My phone is a remote control

Now that I use iTunes on a daily basis, the app Remote is a must have. Remote is a free app from apple that let’s you control iTunes from your iPhone. After installing Remote you’ll need to add your phone in any iTunes you wish to control.

The app is totally straight forward and has the same interface as iTunes. Here’s what the app looks like.

My phone is also a tuner

HotPaw productions makes a free strobe tuner called inTuna A440. This is a must have for any musician. You can only play the notes A or C, but that should be enough in a pinch.

I wouldn’t replace my real tuner with this, but it’s handy enough to remain on my phone. Oh yeah, it’s free too.

I’m learning a new musical instrument

Last week I bought my first app for my phone. Up until now I’ve been on a strict free only diet, and haven’t felt like I’m missing out on anything.

I paid $1.99 for BEBOT, and have gotten at least $19.95 of enjoyment in return. My dad built me an electric noise box when I was a kid, and this is the first noise maker that trumps it.

BEBOT is a Jetsons-esque singing robot. In this app he’s playing a 60s style lounge. My new robot sings in four voices : Bebot, PWM, Theremin, and Pulse. Each of which have different inflections and whatnot.

When you fire up BEBOT, your phone’s screen in the playing surface. Left Right to walk the scale, and Up Down to tweak the soundwave. Get this, you can have up to four fingers playing at once.

I’m learning to play it for some upcoming Indaba studio work. BEBOT start a new electronic genre.

I love this app. Here are some action shots. You can’t save settings, so these shots are a setup I was digging.

BEEP BOP BOOP OOOOWHEEEEEE

quick slideshows with Animoto

Animoto is a free slideshow application that is pretty slick. The first few times I played with it I was low on WiFi, so make sure you have internets before checking it out.

I want to say I’ve only used Animoto from my phone and not animoto.com. I need to investigate the site and see how much different the online experience is.

So here’s the lowdown on the iPhone app. The free service gets you slideshows with up to 16 images, and you can add music from their library. I haven’t figured out if you can use your own music yet, but I’m not concerned about that. After making the slideshow you can share as expected.

I don’t have any major quams with the app, but I do have a few wishes.

- raise image limit to 20
- user based URLs. EX : animoto.com/username.
- more social oriented sharing options

My first slideshow

Here are a few screenshots.

My phone’s browser teaches me stuff

Turned on safari’s debug console to find errors and I found a cool feature. Safari’s debug console reports tips as well as errors.

Never had that in a phone.

iPhone = iCrash

I’ve had an iPhone for under two weeks and I’m about to name it crash bandicoot. Every app I use crashes more and more each day.

At first I wrote it off as a safari problem, but every app crashed now. Fortunately it’s random, and not constant. Tonight I’ve had the following apps crash : pandora, safari, app store, and twinkle.

I’m hoping to finish this post before seeing the all too familiar black screen of crash.

Name that tune

If you don’t have Shazzam installed yet, go to the App Store and get it. Shazzam takes a 10 second sample of a song and returns all the information available. Song name, all the expected metadata, plus links to iTunes, YouTube, album art, and sharing options.

I had a call in service like this years ago, but it wasn’t free and you only got song and artist info. Shazzam is going to be the perfect tool for helping me fix all the messed up ID3 tags in my music library.

I’ve only tested it next to my stereo, so I need to test it in public. I’ll be keeping this app for a while.