Archive for iPhone

Tipp-Kick football game timelapse

// November 28th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Video, iPhone

I’ve been playing around with the iTimeLapse app for the iPhone and I must say that I’m hooked.

What is iTimeLapse?

With iTimeLapse you can create stunning time lapse videos straight from your phone! iTimeLapse allows you to capture a series of images rapidly and then compile them into a video.

So with the iPhone in hand, I loaded up the iTimeLapse app and directed it at the Tipp-Kick Table football game.

What is Tipp-Kick?

TIPP-KICK is a football game featuring two versatile metal players who can kick the ball along the ground or lob it up in the air. One push of the button sends the goalkeeper diving / leaping across the goal to clear the ball. The colour showing uppermost on the two-tone balls tells the players who is allowed to kick. The winner is the one that manages to combine ability, skill and tactics.

After recording 15 minutes of “footage” and a quick render - the end result was of course the following video:


Direct link to Tipp-Kick football game timelapse

And for those wondering, the final score was 3-2 in favour of the red team.

What’s that song again?

// August 29th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Music, Tech, Video, iPhone

Ever had a song stuck in your head and you don’t know the name? It happens to me all the time. Either I know a line from the song, or have some idea of the tune, but no idea who the artist or the song is.

To make matters worse, I always seem to miss the song intro on the radio and the DJ never seems to repeat the song title.

Midomi Song Identification and searchImagine my delight when I stumbled upon the iPhone song identification application Midomi. Let me briefly interject.
A good friend, Leon Jacobs once said, “The greatest things about iPhone is the potential that every new app has to completely transform the device into a totally new experience.” I have to agree with Leon. Midomi has transformed the way I interact with music.

The premise is simple - open Midomi, press the big orange button, hold your iPhone up to a source of music and voila, it identifies the artist and song title. It even allows you to play back a short clip (from its own database) so that you can confirm if it’s the same song. Just watch out for loud ambient noise though - it makes song recognition a bit tricky.

Surprisingly enough it even recognised my tone-deaf humming of certain songs. Of course, if you don’t want to feel like a dork singing to your phone, you can also search for a song or band just by saying or typing the name.

The features don’t stop there though. You can bookmark and share your song results via Twitter and Facebook. Check out the lyrics, videos via YouTube and obtain detailed artist info. You can buy the song, but I haven’t been able to do so since the iTunes music store is still not available in South Africa.

All in all, this is a great application and at $4.99 (around R38) it’s worth every cent.

Download the Midomi application for your iPhone here.

Midomi screenshot Midomi screenshot Midomi screenshot
Midomi screenshot Midomi screenshot Midomi screenshot

iPhone applications

// April 13th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // iPhone

My iPhone recently had to go back to Vodacom for an issue with the vibrate button. The thing broke off after only 2 months out the box. Something that’s completely unacceptable. Unfortunately the only thing to do was to book it in at Vodaworld, figuring it will be resolved fairly quickly.

In the initial three days I received a few messages informing me of the progress of the job, until it had to be sent back to the supplier. Around two-and-a-half weeks of silence ensued before I was finally notified that it was ready for collection. As expected (and welcomed), they exchanged the phone with a new unit.

One thing I must commend Apple on is how well the restore function works. Surprisingly enough it restored every setting, archived sms and application back to the last known state. Pretty amazing, considering I’ve never been able to do so with my Windows Mobile phones.

Funny thing about restoring your phone is that you notice how much nonsense you had on there in the first place. I took the opportunity to do some housekeeping and removed some unwanted / unused applications.

Below is a list of some of the more oft used (and mostly free) applications still on my phone.

    Photography

  • Flickit - Flickr uploader
  • PanoLab - Capture panoramic images
    Productivity

  • Discover - Mobile file manager
  • Road Trip - Best travel logbook application by far
    Social Networking

  • Brightkite - Location based networking
  • Facebook - What? Never heard of Facebook? Welcome to earth.
  • Fring - Instant messaging across multiple services
  • LinkedIn - Professional networking
  • Skype - Free calls and instant messages
  • Twitterfon - Twitter client
  • Twitterrific - Twitter client

Unfortunately some of the better apps in the iTunes App Store are still not available to South Africans, so we’ll have to make do for now. But here’s the question, are there other apps out there that I should have on my phone? What do you have on yours?

Afrigator