Thank you Steve Jobs for changing our world. For looking at a device and taking it to the next level. For not being afraid to be different. For being the little fish in the big pond and showing us that anything is possible.

Your life may have been cut short, but you’ve left a great company behind and the most amazing fans. We will miss you.

Don’t be sad because it’s over. Smile because it happened. — Dr. Seuss

Thanks for the memories Steve. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

NOAA Weather Radio is an iPhone and iPad app that lets you listen to over 160 weather radio stations from all around the country and even a few in Canada.

The app also has current weather conditions, radar and forecast.

If you setup your location, it’ll alert you via push notifications when there are severe alerts in your area. Just like a normal weather radio, it’ll make the weather radio warning sound too.

What’s nice is that you can set up alerts for just your county. And, if you want, you can set up alerts for any other county in the US.

At $3.99 for iPhone and $1.99 for the iPad (limited time price), this is one cheap, fully featured, portable weather radio. It’s perfect for anyone who wants to be notified of severe weather in the area.

Sadly it’s not available for Android. If you know of a good one for Android, let me know.

Turn your iPad or iPhone into a weather radio. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

I’ve been testing out both Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player and have to say that they are both nice services.

Below are my pros and cons of each service after some initial testing.

Price:

Google Music – Free (for now)
Amazon Cloud Player – First 5 gigs are free, after that it’ll cost. Tip

Uploading:

Google Music:

• Pro: Creates a native Mac system preference.
• Pro: I can set the bandwidth used to upload my music.
• Pro: Automatically uploads all my music. And when new music is added to my system, automatically uploads that as well.
• Con: It uploads all music in iTunes. The only other option is to manually add individual folders and that’s not very convenient. So my Google Music account includes Jingle Bells and The Wheels On The Bus. Not exactly what I want to hear all the time.

Amazon Cloud Player:

• Pro: Select which playlists or songs you want to upload. It organizes everything by iTunes playlist so you can choose only certain playlists if you want and exclude the Christmas music.
• Con: You have to login to Amazon Cloud Player on the web and click the upload button before you can use the upload app.
• Con: No bandwidth controls.

Playlists:

Google Music:

• Pro: Uploads all of iTunes regular playlists to the web.
• Con: Doesn’t upload smart playlists.
• Pro: Can create instant mixes.

Amazon Cloud Player:

• Pro: Uploads all of iTunes regular playlists to the web.
• Pro: Uploads all smart playlists too.
• Con: Smart playlists don’t auto update, they are basically regular playlists now.
• Pro: Can re-upload playlists to get them in sync.

Both can create new playlists on the fly, however there is no way of creating smart playlists.

Player:

Google Music:

• Pro: Android App – Android player is very user-friendly, clean and works well.
• Con: No iPhone App
• Pro: Website works on iOS so you can play your music on iPhone or iPad. However it is a bit slow but they do say it plays in the background.
• Pro: You can play your music on the web. The website is nice and clean and easy to use.

Amazon Cloud Player:

• Pro: Android App - Android player is decent, however it’s bundled with the Amazon store and it feels bulky.
• Con: No iPhone App
• Con: The website kind of works on iPhone and iPad. However it’s still pretty buggy.
• Pro: You can play your music on the web. The website is ok, not as nice as Googles, but it gets the job done.

Other Features:

Google Music:

• If you use Chrome, get the Play/Pause and Skip extensions for your browser.
• You can rate songs via thumbs up or down.
• You get free music just for signing up.
• Will work with Factotum on the Mac soon, which allows you to play/pause/skip via the keyboard.

Amazon Cloud Player:

• Having the Amazon Store available is pretty nice sometimes. You can quickly purchase a song and have it in your cloud player in seconds.
• You can download your music to your phone or back to your computer.
• Works with Factotum on the Mac which allows you to play/pause/skip via the keyboard.
• It’s open to everyone right now.

If I had to pick one, I’d probably choose Google Music as I like the web and Android user interfaces better. Plus the ability to control my music from my browser and auto uploads of new songs in iTunes just make it easy.

Granted both services could be over shadowed if iCloud comes out next week and creates an even better cloud music solution. However we’ll just have to wait and see how that pans out.

Even better than both services is my iPod. Cloud based music services like these are nice, but nothing beats the speed, portability and features of having an iPod with you.

Google Music vs Amazon Cloud Player – A quick review. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

Bird Zapper has fantastic graphics, good game play and it keeps me wanting to play more. Basically you use your finger to connect three or more like birds and zap them.  There are plenty of combos and bonuses and it just hooks ya.

If you’ve got an iPad or iPhone I think you should check it out. For $0.99 it’s a heck of a lot of fun.

Spent $0.99 on Bird Zapper for iPad and it’s awesome. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

I was trying to replace Toodledo with Remember The Milk. RTM has a nicer interface, seems simpler, a lot of people rave about it and it just felt like a good move.

A Pro account is $25/year and it includes apps for Android, iPhone, Outlook, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and an option to see new features before others. My main reason for upgrading was for the iPhone app.

I moved some of my stuff from Toodledo to RTM and things seemed ok. Turns out, a different getting things done (GTD) app doesn’t do any good when you don’t do much with it in the first place. I was trying to get organized though.

When I got my iPad, I was re-energized to get things organized. Sadly, there is no Remember the Milk for iPad, however there was one for Toodledo.

For $4.99 I could get Toodledo apps for my iPod Touch & iPad. These didn’t require a Toodledo pro account or a yearly fee.

Turns out that Remember The Milk made me realize why I was using Toodledo in the first place. The free version does everything I need and what it lacks in the web user interface, it more than makes up for in features. Plus if I stuck with the iPad version, there were no user interface concerns.

When it came time to renew my Remember The Milk Pro account, I saw no need. Toodledo does everything I need, saves me money and I feel more organized now than I have in a long time.

Saying Goodbye Remember The Milk Pro originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

This is something my wife pointed out long ago when I first got my iPod touch. I was adding apps that access my financial data and, whereas they were password protected, the iPod itself wasn’t.

If you think of it, you add your email, Twitter, Facebook and lots of apps to your phone. It’s a mini computer that you take everywhere, so why don’t you have it protected by a passcode or password?

Plus with more and more companies like WellsFargo, Bank of America, Chase and American Express creating apps for smartphones, your data becomes more accessible to you, and anyone who has your phone.

Leaving your phone un-locked allows anyone who has your phone access into your personal life. Even if it’s just your email, that’s connected to all of you other accounts. Once they have that, they can take almost everything.

And don’t think it won’t happen to you. Remember the guy who left his iPhone at the bar? No one hacked his accounts, but it does prove that anyone can lose their phone.

Do the smart thing and ensure that your smartphone, tablet or any portable device is protected by a passcode or password. The minor inconvenience of typing in the code is nothing compared to the added security it brings.

Does Your Smartphone Have a Passcode? It Should. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

If you’re anything like me, you’ve got thousands of songs on your iPod. Some songs are great while others you’re not quite sure why they are on there. No one has the time to sit down and go through them all, so why not mark all the songs you no longer want with one star, and then delete them later?

I’ve been doing this for a few weeks now and it’s working great. I have my iPod playing at work and whenever a song comes on that I no longer want, I rate it with one star. Then, every few days or so, I fire up iTunes, the iPod and ratings sync, I sort them by rating, and then delete all the one star songs. This removes them from my iTunes, iPods and iPad as they are all in sync.

Even if you manually manage your music on you iPod, you can still sort by rating and clear off any one star songs. Downside here is they’ll still be in your iTunes and other i devices.

It’s easy, efficient and a great way to clean the old music off your iPod that you no longer like.

Clean Out Your iPod With Song Ratings originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

Lily and her Mighty Mouse.

It all started with the Mighty Mouse. She wanted something to play with and I had a mouse that was in need of new life. It was broken so I cleaned out the insides, removed the cord, washed it down, and gave it to Lily. It’s her very first Apple product.

Lily and a classic one button mouse.

Lily has also played with the classic one button Apple mouse. However, she’s not as big of a fan. Mainly because Dad hadn’t cleaned that one up specifically for her and it got taken away right after this picture.

Lily on the iPod Touch

The iPod touch is another one of her favorites. She gets to play with it from time to time and never wants to let it go. Her favorite app is Awesome Ball, however she has a tendency to touch everything and interrupt the game. That and she likes to eat it.

Lily on the iPad

And then there is the fancy iPad! It’s big, bright and so much fun to play with. Lily likes to bang her hand on the screen and usually only get a few seconds with the iPad when she does get her hands on it. However, we’re both looking forward to the day when she can play the games I’ve already downloaded for her.

It didn’t take Lily long to become an Apple fan girl, but that’s mainly because I’m an Apple fan boy.

I’m Turning Lily Into An Apple Fan Girl originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

I did a lot of Googling and a lot of testing and came up with one solution; iRip.

iRip is a Mac and Windows application that can transfer music, movies and playlists from your iPod to iTunes. Now backing up music and movies isn’t all that special, but the fact that it can backup playlists was the one feature I couldn’t find anywhere else.

The way it works is that it imports all the songs on any given playlist into iTunes and keeps the playlist intact. The good news is that it doesn’t duplicate all your music in iTunes either. It only copies over what isn’t already in iTunes and links the songs that already exist in iTunes to the playlist being backed up.

The only downside I found was that it was very particular about exact matches between the iPod and iTunes files. It did import some duplicates, however, out of nearly 14,000 songs and 10 playlists, there were not that many duplicates that I had to clean up.

iRip does come with a price tag of $20, but it’s not a bad price seeing as it’s the only application I could find to backup my iPod playlists, and not screw up my iTunes library.

How To Backup iPod Playlists originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

Good news, you can get an iPad Nano.

Exclusive iPad Nano Picture

iPad Nano, now available everywhere.

Also know as the iPhone or iPod Touch.

iPad Nanos Now Available originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

When the iPad first came out, a lot of people said it was just a big iPod Touch. Sure, it’s similar, but it’s so much more. The screen size alone makes a huge difference. You have no idea how small an iPhone or iPod Touch really is until you play with an iPad. It makes me look at my iPod Touch and think ‘how can I even use this?’

iPad Size vs iPod Touch

Another great thing about the screen size is that everything look so good. Upon firing up AccuWeather, the icons are beautiful and the presentation is fantastic. Apps can become so much more than they are on the iPhone as more screen real estate makes a big difference.

AccuWeather

The iPad also makes me feel as if I’m Tom Cruise from the Minority Report. You know, when he’s swiping screens left and right and clicking on things all in the air. I walk by my desk, swipe the screen and click on an app and it makes me feel like I’m from the future.

There are some downsides, as with any gadget. The virtual keyboard is great, but you’ll still type with your thumbs. If you want to write a paper, or long blog post, I’d suggest getting a bluetooth keyboard or the USB adapter.

Strangely enough, the F and J keys on the iPad keyboard have the little lines on them just like regular keyboards so your fingers know where to be, except you can’t feel them. Odd.

Also iPhone apps run, but run in iPhone size. So Tweetie Twitter works, but you don’t get to take advantage of the whole iPad screen. Sure, you can enlarge the app to 2x the size, but the quality is less as it just stretches the app bigger. More companies need to create iPad versions of their apps as the iPhone versions just don’t do the iPad justice.

2x Scale Up Sample (click to see detail)

Then there is charging. I’m not sure how new your Mac has to be, but I haven’t found one yet that will charge my iPad when plugged into USB. Instead, it must be plugged into the wall.

Overall I love the iPad. It’s fast, does pretty much everything I want, and works great as a little laptop. Especially when my iPod Touch was a first generation so just having sound built into the device is a huge feature for me. It’d be even better if it had a camera, but I think it’d feel awkward taking pictures with the iPad.

I think the iPad will only get better and more and more apps get created for it. There are lots of iPad apps out there, but there are also a lot of publishers that haven’t updated their iPhone apps to take full advantage of the iPad screen.

To me, the iPad is an entertainment system. I can play games, watch movies, go online and stay connected with everyone and I just love it.

My iPad Review – It’s Fast, Fun & So Pretty originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

You see, my wife rocks. She likes to get me sweet presents. This year she was going to get me an iPad, but thought she’d ask me if I really wanted one first. Which I do, kind of.

The iPad is that new shinny Apple toy that every Apple fan wants. So of course I want one! But, the downside here is that my wife would then take my iPod Touch. Which this is a problem as an iPad is portable, but not like my touch. It’s not going to look good mounted on the dashboard of my car and it won’t fit in my pocket. So I’m thinking no on an iPad.

So what about a new iPod Touch she says? Well mine is a first generation touch and I’d love an upgrade, but only if it were to come with a camera; which they don’t. A new iPod Touch would be faster, have an external speaker, microphone, and have more space, but lack any camera and I’m tired of carrying around multiple devices.

So what about an iPhone? It has all the features I want, except it’s with AT&T and I’m very happy with Verizon. I actually just want an iPhone without the service plan but that’s an extra couple hundred dollars according to a guy at the Apple store.

So this is my dilemma. I basically want an iPod Touch with a camera. Is that too much to ask Apple?

I get a feeling that if I were to get a new iPod Touch, it’d be updated and include a camera like a month or two later. You know how Apple works.

So then I started thinking about other gadgets like the Droid. It’d combine my phone, camera and music player into one, but I’d still have my iPod Touch for all the apps and the iTunes music that is ‘protected’ by DRM. So that doesn’t make things much better.

That’s what I’m currently thinking about. My wife is awesome to give me such a dilemma to think about, but when I’m not that good at making decisions, that makes it even harder.

My iPad, iPhone, iPod Dilemma originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The biggest features on the iPhone are the touch screen and the accelerometers. For years now, all Apple laptops have a touch pad, which works in the same way. They all have a motion sensor built it too, but I’m not sure if it’s as good as the accelerometer though.

Plus Apple recently released the Magic Mouse which is also touch sensitive just like the touch pads on laptops and the iPhone screen. So could this all be leading up to iPhone apps on the desktop?

Rumors are that developers were told to make their apps work on the big screen. Everyone assumes the tablet, which could be included, but why not make them work on the desktop as well? Create an iApp app that ran iPhone apps as desktop applications and Apple would see more app sales and more app developers.

To get the best appearance of iPhone apps on the desktop, Apple could use the technology in the latest Quicktime Player to hide window elements when the window is not active. That would keep apps looking consistent with the iPhone.

To make it even better, what if Apple made the iApp work in Windows too? They’d then be taking on Adobe Air and Microsoft Silverlight for cross platform apps. And with so many current iPhone users, they’d quickly dominate the space as the iPhone apps we love could run on our desktops too!

Granted this is all speculation on my part. But what if it were true? What if Tweetie 2, Facebook and other iPhone apps could run on your desktop?

iPhone Apps Coming To Your Desktop? originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

Getting the local news on an iPhone or iPod Touch meant loading an overly busy, and usually slow, website or a very basic, and usually ugly, mobile version.

Now however, WCCO, the local CBS station, has come out with an iPhone application that is beautiful! See for yourself.

WCCO iPhone App

WCCO Mobile Website

WCCO Website

I’ve actually thought that WCCO has had the best designed news website in the Twin Citites and it’s great to see them taking the lead again with not only an iPhone application, but also an Android app.

You can download the WCCO iPhone app in iTunes for free.

WCCO News Comes To The iPhone In Style originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

Sometimes you want something new, something festive and something to put you in a party mood.  Something to dance to!

I’ve put together a list of some of my fun and/or unique holiday songs that are worth checking out. Maybe you’ll find one or two to add to your collection.

• Call Me Claus – Garth Brooks
• Deck The Halls – SHeDAISY
• Merry Christmas From the Family – Montgomery Gentry
• Jingle Bells – Crazy Frogs
• Winter Wonderland – Jason Mraz
• Santa’s Gotta Semi - Keith Harling
• Cool Yule - Bette Midler
• Christmas Without Carol - Elliott Yamin 
• ‘Zat You, Santa Claus? – Garth Brooks
• It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year – Gonzo & Rizzo
• Mary Christmas Happy New Year – ‘N Sync
• Merry Christmas Baby - Pepe 
• Hallelujah He Is Born – Sawyer Brown
• What Christmas Means to Me – Jessica Simpson
• Sleigh Ride - SHeDAISY
• Girl of My Dreams - Jonas Brothers
• Merry Christmas, Baby - Elliott Yamin
• Christmas Vacation – From National Lampoons Christmas Vacation

Most songs above can be found on iTunes or Amazon for $0.99. All should help you shake your groove thing this Christmas.

What Christmas songs have you found that are fun and festive?

18 Holiday Songs To Party To originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

Tis the Season to be Joll-E

Also available is the Happy WALL-E Days iPhone background and the WALL-E Jammin on an iPod desktop.

Tis the Season to be Joll-E originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

Happy WALL-E Days!

Happy WALL-E Days – iPhone Wallpaper originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

It’s already at the correct iPhone size and the placement of the graphics is optimized for for the iPhone as I left space at the top for the time and date and Jack is nicely centered on the iPhone screen.

Enjoy Nightmare Before Christmas fans!

Also, be sure to check out my Firefox theme HalloFF featuring Jack Skellington.

Add Jack Skellington to Your iPhone originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

Todo is a $10 application that specializes in creating task lists on your iPod Touch or iPhone.  It’s pretty basic in use, but does allow for multiple task lists, priorities, due dates, notes and more.  You can even customize the line that crosses out a completed item.

All of that is good, but one feature took it to the next level; synchronization.  Todo will synchronize your tasks with Remember the Milk (pro account) or Toodledo (free).  This is the money feature for me.  I wanted to be able to put in tasks on a computer yet sync them to my iPod, and the other way around too.  I didn’t want my data stuck online or just on my iPod.

With Todo for $10, and a free Toodleo account, I have exactly what I’ve been looking for!

As a plus, Toodleo comes with many additional features including Twitter integration, Firefox extension, Adobe Air application, Netvibes & iGoogle widgets, Google & iCal subscriptions and so much more.

Screenshots!

Todo – A Great Little iPod Task List originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

I was excited to see iTunes 7.7 this morning and then TUAW tipped us off as to how to get into the App Store.

Excited to check it out, I found a few free applications and downloaded them. Nothing to exciting but the Remote application does let me control iTunes or Apple TV (if I had one) from my iPod.

I did see some nice checklist applications too, which I do want, but I’m waiting for one from Remember the Milk or some other system that can sync online.

It seems a bit empty right now, but exciting none the less!

Now, if I could only get the iPod Touch 2.0 software update so I can use the applications.

My First Apple App Store Purchases originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com