of your entries in there, they can also be deleted from the log book for privacy.

Planning projects is another plus, adding a project allows sub to-dos to be added, for instance if your planning a wedding you can add Plan Wedding to your project list, set a due date when you want it done by, then you can go into the project and add items that need to be completed in there.

On top of all of the organization Things has a sister program for your Mac, called Things as well, which will allow you to sync your To-Do lists back and fourth between your Mac and iPhone over Wi-Fi. The only downside to Things is it does not sync with your calendar, allowing this would put the icing on the cake. Also $9.99 for this app is a bit much when there are dozens of other To-Do lists in the app store. If you dont mind paying the extremely high price and need to get organized then this App is definitely for you.

If you’re new to the GPS game, let me assure you that the Magellan Roadmate 2010 app offers all the bells and whistles that you’d find if you were to buy a standalone Magellan Roadmate device.  In fact, the software this is sporting more closely resembles what you’ll see in newer models of the Roadmate rather than the budget priced entry-level devices.  But unlike other GPS devices, this one has the added benefit of playing friendly with other aspects of your iPhone/iPod Touch.  Want to play music?  You can do so from in the app.  Is someone calling?  You can answer it and then go right back to driving.

The problem is that it doesn’t do any of these features incredibly well.  If you want to take a call it kicks you out of the app and then reboots, meaning if you’re on speakerphone while driving and expecting to hear “turn left in 800 metres,” you’re going to be sorely disappointed.  And if you’re expecting the convenience and music browsability that the iPod is known for, here too you’ll find yourself out of luck.  The Magellan app will only play playlists — not individually browsed tracks.  While you can build playlists in the app, the whole experience is miles away from the “OneTouch” mentality that RoadMate is famous for.

Still — everything we’ve mentioned so far is just bells and whistles.  At the end of the day the only thing that matters here is navigation, and here the performance can be a little hit and miss.  Unless your device has an uninterrupted view of the sky the GPS signal is going to drop in and out on an incredibly regular basis.  If you have a car mount kit, though, you’ll be near enough the front window that you shouldn’t have any problems maintaining a signal.  But if you’re planning on tossing your iPhone in the passenger seat while you drive?  Forget about it.

Performance from that point gets spotty at best.  While the device is almost always good at mapping out the quickest possible routes (we had a few tiny exceptions, but nothing really worth mentioning) it failed to keep up with our actual location and kept notifying us of turns 40 feet after we were supposed to make them.  It was a nightmare.

With an experience this bad, you must be wondering how we could dare describe the navigation as “a little hit and miss.”  What we’ve described so far was the miss.  What we experienced and quickly came to love was the hit.  That hit?  It has a name;  the Magellan Premium Car Kit.

Available as a seperate purchase is Magellan’s Premium Car Kit, a $129 accessory that will boost the iPhone’s GPS signal exponentially, provide an in-car mount for your device, charge it, and provide an enhanced speaker as well.  In terms of turning your iPhone into a fully functional navigation system, this thing is a must-buy.  Our experience with the Magellan RoadMate 2010 before and after using the car kit was as different as night and day.  Once connected there was no doubt in our minds that RoadMate 2010 could easily keep up with the stiff competition from standalone GPS devices.

With the kit attached no turns were ever missed, no signal ever lost, and route recalculation would happen the moment I varied from the route.  It was fabulous.  Once we got used to it we quickly delved in to all of the other terrific features the app had to offer.  Entering new addresses is a snap, OneTouch menu options let you easily find the nearest gas stations and other points of interest.  You can even assign favorite locations to the One Touch menu in case you’re looking to make return trips.  RoadMate 2010 is a fully-featured device when compared to standalone units on the market, and with the car kit in place we couldn’t have been happier with the performance.

Still, there were a few things that we couldn’t help but nitpick about when it came to the car kit.  An enhanced speaker is nice, but what this kit really needed was an FM transmitter.  Newer cars might be built to incorporate an external audio source but those of us cruising around in 10 year old cars tend to send our audio across the airwaves.  And then there’s the price.  $129 wouldn’t seem so bad if it included a redemption code for RoadMate 2010, but it doesn’t.  You’ll have to buy both products separately to get them to work together, bringing your grand total to just under $220.  That’s about the price of a standalone mid-range GPS device.

It may sound like we’re dumping on the car kit, but nothing could be further from the truth.  It has a number of great features we’ve yet to mention.  For example, unlike most car mounts this one is designed to fit an iPhone in a protective case.  I keep my iPhone in an OtterBox case and had no problem getting it to fit.  The kit provides options for mounting to dash or window, allows you to pivot the device in any direction or position you might want, but most importantly; it boosts that GPS signal to an incredible degree.

When combined with the Magellan Premium Car Kit, Magellan RoadMate 2010 offers the same top notch performance as Magellan’s standalone RoadMate GPS device.  The two are comparable in price as well.  The only difference here is that Magellan RoadMate 2010 for the iPhone has the added bonus of simply being an iPhone.  It’s one less device to lose, it offers an enhanced speaker should anyone call, and you can play all of your music from inside the app.  It should also be noted that the Car Kit enhances the GPS of the device itself, and not just for RoadMate purposes.  If you need to check out other apps that utilize GPS the Premium Car Kit will make them infinitely more accurate.

While the Magellan RoadMate 2010 app can be purchased independent of the Car Kit, it’s not something we recommend.  On it’s own the app simply isn’t reliable enough to be counted on when trying to find your way in a strange city.  Still, it’s hard to blame Magellan.  The iPhone’s built-in GPS simply isn’t developed well enough to hand this sort of task.  Magellan saw this dilemma and came up with a solution, albeit at a price.

If you’re in the market for a new GPS device and prepared to spend what you’ll need to in the standalone marketplace, you’ll easily find Magellan’s RoadMate 2010 and Premium Car Kit to be a winning combination.  Just don’t expect satisfactory performance if you buy the app alone.

You can download Magellan RoadMate 2010 North America for $79.99 on  iTunes.  Check out magellangps.com for information on how to purchase the Magellan Premium Car Kit.

With features such as Piles and four walls and a floor to throw your stuff around on, BumpTop’s interface is a versatile workspace to organize your files. It isn’t a Finder replacement, but if you like to organize your stuff in plain sight, such as multiple files relating to a project, or a bunch of pictures, you can resize them and place them on any of BumpTop’s surfaces. It’s also easy to quickly jot a note and literally throw it up onto the wall in front of you, sticking there to remind you about your son’s soccer game in two hours.

It’s a nice interface to be sure. It’s pretty, smooth, and is more like a 3D Spaces iteration for the files on your desktop. You can customize the images on each wall, and even double click the background to get a traditional 2D view of your desktop.

There’s two versions, free and paid (obviously). The pro version is the one with the Multitouch Gestures, like pinching to resize items, and swiping through individual items in your Piles. You also get Find-As-You-Type, useful for locating lost items in a crowded desktop. After all, you’ve got 5 surfaces to store stuff on, and if you utilize them, you’ll need this feature for sure. BumpTop also stays out of the way when using Spaces, Exposé, and QuickLook, letting you use these awesome integrated OS X features without a hiccup.

As much as I was impressed with the smoothness of the transitions between surfaces, I found the interface to be a little congested when used on my 13-inch MacBook Pro. Shrinking the files helped, though I liked the preview of photos, and shrinking those too much sort of killed that experience.

Additionally, I’m an avid GeekTool user, and with files in stacks and piles and on walls and such, the text files I display on my desktop with GT are obscured to say the least, if not unreadable and unusable sometimes.

Overall, it’s a great experience for those who love to see their files in front of them and use their mouse or trackpad. Quicksilver lovers will no doubt be unimpressed, but those loving nice graphics and wanting something new to try out against their traditional Mac desktop will be glad they gave it a shot. BumpTop is free to use without the Multitouch and other features, and the all-inclusive Pro version will run you 29 bucks.

In Chinatown Wars you play as Huang Lee, the son of a murdered Triad boss. You arrive in Liberty City to delivery one of your father’s pride possessions, his sword Yu Jian, to your Uncle Kenny. Right when you arrive you get shot and kidnapped, the sword gets stolen, but you escape. Throughout the game you complete missions for Kenny and many other people that you meet while you try to find the sword.

All of the games controls are displayed on screen. While you are walking you can use the joystick to move, and the other three buttons on the right side for actions. The button to the left is your weapon, which you can switch by tapping the pause button in the top right. The button to the right is to roll, and the button above is to kick. Once you get grenades or molatovs, you can just tap your player and drag to throw one. Once you approach a vehicle a button will appear in the lower center of your screen to enter the vehicle. Controls in the car are similar. There are two arrows for turning, a button to shoot your weapon, and buttons for gas and brake. Your GPS is found in the top left of the screen. If you tap the GPS you can view the full map, and place waypoints so your GPS will guide you to that spot. If you tap the small red dot above the GPS you can view your PDA. Here you can do lots of stuff, from viewing emails to ordering weapons online.

I haven’t completed the game on my iPhone yet, but I have finished the story mode on my DS. The story lasted around 15 hours, and the missions are varied. Even after completing the story mode, there is so much more to do. There is the drug trading game, which is a lot like dope wars, but with an occasional police chase. It’s also a great way to make some extra money in the game. There are quite a few side missions, and hidden cameras for you to find and destroy. There are also rampage mini-games. In these you are given one weapon, and get to go on a rampage for a high score.

There is a ton of content in Chinatown Wars, probably more than I’ve ever seen in an iPhone game. The graphics are somewhere in between the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP, but the price is much cheaper. I did encounter a few problems with the iPhone version. It lets you use a custom playlist for listening to music while you are in a vehicle, but the playlist starts with the same song every time you launch the game, and you can’t skip tracks. The controls can also get in the way. This is one iPhone game that you will be playing for a long time, and I think any fan of sandbox games should get this. It’s currently available on iTunes for $9.99.

When the app first starts, a scanned products screen is displayed which contains a database of everything that has been scanned. Items in this database can easily be deleted just like deleting an email. There is also the ability to email the product list to a specified email address. Scanning products is a breeze, when the scan button is pressed the iPhone utilizes its camera, a box will appear with an image in the background; line the image up with the barcode and it will automatically capture it. The best part is it will auto capture it when it gets a good read so there is no need to constantly take pictures over and over trying to get a good read.

On top of taking pictures there is also the ability to manually enter a barcode, which is also useful if a good scan cannot be obtained. When a product list is emailed out it will only display the items and a link to Google Products and Amazon so the prices can be seen there. It will not send the prices in the actual email, which was a bit of a disappointment.

When it comes to barcode scanning Red Laser isnt always perfect. It will not locate some products, which is understandable. The fact that it only searches Google Products and Amazon is a bit restrictive, Google Products does utilize a lot of websites, but a lot is not enough. When I search for cat food I would expect it to search all of the major pet retailers including Target, Wal-Mart, PetSmart, PetCo and so on but it only searched for the food in PetCo and other various online retailers. When I am buying cat food I am more interested in going down to the store instead of ordering online and paying for shipping. If this could be worked out it would be the perfect barcode app and would be well worth the $1.99. If you dont mind comparing online prices and ordering off of the internet then this app is well worth it, if you expect it to search all of your major local retailers then you will be disappointed.

The UI is different, to put it simply. The default display is a CoverFlow-esque view of all your music in alphabetical order by artist then by album, just like in iTunes. To view tracks on a particular album, double click the album, and a track list slides out to the right.

I do appreciate what the developers tried to do with it, but it felt a little counter-intuitive at first. There is a slight learning curve associated with using the app to it’s fullest potential.

Also, there’s no way to view just a tracklist of all your music- your only option is the CoverFlow-like view. So if you rip your music from CD and don’t bother with the artwork, you might end up with something like this:

Full Screen mode could also use some improvement. Now, I realize this is a compact media player, so it’s not supposed to be ripe with features, but there’s a few that should be there to begin with. First of all in Full Screen, there’s no way to navigate your music other than scrolling through the album artwork. No quick-find, no search. If you have a lot of music, you’ll understand where this gets frustrating quickly. Also, within full-screen mode, there’s no way to do anything else, really- save navigating, sorting, playing and pausing. Along with a search box(at minimum), I’d like to see an on-screen volume slider, and a few control buttons: play/pause, forward and previous track.

One of Everplay’s biggest advantages is that it taps right into your iTunes library. No need to organize or reorganize your digital media files. If it’s the way you want it in iTunes, you’re all set. However, this could also be it’s biggest DIS-advantage, as there’s no way to add, delete, or reorganize media whatsoever. You can indeed play your movies and videos in Everplay, but be warned. There is no way to play DRM video content at all. This means any movies or TV shows you have in your iTunes library, you will have to play in iTunes. It’s something iTunes Store lovers will surely be a little disappointed about.

Another major plus in Everplay is its integrated Last.fm features. If you use Last.fm, you’ll be able to scrobble from right within the app, listen to radio, and find similar artists. Also, events from your Last.fm calendar can handily be sent right over to iCal.

Everplay has two modes for playing music, regular track order, and Jukebox Mode. Jukebox mode acts¦well like a jukebox. Any track that is double-clicked is put into a queue for immediate play after the currently playing track ends. Great for parties, it’s basically creating an on-the-go playlist, and you can view or clear the upcoming tracks in the Upcoming menu drop-down. Jukebox Mode, however, is Everplay’s only playlist creation tool, and won’t save when you exit the app. To create a new playlist to use in Everplay, you’d have to do it in iTunes.

To sum things up, this app, like most of its competition excluding iTunes, is a great idea, but its execution is lacking nearly everywhere. It’s compact for sure, but there’s just too much missing. Were some of the missing features implemented in further releases, I’d fully recommend this software, but for now, stick with iTunes. Everplay is free to try, and $19.95 for a license from Snarb.tk

Jobs is a very unique iPhone app used to track billable time, clients, client jobs, and invoiced jobs. This app was created by Bjango, and sells on the App Store for $3.99 normally, but is on sale for $1.99. It is very easy to use and is very straightforward. It stores all jobs the user has done within the app and sorts it by month. It shows all active jobs, and can run multiple jobs at the same time.

Each job is tap able, which shows how much each job is being billed out as, how much time the job took, whether the client was invoiced, and it has the option to export the job. Exporting the job will email the job information to a specified email address. When exporting the job there is the option to email in standard text so it will show up in an email, or CSV format which makes it easy to import into applications like excel.

When it comes to time tracking there are a few additional options such as rounding, it will round the bill to the nearest hour, 15 minutes, or whatever the user desires. A default flag-fall can also be added, which starts the timer at an initial fee to the client and adds the time billed on to that. Adding clients is very simple; the clients can even be linked to the contacts within the iPhone. Also tapping on each client shows an each overview for the client, including all of the jobs done for the client.

This app also backs up to the iPhone, when the iPhone is synced with iTunes it stores a back up within that back up. It also has the option to back up to a computer, which is done via email, and restoring is done just the same way. The only problems with this app is the lack of invoicing, there is no way to invoice a client, also when exporting it emails from a Bjango server, it doesnt send from the users email, however this app is perfect for client tracking. It is perfect for an individual contractor or consultant, or someone who is in charge of tracking multiple people out on billable jobs.

Ever since Guitar Hero hit the home console scene back in 2005, music games have been all the rage amongst gamers and music enthusiasts alike.  Tracing the iPhone’s roots back to the music-only iPods of yore, it seems only natural that the genre would eventually make its way to the iTunes App Store.  We take a look at two of this season’s most popular music games for the iPhone and let you know which one we think is the real deal.

Tap Tap Revenge 3: As the leading music game franchise on the iPhone since the platform’s launch, Tap Tap Revenge is the name to beat if you want to get anywhere in iPhone rhythm gaming.  While we’ve seen a number of licensed entries on the market over the past year (Tap Tap Coldplay, Lady Gaga Revenge) TTR3 marks the third real revision to the series formula.  This time out it brings a wealth of new changes while still maintaining everything we know and love about the franchise.

If you’re new to the series, here’s the quick rundown; Tap Tap Revenge is a music game that, like most other music games, is about tapping out notes in rhythm to the music.  Unlike other series, TTR uses a 3-note system that seems to be a perfect fit for the iPhone.  Players can wrap their hands around the device and put two thumbs on the screen, darting one of those over to the middle track when necessary.  The gameplay is easy to pick up and well-suited for the device, but the coolest feature you’re going to find here isn’t in how you play but in how you play with a friend.  Local multiplayer can be tackled via split-screen on the same iPhone, with one player holding the top of the device and one holding the bottom.  Online multiplayer is also available in a cool score-battle mode that pits you against a room full of strangers that you can chat with between rounds.

Tap Tap Revenge 3 changes things up in a few noticeable ways.  A new single player campaign mode exists where you’ll need to level up RPG-style to unlock songs.  The game now offers a customizable avatar, which can be dressed and armed via coins earned during in-game play.  And biggest of all — TTR3 now offers in-game downloads of paid content.  This means that — in addition to the 200 or so free songs available — new content from major artists will be made available for purchase every week.  Duran Duran, LCD Soundsystem, The Killers — it’s astounding the depth and range of content that’s already available.  Everything from Marilyn Manson to New Kids on the Block is in the store.  Many of these purchases have their own skin for the in-game presentation.  Oh — and did we mention you can import songs from previous premium versions of the game?  Yeah, this thing is pretty much made of win.  A+

Rock Band: Bringing a massive 4-instrument multiplayer experience to the iPhone is a hefty concept, and for what it’s worth EA Mobile handled the transition fairly well.  Rock Band has always been about that living room experience, and so long as you’re hanging out with other iPhone rockers you’ll be able to get the band back together flawlessly.  The game supports 4-person local multiplayer over bluetooth and wifi with each iPhone playing a different instrument in sync with the rest of the group.  Online multiplayer exists too, but it comes off feeling pretty pointless.  I challenge anyone to notice a difference between single player and online multi — the experiences are identical.

When playing in single player you’ll have the opportunity to jam on whichever instrument you choose, with each having it’s own individual note tracking just as Harmonix intended.  The gameplay itself isn’t without its flaws, though.  Each instrument offers up four tracks, unlike Tap Tap Revenge’s three.  This makes for tough times for the larger fingered among us, as trying to hit two notes side-by-side can just as easily spill over into the next note column.  It’s not a game-crippling issue, but it becomes pretty apparent that 4 note tracks is just too many for an iPhone music game.

The instruments themselves don’t vary as much as they do in the console version.  Removing concepts like the kick pedal and the whammy bar means that, despite different note tracking, each instrument feels pretty much identical to play.  The biggest disappointment here had to be the vocals, which — instead of offering up SingStar fanatics an opportunity to bust out our karaoke chops — just offered a vertical variation on note tracking.  Going vertical actually made the 4 tracks more user friendly than the other instruments, but I wanted to sing, dammit!  I can understand that requiring the mic to sing would have limited the available market for the game (1st gen Touch’s have no audio input), but it doesn’t seem fair to the rest of us to cripple the experience across the board.

We were also a little bummed to see that Rock Band didn’t take advantage of the franchise’s massive pre-existing music store, instead opting for an iPhone specific store that (as of this writing) offers only 11 downloadable tracks.  At least the 20 included tracks rock the casbah, offering a much better “big name” selection than TTR3.  Besides — any game that offers Freezepop’s Super Sprode as a downloadable track is a winner in my books.  B+

Winner: Tap Tap Revenge 3.

While the general vibe of the franchise is still in tact, there were simply far too many missed opportunities here to whole-heartedly recommend Rock Band over the competition.  Tap Tap has known what it’s doing since day one, and the experience is only getting better.  And to think — we made this decision without even beginning to factor the price disparity between the two into the mix!

Download Tap Tap Revenge 3 for free by clicking here, or buy Rock Band for $6.99 by clicking here.

1. Journlr – Mac OS X only- Free/$35

While development of Journlr has ceased, it is almost an essential note-taking app for your college courses. It combines the ability to type notes, record audio, video, and take photos simultaneously. All media can be incorporated into a single page of notes and organized in many ways. Smart folders let you keep track of classes, sections, chapters, or whatever you choose to organize by. Notes can then be exported to email, your blog, your iPod, or iWeb if you so choose. Additionally, audio recordings of lectures or discussions can be exported directly into a Journlr playlist in iTunes. Journlr is available for free, but a license can still be purchased from the website.

2. Schoolhouse 3 –  Mac OS X only – $14

We reviewed Schoolhouse earlier this year, and it only makes sense to feature it here again. Since our last review, it has been upgraded to version 3.1.2 from 2.2 in the last review, and it now features a slightly refined look and feel, as well as MobileMe syncing and an autosave feature. Most useful for keeping track of all your assignments and their due dates, you can also write notes, and its great for project organization utilizing the ability to add documents and other media to a project’s page. Other features include grade tracking and a multitude of customization options. Schoolhouse has now moved to a paid model that is set at a quite reasonable $14. You can try it for free with a limit of being able to input 20 assignments, but I highly recommend shelling out the 14 bucks and getting an incredibly useful organizational app. Schoolhouse is available from Logans Collins at their website.

3. iHomework – Mac- Free – iPhone/iPod Touch- $0.99

If you’re looking for an application that will wirelessly sync between your iPhone/iPod Touch and your Mac, look no further. This little app works great with just what you think…homework. While there are little to no note-taking abilities, iHomework allows you to enter all the class info you can think of, such as dates, times, instructors (mobile only), and places. The Add Work button is where you input all of your new assignments and their corresponding information like type of assignment, due date, course, and even lets you input your grade for a particular assignment. One of the great features of this app is the ability to send any and all events to iCal. The wireless syncing process is fairly straightforward, although it could use some adjustment, as the first time around is a little confusing. iHomework for OSX is free from their website, and the iHomework mobile version is just 99 cents from your friendly neighborhood App Store. Well worth it.

4. EtreTask – Mac OS X only – Free

EtreTask is a dead-simple to do list for your Mac. There’s not much to say about it, but if you’re looking for a to-do list only, this is definitely the app for you. It’s lightweight, and couldn’t be more straightforward. Input a note, and check it off when it’s done! EtreTask is free from Etresoft.

5. Circus Ponies Notebook – Mac OS X only – $49.95

Regarded in the Mac community as one of the best note-taking/organizational applications out there, Notebook is a customizable, versatile masterpiece. Upon initial launch, you’re presented with a multitude of templates from which to get started. Want to get organized at college? Notebook sets up a notebook just for you, with tabs for each class, and a contents page to show you where to input your information. Want to write a novel? Plan a trip? Keep a journal? Keep track of recipes? There’s a template for that. Notebook is $49.95 from Circus Ponies for an individual license, an academic license (with valid academic credentials) is $29.95 and a family pack can be had for $99.95.

When you open the application, it shows two folders. These allow you to keep files on your iPhone and also to sync them with your Desktop, and best of all it actually works. In order to set up the desktop sync, you need to register within the application for a desktop application to be sent to your email. It’s free and takes about 5 minutes.

Once you download the application for your desktop, you must move it to the applications folder and then you can begin working with it.

Connect your iPhone to a wireless network before proceeding with the next few steps. Then open the application. You do not have to keep it in the dock in order for it to work as it creates a sync folder on your desktop once you complete the next five steps.

As you open the application, it prompts you to setup a device, which you can do by going to the menu bar and selecting devices. Then you must open the application on your iPhone and click settings in the upper left hand corner, and then select add new desktop. It looks like this:

Once you go through the next few steps, the desktop application asks you to provide a PIN from the mobile application. Then it asks you to select the folders from your computer that you would like to sync with your iPhone. I chose several folders and it took about 5 minutes to upload. You can choose folders with images, excel sheets and word documents. Additionally you can view PDF files, but there are other applications in the iTunes store specifically dedicated to that, which do a better job of allowing you to view PDF documents. Ultimately you will see this screen which shows that the process is finished.

Now you can upload documents and sync ones created on your phone, from anywhere where Wifi is available. That is one of the cons of this device. You cannot sync to your desktop unless you iPhone and Mac are connected to the SAME wifi network. However, you can save your documents and edit them from anywhere.

The document editing allows you to change alignment, font, font colors, and also to highlight in a variety of colors. Additionally you can copy, paste, bold the font, italicize it, and underline it. This makes editing a breeze. The font colors provided are: black, three shades of grey, white, red, several shades of green, blue and pink, and a purple. You can also change the font to Arial, Calibri, Cambria, Courier New, Symbol, Times New Roman and Wingdings. Font sizes range from 8-72. You can also minimize the tool bar in order to provide a clear screen for writing and editing. The application also works in landscape mode.

All in all, despite it’s few faults, this product does exactly what it says it does– creates, edits and syncs Microsoft Word and Excel documents via iPhone and Mac.

One of Notify’s big features is the ability to have multiple accounts. You can set up Gmail, MobileMe and Rackspace accounts, or just use your own IMAP settings for any other mail account. Notify just sits in your menubar, and has a small envelope icon that lights up blue when you have new messages. When you click this, the main window for Notify pops up displaying a list of your new emails. There are also tabs on the top, so you can switch accounts.

In the message list each email shows the subject, and a short section of the full email. To view the full email you can either open the preview, by tapping the spacebar or clicking the preview icon, or open it in Gmail, by double clicking the message. You can also compose a new message, mark the message as read, delete the message, or reply to the message using the buttons at the bottom. Notify also includes notification options, which can be separately configured for each email account.

Notify is designed for people who use Gmail online, so there is no way to have Notify open Mail.app when you click on a message. Instead it launches your web browser. You also can not add attachments to messages that you type with the application.

Notify Pro costs $10, but once the trail expires you can use a free version forever. The free version lacks some features such as mail composing, full message preview, mark as read, and delete. You can download and buy Notify from the Vibealicious website.

Immediately after you launch Pastebot, the item that is currently in your iPhone’s clipboard will be copied into the app. Pastebot can store both text and images. In the clipboard you can browse your clippings and copy an item to your iPhone’s clipboard with a single tap. You can also tap the arrow next to the item to view the entire thing. After you tap on a clipboard item some information will popup. If it is a text item, you will see the character count. If it is an image, you will see the dimensions. Just to the right of this information will be two buttons. One to share it, and one to edit it. With text files, you can paste the item to your Mac, search via Google, send it as an email, or move the item to a folder in Pastebots. With an image you will also be able to save the image to the photo library on your device. You can also move multiple items to a folder, or delete multiple items, using the edit button.

Pastebot has a variety of filters to apply to both text and images. When you are viewing an image you can tap the gear icon to display the filters. For images, there are five options to choose from. You can change the brightness, convert to black and white, convert to sepia, invert the colors, and change the saturation. Tapping the edit button will also let you rotate and crop the image. There are even more options for text files. You can change the entire item to lowercase or uppercase, quote lines, find and replace words, and do much more.

Pastebot also includes one killer feature, you can sync it with your Mac! Once you install the free Mac application, anything you copy on your Mac will be sent to Pastebot (as long as your device is on the same Wi-Fi network, and Pastebot is open). If you tap and hold on an item in Pastebot, it will be sent to your Mac.

Pastebot seems to have everything covered. It’s a great clipboard application and even has a few nice editing tools. I didn’t run into many problems, but it would be nice if Mac syncing was possible with Bluetooth as well, for times when Wi-Fi is not accessible. Pastebot is currently available on iTunes for $1.99, the free Pastebot Sync utility for Mac is available on the Tapbots website.

GPush is the first app for the iPhone that will send you a push notification any time you get a new message in your Gmail inbox.  It’s a fairly simple app that tackles a fairly simple problem, and it works.  After a simple username and password set up, you’ll receive a push notification whenever a new message pops into your Gmail account.  The push notification is similar to any text message you might receive.

One of our earlier complaints about the app, and one which we intended to focus on here was the inability to access your new mail directly from the notification.  This was addressed in a recently released update to the app, and we couldn’t be happier.  Now when you receive a new push, whether you’re in a application or not, you’ll be given the option to view the email or close the push notification.  If you choose to view the email you’ll be kicked out of your current application and taken to GPush.  Once there, GPush will take you to the new Gmail tab where it loads up a mobile-friendly version of your Gmail inbox that’s identical to the one seen in the Google Mobile App.

This new view feature is a great addition and well appreciated, but that doesn’t mean it’s not without flaws.  Clicking view only brings you to your inbox, not the email itself.  For folks like myself who much prefer using the iPhone’s built-in Mail app, having to use the web-based Gmail mobile feels a little too slow and clunky.  And the view option doesn’t work in every circumstance — if your device receives a push notification in standby you won’t have the option to view or close.  Instead sometimes you’ll be forced to open GPush the next time you unlock your device, and sometimes you won’t.  It’s flaky and inconsistent from the standby state, which is a fairly significant stumbling block when it comes to using the feature properly.

There are other annoyances with the app as well.  Many folks have multiple Gmail addresses for business, personal, etc.. but GPush only allows for one account.  And speaking of Gmail, why only the one client?  Sure Gmail is the biggest freemail provider out there, but does that mean users of Yahoo, Hotmail and Live need to be left out in the cold?  Or how about server based emails?  I happen to use several addresses, both Gmail and otherwise, and would have been delighted to have an app that could cater to all my push notification needs.

Despite our nitpicky complaints, GPush sets out with one thing in mind and it does that one thing incredibly well — it keeps me from bringing up my inbox every 5 minutes.  If it can accomplish that, it can probably accomplish anything.

GPush is available from Tiverias Apps on the iTunes AppStore for $1.99.

Accessing the Genius function is a simple enough process.  At the top of the App Store App beside the New and What’s Hot options that we’ve grown accustomed to will be a new to access Genius.  The first time you access this you’ll need to read and agree to the Genius Terms of Service, but once that’s out of the way it’s pretty much smooth sailing as it compiles a list of recommendations.

iTunes Genius has, in my experience, offered a wonderfully appropriate list of suggestions based on my listening tastes.  They’ve turned me on to new music, suggested music I already know I love — all in all it’s been a quality service since it launched.  It’s baby sibling, however, isn’t fairing as well.

While iTunes Genius seems to base it’s recommendations off of the purchases of like-minded individuals, App Store Genius feels as though it’s pulling random apps from similar categories and dumping them in your lap.  Paypal was recommended based on my use of CBC Radio.  NFL 2010 was recommended because I have Pac-Man Remix.  While these things might technically fall under the same category, their purposes and audiences couldn’t be less similar.

Still, it’s not all bad.  Based on my use of Tweetie a number of Twitter-related apps were suggested my way.  My use of Twitpic led to a recommendation for HP iPrint Photo.  These are all things that are thematically the same.  They make sense.  The problem is that more often than not I would be recommended MLB at Bat based on Twitpic or DOOM based on Civilization Revolution.

Looking at your purchases on the whole and making recommendations based on those might have made a little more sense.  If it did Genius would learn pretty quick how much I love tower defense games, and recommendations of those would have been a welcome addition to the sea of nonsense that’s currently presented.  It may break from the system used by iTunes Genius, but maybe that’s what’s needed here.  Music and apps are two very different beasts, and those beasts need two very different approaches to be tackled effectively.

One thing that surprised me was that Genius only factored in apps currently on your device.  If you’ve purchased apps in the past but removed them, those aren’t included.  One can appreciate the logic behind this — if you’ve deleted an app you probably don’t like it — but there’s a flipside to that argument.  What if you loved the app, but just didn’t need it right now?  Secret of Monkey Island SE easily ranks amongst my favorite iPhone games, but I deleted it once I was finished because of the space it took up.  In my mind, that’s something that should absolutely be factored in to any recommendation engine that’s trying to learn about my shopping habits.

App Store Genius is a great idea, but it’s execution is poor and contrary to the it’s own purposes.  Without consistently sensible recommendations, this just isn’t a part of the App Store that you’ll find yourself visiting.

Simplenote provides exactly what it says, a simple way to take and sync notes on your iPhone and iPod Touch. When you open an app, you see a simple page where you can add a new, view, search, and delete notes as well as allowing you to sign up/log in to your web account. Adding a note is as simple as touching the “+”, to manage syncing you simply touch the wrench button, and to delete a note you swipe your finger across the note and touch “Delete”.

When creating a new note or editing a preexisting note, the interface remains clean and simple with buttons to return to the notes list, email your note, or delete it. The app supports both portrait and landscape mode, which is very nice if you are typing a lot and prefer the landscape keyboard as I do. With no extra frills like titles, tags, locations, images, and file attachments, Simplenote runs extremely fast, even on old iPhones and iPod Touches.

The web app for accessing your notes on your desktop is just as clean and light as the app. It looks almost the same as the app and provides the same exact features. The app syncs automatically and stores local copies of your notes to allow you to view, search, edit, and add new notes even when you don’t have network access.

With the latest update of the app, Cloud Factory has added an API which allows for the creation of “Extras” which allows developers to create third party applications to interface with Simplenote. Currently the only app is a web application, Simple Backup, which allows you to backup/export your Simplenote notes into plain text, CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, and Evernote archive formats. I expect to see some exciting new features added with this feature in the future.

If you are looking for a simple, clean, and fast note taking app for your iPhone or iPod Touch that also syncs with the web Simplenote is my pick. Simplenote costs $1.99 which includes a free web account and can be downloaded from iTunes.