iOS 4 macht alles schön?

Seitdem es die iBooks mit iOS4 gibt wollte ich unbedingt Bücher auf dem iPhone lesen. Bei mir hat es einfach nicht funktioniert, weil immer wieder die Meldung kam, dass mein iTunes-Kennwort nicht korrekt sein soll – ist es aber hundertprozentig – sonst hätte ich erst gar keine (kostenlosen) Bücher erwerben können.

Der Donnerbalken

Bei den Büchern, bei denen diese Meldung nicht erschien, ist der Download-Balken einfach nicht verschwunden. Das muss ein ziemlich bekanntes Problem (gewesen) sein, weil genau das in den Kommentaren im iTunes Store zuhauf zu lesen war.

Und es geht doch!

Jetzt habe ich es aus Neugier doch noch einmal ausprobiert. Ein erster Erfolg hat sich gezeigt, als ich das Buch über einen orangefarbigen Honigdieb tatsächlich problemlos öffnen und durchblättern konnte.

Dickes Kompliment an Apple, damit kann tatsächlich gut lesen. Die Einstellungen sind gut und schnell erreichbar. Auch die kleinen Spielereien an Effekten machen Spaß.

Oder doch nicht?

Freudig und voller Ungeduld machte ich mich daran, die anderen noch ungelesenen Werke in mein virtuelles Bücherregal legen zu wollen. Doch die Freude wurde schnell mit einer Fehlermeldung gebremst.

Ein unbekannter Fehler ist aufgetreten.

Doch, es geht!

Glücklicherweise gibt es eine ganz simple Lösung. Einfach das Buch noch einmal kaufen. Die Anwendung bemerkt, dass das Buch bereits schon einmal gekauft wurde und gibt einen entsprechenden Hinweis aus, der jedoch getrost ignoriert werden kann. Anschliessend funktioniert der Download einwandfrei und das Buch kann gelesen werden.

To learn and improve my English, I need to look quite often into a dictionary. There are many free dictionaries available on the web like Leo or Dict.cc.

My favorite is Dict.cc, because it is a very slim page. The results come as speedy as gunshot and look like I expect them. There are a lot of other word suggestions and common phrases which totally differ from language to language.

For using Twitter, or when on the road, sometimes I just need to find the right word. And of course, “there is a app for it”. Get the free German to English and vice versa dict.cc application in the AppStore for the iPhone. It is really well done, with a quick and easy interface. My most liked feature is the live-type-suggestion.

Windows95 and even WindowsXP can be running on a iPhone!

As owner of an Apple device I have of course no real intention in using it, but “yes, we can“! If you are interested in, you even can get the source code.

Sources: Image

How much time is remaining when the tiny battery icon has about 35% battery left?

The free application iBattery is the perfect solution for that by displaying the time is left for usage in hours and minutes.

You will stay tuned on how long your standby will be, how long you can talk, listen to audio or even watch video.

As you already know, I am a big fan of twitter. On the iPhone I was taking the Twinkle client mostly, because it can show me twitterers next to me in a range of kilometres.

The best and lightweight client in my humble option is TwitterFon, but I was missing the nearby-functionality. Thanks to Tim pointing me to a solution having the same functionality in TwitterFon.

Just go to the search and leave the keywords empty. Then click left to the search and specify the distance. Now I found some interesting new twitterers.

On the release time of the free application Skype for iPhone, I could not let it be to install it. Because I am lazy at typing I initially tested it with just a small chat, only.

But, today I had a situation that I needed to do a Skype call to ask something. The voice quality is amazing good! The person I called just used his MacBook with the integrated Microphone.

A very big plus for Skype is, that when I turned my Mac on, the iPhone’s history was inserted immediately to my Mac’s Skype!

Very great to keep the conversions complete.

Fake a call

When you have to take part in a meeting and really do need an important excuse to leave, then take advantage of a fake call.

With your iPhone in the pocket or on the table, it will save you, like your best friend anytime. Even that unintimate situation.

The freeware application Fake a Call does what it’s name already says, it generates a call, but no one is calling for real.

You have plenty of options available, how a fake call can reach you.

Use a quick countdown timer or set an alarm time and let the show begin.

You even are able to select who is calling you.

NatsuLion for iPhone

Today I found out, that Takuma was hard-working on porting my favorite OS X twitter client Natsu Lion to a mobile version for the iPhone.

The conversion is absolutely fantastic!

It looks, feels and really behaves like the Mac one’s.

I am personally missing the features to send pictures with something like twitpic and have location function like Twitterrific.

To make my wish real I got in contact with him by leaving a tweet. Maybe he will find it useful and include that functions.

Having all those inside, it is the perfect twitter client for me.

Dice Simulator

Dices do really have some magic, but do you know if the result is random or just simple or complex physics?

Or is it even all of it?

Impress youself with the free iPhone dice simulator from MotionX called Dice.

You have big amount of design sets. Select many tables and dices in different styles.

To the let the dice roll, just shake your iPhone to begin the show.

The vibration function and the realistic sound effects will give you an extra realistic feeling bonus.

Take a choice

If you need to pick a choice, but are not sure what to take, why not let random do the thing for you?

With the free iPhone application iChoose you have different possibilities to get a random pick, depending on your needs.

Throw a coin, ask for yes or no, gamble dices, take a card and more is available.

But, the little big boss module is missing: Hire or fire.

Shopshop on iPhone

Sometimes there is no way to avoid shopping in real life. So you have to go out and buy what you need. But to remember all things, I hate it to have notes with me and it looks anyhow pretty uncool.

So I would like to thank Nikolaj Schumacher for his free iPhone application called Shopshop. Nikolaj is really listening to his audience the rating comments and putted in lots of suggestions, already.

This is a virtual shopping list remembering lots of bought articles, so that you do not need type everything again and again.

In the screenshot you see that tiny list with the articles still to buy. What is in the cart can be stroken thru by just tapping. If the list is full, hit “clear” and the strokens are gone.

You even can resort by dragging.

iphone password generator

Passwords never should be easy, because the lighter they are, the faster they can be cracked. In those days there are several possibilities to get them in clear text with a brute force attack, rainbow tables and other techniques.

Espacially when they are easy like “hello1975″ or something like that it is no big deal. If you own the right tools, you even do not need to have deep knowledge of that algorithms.

Make sure to combine numbers, letters in upper and lower case and if possible special signs like question marks, exclamation marks, dashes, dots and more.

Even the rule, the longer the better is still true.

For the iPhone is a cute and free password generator available which allows you to determine the complexity and length.

Also make sure, never to have the same password at several places.

Imagine, you have one password for each platform. If that is known, a intruder can get anywhere in and cause damage or misuse your privacy.

Roman numeral converter

The numbers we actually do write are arabic digits, the letters are latin. They are standardized all over the world to have it much easier to communicate all over the world.

But sometimes, you will still find roman numbers, especially on movie intros and outros for the release date. Now, 2008 is then written as MMVIII.

For the iPhone I have found a tiny application called Roman numerals which converts from roman to arabic and vice versa.

LED Banner

Sometimes there is no way to communicate with spoken words. Then you may try written words. But as a geek “pen and paper” is somewhat like a foreign word and I can only “write” when having a keyboard in front of me.

If you are the same kind of freak than me, give a try to the free iPhone application called Banner Free by Masayuki Akamatsu.

It creates a LED Banner with free customizable text and it is scrolling from right to left in landscape mode. The font is running in a accurate speed with a bright color in full iPhone screen resolution.

Screenshot of my timeline

Yesterday, something strange happened at twitter and I am still not sure if I should like it or not. I tend not to like it.

As you know, I am a twitter fan and tried several free clients on the iPhone.

The best in my opinion is Twitterrific, because it is the only free application which can remember the last position of my timeline.

I do really miss this feature on every other application, even if they are more comfortable. It is nasty to keep the last seen entry in mind and afterwards having to scroll manually up or down to them. Sometimes there are numerous changes, because I am using Natsu Lion on my Mac.

Now, to the strange happening. After I went to the barber shop, I took a photo to show my new haircut and twitted it out with Twitterrific. As it should, the photo was uploaded to the twitpic.com image service and posted afterwars as a short URL into the tweet.

Some minutes later, I received another tweet, supposed to be automatic done, that my photo was used for Twitsaver. This is a screensaver for Windows and receives the last pictures containing faces, food and pets.

Screenshots of AroundMe

Download from iTunes AppStore