Saturday, June 18, 2011

App for that: How to create a simple invoice

There are hundreds of thousands of iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps for just about everything — so how come the one you need, the one you know just has to be there, is so hard to find? Enter TiPb’s new weekly feature where staff and readers alike sort through the App Store and help you find just the right App for That. This week, Aatif asks:

I’m writing as a freelancer for a blog, and I was wondering if there was an app available that can help me keep track of how many posts I have written in a pay period as well as amount earned for each.

To see what we found for Aatif, follow along after the break!

Invoice2Go [$9.99 - iTunes link] is a fantastic app for creating invoices on your iPhone. After setting up your business (your personal info for freelancers), you’re ready to start invoicing. Under the products tab, you can add the different services you offer, or in Aatif’s case, various types of articles that he writes. When creating an invoice, it’s simple to add the saved products and specify a quantity. When finished, Invoice2Go totals everything up and creates a beautiful invoice as a PDF that can then be emailed to your employer or printed over AirPrint.

Invoice2Go offers many different templates for the final invoice design and even includes the ability to add a custom logo. You can also add a PayPal button to your invoices. This may not be ideal for Aatif’s situation, but could be great for those of you creating client invoices.

If the price is a little steep for you, Invoice2Go Lite [Free - iTunes link] is a free version of the app that restricts you to only keeping 3 invoices at a time. This sounds perfect for Aaatif as long as he emails a copy of the completed invoices at the end of each pay period. Invoice2Go Lite is also a great way to try out the app and determine if it will meet your needs.

Bonus app: iSpreadsheet

If Invoice2go has more features than necessary, and you find that less is more, you can create your own spreadsheet with iSpreadsheet [$2.99 - iTunes link]. This type of report is very simple to create and may be a more desirable option. For the budget conscious blogger (the prices in the screenshots are from my fantasy world), iSpreadsheet Free [Free - iTunes link] is ad-supported and has all the features of its paid version.

Anyone else have any App for That suggestions for Aatif? Let him — and all of us — know in the comments.

Having trouble finding what you need in the app store? Send us an email to iosapps@tipb.com and let us know what you’re looking for, and we’ll do our best to find you just the right App for That!

What to Do Your iPhone Fails to Operate

iPhones are the hottest selling item of the apple company and the company has made about a good profit through their product. On an average the company sells about 11625 cell phones on an average. To make the scenario more attractive and advanced the company has come up with more touch system gadgets like iPads and iPods. But with so advanced a technology problems do seem to shoot up every now and then. Some are technical faults while some are due to the rough usage by the customers that sometimes results in damaging the internal system.

Some of the major drawbacks that this high tech phone is associated to are the issue of the battery life. IPhone 4 has come with ideas to solve this problem by providing the application of quick look and by dragging most used applications onto the home screen. However for all for you who have the older models of iPhone and are facing similar issues they can adopt certain measures to make the battery last longer. First of all decrease the brightness of your phone, this helps the battery last longer. Switch off the music amplifier when it is not in use so as to save the battery and also charge your phone when it is not in use. Always check that any applications that are in not in use or a Wi-Fi signal that is on is switched off.

Another major crisis that iPhone users are facing is present in the iPhone 4. Customers have complained of having signal issues. When you hold the phone from the metal band the signal start to drop immediately and this is one of the major technical faults in this phone. The apple team of technicians are working on solving this issue. Many angry customers have even uploaded videos demonstrating the signal issue to the company. The company has even claimed to accept their fault.

The screen of the phone is also highly sensitive. Any small damage or a foot height of fall can shatter its screen. Some customers have even reported of discolouring and damaged API’S. Keeping the phone around a hard cover could somewhat reduce the magnitude of damage, but this high sensitivity issue also needs to be resolved.

Another common problem with this phone is that if you overload it with songs, videos, applications etc the response time seems to slow down. This can be nuisance for the user so unless you have a lot of empty room on your phone don’t go for downloading heavy files. If a heavier space capacity is what your requirement is then go for the phone that has a larger storage capacity. The dictionary also often refuses to add in new words into its memory for which you can enter the words on Google and make the phone learn the new words. Although iPhones have made a great breakthrough in the cell phone industry but the company needs to look into the problems occurring in order to keep customers happy and glued to this high tech based cell phone.

App for that: How to create a simple a invoice

There are hundreds of thousands of iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps for just about everything — so how come the one you need, the one you know just has to be there, is so hard to find? Enter TiPb’s new weekly feature where staff and readers alike sort through the App Store and help you find just the right App for That. This week, Aatif asks:

I’m writing as a freelancer for a blog, and I was wondering if there was an app available that can help me keep track of how many posts I have written in a pay period as well as amount earned for each.

To see what we found for Aatif, follow along after the break!

Invoice2Go [$9.99 - iTunes link] is a fantastic app for creating invoices on your iPhone. After setting up your business (your personal info for freelancers), you’re ready to start invoicing. Under the products tab, you can add the different services you offer, or in Aatif’s case, various types of articles that he writes. When creating an invoice, it’s simple to add the saved products and specify a quantity. When finished, Invoice2Go totals everything up and creates a beautiful invoice as a PDF that can then be emailed to your employer or printed over AirPrint.

Invoice2Go offers many different templates for the final invoice design and even includes the ability to add a custom logo. You can also add a PayPal button to your invoices. This may not be ideal for Aatif’s situation, but could be great for those of you creating client invoices.

If the price is a little steep for you, Invoice2Go Lite [Free - iTunes link] is a free version of the app that restricts you to only keeping 3 invoices at a time. This sounds perfect for Aaatif as long as he emails a copy of the completed invoices at the end of each pay period. Invoice2Go Lite is also a great way to try out the app and determine if it will meet your needs.

Bonus app: iSpreadsheet

If Invoice2go has more features than necessary, and you find that less is more, you can create your own spreadsheet with iSpreadsheet [$2.99 - iTunes link]. This type of report is very simple to create and may be a more desirable option. For the budget conscious blogger (the prices in the screenshots are from my fantasy world), iSpreadsheet Free [Free - iTunes link] is ad-supported and has all the features of its paid version.

Anyone else have any App for That suggestions for Aatif? Let him — and all of us — know in the comments.

Having trouble finding what you need in the app store? Send us an email to iosapps@tipb.com and let us know what you’re looking for, and we’ll do our best to find you just the right App for That!

The difference between Apple iPad 2 and Verizon Android tablet commercials

The difference between iPad 2 and Android tablet commercials

Apple has now aired a series of three iPad 2 commercials, the first of which clearly states up front that it’s not about specifications, it’s about experience. They go on to show how different people, in different walks of life, can use, benefit, and enjoy the iPad in a multitude of easy to understand ways. Verizon has aired a couple Android tablet commercials during the same period, and these focus on Flash, chipsets, and radio technologies.

Apple/iPad: “When technology gets out of the way everything becomes more delightful.”

Verizon/Android: “Your wife will love the dual core Tegra 2 chipset.”

Apple/iPad: “If you ask a parent, they might call it intuitive.”

Verizon/Android: “4G LTE upgradeable.”

Check out the videos after the break. Apple has shown how to sell tens of millions of iPads but apparently even Verizon still can’t hear them now.

The iPhone 4Gs Technology on Fire: Live Event of Mc World

The iPhone 4 Gs, the latest development in market by the apple company seems to be excelling in technology at an immense speed. Recently a live event was conducted by the Mc World for the apple iphone 4 and viewers came across some really interesting facts about this latest 21st century technology touch phone. There is a lot more to this phone then the simple options available on the screen. This event was carried out to announce the number of sales the company has made and to give a brief to the customers over this dynamic piece of technology.

For now apple has sold about 450000 ipads and the demands are soaring even higher than this for which the company is making extra efforts to meet the demand. When IPad was launched 1 million were sold just within one day. As far as the users are concerned the company ahs recorder a statistics of over 4B applications downloaded and the apple store offers you a range of 185000 applications to be downloaded. The most renowned and well known applications that have done great business for the company are Netflix, ABC, MLB and Popular Science.

The iPhone at the same time is doing great business for the apple company as they have sold about 50 million phones as yet and it has won many awards in a row. The specifications are quiet alluring as this cell phone offers you 64% internet browsing and android 19. Certain applications have the facility of including text messages as well and newly developed API’s will give you the opportunity to add 2000 accelerated math functions and video recording and photo library. For zoom in you need to tap the screen if a video is playing and 5 % percent zoom in camera is what allows you a closer view. Small windows also raise up to display all the running applications, from there you can select whichever one you want to use.

Multitasking is what is the new thing installed in these phones. Suppose you open an application but want to exit it and move to another application but you don’t want to lose the progress on that application so for that a faster API has been designed. This allows you to quickly leave one application and switch to the other. It also restores the data and progress on the application you left so that you can restore it anytime you want to. You can also create shortcuts and folders on the home screen by simply dragging them.

The phone has aims to be a complete gaming phone and that is why more than 50,000 game applications have been added and variety exceeds that of Sony PSP and Nintendo. Preserving battery life has also been the top features of this new phone. Birthday calendar applications, creating playlists, larger fonts, Bluetooth keyboards, digital ads, creating brand logos and downloading software is just a click away. Thanks to the new iphone 4 technology life is much simpler now.

Video Making and Editing Made Easier With iPhone

An angry bird is the UK’s number one paid application available for the iPhone. It may turn out to be dangerously addictive but it is the best game being offered for those who love playing simple yet challenging games on their iPhone. Angry bird is a war against the green stealing birds. One makes use of the cartoon birds as weapons to through at the rival castle. The destruction is done on the principles of physics and vectors. In short all you have to do is aim the birds at the green pigs. Once you start you won’t be able to resist putting your phone down.

Scrabble is a game which most of the people love playing. We all have played it at one point in life or the other and have enjoyed it. Now it is available as an iPhone application. Hasbro’s version of scrabble might be better than the board version because you can not only match your intelligence with the computer, but also with opponents online or even your friends. You can even have more than fifty games as once, and for the new players who are just joining can take help from the learning tools. A cheat option is also available which provides the user with the highest scoring words.

If you carry your iPhone wherever you go, you are very well equipped to capture whatever comes your way. In order to make life easy, iPhone4 has an inbuilt video capturing mode, which is capable of capturing beautiful and detailed footage; All this just a touch away.

The video quality is HD which is truly stunning. To aid the video quality, the phone has a very advanced backside illumination sensor which not only helps in capturing breathtaking videos but also it is able to capture in both bright and lowly lit environments. The built in LED light helps in lighting up the dark places.

The best part is that now you don’t even need to transfer the videos back to your computer in order to edit the, iPhone4 has the application for you. With the camera application, you can do the basic editing, which is the cropping of the video. This can be done by simply dragging and selecting the start and the end point.

Not only this but also while making a video you can tap on the screen while recording in order to focus on a particular object when shooting with subjects both in the foreground and the background. One the focus is adjusted you don’t need to worry about the exposure and other details. Once you are done focusing and shooting one particular subject you can always move on to the next subject simply by tapping on the screen.

When in the mood you can even make a video yourself. The iPhon4 comes with a HD camera in the back and a VGA quality camera in the front. This small camera is located on the front, above the display. This is great because it gives a great result and also lets you see yourself so you don’t have to wonder what you look like in your video and in addition to that it helps you minimize the risk of cropping yourself out of the video.

With the help of the application called iMovie, iPhone4 provides its users with a whole new level of awesome. With this particular application, which costs only $4.99, you can now turn the video clips that you have captured into finished movies. This application helps particularly when you are on a vacation or you just had a baby and you are eager to capture every moment. You can simply take a selection of clips and form it into a full movie; a movie full of memories to be cherished for the rest of your life. The application also allows you to combine different video clips as well as photographs. You can add your favorite music in the background and share the finished movies with your friends and family. Dynamic themes are also provided to give the movie a more finished and professional touch.

Once your done editing and finishing the movie iPhone4 allows you to share it anywhere you want. You can MMS a video or just attach it to an email. Posting a video on YouTube has also been made easier. iPhone 4 also allows you to sync all the video clips into your PC or Mac anytime you want!

Plants v. Zombies is another one of the addictive iPhone applications available. The bone chilling nightmare of zombies attacking is realized in this game. Waves and waves of zombie come into the nicely kept garden and trample the flowers and plants. As the zombies come close all you have to do is throw frozen melons, corn and much more at them. All the levels come with increasing difficulty and end up challenging the player even more.

Another hard to quit application is Doodle Jump. It is known to be the top grossing application of all time. All you have to do is tilt the phone in order to guide the Doodler to climb up the graph paper. All the Doodler has to worry about are the enemies which are shooting monsters and black holes. On its way up, the Doodler has to get the goodies which are waiting for it on every other slab.

Cut the rope is a very interesting iPhone application. It is a very addictive game which resembles a puzzle. The creature in Cut the Rope is called Om Nom. It is a little green creature with the entire awe factor a creature can muster. The players are required to cut the rope in order to free the piece of hard candy so that it can fall into the mouth of the little green On Nom. There are a number of obstacles that one has to go through in order to complete the objective. GeoDefense Swarm is an awesome game which is built only one principle, to stop the creatures crawling towards your base. What you have to do is blast them with the cannons which are strategically placed. It is so addictive that once you start, you won’t even realize how long you have been playing until your battery time runs out!

MutiTasking: A Dream Come True

Most of the phones now a days have options of a number of application, but when one tried to multi task and load switch between the application, the phone gets stuck and one is forced to turn the phone off and turn it back on, which results in a waste of time and loosing whatever data they were working on. Well now, iPhone4 has the solution for that problem. It comes with a small Apple A4 card, which is very powerful and allows the phone to run your favorite third party applications simultaneously and not just that it also allows the user to switch between the applications almost instantly with slowing the phone down i.e. its performance remains the same. Doing this doesn’t even eat up the battery time which is a great thing!

Apple team has come up with a multitasking user interface that allows the user to switch between the applications as quickly as possible. To check what applications were used recently all you have to do is double click on the home button. When you find a familiar application which you know you have used and you know it’s still running, you can simply double click on it and start using it without the delay of waiting for it to load again because the applications can remember where you left and when you return to the application it simply starts off from where you left whether its reading the news, playing a game or whatever else you were doing.

Unlike many other phones, which do not allow music to play in the background when another application is, running you can always listen to an audio in the background with the iPhone4. It doesn’t matter whether you are surfing the web of checking you email or playing a game or performing any other task, the music in the background will keep playing. Also the third party application sounds can also be heard in the background simultaneously when you are using other applications.

When using other applications, you can even run Skype in the background and for instance if you receive a voice call, the applications won’t close. If the phone is locked, the call will still come through and unlike other phones will give you a notification. Once you receive the call, you can always go back to the application and switch between other tasks like reading emails and checking movie listings.

It doesn’t matter if all the applications are off or if other applications are running, if you want the GPS will always keep running. Also the applications that use GPS will also keep your positions updates and will keep giving you directions turn by turn so that you never get lost. GPS audio keeps playing even if your music is on. You can choose between keeping the volume of your music high or the sound of the directions high. All these features and much more is what makes iPhone4 the best phone in the market right now. It is a delight to use it every time!

UPDATED: iOS 5 features: File downloads in mobile Safari

iOS 5 features: Apple preparing to allow file downloads in mobile Safari?

UPDATE: Never mind, this worked in iOS 4 if you had DropBox installed. Clearly I shouldn’t blog before coffee. Sorry folks!

Looks like iOS5 may finally bring file download support to iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Previously, if you came across a non-media file link in Mobile Safari and tried to do something with it, it would just sit there, staring back at you — mocking. Now, in iOS 5, Safari will serve up an intercept page that offers to let you send the file to any installed apps that can handle it… which right now seems mainly limited to online file stores like DropBox.

It doesn’t appear to actually be working yet either. At least, several people who tried it got an “unable to open this document error”. So Apple could just be toying with the idea, it could require iOS 5 API support in apps that won’t come until the fall, or it could be tied into iCloud features that also won’t show up until the fall.

iOS has long been able to handle web links for music, images, and videos, for email address and iTunes store downloads, etc. In iOS 4, Mail gained the limited ability to open certain document types in associated apps. Safari getting the same ability would be convenient to say the least, though if you sent an EXE or DMG file to DropBox (or iCloud?) for later use on your Windows or Mac PC, you’d need to make sure it was malware free before doing anything with it.

What kind of files would you like iOS 5 to offer download options for, and how would you use it?

[@Geezy_Geezy]

The difference between iPad 2 and Android tablet commercials

The difference between iPad 2 and Android tablet commercials

Apple has now aired a series of three Peter Coyote narrated iPad 2 commercials, the first of which clearly states up front that it’s not about specifications, it’s about experience, and they go on to show how different people can use, benefit, and enjoy the iPad in a multitude of easy to understand ways. Verizon has aired a couple Android tablet commercials during the same period, but instead of copying Apple’s marketing formula, they throw Flash and chipsets and radio acronyms at us.

Apple/iPad: “When technology gets out of the way everything becomes more delightful.”

Verizon/Android: “Your wife will love the dual core Tegra 2 chipset.”

Apple/iPad: “If you ask a parent, they might call it intuitive.”

Verizon/Android: “4G LTE upgradeable.”

Check out the videos after the break. Apple has shown how to sell tens of millions of iPads but apparently even Verizon still can’t hear them now.

Apple airs a new iPad 2 TV ad – Now [video]

Apple has just posted a new commercial for the iPad 2 called “Now” that looks at life after you have bought the iPad 2. The ad features the Wall Street Journal, FaceTime, the iBookstore, an app called Star Walk and a few others.

You can find the full advert after the break, let us know what you think!

[Apple YouTube]

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