A couple weeks ago, Robert Scoble tweeted out a link to an interview with a couple entrepreneurs who did something I haven’t seen others perfect. They came up with a way to let anyone create an iPhone application without developer knowledge or a lot of cash. Of course, I was thrilled about the idea and a little apprehensive about the results, but I just had to try it out.

Their company, Genwi, recently launched iSites.us, a site that enables people to easily create an application for the iPhone and Android platforms with little effort, and little cash outlay. The whole process involves $25 (or $99 – see below), some image preparation, and about 10 to 15 minutes of your day. This is followed by a week or two of waiting, depending on demand.

Preparation and Planning

iSites offers a couple different pricing options. The more expensive option gives you full control over advertising, allowing you to have your own ads embedded in your app or none at all. The cheaper option (the one I chose) is $25 and includes their own ads in your application. The ads really aren’t in the way, so for me, this was not a problem. If you want your own ads, you’ll need to make sure you have an account with the ad network you choose, but either way, give it a little thought and determine what will work best for you and your budget.

Another thing you need to worry about is your brand management. Before starting, think about your application’s title and description as well as keywords. Additionally, there are a few images you have to have ahead of time. You need an icon, an iTunes display image, a banner and a splash screen image (see the iSites Learn More page to get a peek of the image size and file type requirements. It’s best to have these images all ready to go to streamline the creation process.

Finally, you should grab the category feeds for your blog or site so you can have categories in place when the app launches. The more frequent your content, the more categories you may want to have set up.

Creation and Approval

The creation process and completed application is better seen than described, so I’ve included a video showing the process. For the most part, it’s about 10 minutes of filling out web forms and uploading some images. After that, it’s just a game of waiting for an email announcing the completion of your application.

There may be the rare case in which your application is not approved. In this case, you’ll need to revise text, images, title, etc until it’s approved. When the whole process has been completed, you can just search for your app and download it.

Completed Application

Once completed, the application doesn’t have a lot of features, but it does have some of the important ones. When you start up the application, the first thing you see is the splash screen. I saw at least one other company creating iPhone apps while inserting their own brand here, so I really liked that iSites helps you insert your own branded spash screen here. The app then loads up to the Home screen which shows a listing of your recent posts with thumbnails where available. Each post can be selected to view and read. While reading a post, you can jump up or down a post, favorite it or share it via email, Facebook, or Twitter. The sharing options are a must for an application like this.

Over all, the application is really smooth and brings my blog to a whole new audience pretty seamlessly. Better still is the ability to manage it from the iSites web site control panel. From the control panel, I can change my images, description, etc. Additionally, I can add or change categories and other feeds. This really does feel like a pretty decent blend of control and simplicity.

Application Analytics

I love numbers. More than just any numbers, I love numbers that tell me people are reading what I write. Even before purchasing my app creation, I was a little excited about the prospect of seeing how many people downloaded my iJoeTech iPhone application. Once the app has hit the app store, you have analytics at your fingertips via the iSites web site control panel.

Amazingly, I had a nice bunch of downloads of my app before I even knew it was in the App Store. Pretty exciting. While it’s fun to watch, the numbers are important as a barometer for how your keywords and other criteria work to get someone to look at your app and then to download it.

What’s Missing?

I’m not sure if the analytics pages cover just the iPhone downloads or both iPhone and Android. I’d love to see analytics for both on the same graph. It would also be nice if the application had an option to open a post in Safari. Most of all, though, I’d love if there was some way for the application to hook into my Wordpress and let the user submit a comment right from the app.

Conclusions

I’ve been wanting to create a JoeTech.com app for the iPhone for a while now and although I had seen other offerings, this one resonated with my mostly due to the ease of setup and the low cost. It truly is pretty amazing that I can give JoeTech.com readers a customized iPhone application so easily for only $25. I think every blog should have such an app and iSites.us is the place to get it done.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of SellMyMobile.com. All opinions are 100% mine.

I’ve sold a number of cell phones on eBay and elsewhere over the years. I like to upgrade to the newest phone that suits all (or most) of my needs, so I often find myself with a phone to sell. I was asked, this week, to review SellMyMobile.com, a site dedicated you helping you sell mobile phone and get the most out of your used cell phone.

What SellMyMobile Does

In short, SellMyMobile.com is a site that helps people sell mobile phones for more money by showing the seller the current buying prices for used cell phones from (at the time of this writing) 21 different used phone buying sites. So how does it work? I registered for an account, but if you just want to find a the best price for your used phone, you don’t need to register. Just head to the site and search phones. As you type in your phone model, the search box brings back live suggestions and tries to anticipate your phone model to save you time.

I love anything that saves me time. I also love that the search suggestion includes the best sale price. So before I was even done searching, I had a good idea of what I can sell this phone for. I clicked the iPhone 3G S 16GB that I have and it took only about a second to come back with a full list of prices.

It’s important to note that although most people will go right to the top price, there was at least one option for my phone that included “up to £300 in vouchers”. Depending on your specific needs, an option like this could be much better than the top cash offer, so when you use SellMyMobile.com to find a buyer, make sure to look through the whole list. In my case, I clicked the button to sell it for the highest cash amount, which was about $415 US, and it dropped me right out to the buyer’s site to complete the process of selling and shipping out my phone.

The whole thing was pretty easy and took about a minute to get that far. The buyer I ended up with, (phonerecyclebank.com) seemed to have a pretty streamlined process for completing the sale, too. One thing I thing I thought was missing here is the currency conversion. Being from the United States, I’d like to see a US dollar amount, but couldn’t find that option in my settings. A quick visit to Google with a search for “260 pounds to dollars” got me the number I needed, though. Additionally, I hear those of us in the U.S. may have a site with U.S. currency some time soon.

Broken Phone? No Problem

Here’s something I hadn’t considered. Someone wants to buy my broken cell phone. When I went to my buyer in the example above, I found that they buy broken phones, too and would offer almost half as much for a broken iPhone. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a way to make the results include prices for my broken phone, so for now, I’d probably just go with the highest non-broken offer. This is another feature I’m told is in the pipeline.

Why register?

To be honest, I registered out of habit. Looking back, I may not have save for one reason:

Would you like to be alerted when you mobile phone contract is due for renewal?, Please set when you would like to recieve an alert from SellMyMobile.com

That’s a great idea. My contract is really the thing that might prevent me from upgrading again, so it would be nice to get a reminder. Of course, I might want more than that as a reason to register, but it is a nice feature.

Conclusions

I’m not even sure I have to say it at this point. The site is great and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to part with a used mobile phone. A couple small features would make this site perfect, but even without them, I’m definitely bookmarking it for my next cell phone sale and so should you.

Many states have laws about using your cell phone while driving. Even where the law permits it, using your phone while driving can be dangerous. I have to admit, I talk on the phone while driving a lot. Although I can still drive safely, it’s inconvenient and ties up my free hand. Nokia sent me something that makes it all easier.

About the HF-510

The Nokia Speakerphone HF-510 is a hands free kit for your car that connects via Blue Tooth to your phone. Simple enough, but what makes this different from other hands free kits out there? I’ve seen a ton of them and decent kits start around $50 last time I checked and the HF-510 comes in a little over that mark. The first difference this device has over others is easily noticed the first time you look at it. The large, easily mountable speaker allows for nice clear audio and can be pretty loud if you want, too. Because I didn’t want to mount the speaker for my review, I found myself throwing it in the cup holder in my car. The speaker size is just about a perfect fit for the cup holder, so if you want to share it between cars, you could try that.

The next stand-out feature I found on this device was the OLED display for caller ID. The whole point of a hands free kit is to not be messing with your phone while driving, so it’s nice to have the incoming caller’s number displayed. This is a great feature and shows up nicely. I hate getting stuck on the phone in my car with someone I don’t want to talk to or someone trying to sell me something. If you don’t mount the speaker or use the included visor clip, though, this feature is not as easy to notice without taking your eyes way off the road. So if you need the caller ID, mount the speaker or use the visor clip.

Other Features, Likes, Dislikes

Additionally, the Nokia HF-510 has a ring around the outside that is used to control the volume and sift through the phone book. While it’s kind of cool and probably works fine if you mount it very stable, it otherwise makes the phone book navigation and volume control harder to accomplish with one hand. While I didn’t really use it long enough to notice any battery issues, it boasts up to 30 hours of operation time and 180 hours of stand by time on the included battery. That’s pretty decent, but they provide a car charger for those really long trips.

Conclusions

This hands free kit just worked well. I might have liked it a little smaller for my visor, but it has a nice design and was generally easy to operate. Call quality was as good as being on my phone, itself and it paired up really really easily. For the extra extra mile the HF-510 goes, I expected a slightly higher price than what I’ve seen and that doesn’t hurt one bit. The Nokia HF-510 looks and works great at a good price, leaving little to ask for.

As you may know, I had my own little security problem at my house when a guy was repeatedly urinating on my storage building in the wee hours of the morning (no pun intended). Luckily, I was slated to review a very flexible and professional security camera system and caught the guy on video before catching him in person. The video and photo are in that post above, but today I learned of something just as interesting that happened at CES.

In the incident I referenced above, my late night visitor had no way of knowing I was recording him because I hid the camera very well and it was dark and late. In this story, the star of the video, Willy Wu, walks up to a booth, picks up the contacts book full of information from potential clients looking for further contact from the company, leafs through it, and casually walks away with it. At any other booth, he may have gotten away easily in a show as enormous as CES. Unfortunately for Wu, the booth he took the book from was that of Swann Security, a global leader in security monitoring solutions. Now that’s just dumb.

According to the article, Swann staff caught up with the guy at CES pretty quickly and he handed over the book without hesitation, but then ran off. Eventually, they’ll catch back up with him, but the important thing here is that he didn’t get away with all that client data.

Have any similar stories? Share below.

Have you ever held a flashlight in your mouth to shine light on something you needed both hands to work on? If so, keep reading, because Joby sent me something they’ve designed for just such a situation.

What Is A GorillaTorch?

The item pictured above is a product called GorillaTorch. The idea is to free up your hands while it still shines light on whatever you need to see. The web site touts it as a

must-have for auto repair, home improvement, camping and more

While it doesn’t seem to be made for standard walking around flashlight use, it seems to have the above mentioned situations in mind with it’s bright light and included tripod.

(Additional Joby GorillaTorch Photos)

How Well Does It Work?

When I saw this in the mail, I decided that this thing needs to do two things and do them well to get a passing grade from me. It’s a flashlight, so obviously it’s ability to illuminate a dark area with lots of light was my first demand. It’s 65 Lumen CREE LED light source was not only super bright, but also adjustable. I usually keep it all the way up, but it’s nice to be able to conserve the batteries with less light when you don’t need as much.

The second make-or-break feature for this torch is the ability to have it point where I need it without holding it. I’m no stranger to Joby products, having recently provided a Joby GorillaMobile review, so I already had some expectations. As I thought, the GorillaTorch’s tripod was almost the same as on most of their products. It’s what they do, after all, so it did not surprise me that it did a wonderful job of gripping to just about anything I tried to wrap it around. What I didn’t anticipate is that it’s magnetic. It’s not something I would have thought necessary, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.

The average battery life is 20 hours at full brightness all the way up to 80 hours if you dim it down. This seems acceptable given that it runs on three AA batteries.

Conclusions

Compared to high end flashlights running upwards of $90 and supermarket flashlights you can get for a couple bucks, the GorillaTorch fits nicely in the middle at $30 but has some benefits neither offer. Comparisons aside, it’s a very reasonable price for the only torch I’ve seen that would fit some of my needs. As part of my testing, it found its way into my server room where I actually needed to use it when the power went out. After having to shut down servers with one hand by iPhone light too many times, the GorillaTorch has a permanent place in that room now and has already proven useful. Anyone who needs light and both hands at the same time should give the GorillaTorch a look.