Category: iPhone

April 11, 2011

Step Aside, Flickr. Instagram is Replacing You.

Poor Flickr.

For years, photographers and amateur photographers had only one hub: Flickr. I also used to be addicted to Flickr and made many great friends on there. It’s a huge bummer they became stagnant and really hard to use. I don’t even remember the last time I logged in… And I noticed more and more of my friends using Facebook as their main outlet for photographs.

Enter Instagram.

Now I didn’t understand Instagram either, until I actually created an account and started using it. And the more I use it, the more it’s clear, Instagram is the next social platform for photographers. There are already ridiculous amounts of insanely talented photographers on there. I can’t wait to see the community keep growing.

So what makes Instagram so great? Well:

discoverability with solid filtering. The noise to signal ratio is on. point. From the popular page to following your immediate friend’s photos, to even seeing activities from your friends (what they liked, what they commented on, etc.) Reminds me of the FriendFeed friend of friend feature, but it’s filtered, so you can choose to look any time you want to and doesn’t clog your feed. (News -> Following)
community: interaction is pretty much like Flickr, where people can talk to each other without reservations. Plus, you can use handles, which is rare for newer sites these days. Part of the reason so many Asians are on there, to protect their identities.
shareability is seamless — such a smart implementation, perhaps the best out there.
MOBILE — it’s in all CAPs because that’s how important mobility will become. I’m excited to see how Instragram will keep iterating its product. And when the Android app comes out? I think the adoption will snowball, trickling down to the mass.

Hopefully, the Instagram team is working on an archiving system with option to store photos at higher resolutions. But I still stand by my statement from a few weeks back: “Finally get Instagram. It’s like Flickr (community and discovery), Myspace-Livejournal (hot girls posting self portraits) but way better.”

If you’d like to connect on Instagram, my user ID is ‘monagram’

Bonus: Check out these two photos from me and Christine. We were at the same place, sitting next to the other, drinking the same thing but the photo, well, take a look. It was so neat when it popped up in our feeds — we both said WOW at the same time.

February 23, 2010

Holy Epic FAIL.

Just remembered I never finished my tech predictions for 2010. #fail Maaaaan and my predictions are usually really good or straight on point. But I do know one prediction that was debunked way earlier than I thought: WinMo. Boy was I truly blown away. Microsoft’s WinMo team deserves major props for executing a social centric data driven OS overhaul. Too bad they didn’t make launch at the same time as iPhone (2G at the least.) I hope they are not too late to play catch-up. Also extremely curious as to how the browsing experience is. I would not want to be locked into any of their (sh*tty) products: Office, IE, and Silverlight, specifically.

Latter is the reason I am going Android. I really want to wait for the third iteration of Android but I am sick of my iPhone and most of all, sick of AT&T’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad service.

NexusOne baby, I’m looking at you!

…why I woke up at 1:20am and felt compelled to punch this out is beyond me.

October 4, 2009

Three iPhone Push Apps Every iPhone Addict Must Own

Don’t know about you, but the iPhone app store is about 80% useless redundant. There are so many frickin’ apps, I don’t know what’s good, what’s bad, which apps have push notifications that actually…well…work…?

However (!!!!)

I may have found the triad of apps with push notifications. Since I’m feeling generous today, I will share with y’all.

1. For the email junkies: PushGmail
Now before you barrage the “TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW“s; wait. And read. For people who have:

multiple Gmail accounts
one Exchange email already set-up on phone

PushGmail is the perfect solution. Still don’t follow? Ok, so I have my work Exchange email set-up, but I also Gmail all day errrrday. With PushGmail, my work emails get pushed onto my phone, and now my Gmail gets pushed too -read: best of both worlds. Have my cake and eat it too. I love this app more than fat kid love cake. At any which way, PushGmail RULES and is only 99cents. WELL worth the dollar (and some change)

2. For the sports addicts: Sportacular
In complete agreement with Kevin (jkontherun) who said: “Sports junkies that have an iPhone or iPod Touch owe it to themselves to take a look at Sportacular.” Holy smokes, this app is amazing. Scores are pushed (multi level settings, create alerts for only games and or teams you keep with) and it’s not just scores. Articles, breaking news, standings, etc., are available too but the best part? It’s free. Free. Screw ESPN. Sportacular is notch.

3. For the breaking news types: Twitter

Ok fine. So this one isn’t an app. But I’ve tried the AP and CNN apps but frankly, for instant breaking news, Twitter’s mobile alerting beats all. First, enable mobile alerts from Twitter to phone. Find your favorite news source and click the lil cell phone logo right by the “Follow” button and breaking news will be texted to you. Like this (points below)

So these are my three must have apps for push – what’re yours?

June 29, 2009

How I Got Two iPhone Apps Refunded.

Holy Moly, Apple does return and refund iPhone apps!!

I am THE biggest stickler for value:money (ratio), and firmly believe in “You get what you pay for.” Upon recommendation, I forked over cash for Beejive –an IM application, when iPhone OS 3.0 was released; mainly for the push function. (Push is notification of new activity, even when the application is closed).

Long story short, Beejive is still extremely buggy and utterly useless. i.e. super crashy, couldn’t log on with mutiple accounts, server errors galore…I just had all sorts of issues with it.

I felt ripped off.

$10 bucks for an iPhone app is HELLA money in my book. For 10bucks, I can get four iced espressos at Starbucks, eight bags of Swedish Fish, 9 soft serves from McDonald’s, or nine 99cent iPhone apps, etc., etc., you get the picture right? So I spent a few days complaining on Twitter about how much Beejive sucks.

On Saturday, I couldn’t take Beejive’s suckiness anymore so I Tweeted: “Dear Beejive, I would like a refund.”

I assumed iPhone application returns and or refunds were near impossible…iTunes and Apple’s site are clustermesses and for the life of me, I could not figure out how to request a refund. Seriously, try “Search” on both, it works but seriously needs help. People were sharing their personal nightmare experiences with Apple refunds, and Sean even got locked out of his iTunes account.

It looked like a refund wasn’t happening…until FriendFeeders Drew and Kisha linked me to two successful refund stories. I followed the directions and requested refunds for (1) Beejive and (2) Chocolatier –a game I purchased by “accident”. ;) hehehe.

These are the steps I followed to request a refund:

Open iTunes
Log on to your account
Go to purchase history
Report a problem
Fill out form with reason for refund (nicely)
Wait

Apple resolved my issues with a quick turn around time, hassle free, and was really really nice about it, too. And I am not going to lie, it shocked the crap out of me! …It may have helped I was clear and concise: “Beejive is not working out for me because x and x. Therefore, I would like x.” Manners and politeness can be advantageous, too. :)

At any rate, thank you, once again, to the wonderful FriendFeed and Twitter communities for helping me out and offering advice, as well as sharing your own personal experiences. Though it is hard to respond to every single @reply and comment, I read every single one of them and appreciate the insight you guys provide. :)

Reason no. 98273948379823 Social Networks RULE.

*if you are interested, there is discussion on apps and personal experiences with Beejive here. Beejive sucked for me, but there are many who experience no issues.
**Apple’s iTunes help web form’s direct link is here.

January 30, 2009

Self Portrait Whores, this iPhone App is for You

I am way too cheap to buy apps and don’t do product/app reviews, since they are so time consuming (taking screen shots, explaining, etc) but this I have to share. I found this neat iPhone app by GAM products and it’s nothing like I’ve ever seen.

It’s a filter that applies light to iPhone photos.
Confused? Well, see for yourself:

Ta-daa
iTunes link: Light . It’s only two bucks.
Images from digitalfilmtools

BTW whoever says the iPhone’s camera sucks is WRONG. Proof is here.

December 23, 2008

15 FAQs About 3G iPhone Unlocking I’m too much of an A-hole to Individually Respond to

unlock_iphone_anysim-1 So the 3G iPhone unlocking software release, due out on New Year’s Eve is being talked about on the Internet. The Dev-Team released a demo video of said software, ‘yellowsn0w’, working its magic by effortlessly switching the 3G iPhone from AT&T’s network to T-mobile’s, and actually made a call.

…sounds bad ass but um HUH? – seemed like the general consensus cuz I got A LOT of people asking me to explain. Don’t lie, your IMs, texts, and e-mails prove it.

Though fret not, even some geek friends have asked me privately via Twitter DMs, e-mail, and Facebook messages what this crap is all about. So you’re not totally technologically idiotic.

Well – since I am an asshole, have no patience, and sure as heck not going to respond to every email, IM, DM, etc., etc., I consolidated the 15 most frequently asked questions here. Kinda like my Christmas gift to you guys? And if you don’t have an iPhone – well you’re assed the EF out. This is the only thing I’m giving this season. ;)

Any which way, here we go! Continue reading →

December 21, 2008

iPhone’s Biggest Problem is Not the Firmware or Hardware

iphone-final-attack-2-1

It is the stupid, piece of crap, totally evil network.

I have lived and visited countless cities across the US of A.
I have been on Sprint, T-mobile, Verizon, and AT&T.
I used all four networks across those countless cities.
AT&T is still the worst. network. EVER.

Since my 2007 comparison, I continue experiencing:

Echo
Dropped calls
FAILed connections
Bizarre background buzz
SMS errors
Voicemail errors

…shall I continue?

AT&T’s stagnancy and their failure to improve is apalling.
The only thing that went up is the damn pricing.
I truly truly dislike AT&T.

So much so, I wish somehow, some way, AT&T’s towers will be blown to bits. Completely dissipated, so they can start from ground up and rebuild better towers. You know, just like the other evil Empire’s super weapon was destroyed and the Death Star II was constructed? It was a more superior battle station, though it ended up being destructed. Actually, that sounds like a good solution since I refuse to Jailbreak my phone and hop on T-mobile’s network.

Anyone down to start a Rebel Alliance?

(image borrowed from Giz, found Googling “AT&T” and “evil”, made by Jesus Diaz. Go figure. Oh – the chicken scratch is mine)
BTW there’s a great discussion over at FF regarding real user experiences. Lots of people from various parts of the country weighing in. Come join! http://bit.ly/MB4G

December 20, 2008

Is Steve Jobs an Evil Dictator or Our Savior?

There was an article on Forbes.com about a Finnish cyber securities firm discovering malware for the iPhone named”Mobile Spy”. For $99 a year, you can monitor calls, mobile web activities, and SMS this software logs, through your Mobile Spy account.

But fret not, Mobile Spy is not a security risk since it needs to be physically installed in the phone you want to monitor. So unless someone has access to your handset or you have a psycho stalker, an ex that turned psycho stalker, or you choose to have relationships with psycho stalkers (no judgements, to each their own!) that can access your phone, you’re safe. Now Spyware/malware, or what have you, is not breaking technology and has been around since I was an Internet n00b.

But this got me thinking. Continue reading →

December 18, 2008

To the Undecideds: It is True What they Say. “iPhone or NO phone”

I used to be an early adopter, especially with all things mobile. I had to have everything first. From the Treo family (300, 600, 650), Hitachi’s monster PocketPC, Samsung’s compact Palm, MotoQ, I was addicted to all multi-tasking (mainly CDMA) phones and wasted invested a lot. I blame my Japanese genes, since in Japan, we go through electronics like new parents go through diapers. (That analogy was for you, LG)

Then, I grew-up. I was the cautious consumer for a few years, waiting for feedback before actually purchasing. I controlled urges. The only “new” technology I jumped on was MMS (multi media messaging) and stuck with the same handset for three years. A complete geek faux-paux. Finally, I was no longer an early adopter.

Until 2007.

If you remember, last year was a mobile junkie’s dream and worst nightmare. The industry stepped up their phone games launching products and services targeted beyond business users. And it worked. 2007 changed the American mobile industry. Continue reading →

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