Ok I have had the Iphone 4s for less than two days but I figured I’d give initial out of the box impressions.
It’s fast.
DennyWeinman.com
musings and mishapse of a technical creative
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iPhone Appolooza
I figured I’d give you a couple free apps that could be beneficial to you.
The first app is Loose It!
This is a cool app that is a free calorie tracker for your day. “Keeping a food diary can double a person’s weight loss according to a study from Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research.” sciencedaily.com This is essentially a food diary and an exercise diary. It takes your current weight age and height and bases a calorie intake for your day. If you work out, you record it and it adds that amount of calories to your ‘required’ intake back. Just a cool little widget to help you whether you’re trying to keep track of what you eat, or trying to lose weight.
The second app is from Sound Made Simple. They have a ‘lite’ iphone app that is basically an audio and accoustics training app. I haven’t actually started trying this one out yet, but for the price tag of free I’m sure it’s worth at least a quick look to see if it can knock off the cobwebs of things learned in past or maybe teaching you a few new tricks of the trade.
Now for the paid apps. Twitterfon has recently become Echofon and has added a few new perks to their pro account. One of the newest is the push notifications which have most twitter addicts drooling. This is great, except the phone only goes out and searches for new mentions or direct messages every so often, so it is not immediate. There is at least a 3 minute lag time in receipt of the notifications and sometimes it’s even more significant. I have had better luck with a second party app that pulls down your mentions and direct messages and notifies you when they show up. It’s still delayed but it shows up quicker than Echofon’s native push. This app is oddly called boxcar…not sure where the name comes from but it also costs. If you’re addicted to twitter like me then you’ll splurge for either or both of these handy little apps (I have both…)
If you’re a church techie and you use www.planningcenteronline.com for your team management you might be excited to know that they now have an integrated facebook app for service notifications and schedules. This is especially awesome for me because I work with students and so my volunteers spend a ton of time on facebook, or check it more religiously than their inbox….which I kind of do too but that’s besides the point.
Tip Off Tuesday
Do you have an iphone?
Are you an audio tech, an audiophile?
Then I’ve got a couple apps for you.
I’ve been stuck in a few situations where I’ve needed a way to analyze what is going on in a room audio wise. Whether just general loudness or a way to figure out why the room sounds so dang muddy or bright.
App one of two is an SPL meter.
This is a cheap app coming in at $.99 from Studio Six Digital.
It gives you the option of A or C weighted, slow or fast.
If you’ve got the gumption you can also connect an external mic up to the iphone and get a more accurate pick up.
One thing the app lets you know clearly is that the iphone mic has a roll off and so they try and make up up for it with programming. So you get around a 4-6 db difference from an actual SPL meter, but seriously, if you’re in a bind and need a ball park figure for those OSHA complainers pull out your phone and blow their minds.
The next app I haven’t gotten a chance to play with but am excited to have is Pocket RTA. It’s a little pricy ($29.99 to the SPL meters $.99) but it’s worth the investment.
This app gives you a nice real time analysis of what is going on in your space sound frequency wise. It gives you 8 different ways to analyze your room so you can tune whatever your doing and get rid of that mud. This is helpful when you know that your sound pressure levels are within an acceptable limit and you’re still getting complaints of something that is to loud. It’s generally a specific frequency or group of frequencies that are hurting peoples ears.
This isn’t a replacement for a professional room tuner, but for those of you who run audio tech consistently, especially in a church environment another tool in your pocket to make things sound better is invaluable.
