Do you like music? Do you have rythm? Are you sure? Try the iPhone App Tap Tap Revenge.
Tap Tap Revenge sends dots down lines and you have to touch them before they go off of the bottom of the screen. The dots come in different patterns that are somewhat matched to the beat of the music.
You can compare your score with others on the internet too.
Here is a very simple app on the iPhone that is one of those things that is just ingenious. The app is called Level and as the name says…. It is a Level. You know one of those things that have a little air bubble that is in the center when it is level?
Start up level and turn the iPhone lengthwise or leave it standing up and you will get a level with a little bubble. Using the built in accelerometer in the iPhone, the Application can determine what angle the iPhone is at. It tells you the angle in degrees as well as a virtual level on the screen.
Oh, and there is more. Set the iPhone on a flat surface facing up and you have another level. This is a round bubble level.
So next time you are handing that new picture, no need to run to the garage and try to find that level, reach for your electronic best friend, your iPhone.
One of the fun things that I do is review different toys… I mean electronics. This review is for the Aiptek HD 1080P camera. Before I signed up for the review, I had already purchased 2 of these camera.
I had a project where I needed to create a 3-D video. Part of making the 3-D video you need 2 cameras to record the video in stereoscopic format. The trick is the center of each lens needs to be about 2 1/5 inches apart. There are not many cameras that you can put together that closely. So I went in search of a camera I could do this with.
I found the Aiptek at Best Buy when I went looking and settled on them for the project.
Let me first say that if you are looking for a professional High Definition camera, stop reading now. There are the furtherest things from even a pro-sumer high definition camera. I picked them up at Best Buy for about $160.
The old saying “you get what you pay for” fits here. But let me just say, for $160 they are not horrible cameras. In my review process I recorded some video at a carnival of my nephews and when I edited the video just about everyone commented how clear the video was.
The cameras come with very limited build in memory for video but can take SD cards. I purchased 2 8 Gig SD cards, one for each camera.
Here is a review of the camera features:
That is a long list of features. Now the more technical side of things…. As far as the lens… There really is no lens. There is a small plastic cover that protects the sensor. The sensor is very small. It looks even smaller than the sensor that is on my iPhone.
Now one word of warning about the 60 FPS. I use Final Cut pro HD and am running the latest version. It had problems editing the 60 frames per second videos.
After I figured out the problems with 60 frames per second and started recording in HD at 30 FPS, editing was a breeze. To transfer the videos you can remove the memory card and use a card reader to remove the videos. Or you can plug up the camera to a PC with the USB and it will show up as a new drive on your computer. When connected to the USB, the battery gets charged.
There is no image stabilization in the camera and you can really tell when you are shooting in High Def if you do not have a steady hand. I suggest using the camera mount and putting it on a tripod or monopod if you can.
There is a removable battery however, there is no batter charger sent with the camera. The USB is the method of charging. The camera also comes with cables that allow you to hook it up to a TV.
For the price, this is not a bad camera but it does not feel very sturdy and is low on the spectrum as far as quality goes. If you are looking for a fun cheap camera that you will not be upset if it breaks, then this is not a bad camera.
But if you are looking for a long term camera or a camera to do some professional or semi-professional work then I cannot recommend this camera.
For the fun project of making 3D movies the camera worked great for me. But it cannot be used to do any of my other projects.
it is no secret that I am a huge Mac fan. I am not a mac only fan. I am a big unix fan (mainly linux and sun) and I also like Windows too. Each operating system has it good and bad sides. For example, I really do not like quicken or quickbooks on a Mac but I really like it on Windows.
So you like the simplicity and reliability of the Mac but do not want to have to give up your Windows programs. Well, with the Intel based Macs you no longer have to give up your Windows applications.
One solution is to use boot camp which comes with the Mac. The problem with boot camp is you can only have either Windows or the Mac booted up but not both.
I bet you have heard of Parallels for the Mac that lets you run Windows apps. In this blog I am going to compare Parallels for Mac and VMWare Fusion.
Both applications create a virtual machine that allow you to install Windows inside of the Mac operating system. This allows you to run Windows inside of a window on your Mac. There has been some confusion around some of the marketing for Parallels.
Parallels allows you to run windows apps because it allows you to runs windows. But unless you install windows inside of parallels you will not be able to run windows applications.
I have had people want to install the Microsoft Office programs for windows on their new Mac so they did not have to buy a new copy that was Mac compatible. Yes you can do that but you must first install windows under Parallels or VMWare Fusion.
Both Parallels and VMWare Fusion create a virtual machine that runs inside of the Mac operating system. They have a few other things in common:
Each product has their own way of doing things. Parallels for Mac has been out longer and has a few new features. The beta version of VMWare Fusion is available now for download.
Now Parallels for Mac has been around longer than VMWare Fusion however, VMWare has been around a lot longer than Parallels. VMWare has had VM products for many years that run on Windows and Linux servers.
I have both of these products and have tried them both and I keep gravitating back to VMWare fusion.
According to the Parallels web site they outperform VMWare fusion but from what I have personally seen, VMWare runs circles around Parallels. Also, VMWare fusion does not crash on me. Parallels had some stability issues.
Both companies offer a free trial download so you can try them yourself. If you want to run your windows apps on the Mac, try them both. I can personally recomend VMWare fusion. That is the product I have selected as my choice.
Raise your hand if you have the new Microsoft Office 2007…. Raise your hand if you hate the new tab based interface in Word and Excel…. Wow, same number of hands!
I am not sure what Microsoft was thinking with this new interface. I have not found one person that likes this new interface. In fact, most people really hate it. It is so much slower to use, not shortcut key friendly and just not the same.
It is harder to find things than before, the menus are gone, it is just frustrating to use. And the other frustrating thing is you do not have a choice. There is no option to go back to the way it was before. I applaud trying to improve on an interface but if you are going to make such a drastic change at least give the option to go back to the old way. I mean this is not just a simple interface change like a new menu or maybe moving a couple of things around and re-organizing, this is a whole shift away from the way we have been using every program since the beginning of windows.
It is so frustrating that I now use other tools more and then paste in the text and tweak it after I get it in. The same changes were made in Excel and Word. I have had this update now for a few months and I still cannot find some of the features that were there before. I am sure they are there somewhere but I sure cannot find them and I refuse to have to use help to learn how to use Microsoft Word. After all, I have been using it for at least more than 14 years. I should not have to use help.
Now, I have been ranting on how bad the new Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel are in Office 2007. I must say I really like the new Outlook in Office 2007. There have been some nice additions in there and they did not mess with the user interface and menus like they did in Word and Excel.
Microsoft… Either go back to the old user interface or at least give the option to use the old interface. Oh, and fire the person who designed the new interface!
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