Trails for iPhone... FTW!

I have been using Trails for iPhone since version 1.0, but recently gave Motion-X GPS and Ascent Mobile a trial run for tracking walks/hikes.
I use the Ascent desktop software, thus it seemed like a natural fit to use the recently released Ascent mobile application, but this version is just too new and as a tracking application it has too many features missing, such as the ability to pause while recording a track. You must stop recording and then launch a new track with Ascent Mobile, this is a deal breaker.
Motion-X GPS does not offer the GPS accuracy obtained with Trails, launch time is a bit slower and GPS acquisition lags behind Trails. Also, Motion-X GPS does not have the tracking configuration features offered by Trails, such as specific settings for hiking, Jogging, cycling and car.
Bottom line, I returned to Trails, the new version 2.0 adds map caching for offline map usage (no data connection required), topographic maps and landscape graphing. The track summary page has been redone and gets an A+ for display and usability! Use of Trails is straight forward, swipe to pause, swipe again to re-start. The perfect iPhone Pedometer!
My workflow:
1. Record activity with Trails for iPhone.
2. Email GPX file to self.
3. Drop GPX file in Ascent for Mac, for reporting and analysis.
4. I can then sync activities back to Ascent Mobile on the iphone, allowing me to carry around my activity diary!
Thus, Trails is my acquisition device and Ascent is my reporting application. The best of both worlds!

Back to Twitterific

After a couple of months of using Tweetie on the iPhone, I am back in the familiar confines of Twitterific, Twitterific 2.0 specifically. While I enjoyed the trending and search features of Tweetie (both are now available with Twitterific 2.0), I never really got comfortable with Tweetie for viewing posts. My biggest issue was the need to flick-scroll to the bottom of the screen and try to remember which tweet I left off at. Twitterific 2.0, as well as earlier versions, load the new tweets above the tweet you left off at - which is displayed front and center... you just pick up where you left off at. For me.. this is the key feature to any Twitter client!
Twitterific 2.0 FTW! Highly recommended.. There are many reviews on the web going into details of all the new functions.. if you are on the fence, I recommend reading a couple. Bottom line, for $3.99 the Pro version of Twitterific is a steal!

Creating Music on Your iPhone

A hobby of mine is creating music on Apple products, Logic, Ableton Live & Garageband on the Mac and now leveraging the many Touch OS applications on my iPhone & iPod Touch.

Touching briefly on a few of the better applications available:

• Beatmaker - think of this as a loop/beat version of Garageband.


• Noise.io - a full featured soft synth that has a link with Beatmaker, allowing you to use content you created in Noise as loops in Beatmaker.


• BassLine, iSyn & Technobox are all variations of a synth & sequencer. iSyn is a lot of fun.


• iDrum, MegaSynth, Jasuto, NlogSynth are all virtual instruments.

If you are musically inclined, or just like to noodle around there are alot of great options.

A good blog to add to your RSS feed if you are interested in music creation applications for the iPhone/Touch is: Palm Sounds.

Wundermap! An Interactive Weather Touch Map

For your very own Interactive Weather Touch Map... go to: i.wund.com using Safari, this will take you to the Weather Underground's iPhone optimized website. Search for the location you are seeking weather information for, then scroll down to the button: "View Full Screen WunderMap".


A new browser window will open with a radar weather map that takes full advantage of your iPhone's Touch OS. You can scroll around the map by dragging with your finger, use the pinch gesture to zoom in or out and rotate your iPhone for landscape viewing. This is the best implementation of a radar weathermap I have seen so far. You can bookmark the map to your bookmark list or to a home screen, the weather map will update when you launch it.

You also have the option of displaying Satellite VIS (cloud cover) or Satellite IR4 (detects clouds day & night) maps as well.

While this is a webapp, it outshines the mapping capability of any of the native iPhone weather applications.. or at least the ones that I have used. After checking this out, you may find yourself bookmarking the icon to your home screen.

Bento! Apple's Personal Database Comes to the iPhone!

And it syncs with the desktop version of Bento.

Bento for iPhone ($4.99) is now available on the App store. Bento for iPhone comes with 25 ready to use templates, supports 15 different field types and integrates with the other iPhone applications such as Contacts, Safari, Mail and Maps. As mentioned above, Bento for iPhone syncs with Bento 2.04 for the Mac.
I think this is great news and look forward to exploring the power of this new application. Without reading too much into this release, I hope that this is a sign that Apple is working on porting some of their OS X applications for the iPhone. I know I have been waiting on iWork for iPhone and Garageband/Logic for iPhone.
More details as I explore Bento for iPhone.

EA's Tiger Woods Golf and Myst released for the iPhone

Over the weekend two of the gaming big boys were released for the iPhone. EA's Tiger Woods golf ($9.99) weighs in at 160 mb. Graphics and game play are excellent. If you are a fan of the Tiger Woods golf series, this is a great way to carry it in your pocket.
Myst is 700+mb and requires 1-1.5 gb of free space to install. Sounds impressive!
This week:
Waiting on Twitterific 2.0 to be approved and Instapaper 2.0.
It should be a good week!

Quickoffice Suite for iPhone

From reading the reviews that are beginning to show up on iPhone blogs, a couple questions have been answered:

1. Quicksheets does NOT have cut, copy & paste.
2. A new point release update has added email functionality.
3. The update did not address the auto-correct oversight.

Quickword is now available as a stand alone application, priced at $12.99.

I have waited this long for an office suite on the iPhone, I think I will wait awhile longer to see what Dataviz has to offer with Documents To Go for iPhone, when I was a Palm user, DTG was my office suite of choice.