Eazy D - 1, 2, 3. | Eric Deutchman

What a great feeling!


Fantastical Cereal Discovery on 12seconds.tv

That's right, I went and registered a much easier-to-spell domain name.
With this name comes a new outlook on life: well, not really.... but I did register this domain for 5 years! Thanks, GoDaddy - looking forward to your Danica Patrick ads during the Stupidbowl.

On another note, look at the fancy, new, and boring looking links to my other appearances on the Web - to the left of this post.

Longboarding in Winter from Eazy D on Vimeo.

So there's a well-known keyboard shortcut for switching to the next tab in Firefox (and probably IE) - you hold the Control key plus Tab.

HI There,

Please do me a huge favor in supporting a charity I help out with. This is a bit late, so please do the following as soon as you can! It's free for you and takes a couple seconds:

Go to http://www.myemma.com/emma25/ and check off the box next to “The Massachusetts Soldiers’ Legacy Fund “

It’s under the category of Education & Leadership.

 We’re entered to get a free account to use Emma, an e-mail marketing service that could help reach donors for the charity in ways not possible right now. 

The Massachusetts Soldiers’ Legacy Fund is here to provide grant money to the children of Massachusetts fallen soldiers overseas. More information can be seen at http://www.mslfund.org . Please cast your vote for this, and any other charities on that Emma link above. Thanks so much! Tell your friends and family to do the same! It changes lives.

Your Pal,

Eric.

After a brief 100-day beta testing phase, Google surprisingly released a Version 1 of it's Chrome (Chromium) browser. I'm a huge fan of this browser due to its speed, memory management, smart address bar autofill, and the ability to drag tabs out of the window and into another.

source: market share

Don't 'assume'. You will make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'. 

Back in August, I wrote about how to snag a Woot.com bag-o-crap. - Well, diehard fans of Woot can try these tips out sometime today or tomorrow because there is a Woot-off going on currently. Usually, Woot offers only one item per day. During a woot-off, when one item sells out [of stock], a new item is posted, and so on, and so on, until they feel like stopping the deal. The last item is usually something silly. 

After a week or so of this iPhone app crashing everyone's device, TwitterFon is back in action.

Image by Lee Oden

In this post, I'll show you which apps I have gotten so far and why I think they're all useful to me. There are also some iPhone tips & tricks I found to be useful, being one of those people that needs to know every little piece of functionality electronics have.

EDIT: I must say, it's been a while since I posted this and realized just how quickly the App Store scene is changing. I will be posting an updated list in the future. Subscribe to my blog with the button to the left to keep up with the times.

Part 1: THE APPS

Part 2: TIPS & TRICKS

Part 1: iPhone Apps You Need to Get

It's been a week since I bought my iPhone. Here's a list of what I have so far. They're all FREE unless specified otherwise:

1. Standard Apps that come with the phone (Youtube, Photos, Maps, etc).

Don't underestimate these - they were built for the phone and give a good base to keep you busy. Just remember you don't need to keep them on your main app screen (see Part 2).

2. Palringo - This is a multi-client IM app. Instead of using something like AIM+, I use this app because you can sign on to more than one of your favorite messengers. I open this app, and it connects me to Google Talk, AIM, and Windows Live Messenger. You can change how your chat screen looks (I changed it t

o the iTalk theme), you can swipe your finger side to side to switch chat windows, and when you press your Home button, it will keep you signed in for a long time so you can retrieve messages at a later time.

3. Facebook - Wayyy better than using Safari to go to facebook.com or mobile.facebook.com - the interface gives you everything you need at your fingertips. It sometimes will not refresh properly, but this is rare.

4. Twitterfon - Another social networking app. for Twitter. Shows recent activity, allows for @ replies, messages, TwitPics, etc.

5. EasyWriter - When you are writing an e-mail to someone with Mail, you are forced to use the vertical/smaller keyboard. If you know you're going to write a long e-mail, you can open u

p EasyWriter which gives you a horizontal/larger keyboard to use. I find it gives me less typos because the keys are bigger. You then click Done and it throws your message into the Mail client you were just in.

6. Google - This app actually has a ton of Google goodies inside of it. Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Talk, Reader, GOOG-411, News, Notebook, Photos, orkut, Translate, Maps, YouTube, and Google Earth. It hooks you up via your Google Account so you get all relevant material from Talk, Reader, etc.

7. Private Free - This app has a good concept, so I left it in there for now. If I lose my phone, and somebody picks it up and keeps it, they might want to try out all my apps. If they click the PrivateFree app, it grabs their latitude and longitude via GPS and e-mails it to me. Vengeance ensues.

8. Vlingo - Why type when you can give voice commands? This app is really good at recognizing words (i.e., it recognized ".net imaging toolkits"). Some uses include "find restaurants near Boston Massachusetts", "google apple pie recipes", or updating Facebook and Twitter "status update ... is going outside" - even calling someone "Call Bob Smith at home"  -- Good for the road.

 

9. WhosHere - Ok, not the biggest fan of this. However, it may be because I'm in a small town. Basically, it's a social networkin

g app that uses GPS to find people near you, then shows their basic stats - Picture, Age, Interests, and an ability to send a message. May be better in NYC or something.

10. Shazam - Simple use: start the app, hold your

 phone up to a song you can't remember the name of, and it tells you what it is. Technology these days....

11.  Pandora - This is a port of the super awesome Pandora Radio website. Choose an artist or song, and it starts to play music for you it thinks you'll like based on the type of song you chose. As it pumps out tracks to you, tell it "I like it" or "I don't like it" and it will learn your taste. I have one radio set up on Pandora that never plays a song I don't like. If you have a good connection, see the settings to play higher quality streaming music than the default.

12. Translator - Lots of languages supported.

13. BigOven - 16,000 recipes inside of your phone.

14. SpeedTest - Test the speeds of your phone's connection whether it's WiFi, 3G, or EDGE. I found out that the 3G connection at my apartment is faster than my economy cable internet

 package by Comcast here. Measured in Kilobits and Megabits per second. Downloads packets from a server somewhere to determine speed.

15. RDP - Haven't gotten this to work yet, but you can remote in to your Windows box! My sister got it to work, I just haven't dedicated enough effort into it yet. 

16. WootWatch - Much easier than using Safari to go to woot.com, our favorite Deal-a-Day website. Quick buttons to see the woot, sellout.woot, shirt.woot, and wine.woot selections. Double click the item picture to make it bigger, or slide up the description of the item to see more.

17. Flixster - Movie reviews, info, trailers, showtimes, links to IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, etc etc etc. It's actually a really solid app.

18. Poker Quest - a Poker Dice game where you shake your iPhone to roll the dice (which nicely bounce off the sides of the table). Free, limited to a couple levels.

19. TipStar - a tipping calculator for your iPhone. Enter the bill, how good the service was (resulting in a 15, 18, or 20% calculation [which can be changed]) and how many people are splitting the bill. Standard on most phones, but free to download for this phone.

20.  Power Tuner - $4.99 - a Chromatic tuner for my guitar.. in my pocket always! Got the best reviews of all the tuners I saw in the AppStore.

21. iTalk - used for recording. Gives you a nice, big button "Start Recording" and "Stop Recording". Active sound monitor while recording. Supports pausing and resuming a recording, etc. Great reviews, picks up sound wonderfully. I use it when I have a bright idea for a song.

Get iTalk Sync to transfer to your computer.

22. GuitarChords - Doesn't make sound, but has a nice library of guitar chords. Slide the key, then choose the form. (C dim)

23. iTick - a metronome, also with nice dials to choose the right beat. Wish it had a tap-to-BPM function.

24. PocketGuitar - $0.99 - Ok, this cost a buck, but it's a guitar in my pocket. Only shows 4 frets on the screen, but you can tell it what fret to start on. Choice of guitar (acoustic-electric, electric, ukelele, bass, etc.), choice of effect (distortion, delay, how much), and the ability to bend the strings, form

 chords (think multi-touch), hammer on/off, etc... it's pretty amazing for a buck.

Great for blues scales.

25. Trace - In this game, you control a little stick figure trying to get to a goal. You can tell him to move left, move right, or jump. There are obstacles in the way or holes to fall into. You have to draw platforms for him to jump and move over to the goal. 120 levels. Holy hell.

26. Scribble - Draw a picture on your phone with your finger, or load in a picture you took with Camera and draw on it. Then save it to your phone as a new image. Pretty simple and free.

27.  Live Poker - Haven't tried this yet, but I hear lots of good things and it's free.

28. Labyrinth - Only 10 levels in the Lite edition, but it makes great use of the gyros in the phone. Hold it parallel to the floor and get the ball to the goal without falling in the holes. Ah nostalgia. Also, in the settings, there is a nice level to be used for hanging pictures and putting up drywall!

29. JellyCar - You have a car that needs to get to a goal and you use the iPhone to help the physics along. Tough, has choppy graphics, but it's something to do.

30. Email2SMS - Haven't tried this yet, but should supposedly send a SMS text to someone through this app.. though I doubt Apple would allow an app going against it's licensing policy.

31. SitOrSquat - Uh.. finds the nearest toilet. Only finds those bathrooms that people actually added to their database however, so Amherst only shows up as having one bathroom. This may be useful in the City though.

32. Urbanspoon - Finds restaurants near you. Shake your phone and it gives you a suggestion. Lock in things to prevent bad suggestions (i.e., give me only 2 star restaurants).

33. Habits - $2.99 -Lets you add habits you want to form. You choose how often you want to do them. It keeps track of how good you are at sticking to your habits with percentages, etc. You can also choose to Pause a habit if you are going on a trip or something and it will not count against your stats.

34. Google Earth - Use GPS to find where you are, or spin the earth to find some faraway place. Holding the iPhone down while you look at it will show you a top-down view. Start to bring your iPhone up to eye level will look up towards the horizon...

35. Loopt - I'm probably going to delete this simply because it uses SMS text messages to do what it needs to do, and i don't have a Text plan. Regardless, it tells you where your friends are on a map, and what they are up to. Only if you have friends.

36. Amazon.com - A better interface for your friendly we-sell-everything store.

Part 2: 20 iPhone Tips & Tricks

1. When the iPhone is locked, pressing the Home button twice will bring up your iPod controls for quick song/volume changing.

2. When using Camera, it's hard to do a selfie because you have to find the small touch button on the screen-side to take the photo. There are some apps that you can pay for to set the whole screen as the shutter button BUT WAIT .. here's something free you can do: When you're about to take the selfie picture, find the shutter button and HOLD IT DOWN.. set up for the selfie, and then just let go of the shutter button. It won't take the photo until you lift your finger off of the button.

3. When the iPhone isn't locked, pressing the Home button twice will bring up your Favorites menu. Add contacts to this to get a list of people you call often so you don't need to trudge through your contact list if you're in the car or something.

4. Wi-Fi takes up less battery than 3G mode. Use it if it makes sense.

5. Turning your brightness down at night will save battery.

6. The battery will only charge to 80% of full capacity after about 400 full charge cycles. A full cycle is 100%. For example, using the battery 20% one day, charging it, then using 80% the next day and charging it = one full charge cycle. 400 of those.

7. Don't overlook the Settings section. Lots of powerful customizations in there to make your life easier. Keep in mind many apps have their own settings you can change, right in the Settings section.

8. When typing something, pressing the Spacebar twice will insert a period and a space after it for you.

9. If you need to put in a special character like a question mark for example, do this: press and hold the ".?123" button on the lower left, then move your finger while still pressing down to the character you want and let go. This will choose your ? mark for you, and bring you back to the QWERTY keyboard. You'll get faster at it. I sometimes use this for the period character too.

10. To reset your iPhone, press and hold both the Lock button on the top right as well as the Home button - for a few seconds. Your phone may lock up sometime and you need to do this so it doesn't just drain the battery until it dies.

11. To take a screenshot of your current screen, Hold down the Home button and click the Lock button once. It'll be saved to your Camera Roll.

12. In the Clock app is an alarm you can set to wake you up.

13. Telling your iPhone to always Fetch mail from your Exchange server or your GMail to always push mail every 15 minutes, etc., will also help drain your battery.

14. When your phone is ringing, pressing the Lock button once will silence the ringtone. Pressing it twice will send the caller to voicemail promptly.

15. When browing the web through Safari, double tapping on a column of text will resize the window to display just that column for easy readability.

16. When typing in an address in Safari, you don't need to add the "www" or ".com"

17. To save a picture from Safari, tap and hold on the picture to bring up a Save dialog  box.

18. To quickly delete e-mails, go to your Inbox view. Then swipe the email from left to right - a delete button shows up.

19. The headphones that come with the iPhone have a little rectangle piece of plastic halfway down the right-side heaphone's wire. It's not only the microphone, but also a button. When your phone rings, press this button once to pick it up, twice to send them to voicemail, or press it once to hang up once you're done talking.  When you're not in a call, press it once to start your iPod and play a song. Press it again to pause the song. Press it twice to skip to the next track. 

20. To rearrange items on your iPhone, simply tap and hold an app with your finger. Things will start to jiggle and you now can move them around. Even replace the bottom 4 apps on your screen.

Hope this helps!