Results tagged “gadgets”

I install quite a lot of games on my iPhone. Some come, some go. After a little cleanup yesterday, here are the ones I decided to keep.

Of those, I'd say I've played Plants vs Zombies the most, closely followed by Doodle Jump, and Orbital. The two newest games are Leap Sheep - which is hellishly addictive and The Incident.

Do you game on your phone? Which are your current faves?

Well, sometimes all you need is one word.

• One word movie review - Shrek Forever After: good.

• One word weather forecast: hot. (110° yo)

• One word concert announcement: Pixies. (hell yeah I said Pixies - woohoo)

• One word iPhone 4 reaction: drool.

• One word music review - How To Destroy Angels EP: amazing.

• One word describing 12 year old staying with us for the weekend: tiring.

• One word reaction to oil covered wildlife: anger.

Like most geeks, I read about today's iPad announcement with some interest. I mean I do like the odd Apple product after all.

My initial gut reaction: underwhelmed.

But then again, I think I'm probably not Apple's target market. Don't get me wrong, it looks lovely and if someone wanted to buy me one, I'd say thanks with a big grin on my face. It just doesn't do anything I can't already do with the devices I already have. And I think that's why I was left with a meh feeling.

I have an iPhone and I love it. It's become like a second computer to me. An ultra portable device with which I can make calls, surf the web, read email, tweet, watch video, read books, take photos, and play games. And it fits in my pocket. In short, it's convenient.

The iPad, to me, is basically just a much bigger version of that. Except it won't fit in my pocket. Which isn't all that convenient. I'd have to tote it around in a bag. And I already do that because I have a laptop. A portable device with a bigger screen, more horsepower, and more storage than an iPad.

Now, if I was in the market for a netbook, if I didn't have a laptop or a smartphone, I would probably be extremely excited by today's big announcement. But I'm not in that market at the moment.

However, ask me if I'm kicking myself for buying my girlfriend a netbook for Christmas. Go on ask me.

Last week we added another gadget to our collection.

But it's not all pure mindless entertainment. Oh no. In a word, exercise. Sure, you could go outside to run or go down to your local gym to workout. But where's the fun in that? What you want is a Wii Fit Plus.

Good lord am I sore. Seeing as I've never done Yoga or Kung Fu in my life, I'm apparently using muscles I didn't even know I had.

I must admit I was initially very skeptical of the Wii Fit when it first came out. After all, this is a video game console, how much exercise could you really get? Let me assure you, the answer is you get a lot of exercise. And it's so much fun.

Blimey, buying a Wii means at one point or another I've now owned every Nintendo game console since the NES.

I've had my iPhone 3GS for about a week now and not surprisingly, I like it. I like it a lot. Then again, I am hopelessly late to the smartphone party and anything remotely better than my old Razr is going to feel like I swapped my Commodore 64 for a MacBook Pro. The 3GS is a great phone. It's fast and for the most part just bloody works.

My old phone contract expired a couple of months ago and since then I've been pondering which phone to get next. I spent some time playing with a Palm Pre, a Blackberry Storm, and a Motorola Droid. Of those, only the Droid seemed like it was almost good enough to own. Almost.

So, my one week in "far too soon to be giving this kind of writeup, but doing it anyway", er, writeup.

The Apps

One week in doesn't give anyone enough time to compile a decent app review so I won't even try. But what I have found that I like so far, and shown on my home screen are the following:

Google Earth
Evernote (iPhone port of my fave note taking, organizing desktop app)
AroundMe (finds businesses, er, around me)
TweetDeck (iPhone port of my fave desktop Twitter client)
Flixster (movie showtimes, information, and theater locator)
Shazam (music identifier)
Wikipanion (better than navigating Wikipedia in Safari)
Reader (mobile Google Reader)
Flickit (all round mobile Flickr gadget & uploader)
Last.fm (for listening to music streams)
IMDb (for movie junkies everywhere)

Most importantly, I replaced the Apple Mail client with the mobile version of Gmail. Which you must do immediately.

The Keyboard

The keyboard really isn't that bad. I thought that my big chubby digits would be a problem and to a certain degree they are, but the auto-correction is scarily accurate and I've found myself typing emails & texting at quite a good pace.

The Camera

The cameras in phones suck. All of them. The question then becomes, how much does it suck and can you live with it? Surprisingly, for a phone, the camera is not entirely made of fail.

Obviously it's no DSLR, but it's no slouch either. So that coupled with the rather spiffy Flickit app to upload directly to Flickr makes for a rather nice 'on the go' pic taking experience.

The Games

I haven't spent much time trying out various games because I really haven't gotten much further than Orbital. I'm hopelessly addicted and it might just be the finest $0.99 I ever spent.

Check me out with a high score of 40. Ahem. I didn't say I was any good at it.

Stop Waffling

Ok, it's fast, it works, I'm happy with it. Can't really say any more than that.

After owning iPods for years, and a MacBook Pro for just over 12 months, today I added one more to the Apple collection.

This replaces my old, beat up, downtrodden Motorola Razr that I've held onto for years. I'll be honest though, it was a bloody good phone that served its purpose well.

Now, off to the App Store I go and start downloading. What would you recommend? What are your must have apps?

[Moozik: Ascii.Disko - Nitrate]

Mobile phones have become one of those irreplaceable items to the point where we wonder how we ever lived without them. We did, obviously, but how much more convenient is it to call a person instead of a place? How much more convenient is it to be able to make a call wherever you are instead of having to find a bloody pay phone?

But it's not only that. Text, tweet, stream music, take photos, take video, upload files, find restaurants, surf the web, and play games. The world is your mobile oyster. And it's all very cool. I love it. But at what point is it too much? At what point have we become too plugged-in?

At the pub on Friday night, the amount of people sitting at the bar glued to their phones surprised me. I think I never really noticed before. Even couples on dates were doing it too. As soon as one of them went to the bathroom, out came the phone and the tweeting or texting or web surfing commenced. Like clockwork.

At the cinema on Saturday night, same thing. Phones out everywhere not only while the trailers are playing but during the actual movie itself. Everyone doing some mission critical task that can't possibly wait until the movie ends. You're not that important. You've paid to watch a movie right? Perhaps you should, I dunno, watch it?

Sunday night proved entertaining as well. We were at a concert and still people were texting and tweeting and talking on their phones. In the middle of a concert. Have you not paid to come and see this person live onstage? What could possibly be that important that you can't wait until the concert ends?

Now, I love gadgets & those internets as much as the next geek. But it's ok to sometimes leave your phone in your pocket. Really. The world will still continue, everything will be ok.

Kids today I tell you. Attention spans of goldfish. Now, get off my lawn.

[Moozik: Low Line Caller - Built On Gasoline]

I think it's most amusing how much we rely on technology for things these days. Things that we were quite happy doing ourselves back in the day now become tasks that only a Blackberry, an iPhone, or a GPS unit can do. Be it calculating tips in a pub or restaurant, to finding your way from A to B, we've suddenly forgotten that we survived well enough without gadgets when we were younger.

My other half and I were out house hunting (that will be a separate post) the other day and had a real estate agent along with us. True to form, I doubted the real estate agent's encyclopedic knowledge of Phoenix. I mean, how could she possibly know the area better than the iPhone's map/directions app? Just follow us I said. Ok she says.

Yeah, that was embarrassing. After an afternoon of amusing phone calls, u-turns, and generally having to admit that we were totally lost, I've come to the conclusion that the iPhone map/directions app is a big bucket of fail and shall never be used again.

Mind you, just to balance things out, I do love the iPhone's tip calculator app. I'm totally crap at figuring out tip amounts and generally over tip. Now I know exactly how much 15% is. In pubs & restaurants we use it all the time to come up with the most annoying tip amounts we can. Seeing the bartender looking puzzled at his tip for $4.78 is totally worth it.