Some Cool Audio Recognition Apps

Now we've all heard of Shazam and tried out Apple's Voice Control feature, but these 2 nifty apps take voice recognition to the next level!

SoundHound

This is Shazam on steroids! Now I replaced Shazam long ago with MusicID since it also gave me lyrics, and videos and whatnot, but SoundHound still has all of those features, as well as the killer feature of being able to recognise humming and singing!

It's great fun to try and I'm imagining many kinds of games you could play with friends to see who can make SoundHound identify the song they're singing! Or if you just have the tune stuck in your head and you want to find out what it is without actually having the song playing, you could just hum it out and SoundHound will hopefully tell you what the name of the song is!

I've tried singing, humming new and old songs alike, and I was amazed everytime with the accurate results! This is one exciting app to have!

Dragon Dictation

This app basically translates speech to text, like the google app, except it gives you the option of texting, emailing or copying to the clipboard. You'd think a speech-to-text app would never work and would just be a gimmick, but it actually works really well! I was equally amazed by this app as I was by SoundHound! My jaw dropped as every word I dictated appeared before my eyes on my iPhone's screen. I'm really impressed by the advancements developers have made in audio recognition!

First impressions of the iPad

When I first laid eyes on the iPad when I opened it's box, i thought - wow...it's so gorgeous! Typical of any Apple product unboxing. The first thing I did on it was post a status update on Facebook as my friend and I were on a race to see who could get their iPad's up and running first!

While I was doing this, I was completely blown away by the beautiful screen. The IPS screen that they put into this thing is crystal clear. It makes doing anything on the iPad such a pleasure. Coupled with a quantum leap in speed from the iPhone 3GS with it's new Apple A4 system on a chip, the hardware of the iPad is already enough to make it a winner from the first generation.

Typing on the iPad
Admittedly, I was scared of what typing would be like on the iPad. In portrait mode, you're usually typing with your thumbs while holding it with your hands much like an iPhone. If you're in landscape mode, then you definitely need a case to elevate it slightly to get the right ergonomic angle to type on it like a normal keyboard, otherwise you'll be doing a lot of one handed typing. There's a slight learning curve no doubt, but like on the iPhone, it is responsive and once you get used to it, it's great! in fact, I'm typing this whole post with my iPad. Below is a comparison of the iphone keyboard and ipad keyboards in portrait and landscape modes.



Everything is bigger and better!

Web browsing
Like i said before, web browsing is simply amazing with fully rendered web pages that look fantastic on the IPS screen. The smoothness and fluidity when scrolling and zooming with your fingers is an absolute delight. I've yet to experience any problems with the lack of flash.

Photos
Photos also look wonderful and the iPad makes for the perfect digital photo frame to show off your photos. With a Mac it syncs with iPhotos so you'll need to sort out everything (my iPhotos gallery is still a bit of a mess!)

Video
The mobile video experience is also enhanced as I can stream videos from my iMac to my iPad and watch it (using AirVideo) you could do this with an iphone but the screen is simply too small. The iPad's screen is large enough to enjoy watching any kind of movie on, and the speakers are pretty loud as well.

There's a native iPad app just for videos called "Videos" and it is no longer combined in the iPod app like on an iPhone. So far i've only transcoded some Tutorial videos but as always they still look great! Even videos that have been transcoded for the iPhone resolution look good.

Apps
I must say, all the HD iPad apps look amazing. Granted, I'm a bit disappointed that developers have just done straight out ports and have not revamped much else apart from the graphics, but I'm positive we'll see some really great iPad only games coming out soon.

Firemint has done a wonderful job with Flight Control HD as it let's more than 1 person redirect the planes. This adds a whole new dimension to the game as you have to work with a buddy to land the planes. Thats a great example of iPad gameplay that I would like to see other developers doing.

iPhone apps also render pretty nicely on the iPad although some apps still look a bit pixellated when you blow it up to the 2x screen resolution. Just knowing that it is backwards compatible is nice, unlike other recent mobile gaming devices (PSP Go and DSi)

Productivity
I've already filled up my iPad with a bunch of note taking apps but I have yet to try them out at uni for real until next semester. I've been playing around with a bunch of them and some of them look very very promising.

Reading
iBooks is definitely the best app for reading ebooks. You can convert any pdf to a .epub using free software for both Mac and PC to put onto iBooks, but any document which is graphics heavy (pictures, tables, etc)like a textbook will not convert very well.

To solve this, I use GoodReader, which is one of the best PDF readers out there. I used to actually put a textbook pdf on my iPhone and read it on that but it soon became unbearable to read. Now with 10 inches of screen size, I can now read that textbook with ease.

This has been more of a fly-by review and I hope you've gained more of an insight to what an iPad can do. It's definitely more than just a giant iPod touch and once you play around with it for awhile and go back to using your iPhone, you feel like its a totally different beast. The iPad is here, and it is great!

Magic Mouse is back in the house!

Awhile ago, I ditched my Magic Mouse for my old wireless mouse, and for several reasons:

1) I kept running out of batteries (It does not last for 4 months...)
2) I was starting to develop RSI from the ridiculously bad tracking of my huge 24 inch screen (even at maximum track sensitivity it
would take my whole mouse pad to track to the edges of my screen)
3) I was bored with the swipe gestures that Apple had given to the Magic Mouse by default.

Enter: MagicPrefs

This nifty little add-on is what I was waiting for Apple to eventually with new gestures for the Magic Mouse, but instead has been done for free by a third party. It addressed issues 2 and 3 with even higher tracking speeds (bye bye RSI) and a whole truck-load of new swipe features!

I've been playing around with it all night, and to summarise, it basically makes your Magic Mouse almost on par with the Macbook Trackpads. This is saying a lot because in addition to scrolling and going back and forth (boring) I can now:

>Middle click (to open new tabs!)
>Expose with 2 finger swipe down
>Show desktop with 2 finger swipe up
>Switch spaces with 3 finger swipe up
>Bring up the dashboard with 3 finger swipe down
>Bring up a nifty little magicmenu when triple clicking (easy access to copy/paste without touching the keyboard)

That's not even half of the things you can add, although half of the gestures there are probably not ergonomical or convenient to do unless you have epic spider hands.

At any rate, if you have a Magic Mouse (or is considering getting one) then MagicPrefs is a must have!

Check it out here

Using an iPad at uni?

I've been thinking about how I would use my iPad once I got it so I started hunting around for some note-taking apps which I could play around with while I was in a lecture. After a quick search I found a demo for an app which brought to life my exact idea of how I would use the iPad to take notes. The demo video below absolutely blew me away and I cannot wait a second longer to get my hands on one!

This app is called PadNotes, and the video explains itself:

Now people say that the iPad is somewhere between a phone and a laptop....but can your laptop really do all of this in a uni lecture theatre?

I think not!

iPad and Velcro...The Perfect Couple?

iPad + Velcro from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

QuickReply! The missing "Reply" button for SMS's!

This little Cydia app is an amazing little extension to the in-built Messages app which lets you reply to an SMS without leaving your current app!!

Here's how it works...

Here I was browsing Safari when I got an SMS...



Notice how there is now a "Reply" button in addition to "View" and "Close"? This is the core functionality of QuickReply. Notice how the person's photo even pops up if you have one for them!

Next, I want to reply to confirm that it works, so I go ahead and tap "Reply". I am then taken to an overlay screen.



I type in my enthusiastic reply, and as soon as I click send, the overlay disappears and I'm right back where I left off!


You will then hear the SMS sent sound after a short wait!

This is messaging multi-tasking at it's best! Let's see this in iPhone OS 4.0 Apple!!

COOL!! NOW WHERE DO I GET IT???

First, your iPhone has to be jailbroken. See my easy tutorial on how to do so here.

Oh, by the way, if you want this for yourself, normally you have to pay US $2.99 but since I always find a pirated way (arrr!), here are the instructions to get the cracked version of QuickReply:

Step 1: Add "http://www.sinfuliphonerepo.com" as a source in Cydia. (If you don't know how to do this, then check this tutorial)

Step 2: Search up QuickReply. Install it.

That's it! You're done!

It's an invisible app so nothing will change on your iPhone apart from the aforementioned added functionality.

Enjoy!

Let me know if you like this app!

What is an iPad?

Every started talking to someone about iPad's with their eventual ignorant reply of "its's just a giant iPod Touch!"

Well, this video will help you prove them wrong.

BTW - the Australian pre-ordered iPads are all sold out so they've pushed the Australian release date AGAIN to 7th June! These things sell like hot cakes!!

Official Australian iPad Release Dates and Pricing!

It's about time!! Damn Americans buying so many iPads that they deplete the supply for the rest of the world, hence pushing back the original international release date of the iPad way back in April.

The new international release date is May 28th. Mark it in your calendars, people!

I may well be one of the hundreds (thousands?) of fanboys/fangirls lining up in the morning to nab me one of these!

That is, until you see the $AU pricing, which is a bit too much if you ask me considering the 16GB base model in the US is US$499 and here in Australia it is AU$629 and the exchange rate is around 90c for the dollar!

Here's a price comparison so you can see for yourself.

Wi-Fi models:

16GB: $629 (US price $499)

32GB: $759 (US price $599)

64GB: $879 (Us price $699)

Wi-Fi + 3G models:

16GB: $799 (US price $629)

32GB: $928 (US price $729)

64GB: $1049 (US price $829)


That's quite a premium that they tack on! So what does eBay have to say about this?As of this time in writing, the cheapest Buy It Now iPad for the 16GB wifi version comes to AU$765 with shipping.

I guess waiting it out will be the cheapest option for now!

SPIRIT JAILBREAK 3.1.3!

####WARNING! ####

This is purely a jailbreak...there are no unlocks yet. So if your iPhone is using a foreign SIM card...then DO NOT DO THIS!

####WARNING!#####

This is a super easy jailbreak...easier than Blackra1n in the sense that your iPhone 3GS is NO LONGER TETHERED!!! Hurray!!!

Step 1: go to Spirit and download the jailbreak program (Works on Win and Mac!)

Step 2: Plug in your iDevice

Step 3: Go to iTunes (latest version is fine) and update your iDevice to 3.1.3

Step 4: Back up your iPhone by syncing it once the update is finished (just in case)

Step 4: Run the Spirit program you downloaded...

THAT'S IT!


Troubleshooting:
Note for windows users...apparently running the app in windows 5/98 may fix some error messages you may encounter

UPDATED

Here's a video to fix the Windows error

iPad and iPhone Interaction

I'm sure everyone has seen how iPad scrabble works, but check out this video of a racing app which uses your iPad as the race track and your iPhone as a steering wheel! Awesome!