iPhone Application: Say Who

The iPhone 3g application, Say Who is available for anyone interested in a voice recognition application for making phone calls. This application installs very quickly, and is free. To use, you simply open the app, press the button while saying the name of the contact you wish to call, the next screen shows who it will call in 3 seconds, and if you don't press any other options, it makes the call.

This application is a good alternative to dialing the phone when driving. It comes in handy when you are calling people you don't very regularly. I have my favorites setup so for those people, it's not any faster to use the Say Who application. But for those other 140 people not on my favorites list, this application is very helpful.

You will need to familiarize yourself with how you entered your friends names in your phone. I know for some of my contacts I use first and last names, just first names, just last names, or nicknames. Once you use Say Who you start to remember how your contacts are stored in your iPhone.

Shortly after installing Say Who my iPhone applications wouldn't open correctly. I have about 10 on my iPhone and not one would open. This isn't the first time this has happened, but I did have to delete all my apps and reistall them. They all work fine now. Just something to be aware of.

iPhone Application: Loopt

For all you iPhone users, there is a pretty cool app called Loopt available for free!

This iPhone application Loopt tracks your location and shares it with your friends who have the application on their iPhone. I really like the idea and have a 10 friends who also use it so far. It's very accurate and will show each friend on a map or in a list displaying what streets they're on and how far they are from you. Each user can customize their profile with a picture as well.

From each friends profile page on Loopt, you can call, text, ping, comment, and my favorite, get directions to their location. This is where I see this being the most useful. Essentially, you'd never need to call and have someone give you directions again. You would simply look them up on your Loopt application, find their location, and have Loopt map the directions to your friend.

You can change your "What's Up?" message to let friends know what you're up to similar to a "status" update on Facebook which you can set to link up with each other. Under the settings tab, you can set your location settings to one of 3 choices:

1. Share with all of my friends
2. Share with some friends
3. Hide from everybody

One feature that I don't use on Loopt is Loopt Mix. This feature lets you create a custom profile to connect with Loopt users who aren't in your address book(stranger), who may share similar interests. Loopt doesn't share your phone number or your exact location. You have to click on "I Accept, Turn ON Loopt Mix" to enable this feature.

iPhone Update Finally Here!!!!!

So it looks like Apple has come through and provided some fixes to frequent iPhone problems. Update 2.2 is now available and I recommend everyone download and install it ASAP. I'll review this update in more detail soon. But for now, enjoy these features!

• Street View now available on Google Maps
• Fixed dropped and failed call issues
• Safari updates
• Podcasts
• Etc.

There is already information on the updates still to come so be on the lookout for more updates.

ATT 3G Network Review Part 2

In a previous post I went through some of the noticeable problems with ATT's 3G service for the new iPhones. My initial review wasn't very good and unfortunately, this one is going to be worse.

Since the first review, I've gotten feedback from more users in more cities that are experiencing the same problems. During peak usage hours (5-10pm) users are experiencing "Failed Calls" which is what is displayed on the iPhone when a call is dropped, over 10% of the time within the first 2 minutes of a conversation. The updated cities list which I've tested and gotten feedback from are as follows: St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago, New York, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Richmond, and Austin. That's 10 cities in 9 states.

The iPhone users love all the applications, ipod, GPS, and internet features. BUT IT IS TERRIBLE AT MAKING AND ACCEPTING PHONE CALLS, which is arguable the most simple, but most important feature of a cell phone. I continue to check the web and company website to look for updates on their network. I've gotten my phone looked at twice to make sure I didn't have a defective phone before I bashed the company, and it checked out perfectly fine. I encourage all feedback and testimonials on this problem. Hopefully as time goes by, ATT can straighten out these issues.

Urbanspoon iPhone Application

The newest application I've tried for the iPhone 3G is Urbanspoon. Urbanspoon is designed to find restaurants near you. It uses a graphic interface similar to a slot machine. Based on your location, it will find nearby cities, and a diverse pool of restaurants to choose from. The search fields are city, type, and price range. You simply enter your location, shake your phone to start the "slot machine" style search, and it will find you a restaurant. The 3 criteria spin until they land on something. You can make one constant by "locking" that field and the other 2 will spin until they find something.

It actually has been very useful this last weekend as I was looking to find some restaurants that I hadn't been to before. I was able to find a lot of restaurants I hadn't heard of that had great reviews. Urbanspoon also lists recent reviews to the restaurants it finds. The best part I think, is that you can search by price range. I personally like to have a good idea of what things cost before entering the restaurant.