Posts tagged with "iPhone"

Kudos to Apple Customer Service

Short story … Well, my iPhone went on the blink last night.  So, I took it to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store.  The “genius” plugged it in one time to try to restore it.  Didn’t work.  He handed me a brand new iPhone.  Signed a paper and I was gone.  Nice.

Related:

Cool iPhone App for Catholics

Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock App Could be Life-Changing

Testing the WordPress App on my iPhone

My Friend Karyn Reviews iPhone Apps for the Hebrew Bible

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Cool iPhone App for Catholics

Some of you heretic Protestants like Joel might like it too … just kidding 😉 .  Today I downloaded iMissal.  It’s a pretty cool app that is a Missal, complete with daily mass readings and mass parts, a devotional (Our Daily Bread), and a collection of prayers.  For audiophiles like myself, the lectionary readings can be listened to.  I think that you need a WiFi connection or 3G connection for everything to work properly all of the time.  So, that is something to think about.  But otherwise, I think it’s well worth the cost, especially when you take into consideration the price of a Missal.

Related:

Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock App Could be Life-Changing

Testing the WordPress App on my iPhone

My Friend Karyn Reviews iPhone Apps for the Hebrew Bible

Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock App Could be Life-Changing

I was a bit surprised when my former college roommate told me that there was an app for the iPhone that  would be worth the price of the phone even if it was the only app available.  He proceeded to tell me about the Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock app (developer site HERE).  Now a bit of background, my former roommate is an epileptic and his sleep is very important to him, i.e. if he doesn’t sleep enough and take care of himself properly, he will have a seizure.  With that being said, I am not an epileptic, but struggle to wake up in the mornings.  I have good intentions of waking up early and reading or exercising, but when the alarm goes off I wake up groggy.  What he described sounded like it could benefit me too.  Best part the app is only 99cents, which great since similar products are going for $340 on Amazon.  So, I figured I would give it a try.

The premise of the app is simple, so I won’t go into a lot of detail.  It uses the accelerometer in the iPhone to detect your movements while you are sleeping.  It uses this movement data to determine your stages of sleep and from that your sleep cycle.  It calculates the best time to wake you up according to your sleep cycle within a 30 minute time frame of when you set the alarm to wake you up.  Thus, if you set it for 5:30, it will wake you up at the optimal sleep cycle time between 5:00 and 5:30.  If you want more detail, you can go HERE.

All I can say is so far, so good, and I only expect it to get better since the first couple of days the app is calibrating your sleep cycle.  I have been up and productive this morning before my family has awoken.  That’s not normal for me.  I don’t know how much of this might be psychological from me expecting the app to work, but I’ll keep you posted …  And, if you have, 99cents to spare and iPhone, you might want to go ahead and give it a shot.

Well, I Finally Got an iPhone …

and it is just about the coolest thing … ever.  I have been dropping hints at my wife for quite a long time now.  I think she finally got fed up with my old phone, which was on its last leg (I promise I didn’t just pretend like the service was bad just so I could get an iPhone).  She gave me the go ahead to get an iPhone for Christmas.  She was going to get it herself, but didn’t really know what she was looking at.  Anyway …

Today was my dad’s birthday, so I videoed my kids singing happy birthday.  I tapped the dialogue in the bottom-left of the screen.  I tapped one more button and e-mailed the video to my dad.  Two taps of the screen … that’s pretty awesome.  I’m sure there are other phones that do stuff like that, but it’s my first experience doing something like that with a phone.  I had an iPod touch before, and it was pretty great, but the added capabilities of the camera (with videoing option) and mic built in lead me to believe that the phone is actually going to make me more productive.  And, with the way everything is integrated with iPhoto, iTunes, etc., I couldn’t be happier with the purchase.

I think the only thing so far that I’m not crazy about is the battery life.  But, that probably has a lot to do with the fact that I was on it a crazy amount today.  And, Karyn at one point showed me a gadget for extending battery life, so I’ll have to look into that.

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My Friend Karyn Reviews iPhone Apps for the Hebrew Bible

HERE is a post where my friend Karyn (who is in the same doctoral program I am in) reviews iPhone apps for reading the Hebrew Bible.  It is a very in depth and helpful review.  If you have looked at these apps you know that there is an enormous price difference.  BibleReader almost literally costs ten times as much as Hebrew Bible. Is the extra cost worth it?  Go on over to Karyn’s blog and see what she has to say.