If you haven’t downloaded and installed DropBox on your Mac yet, you are missing out on one of the most useful “cloud”-based applications around today. DropBox gives you online storage letting you access your files from anywhere using their client or webpage from any computer.
Now DropBox has released their iPhone application that truly makes accessing your files on the go a piece of cake.
If you have an iPhone and frequent Starbucks to get your daily caffeine fix, there’s now an app to make your life easier. Starbucks has released an iPhone app that brings your Starbucks card to your iPhone. Mobile Card app lets you view your card balance, reload the card, view transactions and actually pay for transactions (Currently being tested in the Silicon Valley and Seattle, WA areas).
Evernote has now been around for awhile and the iPhone app is now over a year old and just seems to be getting better with each new release. Evernote for iPhone works seamlessly with the website and the various desktop apps. Using the app, you can capture, collect, store and organize information wherever you are.
Essential Tools for Webmaster and Bloggers, Here we throw all the AdSense iPhone Apps into the ring. SenseApp vs iEarn vs QuickSense vs iAdSense
You might already be used to the Genius feature in iTunes to help you develop playlists or even find similar music, but now Apple has added Genius feature on the iPhone/iPod Touch to help you sift through the thousands of apps available. Like the Genius feature in iTunes, this will look at the apps installed and make recommendations to what else you might link.
iTunes 9 was released this past Wednesday and it adds many new features, but our favorite addition is the ability to manage your iPhone/iPod Touch applications directly from within iTunes. Many frustrating hours will be saved by no longer having to move apps one-by-one on your device.
One of the great time savers and productivity apps on the Mac is TextExpander. Using predefined shortcuts and abbreviations, TextExpander expands them into snippets or even full paragraphs. Now Smile On My Mac has brought that same functionality to the iPhone/iPod Touch with their app, called TextExpander Touch.
Twittelator Pro v3.1 from Stone Design is probably one of most full-featured Twitter clients now available. If you used or looked at an older version in the past, Twittelator Pro v3.1 deserves another long hard look.
Do you use Firefox as your primary desktop browser and need a simple way to sync those bookmarks to your iPhone or iPod Touch? Since Safari is the only browser available on the iPhone or iPod Touch you either need to manually create the bookmarks manually or do without, but there is an easier way.
Would you like voice recognition on your iPhone, but don’t have the new iPhone 3GS? Vocalia 2.0 from Creaceed brings voice recognition to older generation iPhones, along with the second generation iPod Touch.
Vocalia is a speech recognition tool that allows users to simply say a contacts name and Vocalia will search through the contact list to find the name or names closest to the one spoken. Vocalia uses phonetics so you do not have to “train” the software with your voice or pronunciations.
When you start the application the first time, it will scan and phonetizize the contact list. When ready you will be presented with the purple Vocalia “eye”
Simply pronounce the name of the contact and Vocalia will search its database and present the closest match. If there is one match, such as when we said “Home”, you will be presented with the contact information, allowing you to touch the number to initiate a call. If however, there are several matches when we just used the contact’s first name. “Jim”, Vocalia presented us with a list of possible matches.
Vocalia does a very good job on sound pickup and voice recognition and your results will depend on background noise. We were to use the application with the iPhone sitting on our desk in a quiet office. Vocalia was easily able to recognize the contact’s name and present us with the correct contact information.
Another feature in the application is the ability to edit the phonetizations and even add nicknames to contact records.
We also tested Vocalia’s iPod functions, which allows you to say an artist name and Vocalia will display information for that artist, allowing you to select All Songs, particular Albums or individual songs. iPod mode is initiated by selecting the iPod menu item and the Vocalia “eye” will be brown.
Vocalia also allows you to import Safari bookmarks and use voice commands to open bookmarks in Safari.
We were very impressed with Vocalia’s voice recognition and ability to correctly identify contacts and artist names in iPod mode. As mentioned previously, background noise can affect accuracy, we had minor problems when testing outdoors with some wind noise, but indoors Vocalia performed flawlessly for us.
Vocalia 2.0 is available in the App Store for $3.99 and if you want to add voice recognition to your older generation iPhone or second generation iPod Touch, this will provide you with that ability.
