Inverted Reality

Time BOM

Check out this new App from Shift Jelly. Time BOM Yeah, it's an iPhone/iPod Touch app. It's simple, it just displays the time, date, and weather for your location on the display, in any orientation, with a couple of different themes. Here I have it sitting in my super awesome MiniDV tape case (iPhone holder)... yeah that's my sik idea by the way. Shift Jelly is an Australian app developer, support their stuff! This app was only $1.19!

Plants VS Zombies

Popcap games have done it again, yet another brilliant port to iPhone / iPod Touch. If you are an iPhone owner and you haven't heard of, or purchased and played this yet, do it. With a 'tower defence' style gameplay, you'll keep the Zombies away from the front and back of your house as they 'braaaaaains' their way across your turf. The best thing about this game for me, apart from the great user interface and sound effects is without a doubt the comedic approach the developers have taken to zombie actions. How about a group of zombies performing a 'thriller' style jam across your lawn while they take out your defences? Or the crazy pole vaulting zombie? Maybe the ride-on-mower zombie. You can't help but to laugh whilst playing this! Taken from Popcap's official site:

Get ready to soil your plants in an all-new action-strategy game from PopCap! A mob of fun-loving zombies is about to invade your home, and your only defense is an arsenal of 49 zombie-zapping plants. Use peashooters, wall-nuts, cherry bombs and more to mulchify 26 types of zombies before they can reach your front door.

Each zombie has its own special skills, so you’ll need to think fast and plant faster to combat them all. But be careful how you use your limited supply of greens and seeds… as you battle the fun-dead, obstacles like a setting sun, creeping fog and a swimming pool add to the challenge. And with five game modes to dig into, the fun never dies!

Fanboy

I was reading some of Chris Pirillo's tweets.. he's a tech nerd that does a live video tech show, runs some sites, runs a convention, does all kinds of stuff.... recently he's been tweeting about being a 'fanboy' or should I say, NOT being a fanboy. It's got me thinking, am I fanboy? I'm a pretty die-hard Apple fan... I love Apple products! I stalk the rumor and official sites for updates, new products, gossip etc... I could be a fanboy. I've not always been an Apple fanboy. Sure my first experience with a computer was an Apple IIc which my mother bought me when I was nine years old. I must have been the only kid in my entire school who was handing in homework that was done in a word processor and printed on a dot matrix printer. HAH. When Apple announced they were moving to Intel processors, and I had my first experience with a Mac running OS X. I dropped my cash on the bench and forked out for two brand new 15" Macbook Pro's. Revision A, pre-ordered. That was an easy $9k.

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iPad is just iTunes enabler

or is it? Bringing us the iPad is one of the greatest moves Apple has made since the iPod, and here's why... Think about what the iPod offers us already. Music, movies, TV shows, games. All delivered easily and reliably through iTunes, Apple's digital delivery store. Sure you can load your own music on it, you can check your email on it, you can surf the web on it. Heck, with the iPhone you can even make phone calls. Don't forget about Apple's core purpose for these devices. Delivering digital content to you via their app store / iTunes. Making money. Now think about this... Just how profitable do you suppose iTunes / app store is for Apple? Lets not forget that the iPod single handedly resurrected Apple from a really deep hole. Of course it's profitable. It's also controlled, scaleable, reliable, and simple for the average Joe. Just what you'd expect from Apple. Have we forgotten that the core of all these Apple products is paid (and some free) digital delivery via app store and iTunes? Yeah there's free stuff, it keeps the punters happy, and pulls in the customers. Lets look at the iPad. It's much like an iPod Touch, only, larger and more powerful. When it was announced to be running an iPhone-style OS, I immediately wondered why.. but it's becoming more clear all the time. I bet Steve is sitting at his desk thinking to himself "If only all our devices ran an iphone-style OS". Why you ask? Some reasons:

• Apps for the OS are designed strictly to Apples rules and guidelines. They must be approved before they hit the app store. They even get age classifications. You couldn't possibly install a "bad app" that might wreak havoc on the device. It pretty much makes the device really use friendly and renders any support arrangement almost useless.

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Apple iPad announced

Well Apple have done it again. They've gone and made yet another product that we are all going to want, even if it doesn't perfectly meet our requirements. It's a new wanky gadget. It's the Apple iPad. It's a giant iPod Touch. Yay! http://www.apple.com/ipad/ Do I want one? I don't really know yet. I can see some uses. It has a 9.7" screen (as I predicted last week), and runs an iPhone'esque operating system.

Watch your data when tethering 3G on OS X

If you don't know what a widget is, your a goon. Open your dashboard by hitting F12 (or F4 on newer mac's) if that doesn't work, panic! Get yourself the iSlayer istat pro widget Now, it monitors network interfaces, pretty wild eh? When you connect your iPhone by USB or Bluetooth, you should see it as an interface in istat... keep your eyes on that data if your monitoring your usage. OR use your providers usage page, OR, check out iiQuota on the appstore (supports most of the big name carriers) Enjoy!

iPhone Tethering experiences

So I've been tethering my iPhone to my new Macbook Pro 13" since I purchased the laptop. I figured now was a good time to write about it. I've been doing it for a few weeks now. Here are my findings. Background info: Equipment: iPhone 3G, Optus, 500MB data included a month. Macbook Pro 13" 2.53Ghz. Used: mainly on the train to and from work in Perth CBD at speeds up to 130kph The iPhone 3.0 OS allows tethering, some mobile carriers allow tethering out of the box, others do not. Optus for example do not allow tethering, however there are ways around this without even 'hacking' your phone. (You basically need to change the APN on the phone using a mobileconfig file.) Some web sites make this really easy for you. Be warned that this technique may be shit-canned in OS 3.1. A Shame because Optus charge $9.95 a month to "activate" tethering.

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iPhone and apps

well I've had the iPhone 3G for three weeks now, and have added some apps from the app store, some free, some purchased. I purchased Super Monkey Ball and have only played it a few times. I was curious. Probably the best purchase I made was "Comic Touch" by plasq, it lets me add little comic notes to pics taken with the iPhone camera. VERY cool, especially when you've got a baby girl as a subject! Some free apps I've installed include "remote" which lets you control itunes or appletv from your iPhone. "Here I Am" which e-mails a friend your current location for them to see on a google map (brilliant). Tap Tap Revenge (fun game), Facebook App, Google App, AIM, Wordpress, VNC lite, WritingPad, GarageBuy, Labyrinth, ZIPcodes, Shazam, Paypal, IGN Reviews and AirME. Lets look at some of those free apps I've installed. Facebook App is just excellent and I use it all the time. I can take a photo with the iPhone right inside that app and it instantly uploads it to my Facebook profile. Google App is not bad for finding something near your current location. AIM for chatting with mates (iChat), Wordpress for updating blogs, VNC lite for connecting to my computers remotely which is neat and works really well. WritingPad is just a novelty note-taker with brilliant UI. GarageBuy from the makers of GarageSale is a great eBay client app for bidding/watching/searching. Labyrinth is an amazing game with super smooth controls!  ZIPcodes... blah blah, I can't be bothered writing any more. *sigh* I'm going to go make a tea.   The iPhone is awesome the app store is awesome.. I'm just loving this!

Use iPhone or iPod touch as Apple TV remote

Wow this is cool. I just found this with a but of Apple TV searching. You can use your iPhone or iPod touch (or any web browser device) as an Apple TV remote control! Why you would want to I do not know, but here's the link anyway: http://www.picpoc.ro/static.php?page=staticATViPhoneRemote

make wordpress iphone compatible

I stumbled across this plugin for wordpress that makes your wordpress site nicely viewable from an Apple iPhone or iPod Touch. Infact, if you have either of these devices, I'd love it if you could try viewing this site with it give me some feedback! source: http://iwphone.contentrobot.com/

"The iWPhone WordPress Plugin and Theme automatically reformats your blog’s content for optimized viewing on Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch. It detects the iPhone/iPod touch’s User Agent and serves up the content with the special theme only to iPhone and iPod touch visitors, all other browsers will view your WordPress blog with your current theme."