One thing that I have learned from decades of writing is always find and tell a great story. And this is why Ira Glass is one of my heroes, one of my mentors. You wouldn't think that a guy who writes about tech day in and day out could be so moved from listening to him on public radio, or seeing one of his live shows. It isn't like he uses some new-fangled streaming audio gear or USB microphone setup. (Well, maybe he does, but that isn't the point.) Hearing his show is always a moving experience, a moment when he finishes the story and you just go, "Wow, that was something." Some stories are funny, some sad, some have morals or points to them, others just are what they are.
In any case, Glass sets a very high bar when it comes to his craft.
Since launching with the iPhone 4S in October, Apple's new voice-controlled personal assistant feature called Siri has been enamoured of Apple fans, mocked by others and been found to have a few humorous Easter eggs built in.
As cool as Siri seemed to many at launch, like so many things, it's true potential wasn't really unlocked until a crafty developer got his hands on it and started tinkering. Pete Lamonica managed to create a hack called SiriProxy that allowed him to control his thermostat using only his voice (more on that below). He set up a proxy server and posted his code on GitHub so that more developers could take advantage of it and push the limits of what Siri can do. And indeed they have.
For all the wonders of Apple's iPad, one feature that's always been a little underwhelming is its native Web browser. Like on the iPhone, Safari for the iPad definitely gets the job done and is overall a pretty solid browser in terms of performance, but there are few features that are inexcusably absent.
Fortunately, there have been a number of third party browsers that have made their way into the App Store. Atomic Browser and Opera Mini are both very popular, streamlined browsers that support tabbed browsing. Skyfire offers rich social integration and can even play Flash videos. The newest entrant into this space is Dolphin HD, a tablet-optimized version of the popular Android browser, which just launched for iPhone a few weeks ago.
In our continuing tradition of rounding up new mobile application releases we found interesting and/or exciting over the past month, we present you with this new list of apps for July 2011. This month, we found a lot of great new iPhone apps, some Android and tablet apps, and a bunch of "notable" application updates.
As always, share your thoughts on those we missed in the comments below.
Just as the Web has brought us untold advances in innovation, collaboration and productivity, it has also given us things like this Tumblr blog curating animated GIFs of Tom Hanks portraying various animals, not to mention Farmville, Twitter or the 35 hours of video that are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
With so many digital distractions, it's a wonder we can get anything done. For those of us for whom being productive means stringing words together, whether we're bloggers, marketing copy writers or aspiring novelists, the Internet can be a mixed blessing. Fortunately, there are a number of writing applications that attempt to block out the distractions so we can finally focus.
In our continuing tradition of rounding up new mobile application releases we found interesting and/or exciting over the past month, we present you with this new list of apps for June 2011. Previously in June, we shared a list of apps that came out in May and during the first part of June, so be sure to check that post for some early June app launches.
This time around, we're again focusing on new (and notably updated) iPhone and Android applications, as well as a few iPad, tablet and cross-platform apps that caught our eye. As always, share which apps are your new favorites in the comments below.
In this continuing series here on ReadWriteWeb, we round up some of our favorite new applications for smartphones each month, specifically for iPhone and Android devices. This spring edition includes some major new launches on Android, like Netflix and Google Music, as well as some incredible technology leaps on iPhone, like the app which identifies trees by their leaves! As a bonus for this month, we've added a section with notable app updates and another featuring new tablet apps.
In this continuing series, we round up some of our favorite new applications for smartphones each month, specifically for iPhone and Android devices. This spring edition is one of the longest lists yet - there have been a number of incredible new launches to highlight this past month. (And yes, we know it's May already, these things take time). As a bonus just for this month, we've added a section for new iPad and Honeycomb apps, too.
As always, feel free to share your favorite apps in the comments!
