The Iphone Blog

At the time, Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ remark about ebook pricing being the same whether sold by Cupertino or Amazon seemed rather optimistic. At the time, Amazon controlled ebook pricing and the ebook market, while Apple had just released the iPad. However, just weeks after the tablet was unveiled, Amazon will now adopt Apple’s price [...]

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We start off the week with a number of Apple-related deals. First up is an iPhone accessory bundle that could serve as an emergency kit for those road trips. The $10 kit includes windshield mount, wired headset, travel and car chargers and USB sync cable. Has your internal Superdrive died or you need an extra [...]

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The clever people at Information Architects have released a free Omnigraffle template for iPad app design.
For those of you who’ve never used it, Omnigraffle is a wonderful visual design tool that can be turned to all sorts of tasks. It can create any manner of diagram, but works even better when enhanced with template themes [...]

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Make no mistake: some of these apps aren’t worth the icons they’re hiding behind. But iCatchall does have more than a handful of genuinely useful tools.
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Here’s a little-known keyboard trick on the iPhone or iPod Touch that will activate Caps Lock mode for typing in all capital letters.
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If you want to know what’s it all about in the texts of your favorite rappers or what all those strange words mean that some cool kids throw out so quickly and easily using this language in their casual speech, then you definitely should download the app Slango Urban Dictionary.

This is the app enabling you the access to about 4 million slang words with their definitions quite quickly due to its New Quick Search technology. Besides with this app you can easily discover a Word of the Day and catch up on the past week’s words. You can also bookmark your favorite words for offline viewing and share favourite terms or phrases over Facebook, Twitter or E-Mal.

Slango uses the online database from Urban Dictionary and you can add your own definitions at www.urbandictionary.com

The application requires an active internet connection to find you the requested words and is available at the iTunes App Store for $0.99

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Siri is a new innovative creation which uses natural language processing to answer questions and make recommendations. Siri Assistant App has been created through SRI’s CALO Project, America’s largest Artificial Intelligence research project and the beneficiary of $150 million investment.
It should be noticed that Siri is compatible only for iPhone 3GS and for 3G either but does not support iPod touch.
Siri operates through voice recognition and it should be treated like a real person. You can even ask it if it’s been having a nice day. It responds at once and finds necessary information within seconds.
Siri can assist you finding the proper information you’re looking for and with it’s reliance on GPS location Siri will start searching the nearest things you’ve requested (if you want it so).
Besides Siri Assistant can serve you a reminder of your businesses in scheduled time or purchase things through your phone.
For example with the help of Siri you can book a flight, a hotel room and get a taxi at the same time.
Siri Assistance is still free and and available in the iTunes App Store right now.

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Electronics marketplace Retrovo have put together some numbers about the lead up to the iPad, if it lived up to to the hype, and if people were planning on picking one up. They polled 1000 random users before the announcement, and 1000 after, and compared the results.

While Retrovo is painting the general public as disappointed, the graph above shows that the big increase is in people who have heard of the iPad and are not interested in buying one, where there’s a massive drop in people who haven’t heard of it. This reflects the fact that more people were made aware of the device. The number of people who think they want to buy one tripled from 3% to 9%.

That said, the second chart is a bit more clear on the matter, as significantly more people feel they don’t need one. However, even if they don’t need it, they might want it.

The other issue is of who the tablet is marketed for. There’s a relatively strong opinion in the blogosphere right now that the iPad will actually be very good for people who don’t use the computer very often, and want a simple device that’s intuitive to use. If that does end up being the case, then that’s hardly the market segment to fill out surveys on a gadget blog.

What do our readers think? I’m a bit of a fan of the device, as I think it would be great to read books and comics on, and I think my emailing grandmother might find it useful. However, it doesn’t have what I need in terms of functionality for me to pick one up on day one. Do you think you’ll get one? For yourself? For someone else? How do you think you’ll use it?

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The Austrian service provider Hutchison Austria has announced that when the iPad becomes available in their nation, they’ll offer a substantial subsidy with a 2-year contract. CEO Berthold Thoma said:

Hutchison Austria will be the first Austrian carrier to bundle the iPad. We will do so via our long-established laptop bundle, which offers customers a 333euro rebate if they agree to a 2yr contract offering 5GB of data for 29.90euro.

There’s no official price on the iPad in Europe yet, but Apple products tend to have a 1:1 dollar to euro on the continent. If that pricing trend continues, that’s half the price of the entry level 3G enabled model knocked off.

A commenter at 9 to 5 Mac has pointed out that this deal is the same as Hutchison offers for netbook and notebook users, so is not much of a departure from normal.

We asked the question, “Where’s the iPad subsidy?“, but it remains to be seen if any of the United States carriers will offer similar deals.  A subsidy might make the iPad more tempting for frequent travelers.

[via 9 to 5 Mac]

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After writing my most recent review of the NEW di-GPS Pro and Mini GPS' a few readers suggested that I check out the Solmeta N2 GPS. which offered a couple of advantages over the di-GPS models and being the GPS freak that I am, I couldn't resist.
 

What makes Solmeta different?

Aside from all the things you would expect and that I've covered before with the other units, the Someta offers a couple more bells and whistles. The big one for me and probably the reason I was anxious to try it was that instead of having to buy one model or another for either a Nikon DSLR with a 10 pin terminal (like my D700) or one that has a specific GPS port (like my D5000), this one comes with BOTH cables. This way the user can buy one GPS unit and use it with every Nikon DSLR that supports GPS units. Although that was a big plus for me having two bodies, the average user is probably only going to use one cable or the other as they will likely only have one kind of body. The only other feature that got my attention was that this one has the ability to know your heading. Definitely nice when you want to know what direction you were facing when you took the shot.
 

How well did it work?

Luckily the unit arrived (after what seemed like forever!), the day before I was headed out on a business trip. So I was able to pack it for some real world testing. I still brought my other GPS as a backup since I hadn't had even a moment to make sure the Solmeta was going to work.
I connected the appropriate cable for my D5000 and stood outside my hotel to grab a GPS signal. I gotta say that it seems to take a lot longer to acquire the satellite than I'm used to. Not too long, just longer. So plan ahead!

Once it locked on, the light went from rapidly flashing green, to a slow flashing green to a steady green meaning that it had acquired multiple satellites. I started shooting and the information was captured as expected.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom brought the GPS metadata in with the shot. You can click the GPS coordinates above to take you to this location on Google maps.
 

One major design flaw

It's a good thing I brought my other GPS because the Solmeta only lasted one day! As it turns out, the cable they give you for the D5000 is very short. So short that there is no play in it whatsoever. So as luck would have it, the cable got bumped by one of my shoulder bags while walking and this caused the connector inside the Solmeta to break free from the logic board. Although the Solmeta itself still lights up and seems to lock on, no information is transferred to the camera anymore because technically it doesn't see the cable.

Even if the cable was the same length that it is now it could work so much better if the if didn't plug into the body at a weird (upside down in my opinion) fashion. If they had made the L shaped head plug in the opposite way it would have probably been fine. You probably won't run into this problem with the other cable (for the terminal port) because the port is physically located closer to the hotshoe. Also you could avoid this by attaching the Solmeta to your strap instead of the hotshoe. However, since it's designed to go on either way and is probably more accurate (especially for headings) if sitting on the hotshoe, they should make the cable longer!
 

The Bottom Line

The Solmeta is a good choice, however I would have to caution everyone to be careful with how you attach it and transport it, otherwise you could end up with a broken one just like I did. Again, this is a lot less of an issue for the other cable and if you mount it on the strap instead, however I hope they change their cable design. Now I get to see how well Solmeta handles replacements? I'll report back on how that goes.

The Solmeta N2 GPS goes for $160 (with normal shipping included).

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