Arts IT Savvy

I’ve been finding the following applications quite useful on the iPhone:

App Sniper allows you keep track of both the latest applications released, and also which apps have come on sale in the last 72 hours. You can also set up watch lists which let you know when an app you are interested comes on special.

Oz Weather is what it says. It sources its info from the BOM website and gives current details, inc rainfall radar, as well as 7 day forecast.

Bloomberg provides up to date share pricing for your portfolio, as well as news for those companies, and share price history.

To Do fills a gap in the applications suite initially provided with the iPhone.

TV Guide gives program listings for regional and national stations (inc pay TV)

Free Memory does just that – it frees up device memory, so that the occasional need to reboot the device is minimized.

I almost forgot the Wordpress App, which I am using right now on the iPhone to write this entry!

Those of you who have an iPhone (iDon’t) or a 2G iPodTouch (iDo) may be interested in the iTalk. The phone thing has a microphone built in and the touch thing doesn’t but it seems to work real well indeed if you get an external microphone.

Once you’ve recorded the audio you can then wirelessly transfer it to your desktop/laptop, well worth investigating — both pro and lite versions are available — your mileage may vary.

Spam and Scams

Have a look through a number of emails, and try to identify which are legit, and which are not, and where the common traps and pitfalls are.
Find out more about good and bad practices with tackling questionable emails, and overall improve your “spamdar” (Spam Radar) (or should that be “scamdar”?)

Session will be from 1:10pm to 1:50pm in S403, Building 11, Clayton Campus.

No charge or RSVP necessary.

The iPhone 2.0 software upgrade allows applications to be downloaded and run on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Quite a number of these use the device’s accelerometer to varying degrees of success. They certainly provide a new twist on interactions with the device (he he – sorry).

There are a couple of programs out already allowing the device to be used as a spirit level, and hopefully soon there will be one that acts as a digital one, and the device then could be as useful as the Wixey Digital Angle Gauge. The programs that provide this functionality are free, and actually work surprisingly well.

Although I’ve mocked this image up, the screen shot of the program is the actual one provided by the programmers, and this isn’t April 1.

(It’s obviously a mock, as on my device, the lower bubble is at the top of the gauge when it is in that orientation. It is surprisingly responsive, but perhaps these days not so surprising – technology is just a little mind blowing!)