A Thinking Man

It is now over 18 months since I first got her - ‘it’ seems way too impersonal for an object which has become an almost indispensable part of my life.  I have blogged before about the first love, about speaking to her so that she never forgets (ReQall), about the app that enables me to broadcast live from my phone (iPadio), and about the app which enables the phone to store and organise everything (Evernote), including the kitchen sink (well pictures of it, descriptions of  it, and songs and videos).  I decided that the time had come again to review some of my most recent favourite iPhone applications.

Video Without The ‘S’

I foolishly thought that in order to be able to record video footage I would have to upgrade to the 3GS which would have been expensive.  However an assistant in my mobile shop told me about iVideoCamera (costing a mere 59 pence via iTunes).  This will shoot video in high or standard quality and will save the clip, or post it to a variety of locations (Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more).  Admittedly the video quality is higher with the 3GS.  However, for a phone that isn’t meant to have video (yes, only heaven knows what Apple were thinking about at that particular meeting), this gives me more than I want.

Professional Voice

Whereas the iVideoCamera is only adequate on quality, the HT Recorder is excellent.  It is a professional voice recorder that is extremely flexible.  The sound quality is impressive.  It has a range of settings so that you can select the microphone/recording options according to your environment (personal recording, meeting, conference).  I have actually used it on a table top to record a meeting between six of us, and used the conference settings to record a speaker in a large auditorium.  It has the facility to skip forward and backwards to markers in the recording.  What some business users will find useful is the ability to publish the recording on the web so that a wider (and possibly restricted) audience can hear it.  It can be posted to a temporary URL via WiFi, or to a more permanent site via FTP.

British Qualities

There are several news sources available for the iPhone, but I particularly like the Independent, the Telegraph, and the Guardian.  The Independent has great material, though it is a bit sluggish to load (however, it does come with a very large print option); the Telegraph allows you to see the occasional video clip as well as read; the Guardian lacks video, but has a particularly rich picture section, as well as containing podcasts to listen to, and allows you to arrange and search news material by broad category and topics, as well as by individual columnists.  If I had a long spell on a desert island, I suspect the Guardian would entertain me the longest.

Transcribed Voicemail

I understand people who say, “Because I can!” when asked, “Why?”  Ok, I can’t really justify the next one, but it does give me a great deal of unexplained satisfaction.  I went along to Ribbit and became a beta user.  I then downloaded the free Ribbit app, and now have business quality transcribed voicemail.  When someone rings and leaves a message, that message is typed into a text and sent to me straight away, and the transcription is also posted to my email.  If I want to hear the original voice message I can listen to it on my Ribbit app (as well as see the transcription) or have the file delivered to my email.  And of course, the options for sending back emails, texts, voice messages, phone calls from within the Ribbit app or from the Ribbit site are seemingly endless.  As someone who gets a lot of voice messages with important numbers and other information in them (and who occasionally needs ‘proof’ of last minute cancelled appointments for billing purposes), having a written record easily to hand is proving useful.

Tags: 3G, 3GS, Evernote, Flickr, Guardian, HT Recorder, Independent, ipadio, iPhone, iVideoCamera, news, newspapers, phlog, phlogging, Ribbit, Telegraph, Twitter, video, voicemail, YouTube