iPhone4idiots

Last week Cartoon Newtorks, Adult Swim (late night programming geared towards adults), released a free app. What’s really cool is that it includes quite a bit of full length free episodes. As you can see in the picture there are a ton of shows included in the app (north of 50). Not all have full episodes, however, as many just provide clips. Not surprisingly this isn’t a gold mine as most the full length episodes are from previous seasons. The Boondocks has one full episode, “Let’s Nab Oprah”, which is the 11th episode from the first season (2006). The Venture Brothers has five full episodes four of which are from Season 3 (2008). However, the far left bottom tab, “The Latest”, has a few recent shows. Robot Chicken is the episode from February 13, 2011! Adult Swim works on all iDevices (iPhones, iPads and iPods). The app also includes a schedule of shows and Adult Swim games that available for purchase in the app store. It almost goes without saying that you want this app solely to stream the videos. The quality is great and if you have kids like me you can’t stay up and watch any of these shows. Hopefully, the day is not too far off when Comedy Central starts streaming all their shows to iOS devices a few days after they air.

Over the past month I’ve told both my mother and mother-in-law to wait on buying an iPad because the iPad 2 would be coming within 60 days. The original iPad went on sale in April 2010 (pre-orders started in March) and whether its the iPhone or iPod, Apple consistently releases a new version every year (for the iPhone its June and iPod its September). Thus, I’m sticking with it should be in 60 days despite a ton of recent rumors that it would be delayed. In fact, yesterday Apple announced an event for March 2, 2011 where I fully expect them to release details of the iPad 2. So what’s gonna be new and which rumors are completely off the mark? I think its quite predictable what’s coming. Continue Reading…

NBA JAM, EA Sports $4.99, is the classic two on two arcade basketball game. All 30 NBA teams are included and you can unlock legends like Karl Malone and Scottie Pippen or celebrities like Bill Clinton. There are two modes of play, classic where you try and beat each team once and arcade where you just match one team versus another for a single game. In either mode you constantly are unlocking new players and features. For example, if you shove the opposing team 10 times in one game (a good way to steal the ball) you unlock Dennis Rodman! Continue Reading…

Hungry Shark Part 2, Future Games of London $0.99, is a fun game for both kids and adults. You control your shark by tilting your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. You explore the ocean looking for things to eat before your health runs out ending the game. There are all kinds of fish, crabs, stingrays and penguins to eat. However, my favorite is devouring scuba divers or going up to the surface to snack on a bird or person swimming! Continue Reading…

In case you missed it over the weekend there were lots of rumors about a smaller iPhone coming this summer. Sources included 9 to 5 Mac, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. While details were light and differed a little the basics were the same. The iPhone “mini” would be a little over half the size of the current version and likely sell for $200 without contract. One can assume both ATT and Verizon would offer the “mini” iPhone. There would be less storage and no retina display. You could still have apps on the iPhone but most media would have to be accessed through cloud based storage. The new iPhone would likely get rid of the home button and use the entire surface for display. Recall that iOS 4.3 is introducing swipe gestures that would act like (or replace) the home button. I think this will happen as it makes sense. There is a market for a lower priced smartphone that Apple isn’t tapping. Who knows on the timing as the Verizon iPhone rumors were around for years. Could it be this summer with the introduction of the iPhone 5? Time will tell. I do think if the iPhone “mini” does happen it will hurt iPod Touch sales as it will be competing in the same price point.

Google Translate was released this past week as a free native iOS app. The app can translate 57 languages in text and 15 languages can be spoken into your iPhone with the text being displayed. What’s really impressive is the app can speak 23 languages aloud! In my own personal testing with English to Spanish and Spanish to English it did fairly well. While not perfect it does a good enough job to where it would be very helpful in situations where you are trying to communicate with someone. The app is simple enough to figure out how to use in minutes. You can see the in the photo here I have it set to translate Spanish to English. I tapped the microphone and let a co worker, Julio, speak into my iPhone. Julio said the translation was essentially correct. However, when he tried throwing in a curse word the app failed. Nevertheless, this app is making great strides. Since its free I would recommend anyone try it out if they ever think they’ll be in a situation where translation might be needed. I sure could have used this to ask, “Can you please point to which items on the menu are fish?” when I was in Spain years ago.

So I’ve mentioned the issues before. No simultaneous voice and data, buying an iPhone that’s already 7 months old and very little support outside of United States. I made the video below mentioning these things and am surprised by the number of angry comments its gotten. Now I should have titled it “Why Not to Buy Verizon iPhone” as opposed to “Verizon iPhone Fail” as its going to do huge sales numbers. However, I state this in the video and that if its strictly a voice coverage issue for where you reside then go ahead and buy it. Nevertheless, many think I’m an idiot for various reasons. Take a look at the video and read some of the comments as I think they are funny and let me know what you think?

I know very few of you use Twitter, but I just had to make a quick post about this. Last Thursday I noticed FEMME FATALE was trending on Twitter. I didn’t think twice about it, but it’s pretty much remained the number 1 trend on Twitter for days. I finally decided to see what it was about and discovered Britney Spears tweeted the cover and name of her upcoming 7th album due to be released in March. On a side note I must admit I find her much more attractive with hair. Now, I realize she has almost 7 million followers on Twitter, but so does Justin Bieber. Back in May, 2010, Twitter changed the formula of its Trending Topics basically so Justin Bieber wouldn’t be trending every hour of every day (and many times in multiple positions). It worked quite well as no pop star has dominated the trends since then. Interestingly, it seems to have a more worldly scope as often there is something trending where almost all the tweets are in non English. I haven’t seen anything trend on Twitter for more than 48 hours since Twitter’s formula change back in May. Even Egypt or Mubarak didn’t trend constantly. That’s what makes this five day run of FEMME FATALE so intriguing. Has Britney cracked the code??

Electronic Arts, Bop It! $2.99, is a fun game that makes me think of Simon Says taken to the next level. The basic game is simple to play. You listen for the command and do the action as quickly as possible. This can be a tap (”BOP IT!”), a swipe (”PULL IT!”, “FLICK IT!” or “SPIN IT!”), a two fingered circular swipe (”TWIST IT!”) or even speaking into your iPhone for “SHOUT IT!” Single player modes include classic, basic, extreme and blitz. In classic mode you just do what it says, but it gets faster and faster adding more objects to the screen. In basic mode there is only one object on your iPhone display. Extreme mode places six objects on the screen for you to manage. Blitz mode times how long it takes you to make twenty moves. No matter which game you choose speed and accuracy lead to higher scores. There are 40 trophies to unlock in addition to local and global leaderboards. Bop It offers multiplayer modes as well. However, most of these are just pass and play and IMO not that great. I really can’t recommend spending three bucks on Bop It! However, if you run across the game you should play as the first half hour is by far the best and makes you feel young. Kind of like playing wack a mole.

Great news. Greenpois0n RC5 was released a few hours ago. This is an untethered jailbreak for 4.2.1 for all iPhone 4 and 3GS, iPad and Apple TV. A lot of people have been waiting for this. You don’t need SHSH blobs. All you have to do is update to 4.2.1, download greenpois0n here and jailbreak away. Be sure to backup your iPhone before you start! The server is currently getting slammed and I haven’t been able to get through and download myself so be patient. The exploit Greenpois0n uses has been patched in iOS 4.3 so don’t update your firmware when iOS 4.3 is released or else you’ll be waiting again for a new jailbreak.
UPDATE 4/4/2011 Windows version is now out. Greenpois0n won’t open on Mac OS X 10.5.8. Guess you need latest Mac version. From reading it works fine as long as you attach your iPhone via USB and turn it off before running. Also the loader of Cydia is quite slow so be patient.