How are you using Evernote?

I have been using Evernote lately for business meetings and i’m loving it. I hate taking notes. If you have an iPhone (or other supported device) you can let it do the heavy lifting for you. When the meeting starts, i capture the discussion as a “voice note”. The mic is pretty good at picking up someone speaking even across the room. Typically there is some scribbling that has been done on the whiteboard as well. After the meeting, i’ll just take a shot of the board with the camera as a “snapshot note”.

Now when i need to refer back to the meeting i can access virtually everything that took place. Love it! All the content is stored on the Evernote web service, so it syncs with your Evernote desktop client as well which means whether you are at your desktop or mobile device your data is accessible.

The only complaint i have, is that voice notes are limited to 5 minutes in length. So right now i have to quickly save every 5 minutes and start another ‘part’ to the meeting. I suspect this may be a limitation of the iPhone SDK though.

Evernote is a free download for Mac & PC and is available here.
The iPhone client can be found in the app store.

The Fix the iPhone website

While it’s not really an iPhone shortcoming, maybe this will help with my idea from earlier this year.

Check out the site here.

Fieldrunners: best iPhone game to date?

The Good

• Lots of fun, fast paced.
• Seems to have pretty solid replay value.
• Controls are simple and feel good.
• Graphics are pretty solid.

The Bad

• No soundtrack or even sound effects, although this is rumored to be coming in an update.

How it works
Your goal is to stop waves of enemies from making it from the left side of the screen to the right. With each wave, you’ll face different & stronger enemies. Once 20 make it to the right, it’s game over. So how do you stop them? You’re able to create 4 different types of ‘towers’, each having it’s own strengths/weaknesses. You have your “Gatling Tower”, which has a weak but continuous short range attack. The “Goo Tower” which does no damage, but slows enemies down from a medium range. The “Missile Tower” which causes fairly significant splash damage & from a long range and finally the “Tesla Tower” which does massive damage but only within medium range.

As you kill bad guys with your towers, you get cash. Cash is required to buy towers. The other interesting dimension to the game is you can also spend cash on upgrades for existing towers to make them more powerful. The positioning of towers and the types of towers you use make for a really interesting strategy game.

So here’s what i think about it.

Graphics 9/10
Really solid for an iPhone. Only seems to be one level right now (albeit a long one), but the textures are really nice and suit the game. Kind of reminds me of Legend of Zelda for SNES if you recall that game.

Audio 0/10
Unless i am missing something, which i don’t think i am there is none! No sound effects, no music - nothing.*

Gameplay 8.5/10
Tapping & positioning towers feels just right. If i was going to complain about anything it might be that i wish you could zoom in a bit more and add more variety of maps.

* On the App Store page the developer mentions a big update is coming that adds music, sound & new content, which will take this game from great to awesome most likely.

Fieldrunners is available on the App Store for $4.99. Here’s the link.

What happens if you break your iPhone in Canada?

My friend Paul broke the glass of his iPhone this past weekend, a horrific sight for any iPhone owner. In Canada, you can’t buy the 3G iPhone from Apple directly, you have to go through Rogers and that requires signing up for a 3 year contract. When he went to Rogers, they said the only way they could ’sell’ him a new phone was if he paid out the remainder of his existing contract, which works out to about $3,000 CDN…THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS!

After much arguing / pleading with store managers and speaking with the staff at the Apple store in the Eaton’s Center he was still unable to get a replacement. Not really surprising though, If the damage is inflicted by you, and not a fault of the device - i.e shattering the screen, you are on your own. The bottom line is, in these situations your best option is to speak with Apple to find a certified iPhone repair depot which can fix the damage for you. One unfortunate side effect of repairs such as replacing the glass screen is they void your warranty.

My iPhone app top 10 list

I’ve had a few weeks to try out many of the apps on the iTunes store, and although it’s not even a month into the release of the 3G iPhone there is already some outstanding products available, many of which are free:

Google Maps (built in)
The best feature in maps is that you can search for anything. If i search for “Sushi” gmaps will search and drop pushpins on the map for any results matching your search criteria. You can drill down to results, get phone numbers, addresses and using the built in GPS get directions from your current location. This has already saved my ass on a couple of occasions!

Airme (free)
If you are a Flickr user, and love your meta data - this is the app for you. I actually bought mobileflickr for $2.99 before i found this one, but i’m going to use this instead. Airme will allow you to take photos, and then automatically upload them to your flickr site for you. Again, the magic comes from the GPS integration. Airme automatically tags your photo with your local weather (temp / sky conditions) and plots your photo on your flickr map.
Link

Google Reader / Google Talk (free)
These are actually web apps, but with all their ajaxy goodness they feel more like native apps. I spend about an hour each day commuting on a train to/from work and being able to access all my feeds in Google Reader is like having my own custom newspaper. I also like that alot of the features have been carried over from the desktop web app (i.e sharing / share with notes / stars). The implementation of Google Talk is really solid too, only problem i find with gTalk is that alot of people sign into their gmail and walk away from the computer but still show as ‘available’ - so it can be frustrating trying to connect with your contacts occasionally. Also, due to the limitations with the iPhone SDK & the fact these are web apps if you leave safari you will be logged out.
Link

Texas Hold’em (not free)
Really REALLY well done game. All the touch gestures feel right (double tap to check, tap drag & throw your cards to fold etc…). The graphic quality is probably one of the best i’ve seen so far. One cool little feature is if you tap your dealt cards, you will see a colored ‘hand strength’ meter. I’ve actually found this a handy tool for a beginner like myself…for example pocket 2’s a beginner would likely make the mistake to bet hard when in fact it’s a really weak hand. Other cool things: LAN multiplayer support, stats (keeps track of your best hands / win % etc) & it will save your games making it great for even burning 3 mins waiting in line at the grocery store. The only negative i have is that you can’t listen to your tunes while you’re playing, which you could do with the old ipod version.
Link

Remote (free)
There has been alot of buzz around this one. Right now i live in a 700 sq/ft condo, so i don’t have much use for it however this would be amazing for a house party or backyard BBQ. With Remote you can control iTunes or AppleTV over wifi from your iPhone. This way you don’t have to leave the party action to skip a track / pause etc…awesome.
Link

Facebook (Free)
The thing that is most impressive about the Facebook app is the attention to detail. There is alot of functionality crammed into this app but the beauty of the UI is they don’t expose it to you all at once & overwhelm you, it’s like peeling the layers off an onion. I continue to find cool things i didn’t realize it could do. It actually even supports Facebook chat, although i’m not sure if anybody really uses that, and it has the same limitations as Google Talk when you leave the app. Just a really solid translation of a web app -> iPhone.
Link

Truphone (free)
Apple does not allow apps which support VoIP over cellular data (edge/3G) however if you are on wifi you can using Truphone. I used this when i was in New York state for a friends wedding a few weeks ago to dodge roaming charges and it worked great. Just hop on free hotel wifi and you’re good to go. When you sign up they give you $4.00 to get you started. Rates are pretty decent @ about $0.06/min for landlines/mobiles in Canada/US. One nice thing is that for the person at the other end the call display still shows your iPhone #.
Link

Urbanspoon (free)
Merlin Mann called this app “almost useful” last week on Macbreak Weekly and i see where he’s coming from, but it’s probably one of the first apps i show people when i’m demo’ing the phones features cuz it’s just so damn cool. I am going to Hawaii for 2 weeks and am going to try it out while we’re there. Urbanspoon finds your location using the built in GPS, and then builds a slot machine style list of neighbourhoods, types of cuisine & cost level ($/$$/$$$/$$$$). You can lock certain dials on the slot machine, for example maybe you are certain you want Italian food, but don’t care what neighbourhood or cost. Then you simply shake the iphone (so silly, but so cool) and it will return a restaurant matching that criteria. You can then drill down and see ratings, address & phone number with links to Google Maps if you want to get yourself a table.
Link

Twinkle (free)
I used Twitteriffic when i first got my iphone as that is what i use on the desktop, but i found it started crashing alot so i tried Twinkle (which i used on my old jailbroken ipod touch). The selling feature of Twinkle is that it uses GPS to show you Tweeters who are nearby, which is surprisingly interesting even though they are complete strangers. Also supports picture tweets.
Link