Video Review: HyperMac 150W External Battery

Rating: 9.5 out of 10
Pros: Extends battery life on MacBooks up to 21 hrs. Can charge the iPhone up to 35x without recharging. Very accurate battery indicator lights.
Cons: Battery’s power brick can get very hot. Does not get fully charged if you are trying to charge both the battery and a computer off of the battery at the same time. Replacement MagSafe cable costs $100.
Overall: The Hypermac, though pricey, offers a lot of bang for your buck. With three of the four batteries they sell coming with the DC Charger, normally sold for $150, a battery that lasts 21 hours, and an extra charger for your laptop laying around it is a great buy that you won’t regret.

App Review: Squeezer

With the craze of Twitter I’m surprised this type of application has just surfaced. If your familiar with Twitter, you know your tweets can only be so long. You can run into problems when your trying to tweet a web page however. Well a few companies stepped in and provided users with URL crunchers so to speak, giving us the ability to share pages without taking up needed characters in our tweets. On the iPhone it was a little more cumbersome in order to complete this task. Not with Squeezer, just copy the link from Safari, open up Squeezer and let the app generate a new compressed link for your tweeting or sharing needs. Squeezer uses a few of the most popular sources, most prominent is bit.ly. Included in the app is the ability to share it to Facebook, Twitter, Email and SMS from within the app. It’s an easy to use application that solves a nagging problem that some encounter. Squeezer solves it for me.

Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Extremely efficient and extremely simple to use.
Cons: Wish it used more services to provide links.
Overall: Really nice application. Anything to cut time from doing something is always a good thing. If if only a few seconds.

Video Review: Hands Free Magnet

Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Pros: Serves multiple purposes to stick something to a surface via a magnet.  Would work well with the ez cube fm transmitter click here to see that review.
Cons: A bit pricey at $9.95, it is packaged depicting use with a cell phone but if I were the manufacturer I would market it as an all around household solution as I would never use it on a cell phone.
Overall: This magnet does come in handy for some odd applications and it seems to be working well for me in the car with my XM Radio and aux power supply.  The only real thing I question here is the price and marketing strategy of the packaging.  I think it would sell a whole heck of a lot better marketed differently.

To purchase the Hands Free magnet from Amazon for $9.95 click here. To purchase the ez cube for $39.95 click here and to purchase the USB cord for ezcube click here.

App Review: Prowl

If you have Mac OS X, I hope you have Growl installed. If not, run and go download it, then come back here and finish reading this post. Now that we know what Growl is, I can explain what Prowl does. The notifications that are received on your Mac or PC can now be pushed to your iPhone via Prowl.  Now why would you want the notifications from your computer to be pushed to your phone? Oh the possibilities are endless. Growl can send popups for pretty much any app. Mail, Safari, Skype, Adium, Transmission and many many more. A standing list of notifications already made to your phone is kept for 10 days. More than enough time to take a peek at what has been sent your way recently. Personally I use Prowl to send myself Growl notifications for transmission. Whenever I am away from the Mac I like to know what’s happening when it comes to my apps. Just recently I downloaded an ISO of Ubuntu, once the download finished, Prowl sent me the notification and I was able to log in remotely to shutdown Transmission. Without Prowl I would have had to wait until I was home again to get that update.

As mentioned Prowl works with other applications as well, most notably is Mail. With Mail running on your Mac/PC you can essentially have Push email. Of course it truly isn’t Push email. Your messages are delivered to your computer. Once received, Prowl sends the Growl notification to your iPhone. Once the pop up shows on your iPhone, it’s up to you to open up Mail and retrieve the new message. I would say that if it was the only option of getting Push email then sure, go for it. But if it isn’t, I would turn off your current method.  Prowl also has some independent DEVs in its corner. Folks are putting together nifty little add-ons to programs to increase the usability of the app. Prowler allows you to send highlighted text from Firefox to your iPhone. This handy feature alone has made the purchase of Prowl worthwhile. My wife can now browse the web for recipes and instead of emailing them to my phone, highlight and right click “send to Prowl”, automatically send what she has chosen to prowl. Phone numbers, directions and recipes can be sent to my phone in a snap. So if you decide to get Prowl, please take advantage of Prowler.

As you can tell I love using Prowl and I know you will as well.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Pros: Great implementation of an already great application on the Mac.

Cons: No major complaints. Could be a little ‘prettier’. (But function, over looks is always good)

You can purchase this app from the App Store for $2.99

Podium Announces “Cash for Clunkers Program”

Complete program details can be found at www.podiumrevolution.com/cashforclunkers.

Video Review: Speck SeeThru for iPod Nano 4G

This is a video review by our Monthly Guest Reviewer Luis Rocha

Video App Review: Baseball Slugger

Rating: 10 out of 10
Pros: Multiple styles of games with the best being online match-ups against people from around the world, add friends to your rival list. Affordable, only 99 cents. Fantastic graphics and sounds, lots of ways to level up with equipment and skills.
Cons: Addicting, will prevent you from going to bed at scheduled times, tough to perfect the use of accelerometer.
Overall: One of the best baseball games in the app store and at 99 cents you really can’t go wrong.  The company is so customer focused they are putting together tournaments based on player feedback.  If you are a baseball fan you shouldn’t be without this app.  Not many apps get my Editors’ Choice Award but this was a no brainer. Kudos to the developer.

You can purchase Baseball Slugger for 99 cents by clicking here.

Video Review: Speck Pixel Skin for iPod Nano 4G

This is a video made by our Monthly Guest Reviewer, Luis Rocha (aka LuisMayhem17)

App Review: NotifyMe

Push. We have been waiting on the release of Push Notifications since Apple announced it last year. Well September of ’08 came and went without a bang, but with the coming of 3.0 we finally have access to it. So of course we should be seeing a lot of apps with push support coming out. To my delight the DEVs over at PoweryBase released a little gem called NotifyMe. Dubbed the first push notification Todo app. Well I have to say, it lived up to my expectations. I really didn’t get into ToDo apps because I’m too lazy to open an app to find out what I need to get accomplished. I knew Push would definitely solve the problem if ever released.

So what does NotifyMe do that other ToDo apps don’t? It provides a simple and minimalistic solution for getting stuff done. The ease of use with NotifyMe has got to be the best feature by far. The gorgeous design of the application makes it a joy to use as well. Starting up it gets right to the point. (After you have initially set up the app for Push support) you are greeted with an overview setting up a new reminder or viewing reminders already made, as well as past reminders. The ease of creating reminders is great. Unlike other ToDo apps that I’ve used, you don’t get bogged down with unnecessary “flare”. The app is completely Read the rest of this entry »

Video App Review: Navigon – Mobile Navigation for Europe

Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Pros: Maps for 42 countries, 19 languages for the GUI to choose from. Very nice graphics with the special Reality View Pro feature (realistic display of motorway interchanges and exits) together with Lane Assistant Pro. Automatic language selection to match the iPhone’s user language. 2D and 3D map display together with portrait and landscape format. Optimized volume control (when using the NAVIGON navigation and the integrated iPod function of the iPhone at the same time).
Cons: Basic options to choose with limited ability to input GPS location’s. Small buttons and indicators in navigation mode with not well thought out touch controls makes this navigation hard to read and operate sometimes.
Overall: App is on sale for $99.99 ( normal price is $130 ). The value that we get for this price is huge so I think if you are looking for a GPS  app for the iPhone it will be a good choice however this app still needs some more development especially for the optimization of 3D view on the iPhone 3G. But if you are looking for the best coverage and map accuracy then this app is the best choice.