Technologizer

Flook, a Location-Aware Microphotoblogging App for iPhone

I’ve been playing with Flook, a clever new program that’s now available on Apple’s iPhone App Store. Conceptually, it’s very, very simple: You use it to capture images with your phone and attach brief titles and captions to them. Flook then turns the image, title and caption into a full-screen combo it calls a card, [...]

Stud or Dud? This iPhone App’s a Dud!

Back in September at the DEMO conference, public-information company Intelius launched DateCheck, an impish iPhone app that ran an instant background check to tell you if prospective dates had criminal backgrounds or other undesirable qualities. Now DateCheck has a competitor: Intelius rival PeopleFinders is introducing Stud or Dud?, another impish iPhone app that runs instant [...]

The Apple iPhone App Store Approval Process: A Really Inefficient Route for Getting to the Right Decision

Bobble Rep, the iPhone application that lets you find and contact your senators and members of congress and which depicts them as bobblehead dolls, is no longer an app non grata. After initially rejecting the program, Apple has done an about face and pushed it through to the App Store. (On my iPhone, at least, [...]

Political Caricature? There’s No App For That

I long ago gave up on trying to cover every weird rejection of an application intended for Apple’s iPhone App Store, but this one merits quick mention. Tom Richmond, the excellent caricaturist whose work appears in MAD these days, has blogged about an app he co-created. It’s a guide to senators and members of congress [...]

Verizon Wireless: The iPhone is a Misfit Toy

Once again, Verizon is bashing away at the iPhone in a commercial–one that places an animated iPhone lookalike on the Island of Misfit Toys from the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special: For entertainment value and diligent recreation of the Rankin-Bass studio’s stop-motion puppetry style, this ad gets an A. I [...]

iPhone Tethering on AT&T: One Year and Counting

Exactly one year ago, on November 6th, 2008, I was siting in the audience at the Web 2.0 Summit when AT&T Mobility President Ralph De La Vega shared good news from the stage: The company would “soon” be permitting iPhone users to tether their phones for use. I assumed he was a reliable source and [...]

5Words: Cheapie iPhone 3GS Coming Shortly?

$99 iPhone 3GS for Xmas? Droid: What you should know. Skype legal hassles over! Please? Twitter starts to test retweeting. Windows 7 outselling Vista handily. Band Hero sued? No doubt! Slacker radio hits Android phones. Orb media streaming for Macs. It’s Wikipedia in handheld form. Technology isn’t making us hermits. ________________________ Like 5Words? Subscribe via RSS.    

Verizon’s Droid and the Importance of Pinching

When I compared the Verizon Droid to the iPhone 3GS last week, I said that the Droid didn’t have multi-touch input–based on the fact that I’d used it a lot and encountered no instances when it did. A commenter said that the phone did indeed support multi-touch, and I tweaked my item. Essentially, the phone [...]

5Words: Want iPhone Flash? Blame Apple!

iDon’t Think the Droid’s iPhone Attack Will Work

Verizon is spending a lot of money advertising its upcoming Droid smartphone. It’s everywhere–from commercials on TV to bills posted on construction sites. But I question whether the iPhone-mocking focus of the ad campaign can generate broad appeal. The ads target the iPhone’s shortcomings, such as its lack of a camera flash and the rigid application development [...]

The T-Grid: Verizon Droid vs. iPhone 3GS

So Verizon’s Droid is official, and officially arriving a week from Friday.  I’m smart enough to know it’s pointless to call any phone an iPhone killer, or even a potential iPhone killer–and that competing with the iPhone is much more about software and overall integration than it is about hardware specs. (If you could kill the [...]

Lala for iPhone: Soon, Hopefully!

A little over a year ago, I wrote about Lala’s extremely nifty music service and mentioned a version for the iPhone which the company said would be available soon. I couldn’t wait to use it…but “soon” never arrived. But it sounds like “soon” may come…soon. Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk reports that Lala expects its iPhone app [...]

Sonos’s All-in-One Connected Speaker System

I’ve been talking to the Sonos folks for years. And everyone I know who owns their connected music system absolutely raves about it. Yet, I’ve never joined in given the steep price of entry (starting at ~$1000) and BYOS (bring your own speakers) requirement. Fortunately, Sonos has been listening and their new all-in-one S5 ($400) [...]

Droid Attacks iPhone

Verizon Wireless, which recently announced it was hopping on the Android smartphone OS bandwagon big time, has started whetting our appetite for its first Android phone. It’s launched a TV ad for the phone, the Droid, and a teaser site. And so far, it’s mostly promoting the phone by bashing the iPhone, with pseudo-Apple text [...]

The iPhone App Economy: What Price Quality?

Gizmodo’s John Herrman has a long, smart post up about the economics of the iPhone App Store, the seemingly endless price pressure that makes most apps really cheap, and what it all means for iPhone developers and iPhone owners. (The section on GPS navigation apps is especially interesting–one of the reasons that many of them [...]

ZenNews: Global News for the iPhone

Zensify, makers of a social-network aggregator app for the iPhone, released a free new app today called ZenNews. It uses a similar interface for a whole new purpose: to help you learn what’s going on in the world as reported by a bunch of high-profile news sources. The app pulls together stories from the New York [...]