Looking for even more productivity on your iPad? MindMeister has released an iPad version of their collaborative mind mapping application, allowing iPad users to mind map locally and sync with the web version to share ideas with others. We've mentioned MindMeister before, and they were part of our suggestions for mind mapping on the iPhone, but ever since the dawn of the iPad, I've been waiting for it to come to the big screen!
MindMeister on the iPad may not be the most complete mind mapping application available for the iPad, at least as far as bells and whistles. It does its job well, though, and the synchronization with the web version is a huge selling point, at least for me. The web version is my favorite online mind mapping tool, with its real-time collaboration features and very useful integration with external web services. Being able to update and edit my online maps from my iPad is very exciting, indeed.
If you're a mind mapper, or someone who's looking for a new way to share ideas and collaborate with friends and co-workers, definitely check this app out ($7.99US on the App Store). There's a version for the iPhone ($6.99US), and a companion iPhone app for sending quick notes to your maps instantly, called Geistesblitz (free), too. The app functions fine on its own, but really shines when combined with the web version. The Basic plan for the web app is free with 3 maps at a time, and you can get unlimited maps for $59US a year. Check out the pricing plans at the MindMeister website.
It was earlier this week that Jeff Bezos, father of the Kindle and CEO of Amazon was saying that "A color screen doesn't make an Ernest Hemingway novel any better."
True enough -- the Kindle has a beautiful sharp screen that is a pleasure to gaze at. Not all books, however, are Hemingways, and we're starting to see so-called multimedia titles showing up in the Apple iBooks Store.
One example is the 'Enhanced Edition' of Nixonland, by Rick Perlstein, a chronicle of our 37th President. The book contains the full text of the book first published in 2008. It also includes 27 videos of the former President and newsreels that put those turbulent years into perspective.
The wire services and the Wall Street Journal are reporting that the Citi Mobile app that Citibank offered to customers has a security flaw, and that it saved personal account information in a hidden file on users' iPhones. Our own Mike Rose reports that he got one of Citi's letters to customers warning them about the security issue.
The information saved on the iPhones included account numbers, bill payment information, and even security access codes. If customers synced their phones to a Mac or PC that information would also be on those computers and could theoretically be accessible by hackers.
"We have no reason to believe that our customers' personal information has been accessed or used inappropriately by anyone," Citi said.
The newest version of the Citi app is online and is listed as a 'mandatory' update for customers.
Have I mentioned how much I adore Xcode 4? I would marry it, bear its children and clean up after it -- that's how much I love it. But Xcode 4 hasn't been readily available for general use. Until now.
As of this evening, you can download Xcode 4 Preview 2 and throw yourself into it's exuberant yum. At least you can if you're a member of one of the paid developer programs. Yes, all that Xcode 4 goodness is now yours to enjoy, whether you went to WWDC or not.
So point your browser over to Apple's developer site, log in with your Mac or iPhone paid developer credentials, and download yourself a big hot steaming pile of IDE yum. It's like the chocolate lava volcano cake of development tools.
Good set of deals to choose from there. I think that big EA sale a while back set a precedent for price drops like this -- a nice discount on a game quite a few people have been waiting to play can definitely send it catapulting into the top lists on the App Store. Phoenix Wright is definitely worth $3 if you've never played it before, so that title specifically should really benefit from a sale like this.
Sure, you'd love to be able to check and answer your email while you're driving. But fortunately for the rest of us, many countries, states, and municipalities have made the act of reading and tapping out emails on your iPhone while driving illegal. Hands Free Software has come up with a solution that not only reads your incoming mail to you, but allows you to reply to those emails through voice.
Text'nDrive Pro for iPhone (US$19.99) works with a single email account, scanning its inbox to see if any new messages have arrived. If there's something new, it reads the message to you and then lets you reply to it if you wish. After receiving a review version of the application from Hands Free, I installed it on my iPhone 4 and then promptly got into my car and drove away. Within a minute or two, I heard a rather loud and obviously computerized male voice that I knew was not my wife speaking. Sure enough, Text'nDrive Pro had received a new email in my MobileMe inbox and proceeded to read it to me.
While I was able to ascertain what the voice was saying from the speaker of my iPhone, Text'nDrive Pro does work with all Bluetooth headsets and hands-free kits, so you can customize the way that you listen to the spoken emails and prompts to your preferences.
Here's a neat trick if you want to zoom in on an image while using Quick Look. Hold down the Option key while your mouse is hovered over the image, and it will change to a magnifying glass. Once you've zoomed in, drag the cursor, use the scroll wheel, or two fingers on a trackpad to move around the image. Press Option-Shift, and then click on the picture to zoom out.
To see this tip in action, check out the brief video above. Nothing too complicated, but definitely a fun and easy way, built directly into the OS, to browse around and inspect a picture file without opening a much heftier app like Photoshop.
Lots of folks are happy that the new iPhone 4 has an improved camera, coming at us at a snazzy 5MP, a whole two more than its predecessor. But, alas, it's still just a camera in a phone, with a teeny-tiny lens with no manual focus or zooming options. But ... what if you could put an adjustable lens over that teeny-tiny lens to get what you want?
A fella over at iPhoneDSLR.com has been working on a prototype housing for the iPhone that allows for attaching Canon EF lenses. Y'know, those big honkin' ones you see on the Canon DSLR cameras. Basically -- in theory, at least -- the iPhone lens focuses through the SLR lens, and you can manually focus and zoom the Canon lens as needed.
Definitely a neat idea, though, if you follow what he's doing, he's hitting a couple of snags. One major one being that the iPhone camera is unable to focus on the image projected by the Canon lens. Though the inventor of the housing admits he's by no means a professional photographer, I'm definitely interested in seeing if he can get the help he needs to get this to work well enough to go to market.
I just got off the phone with Victor Agreda, a call I made on my iPhone 4 using a third-party rebranded AT&T SIM. As you can see from the screen shot above, I wasn't using a standard iPhone SIM. Instead, I placed my call via a $10 Best Buy SIM, which displays as O2 in the US.
How did that happen? After all, a standard SIM doesn't fit in the iPhone 4. I used a Noosy SIM cutter provided by MicroSIMCutter to resize the card to microSIM proportions.
Looking for even more productivity on your iPad? MindMeister has released an iPad version of their collaborative mind mapping application, allowing iPad users to mind map locally and sync with the web version to share ideas with others. We've mentioned MindMeister before, and they were part of our suggestions for mind mapping on the iPhone, but ever since the dawn of the iPad, I've been waiting for it to come to the big screen!
It was earlier this week that Jeff Bezos, father of the Kindle and CEO of Amazon was 
If you're a card-carrying iOS 
The wire services and the 
Have I mentioned how much I adore Xcode 4? I would marry it, bear its children and clean up after it -- that's how much I love it. But Xcode 4 hasn't been readily available for general use. Until now.
