Eknath Kadam

No doubt. iPhone 3GS rocks. 3 things that  impressed me are that,  now I can shoot a pretty decent quality video, use it to track my runs and walks and upload the stats to Nike+ website and monitor my progress. (Take a look at the sidebar for the Nike+ widget.) , and the compass. No need to mention that its extremely speedier as S in its name suggests.

Following is a video taken with 3GS and edited with iMovie. It was taken early in the morning when the sun was just rising. Ducks had started their daily routine. A leaf was swimming silently on the waters and the snail was finding her food.

The background track is Brahma Nandam by Deva Premal from Dakshina album.

 

 Good Morning Foster City [3:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Couldn’t wait to pre-order iPhone 3G S. And they delivered it on launch day. Yes, June 19th, and i have been using it extensively for last two days. And I m impressed. It certainly speedier than iPhone 3G. Here is my detailed review.

1. I immediately fall in love with digital compass. It makes iPhone very powerful and particularly the maps app. I went to a shopping center and wanted to find a new store that I had never been too. Maps with compass helped me to perfectly locate it.
2. I got my new Nike+ shoes with Nike sensor. 3G S now has Nike+ support. The Nike+ app is awesome. Its a great aid and boost for my long walks and runs. Now I can track how much time I am spending on my workouts, how longs am walking and how much calories I am burning. iTunes automatically updates the workout data to nikeplus.com and I plan to make that widget available on this blog.
3. Video feature is awesome. But I dont know how much I will use it.
4. I tried the Voice Over and accessibility features. And I think they are really great and make iPhone a perfect phone.
5. 3.0 OS has great new features. Mainly, now youtube supports accounts, so I can record a video and immediately upload it to youtube and within minutes its available to watch.
6. The mic with remote is another awesome update to 3G S. Great to use while workouts.

The other day I was at Costco and was browsing through books and magazines section. And I saw a magazine by makers of iCreate, Imagine Publishing. This magazine issue is named as “iPhone App Directory” and contains reviews of 250 top iPhone apps. It was a cool surprise when I opened page # 135 and saw a full page review of my app, UK Car Driving Theory test. Here goes the full review in their words.

“Learning made fun, easy and cheap”

Value ***** Practicality ***** Fun Factor **** Overall Rating ***** Longevity ***

Not only is learning to drive a right of passage for most young people it’s also a pretty scary learning curve. You go from being a passenger in a safe environment to a driver in a huge piece of metal

weighing several tons and capable of silly speeds in a dramatically short period of time. These days, as part of the testing procedure you need to pass a theory test. This makes sure that you are considerate and mindful of all the rules and regs before you become a fully fledged driver. Now, thanks to the iPhone,and some genius developers, you can study for the written test while you’re out and about without having to carry a laptop with a DVD to play,or a huge book.

Inside this app you will find all the information you need to pass the test, broken down into categories for you to digest at your leisure. You can also take mock tests asyou learn and the application will tell you how you are progressing in the Progress Meter section. There’s a separate section devoted to the Highway Code and the settings enable you to adjust the waythe app responds including the magnification of pictures and resetting the progress chart. As you go through the categories in the main section of the app you are asked the same multiple-choice questions you get in the test, so you can see every variant of the questions and be thoroughly prepared. The app will tell you how many questions from each section would be on a real test. When you take the mock test you will get those questions you’ve already studied for in a randomised way, in the same way it would happen at the test centre.  This app is very well built, incredibly informative and worth every single penny of its £4.99 price tag. Considering the DVD costs over £20,we can’t help but be elated by the great value on offer here. Like many of the apps in this section, the information is extremely pertinent and so well laid out that it makes learning interactive and easy.

And here goes the link to scanned image of the page. Link to PDF

They are thousands of iPhone games in app store now. Almost every game promotes competition, some kind of challenge, violence, puzzle or something that stimulates your left brain. All games are mind oriented. Made for male part of our brain. There are quite a few games which are made for right side of a brain. The one played last time was Zen Bound. But I didnt like it that much as it still has some puzzle part in it. I loved Koi Pond too, but there wasnt much to do in it.

So I had pretty much given up on playing iPhone games until I found Flower Garden by SnappyTouch. I know the concept is not that new, but the execution is simply superb. There are bunch of seeds that I can plant. Water them. Once I have flowers I can make bouquet and send them to my friends. The more flowers I plant and more bouquets I send, the more seeds are unlocked and I can grow amazingly beautiful flowers. Just perfect for my right brain.

I wish more games come on app store which promote tranquility, peace and all that is beautiful.

Thank you SnappyTouch.

You can download the game here.

I am quite happy today to announce that my new iPhone app, Nobel Laureates is now available for download from app store. It took me and Makrand quite a while to collect the data, proof it and put it in right format. There are over 700 Novel laureates till date. Collecting their non-copyrighted photos and resizing in correct format was one of the biggest tasks. Thanks to Makrand again, for his hard work.

Now lets get bit technical. I typically prefer XML over DB  to store data. But this time I had no choice than using SQLite. So, this was first time I was playing with SQLite on iPhone. Apart from that I also played with SearchBar for the first time. With 3.0 coming soon, I plan to add ability to search based on other criteria like country, university etc.

Click below to download the app from App Store.