When iPhones go BUMP

In line for the second iPhone, folks were talking about being able to ‘bump’ their iPhones. It was sounding like we were hearing about a action word that was soon to be as common as Google. While, it didn’t take off quite like that, ‘bump’ing your iPhone with someone else’s to exchange contact information is pretty popular. People look at you strange if they ask you to bump your iPhones and you question why.

The developers of the free Bump app have not had aspirations to be the ultimate contact exchange app. Instead, the technology behind Bump to know that two iPhones real close and showed a nudge at the same time could be used for many other things.

The Bump app has grown to be able to transfer a lot more than just contacts. It is now used to exchange Twitter or Facebook IDs, photos (you can do more than one) and calendar events. Once a connection is made, you are now able to maintain that connection to move other items across between the iPhones than just the originally chosen item.

Several companies and other apps have started to us the Bump technology in their own apps. Paypal was one of the first, allowing the transfer of money from one person to another via a iPhone bump. I had thought we would have seen this app getting used more at conventions and other gatherings but not enough yet to take notice. The coming together of PayPal and the Bump technology does take us back to the roots of PayPal when the VC money was beamed via IR from one Palm to another.

A most recent add is BumpRADAR. An Augmented Reality app that lets you see where there is ‘bump’ action going on. Which you can use to decide if there is a big gathering you should be at. Makes one wonder though that if this app can see a ‘bump’, what and who else can too. And, what can they find out about the bump.

Audible tunes your iPhone Audiobook listening

Audible, long a supplier of my audiobooks, has released an app just for better managing of those audio files.

Since the introduction of the iPhone, you have been able to download audiobooks purchased through Audible and play them like any other audio file. All of the usual controls are there for jumping to the beginning/end, play/pause and view your progress.

The free Audible iPhone app takes your audiobooks out of iTunes and allows you to manage them in their own app. You can still have your files where they were, but the Audible app would really like you to download and play within their app. By doing this, you end up with more information about and finer tuning of your library. The app allows you to download, play and remove the files quickly (over 20 meg audiobooks do require a WiFi connection) so you only have on your device what you need without having to do a USB sync back to your iTunes based computer. The app actually encourages you to remove any audiobooks from the iPhone’s iTunes and run them only through the Audible app.

There are some extra features like Sleep Timer which will make it nice to not worrying about dozing off and waking to hear the end of the Who Did It novel. Surprising though, there is not way to search and buy new audiobooks, this only works with your current library.


Sound Advice

Cool photo effects, all done on the iPhone

When you snap a picture with your iPhone… what do you plan to do with it then? Some I have go onto Twitter, get shared with friends directly or saved off my use later (powerpoints or wallpapers on the desktop). Many times, the images can have more punch to them if I spend a bit of time cleaning them up. I have mentioned basic color correction and cropping apps in the past… today let’s talk about adding a whole new level of flair to snap shots.

With the increases in iPhone camera quality, we expect the resulting images to be clear and tell a story. PictureShow helps enhance that story by allowing you to add special effect to your images. I’m not talking about mustaches and little talk bubbles, I’m talking about making a picture appear old or completely reverse the coloring for max pop!

PictureShow has taken effects that some other apps offer and added their own uniqueness to them. With the below ‘old building’ image, I was able to choose the level of graininess as well I swiped my finger across the image to adjust the hot spot and it’s impact. In the case of the PopArt image, reloading it completely flipped and reassigned colors until I found the right combination.

A few recent snaps that I spent a couple minutes in PictureShow on:

The short feature list:

25 stunning & stylish photos
Lomography : Simulate ‘Lomo’ camera tone.
Holgagraphy : Simulate ‘Holga’ camera tone.
Instant : Simulate instant camera’s tone.
Noire : Black & white french movie poster tone.
Quad : 4 tiled image.
Quad Vertical : 4 tiled vertical image.
Mirror : Funny and odd image specially with face.
DarkSepia : Vintage and soft effect.
MultiExposures : Complex and unexpected Image.
ColorShake : displaced color channel.
Retro : 70’s photo style.
Other Vintage & color effected Style in app.
Quick and Easy navigation between styles.
Easy and real time editing.
Write messages on photos.
Sharing photo via ‘Twitter’, ‘FaceBook’, ‘Flickr’, ‘Blogger’ & E-mail in the app.
20 Frame styles
10 Light effects
11 Noise effects.

Awesome Note Shares… with just about everyone!

One of my biggest concern is creating things in a locked environment. Images, text docs or calendar events created in some apps are unable to be seen or used by other apps. Even with the new iOS4 that allows files to be passed from one app to another, there are still some limitations.

Awesome Note (todo) is going out of it’s way to make sure you can access your data from the many other systems you may be using. And, even with others that you may need to share with. Creating ToDo items, documents and even calendar items can be passed to other apps like Google Docs and Evernote. If you work with or have someone around your home that uses Awesome Note too, there is no need to go through a middle system, you can transfer items between the two iPhones right over a Bluetooth connection. Why don’t more app use the available Bluetooth to pass notes between i’devices?

If you have been following the new Evernote Trunk offerings, Awesome Note received some coverage there too about how you can sync directly between ‘Awesome’ and Evernote making your information available anywhere, anytime. A feature they don’t happen to mention is that normally Evernote keeps all of your notes online and in order for your iPhone Evernote app to keep info on it when offline, you have to have a Pro account. Now with Awesome Note in the loop, you can have access to your notes offline with just the expense of the one app.

Getting the big picture with the iPhone

Be forewarned… these apps work best on the iPhone 4, and OK on the 3Gs. The iPhone 3 really doesn’t have the oomph to do a good job or are missing the hardware needed to automate the processing.

That said, back to my camera on the iPhone!

Recently, there have been several apps released that specialize in taking photos which make use of the gyroscope in the iPhone 4. They work by seeing your movement, taking a picture ever so often (some meter the timing a bit more than others) and location stamping the pic so the app can sew them together for you. I reviewed “You Gotta See This” earlier.

The last two to hit my iPhone have made mention they can do panoramic photos very quickly and easily by just sweeping across an area. This capability is getting more attention these days since Sony is running commercials showing how easy it is to do with their cameras.

I will run through three options you have if a panoramic image need is in your future. And if you don’t need to take any, think again, they are a lot of fun!

To try to keep a level review across multiple apps, I did them quickly one after another, three passes each and allowing 6 seconds each. As well, due to the size of output photos, I have lowered their size to fit my blog upload limits. All where adjusted down to 8 inches across: 360 Panorama was 28 inches, Pano was 351.5 inches and You Gotta See This was 40 inches.

360 Panorama –

The newest of the bunch I’m writing about here. It allows you to tap one button and sweep across an area, moving L to R or R to L. I did several passes across a yard area thinking I had done something wrong, nope, the output was the same every time.

The output of 360 Panorama:

This wasn’t exactly something I would expect to email someone… or print. So I cropped it down a bit with Photogene. If you were going to send this around, you most likely will want to crop further so you loose the black non-image area.

You Gotta See This:

Next up is an app that mentioned they to panoramic images but it isn’t what they are really about. Their outputs are more for showing an area up and down and all around. Stitched together with a fun ‘overlapping photos’ effect. As you can see here, the effect does allow for less detail to be seen but adds a bit to the mood of the image. This is the exact output (scaled down) so you can again see some cropping would give you an image without black borders but loose some of the visual that makes up what You Gotta See This is about. Like ‘360’ above, this app automatically snaps the images as you move your iPhone around so you only say when to start and end the image capture.

Pano:

Last up is Pano, which I have been using for several years now. The major difference with this option over the others is that it does not do the image gathering in one press of the button. You snap an image, move the camera and snap another. The screen shows the edge of the last image ghosted out a bit so you can align the next image. The below took three photos to create. I snapped the three and the app stitches them together. The previous two options could be used with your hand way up in the air over a crowd. But, if your looking for the maximum quality of the final result, it is hard to do better than Pano.