Another of my favorite April Fool's fake announcements from this year's crop of April Fool's Jokes, the persistent, real life, owl notification that keeps pestering you to practice your language skills on Duolingo ;-)

Well...it took a while...a long while, but this game is done ;-)  I had started to play this game part time on my 3DS because I wanted to get through the entirety of the assassin's creed series before I got an xbox one.  I had originally played this on my jailbroken iPhone 3GS many years ago (back in the iOS 4.x days) and I found the game extremely (extremely!) frustrating to control on

It's been an interesting experiment using the Motorola Razr as my daily driver, however with the lack of being able to just search the internet the phone didn't really do it for me (despite the satisfying "clack" you hear when you flip it closed).  I was looking on the web and I decided to buy a refurbished Nokia N8 to keep me going a bit until I find an android phone which I like.The N8 was

Την περασμένη εβδομάδα η Nintendo ανακοίνωσε πως έχει μια καινούργια εφαρμογή για Android και iOS που λέγετε miitomo. Απ όσο γνωρίζω είναι η πρώτη εφαρμογή της εταιρίας για πλατφόρμες εκτός των δικών της. Έτσι λοιπόν την κατέβασα και

Last week in the news there was a lot of news around the government trying to strong-arm Apple into breaking into the iPhone of a terrorist shooter (the San Bernadino shooter), a device they have in evidence but it encrypted.  It seems that the government IT folks created this mess for themselves and now the government is looking for an excuse to have backdoors into our computing devices. 

Well... I guess it's adieu to Zite.  Back when Google Reader closed down I was trying to find the best approximation for Google Reader I could find.  Zite was one of the things I tried on the iPad.  It wasn't bad as a piece of software, it basically took your RSS feeds and presented them sort of like a magazine.  You could also pick from a variety of news topics and those were

When I was younger I used to inhale Apple Keynotes.  I think part of it was Steve Job's presentation style that really drew me in.  I was also a big Apple fan (well, I still am), so I really wanted to know what products came out and get all the related specs and dirt as soon as possible  Early on this meant buying MacAddict, and heading to the Boston Public library to read the most

Now this is pretty cool! Someone hacked together a tricorder using an older iPhone and a tricorder toy from the late 90's. Full story on the Nerdist. Now if only this were real - and if the hardware buttons actually did something ;-)

Smartwatch 3Over the past year I've been eyeballing and oogling over the Android Wear smartwatches.  A friend, and word-colleague, of mine has had an original Pebble for a while (I think he may have been a kickstart backer) but I have to admit that the Pebble didn't really appeal to me - at least the original one didn't. One of the things I didn't like was the square display.  I do like

I can't believe I missed this bit of news last February!  I was checking to see if there are any updates to one of my favorite applications - library books - when I saw a note from the author that the software would not longer be updated.  Too bad, because this was quite a useful application, both on the Mac originally, and then on iOS.  This app allowed you to log into your local academic

Well, another one bites the dust, or as would be more apt to say: another one gets bought out!  This weekend I got a note that Yahoo has acquired the SMS replacement called MessageMe and the service will be shutting down to focus on some yahoo specific projects (are they going to reinvigorate Yahoo Messenger?)This closure brings back to the forefront something I've said in the past (maybe here,

Hiptop LX Back in the day, before iPhones, androids, and (modern) windows phones there were a number of other smartphones. The first smartphones I saw were maxed by Nokia (Nokia communicator line) and by Ericsson (the R350 if I am not mistaken). Those were the days, back around 1999 when you could surf the web on CSD or HSCSD (circuit switched data, aka "dial up"), and feel like you had an uber-phone

Just in time to end my holiday break and get back work, I completed Assassin's Creed 4!  I ended up getting AC4, like my previous 2 AC games, on Amazon.com's Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals for a reduced price.  I could have waited a few more months to get the game at less than half the price (factoring in a used cost), but I got it new for $30. Not too bad!I liked this game quite a lot both

Well, this one crept up on me. OpenFeint, a cross-platform social network for gaming is closing its doors in a few weeks.  It started life on iOS, as far as I know, and later on got onto Android and Windows Phone.  Initially the pitch was global leaderboards for games, something that I really didn't care for much in my iPod touch days...but then came the achievement badges for games and that

OK, so this past weekend I made Rear Admiral (lower half).  I suppose that by next weekend I will make Rear Admiral upper half the way I am going.  I am actually quite surprised at how quickly I am leveling up!  It seems as though the number of experience points required to reach higher levels is linear and not exponential in nature. Oh well, I am not complaining ;-) I just wish I had

I know MacHeist 4 is over, and it was an incredible deal ($29 for a boatload of apps AND 1 year of premium evernote!). I have to say that this time around I did not buy the MacHeist bundle, despite its awesomeness, because I didn't have much use for most of the apps.  Now if Parallels or VM Ware were part of the deal, or if RapidWeaver 5 were there, that would have been a different discussion

Ever since Google got rid of the "share on reader" and "share with note" options in favor of the "+1" in Google Reader I've been not using the web version of Google Reader. Of course, google just evolved the handles for these two sharing options from their web reader, they did not remove the underlying functionality. As a matter of fact it's still there, which meant that apps like byline have been

Well, that's a bummer!Cinch was a service that allowed you to record audio on your phone and seamlessly post it to the web. This for me was an easy way of getting a podcast together (and it also reminded me of another defunct service, utterly). I never really got started with that podcast (maybe I will get it going with audioboo now) but I liked to show off cinch for language learning classrooms.oh

I was browsing the AppStore the other day and I saw that Instapaper was cheaper than its normal priceMaybe if this were the original price I would have gone for Instapaper over ReadItLater ;-). In any case, I was in a temptation to buy it!  After all, Instapaper was my original "save for later reading" application on iOS, and I only changed to ReaditLater (now Pocket) because there was no free

A while back (well, last September when I got my iPad),  I tried out Instapaper's competitor, Read It Later.  I have to admit that what drew me to Read It Later was the entry price: free.  Instapaper did have a free version but they axed it.  For my use free was good enough.  There were a few features that I now use, that I didn't back then, that were on the Pro version, but

I was debating whether to write this in English or in Greek, considering that the original idea came to me in Greek after having listened to WeekendGeeks, but maybe in English more people will have a useful application for it.It seems like I am not the only one that really dislikes Google's change in Google Reader.  Sure, it's old news by now, but that still doesn't mean that we have to like it.

  Well, since MobileMe is inching closer and closer to its inevitable death, I decided today to update my iPhone 3GS to iOS5, and move my data to iCloud. I attempted at jailbreaking my iPhone, but since it was jailbroken the update process eluded me in the short time frame that I had to update, so I decided to just go with stock iOS. My iPad hasn't been jailbroken, and iOS5 is not bad on it,

  I was browsing the free iPad app of the day and I came across this game called Gem Keeper which became free for today. As with many iOS apps that look vaguely compeling and have just become free,  I decided to download it and give it a try; and I have to say that it is quite addicting.  The question that comes to mind of course is when did castle defense games become so popular?

This is a pretty interesting comic book (based on real events).  This is so nicely done that others need to pay attention to it!  It really showcases what you can do when you really utilize the medium you have to work with and break out of existing constraints (that are not necessarily your current medium's constraint)CIA : Operation Ajax for the iPad from Cognito Comics on Vimeo.

It's interesting, AvantGo may be gone, but it's spiritual successors do live on!  I had tried both Instapaper and ReaditLater. I ended up going with ReaditLater for pricing reasons. Yes, I know that $5 for instapaper isn't that much to spend, but ReaditLater was on sale for $3, so I bought that - the way I see it, I just got some coffee money to sip while I read the news!In any case, Christian

Χτες είπα να κάτσω και να αναβαθμίσω το iPad μου αφού ούτως η άλλος δεν το είχα κάνει jailbreak. Εντάξει, εντυπωσιακό αρκετά το iOS 5 αλλά είναι ακόμα λίγο σπασικλάκι. Ναι μεν μου αρέσουν οι νέες γνωστοποιήσεις, αλλά στην οθόνη κλειδώματος

OK, I know this isn't exactly new but it is pretty funny, even though I have not played Portal (maybe I should pick up the Orange Box these holidays).Now as far as user changeable voices go, I've seen them on TomTom and I can say that they can get fairly annoying. The only voice that would do is Majel Barrett (the computer voice in star trek)

It's been about a week with my adventures in iPad land and I can't wait for iOS5 to hit! The two functions I miss the most from my jailbroken iPhone are multifl0w (and alternative app switcher that looks like expose) and LockInfo (information on your lock screen).One the one hand, the smart cover makes it so that I almost never see the lock screen, but the app switcher can be an issue. I just don't

Today I was experimenting with my wife's iPad and the Apple Wireless Keyboard to see just how productive I could be with a simple iPad and Keyboard. As a matter of fact this post is written in safari using the iPad and the apple wireless keyboard. I have to say that my experiments this weekenend were rather positive! Doing basic web surfing, blogging and paper writings (using pages) was a breeze!

One day before classes start again! I was at the Salem Target the other day getting some necessary supplies (read: paper towels) when I did my obligatory sweep of the electronics section to see if there are any (interesting) xbox games on sale. Here I noticed that iPads are actually in stock at most (if not all) locations and all immediate demand has been satisfies apparently to allow stores to keep

Since WWDC is next week, here's an item from my wish list for the next iOS: better iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch integration!  I saw this with HP's WebOS event a few months ago where HP's WebOS tablet was able to seamlessly exchange data with a WebOS phone.  If a user were browsing something on safari their iPhone for, they could easily (it seemed) get that on their tablet via some sort of proximity

This past weekend I opted to bite the bullet and update my iPhone, which was on 4.0.1. I had been waiting for Ultrasn0w to support the newer baseband, but I noticed that I could use pwnageTool and retain my baseband.  So I backed up my iPhone to retain my data (and my apps) and I started the pwnageTool process.  I successfully created an image that I could put on my iPhone. Then the fails

I've said this before, and I will say it again: the ingenuity of the Apple Newton community never ceases to amaze me! We've had the Einstein emulator for quite some time now on Windows and Mac (and some Linux-based PDAs), but not on the iPhone or any other iOS device.Now that is no longer an issue! Newton can run on iOS! There is of course the issue of slowness, but with a little optimization and

No, no, Automator does not exist for iOS yet - but it would be a nice feature!  I was thinking about this the other day.  My iPod Touch has WiFi, and I use it as an alarm of sorts. Since I keep the WiFi off, I don't have up to date information on weather, news, and RSS when I get up - a dashboard for the morning for example.  Of course I can use my iPhone (which is what I do) to get

So, it's the mid point in my time that I have the iPad on loan from the department. Initial thoughts are a bit mixed. I have to say that the large screen makes for some pretty nice couch browsing while watching TV. The keyboard isn't that horrible to use (it's no physical keyboard but it works). I can't really tell if I am fasted on the iPad or on the iPhone in terms of typing.One of the major issues

The other day I was curious to see if Overdrive had an iOS app that I could load on my iPod Touch or iPhone so I can take advantage of the service offerings of my local public library.  I often go to the library to get videos or books (and on occasion books on CD), but lately I haven't had much of an opportunity to browse the stacks - and quite honestly my academic library keeps me busy with academic

OK, bad pun!  With my recent jailbreaking I decided to have a look at Winterboard and themes (aka skinning) on the iPhone.  Back in the days of System 7.5 (all the way up to MacOS 9) there was a shareware program called Kaleidoscope that allowed you to change icons, windows, buttons and other UI elements of the MacOS.  Copland, the original MacOS 8 that was never released was supposed

A week or so ago I heard on one of the TWiT Podcasts that audible had an audible application for the iPhone out.  Now over the years I've bought many Free audible books. They go on sale, or there is a special promotion going on and the books are free. These are automatically downloaded and added to my iTunes library. I don't have them automatically synced however because I don't plan on listening

Well, I gave MediaFly a once over this past week to see if it can replace me syncing with iTunes for my podcasts, or me having to remember all the podcasts I subscribe to so I can search for new episodes on iTunes on my iPod Touch (or iPhone).  There were some good things, and some things that made using the app on the iPhone annoying as hell.The thing that drove me to the app is the seamless

Well, this past weekend I drop up to NH to visit my brother. The one time I wanted music on my iPhone (or iPod) and I didn't have it due to the whole "update ate my music" thing. I luckily had pandora, last.fm, slacker and a few downloaded podcasts that I could use!  Driving up I noticed a few WINs in the iPhone/iOS 4 combo, as well as some FAILs.First off, Last.fm is a major fail!  I was

Well, yesterday I updated my iPod Touch to OS 4. Much to my disappointment this update didn't got without its set of problems. First it took forever to backup the thing before the update started - I think the update process took a couple of hours - you'd think that I were installing Windows on it, LOL :-)In any case, the thing upgraded and I noticed that all of my video and music content was gone

Well, I've spent a whole day with iOS 4 running on my iPhone 3GS. I haven't upgraded my iPod Touch yet, but it's coming (my computer at home didn't have enough hard drive space to perform a backup of the device). One thing that I am still in awe of is Apple's ability to upgrade the OS on my device and yet I still manage to retain all of my apps, all of my settings, and all of my media (provided of