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Cool iPhone Goodies

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Every once in a while I take time off from the World of Trust and write about a hobby, often Mac-related stuff.  Today’s one of those days.

I’ve got four cool things to share with you, all related to iPhones. As they say in the friendly skies, if the iPhone is not in your travel plans today, this may be a good opportunity to deplane.

Here are four items – and, since you can’t always tell about things just by reading about them, a few photos so you can see how it works.

  1. iPhone mount for tripod, for photos and video
  2. Olloclip camera attachment for wide-angle, fish-eye and micro-focus views
  3. MiLi Power Spring iPhone battery case
  4. Kibits iPhone app

So here we go.

First, a photo of the three hardware items: left to right, an iPhone tripod mount; the Olloclip camera attachment; and the MiLi battery case.

Tripod Camera Mount. If you still think the iPhone camera is a toy, it comes recommended by no less than professional photographer Annie Liebovitz.

When I started doing more video, I asked Chris Brogan, and he had some great recommendations. But I didn’t want to spring for another camera; why not try the iPhone, I figured. Someone must make tripod mounts for the iPhone.

Sure enough, they do; tons of them. In fact, I can’t even find the link for the one I bought – hey manufacturer, write in and let me give you credit. Meanwhile, the GLIF Tripod Mount and Stand looks so nifty online that I just bought it. About $20 is what you’re looking at. Way cheaper than buying a new camera!

Lenses. One limitation of the iPhone is the single lens.  Well, there are tons of solutions for that too, some of them wild. But the Olloclip has a clever three-in-one solution: one toy, for about $70.  For that, you get a wide-angle lens, a fish-eye lens, and a super-micro-close-up lens.

The website has some great examples of photography, but to pique your interest, check out this close-up of the tripod mount’s screw-on mechanism from the first photo: that is some clarity.

Battery Case. If you’re in the habit of using a lot of the iPhone’s capabilities, you know how fast you can drain the battery. One elegant solution is a hard-case that includes a supplemental battery built-in. There are better-known solutions, but I just bought the MiLi Power Spring – it’s the smallest, lightest solution I’ve seen. For a bit over 50 bucks, I now keep it ready at hand for those long days.

Collaborative Software. What if you had the ability to share a bunch of files, software and so forth with a select group of people? Fine, there are lots of solutions, ranging from intranets to EverNote and DropBox.

But a nifty little program called Kibits lets you do so instantly, on the fly, for as many groups as you want, with about as much complexity as texting.

Creating groups on the fly, they call it. Now, I’m looking for groups to test it with.

Note: I have no financial relationship with any of these firms; only the MiLi people knew I might be writing about them.

 

 

Killer Apps 2.0: Siri is Just the Teaser

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Last summer I wrote about how speech-to-text software may be a killer app. At the time, I mentioned the rumor about what was to become Siri, the “talk to me” assistant in Apple’s then-upcoming iOS5. I also talked about Dragon Naturally Speaking, a PC-based system.

That was then: this is now. Apple itself is actually understating Siri’s capabilities – and Nuance, maker of Dragon Dictation, has made another huge advance for the you-and-me users out there. In this post, I’ll just deal with Siri: look for the Dragon post shortly.

[Note: I could spin this as being about trust, but that’d be a stretch. Sometimes I just get excited about other stuff – like cool work tools. Hope you like it too.]

Siri: Much More than Meets the Ear

You’ve seen the ads for Siri, seen friends demo it, maybe tried it yourself. And it’s impressive. You can tell Siri “Google the planet Pluto,” or “Remind me to pick up toothpaste next time I’m at the drugstore.” (I use this feature quite a bit).

But the truth is much more powerful. Those are parlor tricks, anthropomorphic gimmicks to introduce a new technology to the masses. You, Trust Matters readers, can handle The Truth. So let me tell it to you.

Forget the virtual assistant. Note instead that speech-recognition capability is now built in to the operating system. That means it’s available to you in almost every window, in almost every app on the iPhone.

What Siri Really Means ­– Now

Let me be clear about what that means. Once inside the data-entry part of an app, you can now speak, and your voice will be converted to text.

For example:

Email: speak your emails – they will convert to text

Messaging: speak your text messages – they will convert to text

Evernote: hit your Evernote app button and just start talking

Twitter: speak your tweets, stop finger-pecking them

Facebook: don’t tap your message, just say it

Google+: don’t type it, just speak it

Search: speak your Google or Bing searches – they will convert to text

Maps: speak your destinations – you get the idea.

You can now speak, instead of type, into almost any text-enterable field in any app. That means Notes, Salesforce, Quora, YouTube, NYTimes, Amazon – you name it.

  • Hate having to type on that little screen? That excuse is no longer valid.
  • Wish you had a dictation service? You do now.
  • Still taking notes by hand until you get home to enter them? Puh-leeze.

The 30,000 Foot View

This technology is not perfect; but it’s even better than the old Dragon app for the iPhone that I wrote about just six months ago, and it’s bound to get better.

As with all technologies, it will be more useful for some things than for others. I find it especially useful in dictating text messages, taking long notes of phone calls or meetings, and dictating thoughts about future articles or blog-posts.

Remember the core value proposition of voice-to-text: We can talk 5x as fast as we can write; and we can read 3x faster than we can listen. That’s a 15x systemic advantage for communications efficiency. When was the last time we saw a technology that improved communications efficiency by 1500%?

Siri is to voice-to-text as a camel’s nose in the tent is to the camel. This will be one very, very big ride.

Next post: voice to text on your Mac or PC desktop as a one-stroke utility – it’s here now.

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Many Trusted Advisor programs now offer CPE credits.  Please call Tracey DelCamp for more information at 856-981-5268–or drop us a note @ [email protected].

Get Your Trust Matters App–and Your Own Too

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You’re a reader of this blog, TrustMatters. How do you receive it?

Do you subscribe to it in your e-mail inbox?

Do you look at it through an RSS reader?

Do you click on a link and read it in a browser?

Well, now you can be the coolest kid on the block. You can download an iPhone app for TrustMatters. It even looks pretty cool; see for yourself.

No more lengthy waits for your phone browser to load; no more typing in too many letters for the small screen. Download the app, and voila–one touch TrustMatters. Dozens of recent blog posts, available at the touch of your index finger. How cool is that?

How to get it: go to the iPhone appstore, search on Motherapp, then scroll down to Trusted Advisor; the screen image is the one you see above right. (It’s on about the 4th-5th screen).

Of course, the really really cool thing is that you too can have your own app. Not only that: you can get it for free. This comes courtesy of the good people at Mother App. In their words, they are "the industry-leading provider of cross-platform mobile applications." Not just the iPhone platform, either.

I am happy to promote them, because they have given me something of value, and I like the way they do business–sample selling, giving without attachment in order to receive.

Check them out, at their website.

What is an App?

I am not a techie, just a curious dabbler. If you already understand the app’s deeply, much less every programmer, please stop here before you embarrass me.

To me, the experience made me understand a little better just what constitutes an app. In a sense, it is nothing more than a customized URL. Its first cousin is a bookmark in a browser; or, more accurately a tabbed URL in a browser. It sacrifices a small part of your screen in return for convenience in accessing a site.

You can already create your own app for segments of certain sites. For example, I made my own app of the op-ed page in The New York Times.

There was a practical limit to how many apps any of us can accommodate, after which we need another meta-tool to search among the apps. But at the level of several screens of apps, which seems to be the most common among iPhone users, it is a valuable trade-off for several highly trafficked destinations.

And until everyone suffers from app over-load (perhaps not that far off), I just think it’s pretty cool to have your own app.

I like mine, hope you do too.