The Gadgets Page

For the longest time, my favorite Twitter app was Twittelator Pro. I like it because it’s so versatile and I can easily use it with several accounts. I can read my friends’ tweets, of course, but I can also see who has replied to me using the @ feature, even when I’m not following that person.

Twittelator Pro’s most useful feature is Sub-Groups. Under the More section, I can set up a group of the people I am following. For instance, if I want to read the tweets of just my friends in Salt Lake City, I can set up a group for that. If I’m at a conference, like SXSWi, I can set up a subgroup of my Twitter friends who are attending the same conference so I can see what they are up to. This feature alone would be worth the five bucks, if it didn’t crash my iPhone every time I use it. Sadly, it does, so I had to abandon using that feature.

Here is a video review of Twittelator Pro (although it shows screen shots from the free version in addition to the Pro version):

• Twittelator Pro on iTunes – $4.99

Twittelator Pro does have the GPS features that some other Twitter apps have, but it doesn’t have a search feature to find people using Twitter near you (even if you’re not following them). You can broadcast your location with Twittelator Pro, but you can’t use that information to find others around you. It appears that the free version of Twittelator has this feature, but I couldn’t find it in the Pro version.

When I pull out my iPhone to tweet, Twittelator Pro used to be the app that I used the most, but Tweetie has slowly taken its place.

If you’re a writer, you may want a little more time to write your tweets than the normal person. If you are trying to be incredibly witty within 140 characters, that doesn’t usually happen on the spur of the moment, so you might want to save your tweet until it’s perfect and ready to publish. Birdhouse is the perfect way to write and rewrite your precious tweets.

• Birdhouse on iTunes – $3.99

Here is a tongue-in-cheek video describing the usefulness of Birdhouse:

Since I have several Twitter accounts to manage (including one for The Gadgets Page), I have found Birdhouse to be a great way to keep track of them all.

The “best” feature is supposed to be the ability to unpublish a tweet. That IS something you can do with this app (as well as on the Twitter site), but that doesn’t mean that no one will have seen it, copied it, or saved it. It will still show up on RSS feeds. Remember, there is no real way to unpublish anything on the Internet.

Birdhouse is not a typical Twitter app. It’s meant to be used for writing only, not keeping up with friends, etc. There is no way to see your friends’ tweets, upload photos, or easily create links to websites.

If you want something to quickly take notes of things you might want to tweet later, but need time to formulate the perfect 140 character response, Birdhouse is a great little app.

Via: Referral Friday Birdhouse for Twitter – communicatrix.

This is a pretty cool video. At first I thought it was just a lame unboxing video, but it turns out to be a pretty cool thing:

He shot this video all in one take without video editing. How did he do it? This video explains it, but try to think how it was done. You can also watch the original video in HD to see the little details that give it away.

All of this is to advertise the Samsung I8910 HD camera phone. If all commercials were this interesting, people would watch them willingly!

This postcard from PostSecret made me cringe with guilt.

It reads:

I rear-ended an unregistered, unlicensed, illegal immigrant.

He went to jail because I was texting and driving.

I’ve texted while driving twice and each time I thought what I was doing was so important that I needed to do it. I was wrong.

There is NO text or phone call as important as staying ALIVE. The writer of the postcard could have just as easily killed the person he hit or someone in his own car. There is a gadget available that can stop you from calling or texting while driving. It’s called Key 2 Safe Driving.

Here’s a video showing how is works:

Trying to use this to monitor your teenagers is ludicrous. Within five minutes, your teen would figure out a way to disable the Bluetooth receiver on his phone so that he wouldn’t have to deal with the problem. The only answer in this case is self-control. Not answering your phone while you’re driving is the only way to ensure that you won’t kill someone or yourself by talking on the phone while driving.

PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.

Via: Key 2 Safe Driving Service Turns Off Your Phone While You Drive | cell phone, text message, digital life | geeksugar – Technology & Gadgets

I’ve talked about Pandora in the past:

• Gadgets Page » For Those of You Missing Radio, Here’s Pandora

It’s an Internet radio that you choose the style of music. For example, if you have a favorite song, you can build a radio station based on that song. Pandora will miraculously play tracks that are very similar to your favorite music. I am continually surprised at how good it is at finding music that I want to listen to.

The ever-popular, Roland K. Smith had some wonderful things to say about Pandora here:

• Roland K. Smith’s Weblog » Triple-T For April 14th

One of my currently favorite programs is Pandora Internet Radio. It’s playing right now on my laptop and it’s my most used application on my iPhone. This morning while taking a stroll on the treadmill listening to Pandora I thought about my first transistor radio back in 1957.

Transistor radios were only a year or two old when I got one for a birthday present. The wonder of these radios were that they operated on batteries and could be taken anywhere. I spent many hours riding on a tractor in the fields that summer listening to music on that AM radio. Forty years has seen an enormous change in our ability to consume music.

Pandora has brought back the beautiful serendipity of finding a song that you love. I have bought more music on iTunes because of Pandora than because of any other recommendations. Sure, Amazon and iTunes can recommend music to me, but that is based strictly on sales instead of music similarity. Plus, with Pandora, I get to listen to the whole song before I decide whether I want to buy it.

With Pandora on my iPhone [iTunes Link], I can listen to music while I’m driving, just like I used to with the radio. In fact, on a road trip from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas, we listened to Pandora the whole way. The only time it dropped out was when we didn’t have cell coverage on that twenty mile strip of Arizona. It works wonderfully on 3G and EDGE.

If you have been missing the beauty of radio in days gone by, then give Pandora a chance.

The Amazon Kindle iPhone Reader is great for the latest books on the market, but what about all those awesome public domain books? Project Gutenberg has thousands of ebooks available for FREE. Is there a way for me to read them on my iPhone as well? Yes there is, thanks to Stanza:

• Stanza: a Revolution in Reading | Lexcycle

I downloaded Stanza’s free iPhone application [iTunes Link] and within minutes, I had Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens on my iPhone and ready to read. I have been watching the Masterpiece Theater version of Little Dorrit and I realized that I wanted to read the original work when I was done. If I had paid for it on the Amazon Kindle app, it would have only cost me eighty cents, so it doesn’t save me much money. For those who want to read the classics, however, Stanza is available for free.

The user interface is a little different than the Amazon Kindle app. Instead of swiping a page to change it, you tap on the right side to go to the next page or tap on the left to go back. If you tap in the middle, you get the settings.

One thing I loved about the settings is that in addition to being able to change the size of the font, I was able to choose from a wide variety of custom themes. The one I chose was “Ancient,” which makes the pages look old. I thought that was perfect for a classic like Little Dorrit. There is also a night mode, where you can read white letters on a black screen.

With free books available from over fifteen different sites, there is plenty to read out there that isn’t just the classics, including technical books from O’Reilly, romances from Harlequin and a world of self-published eBooks.

After spending a year’s worth of book allowance in one month at Amazon, it’s nice to know that there is plenty more for me to read, even when I run out of money.

An unnamed “wireless industry insider” and an unnamed device maker make for a pretty flimsy rumor, but my recent love of reading books on my iPhone had me perk up my ears:

• Tech Rumor of the Day: Barnes & Noble | Telecom | Financial Articles & Investing News | TheStreet.com

Barnes & Noble, the nation’s No. 1 bookstore chain, is working with a device maker and Sprint on a Kindle-like device, according to one wireless industry insider.

Ever since I downloaded the Amazon Kindle App for the iPhone [iTunes Link], I have been reading like crazy again. I have even been tempted to buy a Kindle just to get a bigger screen size, but the fact that my books are in my purse with me all the time makes the Kindle a lot less appealing.

The same is true for anything Barnes & Noble creates. I don’t want another gadget in my arsenal of toys that just reads books. Sorry, B&N, there is only ONE way you could attract me: make it work on my iPhone. Amazon was smart enough to do that and I’ve spent more money on books in the last month than I did all last year.

I wish Barnes & Noble luck, but riding on Amazon’s coattails isn’t really the best way to be an industry leader.

Photo via: XO 2.0 Laptop Concept, e-book mode | Xconomy

If reading 140 characters is just too much for you, Flutter might be perfect for you. I love this funny video about the fictional new nano-blogging service, Flutter.

The problem with this video is that it’s just too damn close to reality. Remember the funny video that came out for the fictional iPod Flea?

• Pick Me! » The iPod Flea

Now that Apple has released the newest iPod Shuffle, this video doesn’t seem so funny anymore. It won’t take any time for them to get down to the iPod Flea size.

Of course, by the time Flutter comes into existence, they really WILL be able to release glasses that will scroll “flaps” in front of my eyes. I can’t wait for those!

Via: Flutter Is a New Nano Blogging Service | video, twitter, funny | geeksugar – Technology & Gadgets

When I got my Acer Aspire, I immediately wanted to make it look unique. Fortunately, there were a ton of skins made specifically for it from Decalgirl. I bought a bunch of different ones, but I really love this one. It’s called, aptly enough, Laurie’s Garden for the Acer Aspire.

I really like how the skin is made specifically for my laptop. They even cut out holes for the little indicator lights.

I also bought the Laurie’s Garden skin for my iPhone.

Each iPhone skin comes with a code to allow me to download a wallpaper to put on my iPhone to match up with the skin. I was worried that the Laurie’s Garden skin might look weird on my white iPhone, but it turns out that there is plenty of white in the design to make it look good.

You can see all the photos here:

• Decalgirl Skins: Laurie’s Garden – a set on Flickr

Whenever I get a new gadget, I want to make it MINE. Putting a skin on my iPhone and laptop is a great way to mark my toys as mine and fulfill my matching disease in one fail swoop.

A while back, I wrote about an iPhone stand that you can make yourself using binder clips.

• Gadgets Page » Binder Clip iPhone Stand

It looks like there is a sleeker way to make your iPhone sit up on your nightstand. It’s called Ultra Thin MobileRiser. It’s a little stand that sticks onto the back of your iPhone (or other device) with 3M adhesive that folds up flat when you don’t need it. You can see it in action here:

I like to have a cute decal on my iPhone, so the idea of sticking the MobileRiser on the back of my phone isn’t appealing, especially when I can just have a binder clip stand by my bed to use when I’m sleeping. For only five bucks, however, this might be the perfect option for someone who isn’t obsessed with making his iPhone cute.