TomTom on your iPhone!?

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Category : Internet/Tech, Random & Interesting

With the maturing of Apple’s ‘App’ store, the saying that Apple utilise in their marketing communications ‘there’s an app for that’ really is becoming more and more relevant and it is literally becoming a case of – if you want it you can find it in the App store.

Last year when Apple released the iPhone 3.0 software update, it gave the ability for integration between external devices and applications running on the phone. To showcase this TomTom was featured in the Keynote presentation where they announced not only their turn-by-turn navigation app, but the windscreen mount to securely hold your phone in the car.

So no, this isn’t some kind of crazy just released news, but it had taken some time for the cradle to become available in the Australian market. My thoughts prompting me to write a post however were more around what I feel is the almost obscene price that TomTom are looking to charge for this application & mount.

The price for the application to run on your phone is somewhere in the vicinity of $99, now that is pricey in application standards for the iPhone. Infact this app is one of the highest grossing apps currently in the store – so some people must be buying it. In me swallowing the thought of spending this amount on an application I thought about it and, yes this is probably a worthwhile price to pay considering the costs that would go into developing and providing the service. Then comes the window mount…

The window mount allows you to dock your iPhone on your windscreen, charge your phone, call handsfree, enhance the GPS performance of you phone, and enhances the turn by turn voice instructions. All for the wonderful price of $129.00. My question here then is, with the increased popularity of portable GPS systems they have severely come down in price. What would compel a customer to spend as much on an application and a windscreen mount when you can spend the same amount or perhaps a little more and have a dedicated device which is centred around providing you with turn by turn directions.

The charging of your phone is certainly convenient, hands free calling is also great, however for this a large number of GPS systems incorporate Bluetooth to this this now anyway, or your car may have the function built in. As or the enhanced GPS function, well wouldn’t you get the best performance from a dedicated GPS??

Admittedly it certainly has it’s merits as well, given that if you don’t already own a GPS you can probably get away with a slightly cheaper option in buying the TomTom for your iPhone. You do get the great touch screen on the iPhone which completely beats all of the other touch screens on GPS devices I have used, and it’s one less device to worry about.

So I can see that it certainly has its pro’s and cons, but I don’t see this as something that I would run out and get. Especially given that we already own a dedicated GPS, however when the time comes that the current unit needs replacing, this could be a viable option.


Google Chrome for the Mac is Here!!!

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Category : Internet/Tech

It was back in January of 2008 when Google first released their very own web browser by the name of Chrome, since that time it had only ever been available to people running windows as their operating system. Unfortunately for those of us who run either Mac or Linux as our main operating systems we weren’t able to get in on the action of this new browser. Ever since the launch however Google had said that there were plans for a Mac and Linux based version of the browser which has now arrived.

Google Chrome

I downloaded it late last night and thought I would have a quick browse around with it. I almost always use Safari on the Mac which I consider to be a very fast web browser and on par with Firefox, but upon opening up Chrome and using it for a little while you do notice the speed in which web pages load. Speed is always something that we are looking for in a web browser because we all want the fastest load times possible and Chrome certainly doesn’t disappoint here.

As far as appearance goes, if you have used the Windows version of Chrome at all you will notice that it is all very similar but with a more…Mac’ish feel to it, the colour scheme has been adapted to better fit within the OS X environment. Although Google have equipped Chrome with a host of different themes that can be added to it as well to change up the look. It does offer the now expected feature of tabbed browsing, however it does so in a different manner to what we are all used to. As mac users if you remember back to when the beta version of Safari 4 was released the behaviour of the tabs was to sit above the address bar? Well this is the same way that tabs are implemented in Chrome – I really like this way of setting out the tabs as it maximises your viewing area which can be especially valuable if you are on a laptop and it is something that I wish had been kept in Safari.

Google Chrome Browser window

The other neat thing that you will notice is that you lose the search bar that we have come to expect, it is no longer a separate box to type your search into. Google Chrome integrates the address bar and search box all into one and they call it the Omnibox. Therefore if you know the URL go ahead and type it in, but if your not sure use the same box and do a Google (or other specified search engine) search.

One of the other things that has become standard in all modern browsers is the ability to browse the web in ‘private’ mode, Chrome also has this functionality which they call Incognito. Essentially meaning that there will be no cookies or web history saved from sites you visit while ‘incognito’ this is a very good feature if you are using a public computer and would like to further increase your safety while doing internet banking or shopping. I do however like the rather humorous explanation that Google gives about the Incognito function.

Incognito Warning

All in all this is a very capable browser and I like it a lot! I’m glad it is finally available on the Mac and Linux platforms for all to utilise. Google Chrome is available for download here: http://www.google.com/chrome

And further information about the browser is available here: http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/features_mac.html

Picasa 3 for Mac – A Scrapbooker’s Heaven?

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Category : Boredom Busters, apple

For the average Mac user, we get our new computer out of it’s box and from that day forward whenever we plug in a camera we use iPhoto. Now iPhoto is a very good piece of photo management software, which makes it easy to import, organise, make simple edits and be creative with your photos. However sometimes there is just a lack of something in this program, what am I referring to? Well read on to see what I mean!

iPhoto does a great job at keeping all your pics in one place and organising them for you, however there are a few things that kind of bug me when it comes to iPhoto. Due to the fact that iPhoto automatically bundles your photos into a giant blob of data under a folder called iPhoto Library. When you navigate to this folder in your Finder and click on it it doesn’t display files like you would expect it to if the photos were stored in a normal folder. Instead what happens is you click the folder and iPhoto opens up, this is no help when you’re trying to select photos to upload to Facebook for example!

Picasa 3 – the latest version – turns out to be a great program! If you want you can switch all of your photos over to this program and let it handle everything. This solves the above mentioned problem because Picasa will save the files in the sensible and ‘logical’ way of doing it. However if you still prefer to continue using iPhoto thats ok too. Picasa will reference the files in your iPhoto library for you to use within the Picasa program, using the program this way doesnt solve the annoying folder problem. However it does allow you to take advantage of a few really neat features.

The Features

File Management

If you choose to use both programs simultaneously that is fine! In fact great because Picasa simply reads your iPhoto library, if you end up making changes to the photo in Picasa the program will prompt you to create a copy. This saves the original in iPhoto and copies it so you don’t loose the precious original copy.

Like the latest verson of iPhoto does with Faces & Places, Picasa does this as well. I have found the face recognition in iPhoto to be easier to use and more effective at how it recognises the faces. Picasa makes you go through and actually type in the name for everyone in every photo even if you have already tagged them. Never the less if you don’t use iPhoto 09 then you get the faces and places capability for free.

Picasa Places

Creative Tools

My favourite feature in Picasa is the Collage tool. Basically to use this you select the desired photos and press the collage button, the program will randomly ‘scatter’ these onto a virtual table for you. You can then alter each individual photo by resizing, rotating and moving it. Once you create the collage it is saved under the projects tab for you.

Picasa Collage

This program is also good at extending photo editing beyond the standard red-eye removal too. Select a photo you want and you can actually put in text overlay using different fonts and colours, retouch the photo, straighten and crop, automatically and manually adjust exposure and color. Very very cool!

This program also allows you to create a movie slideshow of you photos as well, simply select the photos you want  to appear in the slideshow and press the slideshow button. Once you have made the appropriate changes its all ready to rock and role.

If you are a blogger using Blogger, there’s also a quick button here as well which allows you to quickly and easily send a photo to your blog.

This is just a brief overview of some of the cool things that this program can do for you, I think I will be using it mainly in conjunction with iPhoto. But it really is a great piece of software to have and why not – its a free download for Macs and you can also get the Windows version for free as well.

Grab the download from the Picasa website: picasa.google.com

Disable iPhoto Auto Open when connecting iPhone

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Category : Internet/Tech

If you are anything like me, it drives me crazy when all I want to do is sync my phone with iTunes and every time I connect it – iPhoto opens. It opens whether there are new photos on my phone or not (thats possibly the most annoying part – please fix this Apple). So I went on a mission to find out how do disable iPhoto from automatically opening when you plug in an iPhone or digital camera. Turns out that it is pretty simple!

Essentially you just need to open iPhoto, select the ‘iPhoto’ menu > Preferences > General Tab > Connecting Camera Options > No Program

This will stop any programs automatically opening when you connect any iPhone or Digital Camera, and allows you to then manually open it when you see fit.

There are other options for doing this, such as using Image Capture. I think they may have taken this out in Snow Leopard 10.6 because I just can’t find it. But presumably in prior versions of OS X you can open Image Capture and follow a similar process to selecting which programs you want your computer to open when connecting a camera.

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