Utilities
With the announcement of Siri came high expectations for the future of what is, and will be possible with Apple's artificial intelligence assistant. It was exciting. Many people (including myself) had thoughts of launching Apps, adjusting system settings, placing calls, composing texts, searching the internet, and more. While the former was available strait out of the box with iOS 5 and the iPhone 4s, the latter was left to be desired… until now. With the release of Absinthe Jailbreaking tool for the A5 processor devices running iOS5, and the introduction of SiriToggles in the Cydia store, we finally have the functionality that we want with Siri!
Adjustments With Voice Commands
Like I said, I wanted to control the functionality of my iPhone with Siri not just place calls, and make appointments. SiriToggles adds that and more! With SiriToggles you can control the brightness of your iPhone by simply saying "change backlight brightness to X%". It doesn't stop there though! If you want to know how much battery that you have left, ask Siri "how much battery do I have left?" and Siri will display as well as tell you the % of battery life left.
Beyond adjusting brightness and displaying the battery percentage, SiriToggles allows you to toggle a bunch of functions like the name implies. Toggle on/off bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Airplane Mode, Celular Data and more!
Launch Your Apps!
Toggling settings is nice, adjusting brightness is useful, but where SiriToggles really shines is launching Apps! That's right, launch your Apps right from Siri now! Just as you can see in the shot above, tell Siri "launch Facebook" (or any other App) and it launches! This is a feature that many people considered to be a "must have" to make Siri truly useful. Well it's here, now. All that is required is jailbreaking your phone, and installing this wonderful free App.
The Bottom Line
While I know that jailbreaking isn't for everyone, this is just one more reason to jailbreak your device. If you are interested in jailbreaking your phone, see the amazingly thorough guide here on the process. Once you have completed the jailbreak, be sure to install SiriToggles to unlock Siri's potential!
Yes, I'm one of those guys that can't walk past a crooked picture without straightening it. Luckily iHandy Level is a great App to check to make sure that things are in fact level. This Free App makes use of your iPhone or iPod touch's accelerometer to give use a visual live display of a classic bubble level. While it's pretty accurate, you'll want to increase your accuracy by calibrating it with something that is known to be level first. The calibration process only takes a few seconds and then you can go around and check the pictures or other items in your home or office to make sure that they are level. This App is part of a larger set of Carpenter Tools, but they broke this one out and now give it away for free. It seems to work well and I can't really find anything wrong with it. It even has a nice hold feature so that if you're trying to check the level of something that is perhaps to high to see your display.
You can get iHandy Level for Free here from the 
While Apple does a pretty good job in allowing you to setup your Google GMail account on your iOS Device very easily, the one glaring omission is bringing your Google Contacts over. (granted there is a work around in that you can setup your Google account using the Exchange setup) I recently had two different friends that switched to the iPhone from either Android or Blackberry devices and their first question to me was, "How do I get my Google Contacts over?" In one case it was easy enough to do via a Blackberry to Google App and then syncing those contacts to their Address Book onto their Mac and then of course to their iPhone. However, in the other case my friend doesn't own a computer. Their iOS devices are their only computing devices. This is where the Contact Sync for Google GMail App came in and worked perfectly. In iOS you setup a GMail account natively in the OS, but when it comes to your contacts there is no built-in way to bring them over (still scratching my head on that one). Contact Sync for Google GMail is an App that you install on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad and then simply sign in to your Google Account with it. This will bring your contacts over into the native Contacts app and make them accessible to iCloud as well.
Sync in either direction or both
The great thing about this App is that you can either use it as a one-time sync or you can use it as an ongoing way of keeping your iOS device contacts in sync with your Google Contacts. While I do have a computer and only use Google Contacts for Google Voice, I love the option of a ONEWAY sync from my Contact to Google. Mac OS X offers a native Address Book to Google "sync", but I've had it screw up one too many times to the point that I turned it off. Having a oneway option means that my iOS Contacts will always be the master set and only update Google when I choose to. After turning my friend on to this App I decided to try it myself. I was floored by how fast it did the sync of my 1400+ contacts. It did everything PERFECTLY. It brought over the groups, names, numbers, addresses, birthdays, and even the contact photos. I'm extremely happy with the performance.
There's nothing else to say! If you need to sync your iOS Contacts to Google or your Google Contacts to iOS or both, this is the Best App!
You can get Contact Sync for Google GMail for $2.99 here from the
I’ve never understood much of the problem with finding your car in a car park until I was visiting in the US a couple of weeks ago which was my first time having car while over there. Long story short, I now completely see how you can easily loose your car in the car park. Enter Parkbud, a gorgeous application that does two main things: Keep track of how long you have paid and where your car is.
Since I’m a sucker for a good UI, the app rates pretty highly from the start. However, setting the timer can be slightly confusing at first with a difference between time left and when the reminder alarm will go off. It is fully possible to have paid for 5 minutes and set the reminder to go off in 45 minutes. Not very good! There is also no simple way (that I have found) to quickly erase a time if you want to delete it.
Adding your car to the map is very simple and done via the touch of one of three little buttons. You can then easily get directions to the car from where you are using the built-in GPS. Should GPS not be enough for you, you can take a snapshot with the camera to remind yourself exactly how it looked where you parked (or perhaps what your car looks like if it is a rental car).
In the end, Parkbud is a nice application and worth the slight cost if you find yourself not remembering where you park now and then. Having the app on the phone is certainly nice, knowing that it is there when you need it.
Without a doubt, one of the most vital parts of a website these days is analytics. Tracking the data allows the site owner to track many things including what type content their users prefer, where most of the visitors are coming from (ie. search engines, social media links etc.), and much, much more. When I was working with my web designer to build my website (Jasonlykinsphotography.com) I took his advice on which service to use and went with Woopra. Woopra is a web analytics company that offers a few features that I really like (like an iOS App), and they have a free version that suites my needs perfectly. My site is based on a WordPress platform, but Woopra is able to be implemented into many different types of websites so if you have a website check the service out. While Woopra is an awesome analytics service with just the desktop software that it provides, the iOS App is really what puts it over the top for me.
All of the Basics
Woopra does all of the things that you would expect and more when it comes to analytics for websites. What makes this App really nice, is that you are able to access all of those features right from your device. This isn't a watered down control set. You are able to see everything that you can see from the desktop App, but on the go! The first thing we think of when we talk about this topic is visitor tracking. From within the App users can view overall visitor counts for that day, that week, that month, quarter, or year. Drilling down to the day for example gives a list of the last 30 days broken into how many visitors you had per day. This is just the tip of the iceberg though. A look down the list shows the ability to view the countries that our hits come from. Unfortunately it shows the flag for the particular country and not the name. I know the major ones, but I have no idea what some of them are. I wish there was a way to change this to show the flag and/or the name of the particular country. The city and region view spells out what the area is, so why not the country section. Companies shows the ISP service that the visitor was using when they dropped by. While overall visitor count is important and the other lists talked about so far are fun to look at, I find that bounce rate, and visit duration are two of the most important tools for me. They help me determine what content my viewers like, and what content my viewers don't like.
The Not So Basic
The things listed above are features that you would expect SHOULD be in an App from a service like Woopra. Here are a few things that they do that I felt were a little above the "required". From right within the App you can see the platforms, browsers, languages, and screen resolutions that the people viewing your site are using. You can also see which pages get the most hits, which pages are the landing pages (the page that people are going directly to first), exit pages, downloads (if you have any), and the most popular outgoing links. On down the page you are able to see what type of people refer to you most (backlinks, social media, search engine, direct, etc.).
Live Visitor Interaction
One thing that I really love about Woopra, and the Woopra App is the ability to see real time what is going on with your site. At the bottom of the App there are two tabs that really make this happen. The first is "Visitors". this tab shows a list of the current active visitors on your site. It shows The visitor, all of the statistics about that visitor, and what page they are currently on. This is all happening live. Real time. The next really cool feature on the App is the Chat function. This lets you actually chat with your visitors from your iPhone or iPad.
The Bottom Line
From the images above you can see, I don't get near enough traffic on my site. That being said, I still like to see what traffic I am getting, and what I can do to make the site more appealing to people. Heck why not stop on by yourself and check out some of my photographic work. If you have your own website, I cannot say enough about the Woopra quality, and the great value. If you already have Woopra, you should definitely check out this App. It will tie your website analytics to you real time on your iPhone or iPad.
You can get Woopra for iPhone and iPad from the iTunes store for free here:
Everyone knows how much I like learning Apps for my children. I'm constantly writing about, and recommending the best ones to you guys. Every now and then though I run across a children's App that has no real intellectual value, but is still good for the kids. Santa GPS is one of those Apps. This App is all about keeping the magic of Santa claus going with the kids, and having a good time. Of course, it does a little more than track Santa, which makes it my favorite among these Apps.
Track The Fat Guy
Santa GPS uses your location to tell you exactly how far away from the North Pole you are currently (this of course is where Santa is currently toiling away on all of those toys for the kids). Of course when Christmas eve arrives his location will change as he makes his rounds. To display where Santa is, the App has a little picture of Santa's workshop at the top of a world map on the tracking page. When he starts his trip, a little Santa "S" appears and moves around the map. This is always fun for the little ones to watch as Santa visits all of the little boys and girls around the world. On top of the tracker, there is count down clock to Christmas Day so the kids know exactly (down to the second) how long until Christmas.
Of course what's Santa without a wish list? Let your children type out their letters right within the App. When they're done, they can send them to Santa via email (Santa is up with the times you know)…
Keeping Up With the Latest Elf News
Want to keep tabs on what's going on at the Elf Workshop? Of course you do, and so will your kids. The Elf blog is a great way to keep up with all of the happenings at the Toy Shop.
Naughty or Nice?
This is a great little addition to the App, and for me really puts it over the top. A built in, naughty or nice meter. I put my twins in there, and every day they work towards moving that needle to the "nice" side. If they start acting up, I just get out the iPad and say "should I move towards the naughty side" and they straiten right up. Seriously, it's a fun little addition to the App, and something my kids like to see. It completes the whole experience.
Bottom Line
This is a really fun, really easy to use, well made App that the kids will love. If you have children that believe in Santa, you need this App.
Get Santa GPS for the iPad for $1.99 from the iTunes store Here:
Get Santa GPS for the iPad for $.99 from the iTunes store here:
There have been a few reports going around lately about people having problems with battery life after upgrading to iOS 5 or to the new iPhone 4s. While I haven't had any real issues myself with the iPhone 4s, it's great to know whether or not if an App has run a muck and is chewing up system resources. One sign of this is if your iPhone or other iDevice is all of a sudden warm to the touch. This usually means that the processor is working overtime. When that happens you can try things like quitting some of the Apps running in the background or a simple reboot of the device. However, I would like to do more than just solve this problem temporarily, I'd like to know which app in particular is causing the problem?
System Activity Monitor shows what's going on in real-time
This App is similar to the Mac OS Activity Monitor in that it shows you in real time which apps or processes are running and more importantly which ones are running with high amounts of processor time. If you're not playing a game or doing something else that would task the processor then your device should be running with the majority of the processor count in "idle." If it's not, you can quickly identify which App or process is causing a problem.
I highly recommend System Activity Monitor as a troubleshooting tool!
You can get System Activity Monitor for $0.99 here from the
One thing is for sure and that is Apple is aggressively removing all obstacles from people that just want to use an iDevice and may not even have a computer. With iOS 5 you can now setup and use an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch without ever having to sync it with a computer. You can download media directly to it as well as back it up to iCloud. So let's say you buy an iPad and an AirPort Base Station to be your wireless access point. If you didn't have a computer, how would you setup your new AirPort?
AirPort Utility for iOS
With the AirPort Utility App you can now not only setup your AirPort base station, but you can manage all of the settings going forward. The App is basic without many frills. Once you launch it it will identify any AirPort Base Stations in range. You can then access and change any of the settings. The App does what it claims to do and while the graphical interface is pretty plain for an Apple App, it works! It's a universal App for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. It does require iOS 5.
This is one more thing added to a growing list of things that I can do from my iDevices that I don't need my computer for anymore.
You can get the AirPort Utility for Free here from the
Last year I did review on iCam and I've been very happy with that App. I'm still happy with it. However, earlier this week a colleague turned me on to IP Camera Viewer. While both Apps allow you to view and control your remote IP Cameras on your iOS devices, IP Camera Viewer has one distinction and that is it works directly with the cameras themselves. My Panasonic cameras all have their own webservers built-in. This is how the cameras can be viewed in a web browser. With iCam you setup their server app on your computer and your iOS Devices communicate with that server. The obvious disadvantage in this is that you need to have a computer on and have access to it (opening the right ports on your firewall) over the internet. I still like iCAM because it can do things like record and transmit a serious of stills if it detects motion. It can also send push notifications. However, for those looking for a more simple solution that doesn't require a server, IP Camera Viewer rocks! IP Camera Viewer can not only view the cameras, but it supports panning them as well if the cameras themselves offer that feature.
Setup multiple cameras and camera groups
I have a set of cameras at home and another set offsite in my photography studio. I like the way IP Camera Viewer can have groups that you can switch between. This way if I want to watch the cameras at home I can switch to the "Home" group. Setup was extremely simple in that all I had to do was put in the url/IP address of each camera, port number and user name and password. IP Camera Viewer supports hundreds of different camera models natively. Once the cameras are setup you can view them and control them from your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch from anywhere that you have an internet connection. I was pleased with the performance once I got the cameras setup. The initial model selection could use some improvements as it takes a while to scroll through the list of brands to get to "Panasonic." A search would work great in that dialog.
You can get IP Camera Viewer for $2.99 here from the
I started using CrashPlan as my cloud backup service in January of this year. I'm a bit of a backup freak. I have multiple backups including Time Machine, clones and lastly cloud backup for disaster protection. I always felt that a backup located in the same place as the computer offers no protection in the event of a disaster such as flood, fire, theft, etc. I went with the unlimited Family Plan and have multiple computers backed up to the service. While CrashPlan has always offered the ability to access your backed up files via their website, now they've introduced Universal iOS Apps that allow you to access your backed up data from anywhere you are from your iDevice.
Complete Access To ANY of your Files from your iDevice
Since all of my computers are being backed up to CrashPlan, this App means that I have access to ALL of my files now from my iPhone or iPad. If there is a document that I left on my computer (and it's been backed up to CrashPlan), I can access that document, view it on my iPad (if it's in a compatible format) or simply email it to someone all from within the App. CrashPlan takes advantage of the "Open In' command to say open a RAW file in an App like Photogene or open an Excel file in Numbers. Image files like JPGs can be viewed right in the App. Once a file is downloaded into the App it remains local and available offline until you remove it.
It works great! My only complaint is that there is no preview to the image files BEFORE you download them. In my case, say I have a folder of 100 JPGs and I want a particular one, they will be listed by name, but I'll have no way of know which one is which unless I know the names. This means tapping on and downloading each one until I find the one I want. Otherwise, this App more than meets my expectations and it was a pleasant surprise to see it released.
You can get CrashPlan for FREE here from the
