Author: Scott Merrill

fidipidi, aside from being a portmanteau of serendipity and Pheidippides, is a Facebook application that allows you to create real-world greeting cards that get sent through the U.S. Postal Service for delivery to real human beings. Think of it like all those e-card services that were so popular about a decade ago, except that the card gets delivered to the recipients actual mailbox instead of their email inbox. Looks fun, and easy to use.

The first 15,000 people to sign up for fidipidi can use the code 1stCardFree to get their first card created and sent for free!

For a variety of silly reasons I don’t really use Facebook, let alone any Facebook apps, so I can’t provide a real testimonial here. If Facebook is your kind of thing, this might be a good app to try.

BookLover is a $0.99 app for the iPhone for people who love books. It looks at first glance like an iPhone version of Delicious Library, which I’ve never used. You can organize books — complete with book cover art and in some cases a synopsis — on your virtual bookshelf. You can take notes on books you’ve read, or perhaps jot a note reminding you about who you loaned your copy to. You can post your notes directly to your FaceBook wall or email them to a friend. And BookLover can recommend other books for you to read.

I find it hard to justify the use of a dedicated application for making what is essentially a list of things: the built in note taking application on the iPhone works just fine for that purpose, for me. The addition of cover art is neat, and being able to drag-and-drop books on the virtual bookshelf to organize them is handy if you have a large list of books pending to be read. I don’t, which is why the plain old Notes app is fine.

If you’re a bibliophile, give BookLover a shot.

Do you like computer mice? Do you like ambidexterity? Do you like looking at renderings of concept products that are not yet real? Today, my friend, is your lucky day. Gaze upon the Nink wireless optical mouse. Imagine the feel of that corrugated shell under either your right or your left palm. Visualize the sensation of using either index finger to tenderly scroll that wheel up and down, up and down. You can almost feel the mild resistance as the Nink lovingly caresses your desk, gliding back and forth at your slightest bidding…

[Devin adds: What the hell, worst ambidextrous mouse ever. Get a Xai.]

I’ve used a number of Bluetooth headsets, and I really tried to make myself comfortable while wearing them. None of them have been quite comfortable enough for me, and I feel like I’m missing out on sounds around me when the piece is sitting dormant in my ear. Perhaps the new Sound ID 510 headset, coupled with the EarPrint App, will solve my concerns.

The Sound ID 510 headset looks like a good headset in its own right. Supports pairing with two devices simultaneously, a respectable five hours of talk time, and “Environmental Mode to amplify surrounding sound while wearing the headset – allowing clear conversations “On” and “Off” the phone”, which I guess turns the unit into a giant external hearing aid. Sweet!

The Sound ID 510 works with Sound ID’s EarPrint app for the iPhone, though, which makes things a whole lot more interesting. Drag-and-drop sound “personalization” to select the sound mode that you think produces the best audio, plus a visual battery meter for your headset and a “Find Me” function to locate lost headsets. It’s about time these important features were added to the too-pedestrian Bluetooth headset!

The Sound ID 510 headset is coming to AT&T in early June for $129.99. The EarPrint app is free.

A full review of the headset and app are available over at Gear Diary. Sounds like a winner, to me.

Of course, even a useful Bluetooth device like this may not prevent you from being called a “Bluetool“. Use discretion.

Notebook and netbook maker Asus is pre-installing the Amazon Kindle for PC application, allowing Asus owners to access Amazon’s selection of e-books without having to suffer through the pain of software installation on their own time. Not much more to say about this, except that it further cements Amazon’s hegemony in the e-book market. How will Barnes and Noble respond, I wonder?

Via I4U.

The Evernote news just doesn’t stop, does it? Hot on the heels of Evernote integration with Lexmark printers and Fujitsu scanners comes word that Evernote will be integrating with the new P-150 scanners from Canon.

The new Canon P-150 scanner (also called the “Scan-Tini”!) ships with a CD that contains two things: a scanner driver, and a link to install Evernote. That’s the kind of bundled software that I think actually makes sense. Both Windows and Mac are supported by the new plug-and-scan offering from Canon.

Next time I run a contest on CrunchGear, I am definitely not going to commit to selecting a random winner. The submissions for our National Photo Month contest were great! They were clever, artistic, and truly enjoyable. You guys outdid yourselves, and I really wish I could reward everyone who entered with a prize. But alas, I committed to selecting three random winners.

The booq Boa Flow camera bag goes to commenter Jay, for the photo of his camera bag!

The Joby GorillaPod goes to Jsarrafi, who submitted this photo to our email address!

And the lensbaby Composer lens goes to Alan Brandon, who submitted his photo via Twitter!

Really, though, you guys outdid yourselves. The quality and creativity of the submissions completely blew me away. Here are a couple of my personal favorites for your viewing pleasure.

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Mary’s bag:

Ansel hates his bag!

Eric’s bag:

Raymond’s bag:

Gregory’s bag:

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Kevin’s tripod:

Ricky’s tripod:

Daniel made up some wonderful stories to accompany his photos, which were a lot of fun to read.

The tripod decided it’s going to cross the street. All the major intersections in Salt Lake have flags that pedestrians are supposed to wave to make them better targets…I mean more visible to cars.

Ketaki’s tripod:

Georges’ tripod:

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Palak’s lens:

Doug’s lens:

David’s lens:

Carson’s lens:

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Michael didn’t care what he won. I wish I could have rewarded him and his dog Chewbacca. Maybe next time, guys!

Max Roper didn’t seem to read the contest instructions at all!

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Once again, let me say that everyone who submitted went all out, and I’m really grateful for your efforts. Looking at photo after photo of bags and tripods and lenses wasn’t exactly something to look forward to, but you all made it a blast. It was also a treat to see people getting their friends and families involved in this!

Stay tuned: we have more stuff to give away soon, and you’ll definitely need to bring your A game the next time!

If you’ve seen a teenager in the last two years, then you’ve seen a teenager texting. Seriously, I can’t think of a situation in the last couple of years where I saw a teenager without a cell phone. The teenagers in my extended family send text messages seemingly all day long, every day. Now the Pew Internet and American Life project has released a pretty comprehensive analysis of teen texting behavior.

According to the report, 88% of teenagers with cell phones are texters. “Half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month, and one in three send more than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month.” I usually send less than 100 texts per month, so these kids are really texting!

Most of the report confirms my anecdotal observations, but there’s some interesting nuance in the findings. Girls text more than boys, and a quarter of teens have made or received a phone call during class. The most surprising item, to me, was that “Teens whose parents limit their texting are also less likely to report being passengers in cars where the driver texted behind the wheel or used the phone in a dangerous manner while driving.”

It always amazes me to watch teens text. The back-and-forth aspect of texting makes certain kinds of conversation more fun (say, flirting); but it’s so inconvenient for any kind of meaningful dialog. I don’t understand why the kids are willing to string out a conversation across minutes and hours, and dozens of texts, when a simple phone call of the same content would last less then five minutes. I guess I’m getting old…

Like every other tech blogger, I’ve been flooded with press releases about apps that are now available for the iPad. I’ve been underwhelmed, on the whole, with “news” of app updates for iPad compatibility but word came to me recently that BugMe had been approved for the iPad. That got me thinking about my review of BugMe for the iPhone.

My chief complaint in my review was that trying to write on the iPhone screen was too limited. That complaint vanishes completely with the iPad’s ample screen space. Also, the latest version of Bug Me includes an on-screen keyboard for both iPhone and iPad, so that you can type notes rather than handwrite them. Progress! This might be a useful little app for families sharing an iPad in the living room: no longer do you need to put a sticky note on the fridge, instead just jot down your note on the iPad and leave it out!

BugMe! for iPad is in the app store.

BugMe is also available for Android and Blackberry.

UPDATE: word just came in that the next version of BugMe for the iPad will include push notifications of the sort enjoyed by the iPhone.

I’m a huge fan of Evernote. It was one of the first apps I installed for my iPhone, and has been a lifesaver on more than one occasion. Tonight Evernote is announcing a couple of major feature enhancements for premium users: increased note sizes and notebook history.

Historically, no single note sent to Evernote could exceed 25MB. Now premium users are getting a bump from 25MB to 50MB. This is particularly handy for premium users since they can attach any type of file to a note: audio, video, PDF, etc. With this update, premium users will be able to attach larger files to their notes.

The other big feature is notebook history. Premium users can now access and export any version of any note they’ve made. Whether used as a simple “undo” function, or used to gain insight into the evolution of a note over time, this is a pretty neat new feature. It might be particularly useful for shared notes, where multiple people are contributing to a collection of notes for a project.

Evernote premium is still $5/month, or $45 a year. Not too shabby for such a useful product. And the free version works just fine, too, for folks who don’t need all the bells and whistles.

Today is a glorious day, comrades! No longer are we shackled to the Google iPhone app to find a dining establishment that serves that robust delicacy of deep fried chicken wings! No longer will we have to put our phones up to our cherubic faces and say “chicken wings” like all the other proletariat saps! No, friends! Now we can install the Frank’s Hot Sauce app! Truly, there is a divine being, and it loves us!

Just look at this map! I’m surrounded by fine establishments serving Frank’s Hot Sauce! Oh, thank the maker!

PARSIPPANY, NJ (April 2010) —FRANK’S® REDHOT®, the #1 brand of hot sauce in America*, is about to turn up the heat for its flavor fans with the introduction of its Frank’s RedHot iPhone application, Frank’s RedHot Wing Restaurant Finder. With a community of flavor fanatics that are as passionate about their wing sauce as they are about their hometown hoops team, wing lovers everywhere will soon be able to locate the best bars and restaurants serving up wings in time for the big games. For true RedHot fans, the option also exists to choose only those restaurants that specifically serve wings sauced with Frank’s RedHot. Flavor fans know that the secret ingredient in the original Buffalo wing sauce, Frank’s RedHot, is the key to authentic Buffalo flavor.

Frank’s RedHot Wing Restaurant Finder allows users to browse and search a large database of bars and restaurants. In addition to finding the Wing Restaurant Finder via the Frank’s RedHot iPhone app, it is also available on the Frank’s RedHot website at www.franksredhot.com/wings/finder. Consumers can search for restaurants and also by location, simply type in your zip code or city in order to retrieve the nearest location where you can satisfy your Frank’s RedHot craving. In addition the Frank’s RedHot app allows you to:
• Locate wing restaurants and bars using the iPhone’s built in GPS enabled map interface with choice of two different views: map view or list view
• Search by bar and restaurant names
• Invite friends to meet up for wings, direct from the app itself
• Access a variety of RedHot recipes including wing recipes as well as classics such as the ever-popular Frank’s RedHot Buffalo Chicken Dip, chili and more

* Based on Nielsen Data week ending 12/5/09

“At Frank’s RedHot, we know our flavor fans are so loyal that they insist on no other sauce when it comes to satisfying their craving for delicious Buffalo wings,” says Mansour Fahmy, Senior Brand Manager for Frank’s RedHot. ”It’s exciting to be able to offer them the convenience to satisfy their cravings any time of the day or night, thanks to this new technology.”

The Frank’s RedHot iPhone application is available at the Apple’s App Store and is compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch. In addition to searching for wing locations via the iPhone app, wing enthusiasts can also access a host of valuable information on the Frank’s RedHot website, www.franksredhot.com including:

• Accessing thousands of additional recipes from the following categories: classics, drinks, dips, snacks and entrees – everything you need to host a RedHot party with fellow wing fans
• Browse reviews written by fellow wing fans
• Watch popular videos featuring Ethel, who “puts that sauce on everything!” as well as how-to recipe demo’s with Chef Kevin Roberts

I’m not a Getting Things Done kind of guy. I’ve never understood people who live and die by their Franklin Planners. I’ve never understood the huge proliferation of scheduling and reminder applications for the various computing platforms I’ve used over the years. I’ll reveal my secret at the end, but for now we’re going to take a look at BugMe, a reminder application now available for the iPhone.

BugMe is simple enough: it’s basically a note taking application. The iPhone version is all touch — no virtual keyboard. Draw, scribble, doodle, and handwrite notes on your iPhone. They get saved onto a virtual corkboard. You can drag individual notes around to manually arrange them, or you can shake your iPhone to have the re-arranged for you.

You can create notes on various colored papers, or you can use (or take) a photo to use as a background for your note. Obviously, you could just use a photo with no note on top of it as a visual reminder, if you want.

Notes can be assigned a due date, which will allow you to receive a reminder of the note when it is due. Notes only work on the iPhone, not iPod Touch or iPad, and since they rely on push notifications they only work when you have network access. From their iPhone product page:

We must stress that you’ll need to have internet access on your phone to make alarms work and that you should use these alarms as casual reminders – not for really-important-disaster-if-forgotten tasks! Unfortunately, alarms are not supported on the iPod Touch or iPad at this time.

One of the much-toted features of the BugMe iPhone app is the ability to send a note to your iPhone home screen. Indeed, at first blush this seems like a really nice idea: if the note is front and center on your phone, you’re much more likely to remember it! Unfortunately, the process for actually adding an item to your home screen is convoluted:

I don’t blame BugMe for this. They’re going the best they can within the confines of what Apple permits. It just doesn’t seem like such a great idea, to me, to be jump through this hoop in order to put an icon on my home screen to remind me to do something.

You can also push your notes out to Twitter, if you want the entirety of the Internet to remind you to do something.

At ninety nine cents, BugMe for iPhone isn’t going to break the bank, so if this is the only way you’re going to remember to buy flowers for your mom, you can get on with your life.

As for me, I simply add items to the regular iPhone calendar. It’s decidedly low-tech, doesn’t rely on additional applications, and works for me. The fewer apps I need to actually get on with my productivity, the better off I am, I think.

So you’ve been using your iPhone for a couple months or years now. You might be addicted to your iPhone. Even if you’re not addicted, chances are that you have a stock of applications on which you rely heavily. Without a doubt, the single most useful application on my iPhone, and the one I use constantly throughout the day, is email. I live by email, and I read and compose email messages far more often than I make actual phone calls with my phone. To preserve my sanity, I’ve disabled the notification sound for new emails: if I hadn’t, my phone would be making noise pretty constantly throughout the day. But that’s not an ideal situation, because there are times when I do want to be notified of an important new email. Enter MailTones, an application that allows you to set custom alert tones, and makes good use of Apple’s push notifications.

MailTones is the first and only app to let iPhone users change the sound of their email alerts – both for “all” mail, and with different custom tones for different sender domains, subjects and individual friends… which adds enormous fun and practical value to the email on the iPhone – in ways which were simply not possible before!

This is a simple little app, but there’s a big catch: in order to enjoy push notifications, you need to forward your mail to a special address assigned to you at mailtones.net. Once that’s done, MailTones will work its magic and send you push notifications of new email messages. On the whole, this setup works well, but there can be some synchronization issues depending on how compulsively you check your new email: you might get a notification of a message you’ve already read.

You have the choice of forwarding all your mail to MailTones, and then using the MailTones iPhone app to set up a variety of rules for notifications. You can match on a specific sender address, any sender from a specific domain, or subject line contents. You can have multiple overlapping rules defined, and the MailTones app will follow a specific flow to determine which sound to play. For example, if I define a domain match for @crunchgear.com, and also specify a contact match for [email protected], the tone I specify for John will be played rather than the tone for @crunchgear.com. The matching goes by sender address, then subject contents, then domain, and finally if none of those match the default tone will be played.

You also have the choice of selectively forwarding mail from your account(s) to MailTones. This is what I did in my GMail account. Rather than forward everything, I defined a couple of filters to selectively forward only mail for which I might like to be notified.

This allows me to rely on the default MailTones notification for those messages I forward, and I can then fine-tune the notifications based on sender address or subject line matching.

By default, MailTones is on all the time. If you forget to toggle the speaker switch on your iPhone, you’ll get email notifications all night long. Thankfully, there is a “Do Not Disturb” option in the MailTones preferences which allows you to specify a time range during which notifications should be suppressed.

You can get MailTones in the App Store for $2.99, with no on-going subscription costs. This is a pretty good price for an application that really adds a new level of functionality to your iPhone.

Intel’s had their Moblin mobile Linux distribution for some time. Nokia’s had their Maemo Linux distribution for awhile, too. Neither one really gained much traction in the development community. Along comes Google and everyone’s like “OMG Android!!1″ which must’ve really ticked off Intel and Nokia. In an effort to create a Linux distribution suited for new mobile devices — not just phones — Intel and Nokia are teaming up with the Linux Foundation to create MeeGo.

Yet another Linux distribution, right? Stifle that yawn for just a little longer, and read what Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin has to say:

I’d like to point out four key advantages to MeeGo:

• MeeGo was built for powerful next generation devices from the ground up; instead of a cell phone system trying to work in netbooks or a desktop system trying to work on phones, MeeGo has powerful computing in its DNA and will take advantage of new hardware form factors the industry hasn’t even dreamed up.
• It’s truly open, meaning it’s aligned with upstream components (like the Linux kernel, X.org, D-BUS, tracker, GStreamer, Pulseaudio and more) and takes full advantage of the open model. This reduces fragmentation and complexity for ecosystem partners and will make Linux as a whole stronger.
• Qt and application portability. Developers can target multiple platforms (Windows, Mac, Symbian, etc) and devices with a consistent application API and have them run across a broad range of devices. Consumers will want to access the same apps on various devices. Qt and MeeGo make that possible. Because it already reaches so many platforms, Qt is a safe bet for developers. Because it is already well used, it will make it easy to bring many apps from Windows and the Mac over to Linux.
• Cross-device support. Closed platforms (like Apple’s iPad) drive up costs for consumers and limit hardware choice. MeeGo is multi-architecture and can power a broad range of devices from your TV to your car to your pocketable computer to your phone. Consumers can keep their apps and use different devices from different producers.

Personally, I think this makes a lot of sense. Shepherding a Linux distribution is hard work. It takes a lot of effort to build and maintain a vibrant developer community, and it takes a certain attitude to really drive an open source project. It’s never been clear to me that Intel or Nokia really got it when it came to the Linux mindset. By moving their Linux efforts under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation, MeeGo should have a much better chance of survival, and should be a real contender against Android for future devices.

The AT&T Navigator app for iPhone got an update recently, and adds an interesting new feature. From any menu screen, simply shake the iPhone to make the app route you to a predefined “home” address. No need to work through the menus: simply shake your phone. That sounds like a convenient feature. It only works from a menu screen, not when a route is already engaged, so you don’t need to worry about potholes or a bumpy road redirecting you en route.

Other updates include

• Speed Limit Display & Alerts: Navigation screen includes speed limit information and provides visual alerts if the limit is exceeded
• Last Trip Origin: Once a trip is completed, users can easily return to the origin of their last trip by accessing the “Recent Places” menu
• Nighttime Maps: The brightness levels of map screens are adjusted for nighttime driving for easier viewing
• Improved Route Avoidance Options: Drivers may now choose to avoid routes that make use of high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes or choose to avoid routes that include toll roads
• Improved Pedestrian Mode: Users will be able to clearly identify when they are navigating in pedestrian mode with the introduction of a new pedestrian icon on the map screen

And here’s a video showing some of these features in action:

The Online Computer Library Center is one of those quiet organizations making a huge difference in the world. They don’t attract a lot of attention to themselves, normally, and much of what they do is plumbing that helps other organizations. They’ve recently partnered with Occipital, creators of the iPhone barcode scanning app RedLaser, to bring access to their enormous database of books to your iPhone. Just how big is OCLC’s database? It indexes “more than 165,000,000 books at more than 75,000 libraries in 112 countries.” That represents “more than 5,000 years of human history in a single, searchable database” — that’s a lot of books! Now you can snap a picture of a book’s barcode, and within moments find out whether your local library has that book in stock, and whether it’s currently checked out or sitting on the shelf. Yay technology!

We borrowed a relatively obscure book about Europe’s perception of Google (not exactly a Best Seller), Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe by Jean-Noel Jeanneney, translated from French by Teresa Lavender Fagan. Within seconds of snapping a quick photo of the bar code on the back of the book, “RedLaser” told us we could buy the book at dozens of online stores for $0.75 to $31.17 and that we’d find it in the Worthington Libraries and the Capital University Law Library.

WorldCat, the OCLC database, is also available for Android and other mobile devices.

As an unrelated aside, I know a few folks who work at OCLC, and my friend Michael has, in my opinion, the coolest job title evar: Manager, Dewey Decimal System.

Via NBC4i.

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