March 16th, 2010 by admin

Open Government? Sounds good in theory - but from what we have seen, it means actually having to put in effort!! - Darn!!

Its so much easier to just opine over a beer or wine!

Still we can’t fault the gov for its efforts to deliver the opportunity to get down and dirty in government and politics. They have been rolling out have-your-say, and this-is-what-we-are-doing and get-involved, sites and widgets, and applications all over the place!

Some have been around for a while  - like the FBI “Most Wanted” iPhone App. Others as we covered in  our last post, were just released this month.

And, of course, there are the  White House offerings - The White House News App (with up-to-date news from the Obama administration direct to our iPhones) and President Obama’s Podcasts (296 episodes with the latest one released yesterday titled “Health Insurance Reform Right Now“)

So we have eased our conscience and told y’all about the important stuff.

Now to share what we really like! Some  fun stuff from the FBI - check it out:

Now for some reason, this widget size can’t be adjusted - so we are stuck with the left side bit being chopped off. But, it does not affect our ability to watch their cool videos. Use the left hand side bar to scroll down and choose different videos.If you are viewing this post from your iPhone, then you will have to go to the FBI channel on YouTube to watch these videos.

The FBI also has a series of Podcasts we can watch (or listen to) on our iPhone. The iPhonegizmo team like this Open Government initiative (probably for the wrong reasons) because of all the cool media being produced!!

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March 7th, 2010 by admin

Interested in making free calls from your iPhone, free chats, and sending free messages (and even files) from your iPhone?

Well, you’d be crazy to say “no”!

Which is why, when the people at Nimbuzz contacted us, we were excited to pass on their hot details to our readers. The software is free and the free service they provides is fantastic. And with a new users signing up every 2 seconds, we are clearly not alone on thinking this. In fact, Nimbuzz tells us they now have over 16 million registered users.

But so what, right? What we need to know is “Who can we call for free”? Well, all you have to do to make sure that you can get everyone you want to call or chat or message for free - is get them to put the free software on their mobile! Nothing spreads faster than good news, so if you want to be the first to let your friends in on this great service, you better be quick. But first, check out all the neat benefits of getting the free app - which are demo-ed in the following video:

By the way, Nimbuzz also supports Skype, Facebook, Twitter, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, AIM, Google Talk, etc. They also:

* Have a Live Contact Lists - which puts all our phone & social network contacts in one place, so we can see who’s doing what right now!
* Give us free ‘Push Notification’ alerts and/or Inbox messages - for when a friend is trying to make contact when we’re offline
*Let us personalize our account with profiles and avatar pics, if we want.

So - just send this post to all the friends you want to make free mobile calls to by using the “share” button, below!!

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March 3rd, 2010 by admin

The iPhonegizmo team have been at it again. Scouring the internet for great free iPhone downloads for you. Our latest collection of goodies is superb - and a bit different!

We put together the four free iPhone downloads that appealed to us - from those that have either been recently released or are among the most popular free iPhone software ever downloaded.

1) Cool iPhone speed test Speedtest.net  A quick and easy way to check the speed of the internet connection you have on your iPhone. Quite handy - and free.

2)  Project Noah We just love any software that requires world-wide co-operation to bring about some transformational result built on small individual efforts that, combined, makes a massive difference. So we had to include this software. The project is in the beginning phases, but has already spread across the globe. It is simple but powerful. Check it out!

The free Project Noah App allows people from around the globe to input locally taken pics (using the iPhone camera) of local wildlife. The idea behind the software is this:

Noah is a tool that nature lovers can use to explore and document local wildlife and a common technology platform that research groups can use to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere. 

Noah allows us to discover and document local wildlife. The Project has numerous projects (missions) that we can become involved with. It is even possible to work with research groups and organizations to help gather data. Missions can range from “photographing specific frogs or flowers to tracking migrating birds or invasive species”.

Obviously this screams “kids project” - If you are game to let your kids loose in the “wilds” with your iPhone! Of course, increasing numbers of schools have iPod Touches for their students to use. So this free software could be perfect for school projects.

Don’t get me wrong! This app can also be just for fun.

AND  Project Noah app is definitely for adults as well (as the photo of the Leopard above shows). In fact it provides a fantastic opportunity for the urban naturalists, the amateur environmentalists, naturalist photographers and enthusiastic world travelers (to name a few) all to participate in world wide research - and share their love of nature and photography with a world wide audience..

3) CopyTrans Manager. This free software allows users to manage their iPhone media without iTunes. Yes, we thought that would interest you! According to the CopyTrans people, we can

Add songs to …. iPhone without iTunes: drag and drop songs and videos to … iPhone; synchronize…  instantly;

4) Make Free custom Ringtones for iphone - Well this is not really software for downloading. But we decided to include it anyway, because most people spend a small fortune on ringtones when they can make their own - custom ringtones - for free very easily simply using iTunes and the music you have stored there. This smart article will take you through each step.

Don’t thank us - just share!  –>

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November 30th, 2009 by admin

I have just bought my lucky brother the latest 32GB iPod Touch for Christmas. He is about to go to Moscow, Fribourg in Switzerland and Chamonix in France and then, after spending the winter season there is on to Australia after that. So an iPhone is a bit moot at this point.

I was going to get him a GPS locator - but when the needed Russian, Swiss, French and Aussie map DVD’s are added in, it becomes cost prohibitive.

Now, unfortunately, even the latest iPod Touch that I have bought does not have a GPS. And whilst there have been several “work arounds” put on the market in the last few weeks ( the Tom Tom and the Magellan, for example) these have the disadvantage of requiring hardware to attach to the iPod - plus also push the price out of my budget.

Apple does promote the “find yourself” feature of the iPod”

iPod touch finds your location using known Wi-Fi hotspots. It also finds points of interest by keyword: Search for “coffee” and iPod touch shows you cafes nearby.

All well and good. But this feature does have mixed reception from users as it does rely on available WiFi hotspots. And I wonder: “what are WiFi hotspots like in Moscow, Fribourgh and Chaminex??

OK readers - your chance to have a say. If you live in any of these places, or have recently visited there - please share! Let us all know - what are the free WiFi hotspots like there?

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January 20th, 2009 by admin

Although not of the same caliber as the sustainable food/restaurant site we previously reviewed , these two recently released iPhone software apps provide restaurant-locater services with some appeal.

Urbanspoon for the iPhone appeals for two reasons: firstly it encourages us to be a bit adventurous (whilst playing it safe!) That’s because its a shake-and-tell system (or Russian roulette!). We shake our iPhone and it will deliver a restaurant in the area we are wanting to go to eat. Its not entirely random because the restaurants with the best reviews get top listing (and anyway, we can shake again if we don’t like the result). However, we found that its still pretty light on reviews, and they only have wide coverage in US and Canada.

The second benefit of registering with this site is that they are running a pretty good contest at the moment. Every ,month, winners get 5 nights at Hotel Pont Royal in Paris and dinner for two at Joel Robuchon’s Michelin Star Rated L’Atelier Restaurant.

The second restaurant guide that is now available on our iPhone is liveonthego - a ‘take out‘ food guide. This already popular site has developed this free app in response to its fans’ demands.

And its easy to see why this is a popular tool. Because it allows us to order our food from our iPhone (nothing new there) But, we can search for restaurants based on our location, view the full menus (for all LiveOnTheGo restaurant partners) and pay for our order. Its an integrated setup that will please many iPhone owners.

As great as this sounds, the service is basically limited to Californian cities, so no use to most of us. But Californians can access the new software by going to LiveOnTheGo from your iPhone and you will be redirected to the new optimized iPhone site.

For those that are serious about eating well (organic, and/or sustainable foods), we remind of the community based, Eat Well Guide that can be accessed on our iPhones and which covers all of North America and

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January 18th, 2009 by admin

We have done several posts about this issue now, and referred readers to the top free software that has been developed to unlock iPhones. The free software is excellent -but not everyone feels technically savvy enough to use it. So we promised to test some of the commercial iPhone-unlock products and report back.

Well the holiday season got in the way, so we have taken a bit longer than planned to do this. But, we have finally completed this self appointed task and have our first offering.

But first, lets quickly review some of the main benefits of unlocking our iPhones:

Enables us to use free media & great free downloads not available in iTunes - or only at a price! (many of these great free download are featured elsewhere on this blog - see egs here and here)

Can use any SIM card worldwide. Can use any contract or even use prepaid Install VoIP software for free long distance calls! AND - as a quick look at eBay will show - can raise our iPhone’s value by $200!

There are several iPhone unlock software options to choose from. We liked this software because it provides plenty of easy-to-follow FAQs on how this software works! And because the software works with “one click”

You can get more details about the software from unlock-the-iphone.com

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January 6th, 2009 by admin

OK, this year’s Macworld ain’t gonna have the hype of the last two years, lets face it! And with Jobs not even there to stoke the hype, it threatens to be a bit ho hum - at least for iPhones.

But there are two “major” new iPhone products worth mentioning here. Firstly:

Tooble for iPhone

Here is new software that enables users to put any YouTube video onto their iPhone, automatically!

Based on the success of the Tooble for Mac, this new application of Tooble for iPhone is likely to also be a big hit. And the story behind Tooble is another one of those “young geeks make it big” stories. After all we Mac lovers do love products based on great designs or great ideas!

Check out these stats that Tooble.tv give, just 60 days after the 2008 Macworld release of Tooble for Mac:

Only sixty days after tooble’s debut, we’ve hit our hundred thousandth download! As you may guess this exceeds anything any of us expected, but we’re proud to announce tooble’s success and we’d like to thank all of the users who supported us, gave tooble a try, or came out to see us at MacWorld; you guys are great and we’re going to make some great software for you.

Secondly, the DayliteTouch will be on display at Macworld.

It won’t unfortunately get launched at MacWorld, and the launch is still listed as “early 2009″ with the rider bt the Daylite Touch team that:

We will be able to give you a more meaningful date range after Macworld.

But this is looking to be a significant new iPhone product for business users and definitely worth a mention. It uses Daylite’s new synchronization technology to keep all aspects of a business (and its data) accessible “anywhere and everywhere”. The objective being to:

keep your critical business data always synced anywhere you go.

Other “new” listings:

Note that both mDialog (a video platform that enables users to upload and deliver high res video to iPhones) and fone2phone (a utility that will copy all your data from an ordinary cell phone to an iPhone) are also listed as new iPhone products. BUT they have, in fact, been around for some time and so not really worthy of being listed as a “major new” iPhone product - despite their being billed that way on Macworld 2009 site.

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