I have a fairly large network at home of both wired and wireless devices. Some use DHCP and some have static IP addresses. Some have utilities that enable you to easily locate these devices, some don't. Luckily for me there's a great App called iNet Pro that let's me see my entire network at a glance. It shows me the various devices I have online and more importantly what IP address they are currently using. I can see many of these graphically because if the App knows what the device is it shows a nice icon for it. It can also show you some nice info about the iOS device you're running the App on such as the External IP Address and UUID. For devices such as Servers or computers that you may unknowingly opened ports on that could be hacked into, it will show you which ports are open on any particular device. The App even shows you what services are running too as well as useful information such as the MAC address, model number and model identifier. Great when you're trying to figure out if you have the latest generation AirPort Base Station or other gear. The App is fast, has a great UI, provides a wealth of useful information and is a must for anyone with more than a few devices on their network.

You can get iNet Pro for $5.99 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 

Earlier today I review the SplashID Key Safe hardware based USB thumb drive for storing your passwords and other sensitive files (see the review here). It was during the review process that I quickly learned that they also have an iOS version of their App. Many of you may already be familiar with 1Password Pro as it has been one of my favorite Apps for a long time. SplashID Keysafe for iPhone is very similar in that it allows you to securely (via encryption) store your passwords, credit card numbers, bank accounts, web logins, software serial numbers and just about anything else that you want to keep under lock and key. With that being said there are some differences. The 1st difference is one that I really like. You can lock the App with a Password or Pin as you would expect, but you can also lock with a custom Pattern (see the image below). There are 9 pins and using your finger you draw a pattern connecting the dots. That's how you unlock the App going forward. It's much easier than having to key in a secure password containing letters, numbers and symbols. The app is also a bit more visually appealing offering nice icons for the various categories. However, the biggest difference is that it allows direct wireless syncing with the hardware key. This has it's advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that your data is never sitting on someone's cloud that could be hacked. The downside is that it's on you to then make sure that your data is backed up.

Use it stand alone

Although the App syncs with the desktop versions and the Key Safe App, you don't have to have any other software or hardware to use this App. The App can work in a stand alone fashion and you can simply use it to store all your passwords safely. Once you have your web logins entered you can actually use the Apps in-app browser to bring up the site you want to access and the user name and password will be inserted if possible and if not will at least be display on the bar above the page in the app.

The Bottom Line

You should not be using the same "easy to remember" password on all of your sites. I know that having a single password makes life easy, but it also puts you at great risk that if someone figures out that password they can keep trying it on other sites to do more damage. The answer is different passwords on each site you log into and more importantly passwords that are strong containing letters, numbers and symbols. Since these more secure passwords are harder to remember an App like SplashID Safe comes in very handy!

You can get it here for $9.99 from the 

Over a year ago, I wrote about a product by Aji, LLC, iRead PDF. At the time, this sweet little free PDF reader, along with its sister product iAnnotate, were the only iPad apps that used tabbed viewing to navigate through open documents. Aji LLC understood early on the importance of using tabs instead of having you open/close documents to get from one to the other. Easier to use and the options of having more than one file open at a time was priceless, especially to my teaching workflow.

Shortly, after my iRead PDF review, I switched over to the full-featured iAnnotate PDF, because I realized that I also wanted to (pardon the pun) annotate my PDF files on my iPad. I’ve been happily using it ever since. iRead PDF has since been discontinued.

Timing is everything and in the past year, iAnnotate PDF has seen two major revisions that have made it an even more indispensable app to use. How important is this app to me? Well, it’s on the first page of my iPad and not in a folder.

Just this month, one of those major updates occurred. The entire UI was updated, so I had to discard the images that I was going to use for this article. But, I forgive them.

So, let’s take a look at some of the many features iAnnotate PDF has to offer. Let’s start with the feature that won me over, tabbed viewing. As many as eight tabs can be open at one time. The reason I say tabs and not documents is because any one of those tabs can be additional views of one document. This is great so that I don’t have to flip through a long document to get from one desired page to another.

The iAnnotate interface allows quick access to pages in the Navigation Panel by:

Document thumbnails

Document Table of Contents

Markup Annotations

Search Criteria

The Navigation Panel is accessed by a swipe to the small drawer pull at the left middle edge of the UI. Faster than the previous flow of clicking on a small icon the top left of the screen.

A multitude of Tools are accessed by swiping a small drawer pull at the right middle edge of the UI. You can add as many Tools or Toolbars as you like (double arrow icon at bottom of Toolbar) and show or hide them with just a swipe.

Previously, in a few cases, having many Tools on the screen would get in the way while working with the files, this new change takes all of that way.

The Tools used to display in full color, but now only colorize when they are selected. I didn’t think that I would like this. It feels too much like the Lion UI with its monotone look of the Sidebar, which I’m not a fan of. But, I found this pleasing with iAnnotate. They seem to have found the right balance of monotone/color to keep the focus on task.

When a Tool is selected, a tooltip panel also displays a description and other attributes of the selected Tool. Depending on what Tool you are using with text, you may even see a magnification glass display on the document.

In addition to marking up the document pages with features such as highlighting, bookmarks, stamps, lines, quick document navigation, shapes, callouts, text; you can delete pages or even add blank pages to the open PDF. You can add photos (existing or taken with the iPad camera) and audio clips. I hope creating or adding movie files are next. See the accompanying “All Tools” image to see other features not listed here.

An annotation like a signature created with the pencil tool can be turned into a custom stamp, directly within iAnnotate, to use over and over again. I can also connect my iPad to a projector and place iAnnotate in presentation mode to work in real-time during a training session.

In the Library Panel files can be sorted into appropriate folders and files filtered when searching for documents. The accompanying images will give you insight to some of the other features available while in the Library Panel.

Getting files into iAnnotate is relatively easy.

Web download

iTunes

Dropbox

And Aji PDF Service

While I have used Dropbox and Web download for getting documents, I’ve exclusively used Aji PDF Service (a free app for your computer) for processing my PDF files into iAnnotate. Files I typically transfer to my iPad are book size and going through AjI PDF service processed them better and just seemed easier. But I understand that this service will be gradually phased out for a more direct sharing service in the future.

My only feature request is that text alignment in the notation tools be set to left justified and not center justified. Or at least give the options to set which alignment we prefer. Center justified is really awkward when entering multiple lines of text.

iAnnotate is a fantastic app to use for PDF use and annotation on all levels. I find it to be indispensable to my workflow and I’m sure, once you use it, yours too.

You can get iAnnotate PDF for $9.99 here from the 

If you're over the age of 30 then chances are you're going to hear a word or two from today's youth that will leave you nodding and simultaneously scratching your head. Perhaps too embarrassed to ask "what does that mean?". In these situations I'd usually turn to the UrbanDictionary.com website. While the site does work just fine on iOS (it loads a mobile version), I still like dedicated Apps in cases like this simply because they're usually faster and offer more options. The Urban Dictionary Definitions App is my App of choice for this. I like the user interface and it's fast. Also since it's an App it offers some nice sharing options too. Also since it's an App you can easily save words/definitions to your Favorites list in the App. If you're up for a laugh or two, hit the Random Word feature. As you can see above, you may get some pretty funny stuff to read. 

While the App works exactly as advertised I'd like to see a "Recents" feature that would list say the last 10 words that I looked up for quick reference.

So the next time you find yourself hearing a word that's not exactly going to be in Webster's dictionary chances are it will be in the over 4 million words in the Urban Dictionary Definitions App.

You can get the Urban Dictionary Definitions App for $0.99 here from the 

The iPhone, iPod touch and iPad all make great music players. You can sync music to them from your computer as well as download music directly from the iTunes store. You can now even stream music from your iTunes collection via iCloud/iTunes Match. While this is all great for getting music into the devices and listening to it, there really isn't a built-in way of getting music out of the devices. This is where Song2Email comes in. While I certainly don't advocate stealing or sharing music illegally, there are times where you may want to get a song from your iDevice to another system and you don't have access your iTunes library. 

Song2Email let's you email songs from your iDevice

Song2Email performs the basic task of letting you choose any of you songs and email them to any email address you want. You can choose one song or multiples songs and email them via WiFi or 3G (20 MB Limit). The App is Universal so it works on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. This is one of those Apps that has a simple function and it does it very well. I wish that there was more that I could go on and on about, but there isn't. It works!

You can get Song2Email for $0.99 here from the 

My favorite Turn-by-Turn voice GPS Navigation App has just been updated with a slicker, smarter interface. The 1st big change is that App has been cut down significantly in size. The North America version used to weigh in at about 1.7GB. Now the update is about 44MB in size. How can it get so small you ask? The good folks at Navigon took a brilliant approach in letting you selectively download the states/providences that you need. This is AWESOME! If i'm never going to drive through Alabama or Arkansas then why have those maps taking up space on my device? You can pick which states to download whenever you want.  You do have to be in Wi-Fi to download a state, but once it's downloaded you won't need a data connection at all to use the App. I downloaded Michigan (36.9MB) in a matter of just a few minutes over my WiFi/Cable connection. The next thing I noticed was that the new app launches SIGNIFICANTLY faster. Perhaps this is due to the weight loss I'm not a fan of GPS apps that require a constant data connection as the maps are in cloud. Navigon's new approach is a perfect blend between the flexibility of only loading what you need AND not requiring a data connection to use the App once the maps are on your device.

Nice and clean UI

I'm a User Interface (UI) freak and have never been blown away by any GPS navigation system. I'm not saying that this new interface blows me away, but it's certainly WAY cleaner than before and probably will send several competitors back to the design boards. The menus are animated, but not in an obnoxious way. I like the little pull downs to quickly access things you need while navigating. Most of all I like not having to dig through several menus to find the things that should be at the top level. Great job!

The same In-App purchases are available and yes it will allow you to restore the ones you've already purchased. In my case I got the Lifetime LIVE Traffic, Panorama 3D view and Radar Info. They've added a new one called FreshMaps XL that gives you a 1 year quarterly Map update with not only new/changed roads, but they promise tons of POI additions/updates. It's only $14.99 but I'll pass on it for now since this update includes the latest maps for free!

There is one gotcha with this update! The 1st and only problem I've run into so far is that you lose all your saved Favorites. That really sucks since there is NO WARNING! When you fire up the new app they're just not there anymore. I'm hoping that this is just a bug and that they can fix it so that anyone else that's upgrading will be able to either keep their Favorites or back them up and restore them. Navigon shame on you for not warning us about this or allow saved Favorites to come into version 2.0. Otherwise, this update rocks!

UPDATE! The Favorites ARE there! They just won't show up unless you download the Maps/States that they are for. Makes sense, thanks goes to David Lumsden for his troubleshooting help in the comments below! Now I'm even happier about this update!

Price drops until November 30th:

Navigon North America is now only $39.99 

Navigon USA is only $29.99 

Navigon My Region is now only $19.99

East

Central

West

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 

I'm happy to announce an important update to my Learn the Adobe Creative Suite with Terry White App. Most importantly this update addresses a video playback bug introduced in iOS 5 that prevented you from being able to see the video and only hearing the audio. This update also adds:

• Retina Display Graphics
• A new tab bar interface
• Swiping to the left and right from the episode detail page will go to the next or previous episode
• UI enhancements
• Faster show loading
• Minor bug fixes

Thanks for your patience and support! You can get the App as a free update if you already have it or for $1.99 here from the 

It's pretty easy to find Twitter and Facebook integration just about everywhere. iOS 5 even has Twitter integration built-in and I don't think there's a social media friendly App out there that can't post to both of these main stream social networks. However, there's a fairly big new kid on the block called Google+. Google+ started out as kind of a private/public beta. You could only get in if someone that was already in invited you. Now it's open to the public and its numbers are rising. I have almost as many Google+ followers (over 13,000) as I have Twitter followers and that's pretty impressive since the site has only been open to the public for a short time. With so many people now on Google+ I want to be able to post status updates to all 3 networks. Sadly there are very few options for going straight to Google+ 

iStatus+ does all three

There is an App that can post status updates to all three social networks at the same time. iStatus+ has a simple interface that allows you to log in to all three networks (and stay logged in). Once you log in you can pick and choose which of the networks to post to or do all three at once. It has native Google+ support in that it even brings up your Circles to choose from before you post. 

This is GREAT, but there is one major thing missing. While it's great to be able to post to all three at the same time, I'd also like to be able to post the same photo to all three at once. iStatus+ currently only does text. There's no photo posting to any of the networks from this App. Granted it would be a little more challenging to post photos to Facebook and Google+ because you'd have to have Album support, but it can't be impossible. The only other thing I'd like to see is the ability to post a status update to a Facebook Page. Currently the App can only post to your Wall.  It would also be great to have a native iPad version.

Other than that it works as advertised and is the first App that I've seen that can do all three networks. 

You can get iStatus+ for $0.99 here from the