I haven’t had to go shopping for an apartment since before the iPhone. I have a love/hate relationship with the task. I love to see a new place and imagine a new home and how I could dress it up, but I hate all the driving around and making notes about everything. That part feels like work. These days, however, the iPhone spoils us with all sorts of ways to make things like this easier. You know the saying: “There’s an app for that.”
The MyNewPlace app
When provided the opportunity to give a paid review of this application, I have to admit that I hesitated. I really thought it would be some mediocre app and, having not been apartment shopping for years, I was unaware of MyNewPlace.com, which is actually one of the biggest apartment search sites on the web with over six million listings. Before even deciding to review this app, I made sure to watch the video below, and that’s what convinced me to give it a shot. The video provides a quick walk through of all the features and how they work.
Of course, to provide a fair review, I needed to download the application myself and come up with an apartment shopping scenario. I decided to re-enact my apartment shopping task when I was moving Michelle out here to live with me. We needed a two bedroom place with some nice features, a decent pool, and close to my office and also to a freeway as she didn’t know where her next job would be. Armed with some base criteria and my new app, I set out for an adventure (on my couch, that is).
Searching
The first thing you’re asked for is a city and state or a zip code to search. Alternatively, you can use GPS for location-based searching, but I wanted to search across town today. I’m all about the fastest route and this was it. After typing in the zip code at my office, I had 76 results, but I have criteria, remember? So I tapped the “Filter” button and all sorts of filtering options showed up on a new screen. I wanted two bedrooms so I could have a home office. Air conditioning is a must-have, as is laundry and a pool, so I turned all those filters on. After applying filters, I got a new list back, narrowed down to 30 results, but I want it to be close to the freeway, so I tap the “Map” button and up pops a map with 30 little flags. Here, I was able to move up and down through the list with a couple arrow keys or directly tap a flag for base info. I could then further investigate a property by tapping it’s info box.
Property details Once a property has been selected, I want to see pricing details, photos, amenities, etc. I also want to know about deposits, pets, etc. The details area just says “Yes” for pets, which I have to assume means all pets are welcome. It also doesn’t show “Fitness Center” for one of the places I looked at like it does for other places, even though I know this complex has one. If that was a deal-breaker, I’d be avoiding a good complex for no reason. I’m unsure if that’s due to too many other amenities listed or the complex just didn’t include it when they submitted their data. From the details page, I can go to another map with just the one property listed, view photos, see a property description, see the unit options, call them, email them, email the information to a friend, save as a favorite, or enter notes and photos. The photo gallery is clean, offering a large view and five thumbnails along the bottom. I like that they accommodate more than five photos by just letting you flick the thumbnail list left or right for more. I think my property actually had twenty photos. You can also just ignore the thumbnails and flick right through the larger views. The property description page includes a thumbnail, name and address of the property, contact options, and a long blurb of text. In this case, the text included visible HTML that was neither parsed nor stripped, so that looked a little funny. The next option from the property’s profile page was “See Units” which just shows the available unit types and detail about each such as square footage, number of beds/baths, and monthly rent range. One of the little treats that brought it all home was the Notes & Photos area. Suppose I visited the property. I could note that it had a full (two-sink) counter in the bathroom and a large garden tub. Both are selling points for me but aren’t listed in the amenities. I could also take a few pictures during my walk through and they will be saved to this profile. As soon as I do either, it saves this property as a favorite. Of course, I can always get back to visited properties with the “Recents” and “Favorites” buttons on the starting screen.
My wish list
- Larger photos I can zoom in on.
- Floor plans.
- Some form of indicator on a button to let me know it is going to eject me from the app out to Google Maps or my email. (There should be a standard, actually, and all apps should follow it).
- More details in regards to amenities, etc.
Conclusion
For starters, you can hardly ever go wrong with free if an app is even a little useful, but how does it compare to the competition? To answer that question, I downloaded four more apartment search applications and put them through the same test scenario. Comparatively, the other applications I tried offered larger photos or more detail or in one case all sorts of things I didn’t care about, but none were as intuitive and functional. This app is very easy to use and for the most part, well thought out, but could use a couple extras like larger photos and more details.
I love to travel… I don’t get to head out of town often, but when I do, I need my technology. Being away from my computer for more than a few hours gets me a little twitchy, so road trips have traditionally been hard to deal with. With the iPhone and the almost unmanageable list of applications to choose from, things have gotten much better. I just got back from a road trip from Phoenix, AZ to Long Beach, CA, where Michelle and I stayed on the Queen Mary for an extended party, and my iPhone helped a lot when it came to relaxing and getting things done. Here’s a list of ten must-have iPhone applications for your road trip.
Google Maps
One of the original built-in applications in the iPhone’s OS is the Google Maps app. With it, you can quickly search for your destination and map your route to get there. With your trip all mapped out, you can relax and just check in once in a while for any freeway changes or other details. Of course I’m still waiting for Google to give us turn-by-turn directions on the iPhone for free (yes, I AM that spoiled by Google), but there’s a few (not free) apps out there to try as well. I use Google because it’s incredibly simple and I can jump right to street view to see what the building I’m looking for looks like.
Pandora
My favorite source for streaming music on the web is also my favorite source on my iPhone. What I didn’t know was how useful it could really be on a road trip. I intended to make a note of where in the desert it stopped working, but it just kept working the whole time. Other than a couple times cutting out for about 30 seconds, Pandora streamed brilliantly over AT&T’s 3G network the entire drive. Now if AT&T could just get my phone to reliably make phone calls where I need it to…
Email
Another standard app on most smart phones is an email application and the iPhone has a pretty complete email program and it handles multiple accounts. The thing that I used to hate is coming back home to find thousands of emails to go through. This weekend, I was able to keep up with my two important email accounts and respond to people in a timely manner while removing all the spam from my server to only sync valuable emails when I get home.
TweetDeck
While I tried to enjoy my vacation more than Twitter, I still have thoughts and photos I want to share while out of town. Vacations also offer lots of fun things to tweet about. I’ve tried a few of the top Twitter iPhone apps, but this one is my favorite. Just waiting in line for tickets to the aquarium, I was able to check for new tweets, mentions, and DMs and reply to a couple in just a couple minutes. Then I globally marked the rest as “read”. Easy.
Weather
It’s always important to know the weather where you’re going, and if you’re on a long road trip, this can be tricky. When we drove to Detroit and back last summer, we passed through several states and the weather app was very useful to plan out our wardrobe as well as touristy events.
Safari
Despite the completely unexplainable fact that I still can’t view flash in a web site in Safari on my iPhone, it’s still a great browser. It’s pretty fast and renders very nicely. Best of all, it’s as close as I’ve ever gotten to a real web browsing experience on a phone (except sites with flash). Wireless access in many hotels will run you about ten bucks a day and in the Queen Mary, it didn’t matter because I got almost no wifi signal in my room. Browsing the web over 3G in my room was a huge convenience on many occasions.
Gazette
I read a lot of blogs. I try to stay on top of industry news and events and still read blogs of colleagues and influential bloggers. I could lock down an hour in my room to do this on the laptop, but then I wouldn’t be vacationing, would I? Instead, I prefer to skim my preferred feeds in the frequent spare moments when I’m waiting for Michelle to get ready, the elevator is taking forever, or, dare I say it… the bathroom. Catching up in these otherwise wasted spare minutes leaves that hour free for vacationing.
Camera
I have a digital camera and it takes better pictures than my iPhone, but it also runs on AA batteries, is inconvenient to tote around, and lacks the luxury of instant sharing. With the iPhone’s camera, I can snap off a shot any time and I can take thousands before I run out of space. There’s tons of ways to share my photos, from the Facebook or MySpace apps to Twitter apps to Flickr apps like the one mentioned below. Additionally, with the 3G S, I was able to shoot video, which I found myself doing a lot more on this trip.
FlickIt
One of the apps I use the most, vacationing or not, is FlickIt. It just uploads your photos right to your Flickr account. You can add detailed information and tags to each photo, but I usually just do that later from a PC. The only thing missing is the ability to upload videos to my Flickr account. Then it would be perfect.
WiFiTrak
WiFi is almost always a better option than 3G in terms of speed, but when you travel, you often have to wait until you’re at the hotel or near a hot spot and even then, it will usually cost enough to make you grimace a bit. One way around this is to leech off someone else’s WiFi. Just fire up this app and find a suitable (and open) connection and use it. As seen here, you won’t always find an open router, but when one is nearby it helps to have a fast way of knowing and connecting to it.
Bonus : RDP
What if that piece of information, email, phone number, etc is only available to you from your home or office computer? This happened to me over the weekend. I can’t think of a better test case. Servers were about to be moved and I needed quick access to some IP addresses that were in a list only on my computer at the office. I was on the beach with no other electronics than my phone, but I opened the RDP app and connected to my computer at the office, got the information I needed, and went back to enjoying the beach. The alternative would have been to catch a cab, get back to the hotel, fire up the laptop and pay for the WiFi access. I have only needed this app twice and it could use a little bit of tweaking, but both times it was a life saver.
I’m no DJ, but I know cool tech when I see it, and when I was sent a Tonium Pacemaker to review, I had a good feeling I’d like it. The Pacemaker is essentially a music player with dual outputs, a large hard drive, and mixing capabilities crammed into a tiny package. It’s like a DJ’s travel kit. Having mostly no clue how to really DJ, I decided to enlist the help of local musician and club DJ, Brian Forge for this review.
It’s got the look
Part of being a DJ is your image and who doesn’t want hardware that looks cool? From the pacemaker itself right down to every detail of the packaging, Tonium put out a great looking product. When you open the box, everything in it is in it’s own special place and in it’s own smaller black box, including the user manual which is also black and made to look cool. This thing oozes cool every step of the way. The Pacemaker is all black and it’s small… like, cell phone small. Well, maybe a little bigger than my iPhone, but for DJ equipment, that’s not much of a footprint.
Immediately noticeable are the two main components of the Pacemaker on its face: the display on top and the touch control on the bottom. The color display packs in a lot of information while you’re mixing, and looks pretty good. The touch interface is pretty smooth after you figure it out. Before you figure it out, it’s pretty frustrating trying to make anything happen, but it doesn’t take long to learn. Between the display and the touch pad is a touch slider to control the blending of the left and right tracks and with it are some more controls. On the side is a button that you can slide up for the headphone output. One end has the output and power jacks while the other end has the power button, a menu button, and the USB port. Inside this tiny package they’ve crammed a 60GB hard drive and I’ve seen other reviews with claims of 120GB drives.
The software and community Speaking of the internal hard drive, that’s where the software for your laptop or desktop is kept. No CD needed. Just plug the Pacemaker in and it prompts you to install the mix software on your PC. Don’t try it on Windows 7 RC1, though, because Brian did and it did not play very nice. It’s not an official release of the OS, so I didn’t expect it to. On XP, however, the software installed and offered some pretty cool features. It did have some problems dealing with us loading up the same track multiple times and trying to overlap it, but it also smartly prevented us from adding conflicting affects to the same spot on the timeline. The software, like the Pacemaker, is well-designed and has a lot to offer the rising DJ.
Better still is the mix community. Tonium is plans for this device to not replace all the expensive pro equipment, but rather to provide an open doorway for amateur DJs and those of us who just want to play. One of the great things about the device is that, aside from the obvious loading of tracks onto the Pacemaker, you can import and export mixes, completely layered with the cue points and blends you or another mixer created. So let’s say you throw down an awesome mix and you’re proud of it and want to share. You can export the mix to your computer and upload it to the mix site where others can listen, download and rate it. How’s that for community interaction? If it’s good enough, your mix might get featured and linked to from the newsletter. The mix site is a great idea that will surely help some newbies feel more comfortable with the Pacemaker.
Forge to the rescue
When found this thing in my mail box, my first thought was of how cool it was and if I could keep it (sadly, no), and my second thought was, “I’m not a DJ. How am I going to really review the capabilities of this thing?” So I called in a DJ. Brian Forge has been DJing for a long time and has been asked to guest DJ in other cities and over the weekend, he was nice enough to drop by the office for a few hours and try out the Pacemaker.
The Pacemaker is a great little piece of equipment. It features many, if not more, features than you find with standard CDJ units. All the basics are covered and there are many other FX available to play with. The interface does take some time to get used to though. I only had a short time to familiarize myself with the features and functions but as I caught on, I was able to navigate rather well. I could easily see myself using this while traveling. Whether to practice certain mixes, experiment with ideas, or even practicing and keeping myself entertained, this would come in handy. I do feel there are certain limitations though. I was not impressed with the way their cue system is set up. It makes it difficult to properly set cue points. It is a bit cumbersome to navigate a track once you set a cue point and even more difficult to reset one once it is laid. As with CDJs, you can only lay down one cue point at a time. Because navigation is a bit tricky, controllerism is a moot point with the Pacemaker. You will not be able to scratch or bring in FX on the fly. You have to hit the switch, and perform the most accurate of finger movements to just bring up the right FX, let alone control them. However the touch interface does seem to work well for basic DJing. Especially the crossfader. With proper practice, the sensitivity allows for some clean and accurate cutting between tracks.
Overall, I think this is an amazing little device. The limitations I have seen I believe are purely because of how hard it is to pack everything in to such a small, sleek little package. I definitely see myself wanting to pick one up as a “toy” and as a backup device, should my primary decks fail. I could easily see this being used by DJs on the road, by rising DJs honing their skills on the fly, and even people that host parties who want a DJ without going through the effort of hiring a professional.
Thanks, again, to Brian for his insight.
Conclusions
The first thing I think about is the price. It’s not exactly cheap, but it’s not expensive by comparison, either. For an aspiring DJ, it’s a pretty good price and a nice portable device. For a pro, it’s a great travel companion, like Brian said. If nothing else, you could save a mix and DJ a party at the drop of a hat. The usefulness of it seems to stop just short of professional needs, but is pretty complete for a beginner and I really enjoyed the amount of attention Tonium payed to details ever step of the way. Definitely worth the money if you have it to spare.
Lately I’ve been reviewing a lot of Samsung phones and while I enjoy them, this was a nice little change of pace. The Shadow comes with Windows Mobile and a slide-out key pad. It’s a good looking phone, but is it a great phone?
(view more photos below or see the whole set here)
In the box
The Shadow came in a familiar box layout, which I’m not fond of because the top folds out but is weighed down with the user guides so it can rip pretty easily. Inside, along with the phone, is a decent case, a USB connection/charging cable, a wall charging cable, headphones (with extra foam covers), and an adapter. These are the items I usually need with my phone and it’s nice to see them all included.
It just feels different
I’ll be honest. I’ve been playing with a lot of touchscreen phones and I own a touchscreen, and I just like them better. That said, the Shadow does offer a pretty comfortable feel and makes up for some loss of navigation ease with the smooth navigation wheel. It moved just a little too easily for my tastes, but literally just a little. It did make getting around in the phone a bit friendlier. It’s still no touchscreen, but it’s a better solution than most other non-touchscreens, so that helps.
On the back of the phone is a 2.0 megapixel camera, which is smaller than many modern smart phones, but enough to get the job done. The color gradient on the back is a nice aesthetic touch and the weight is just right for this smallish phone. Charging is accomplished by plugging into the bottom of the Shadow. This is how it should be for every phone, in my opinion. The other edges contain the usual buttons for camera shutter, volume and power as well as a MicroSD slot. The face of the phone provides a display a little smaller than some of the high-end smart phones and buttons for menu navigation, call/power functions, home, and back. Amid all these buttons is the navigation wheel which is molded to help your finger grab it. The center of the navigation wheel is a button for selecting.
Using the Shadow
One of the cool things like like about a vertical slider like this is that you can just slide it up to wake it up. I kept forgetting about that, but after owning one for a while, it’ll be a natural movement that will save you those split seconds throughout your day. Unfortunately, I found it was too easy to accidentally dial someone in your fave five. I may have accidentally dialed someone that was pre-programmed in my five a couple times. One of the cool features of this phone is that you can switch between cellular and wi-fi for making phone calls, which is great if you’re always worried about your minutes. Phone calls were good, the camera was pretty decent, and the overall usability experience was above average.
My thoughts
For about $150, this is a pretty good phone. It packs a lot of features into a small footprint and some of the physical features are just plain more intuitive than other non-touchscreens. The battery life seemed a little short in my testing, though. If you were going to buy a smart phone on a bit of a budget, this is a decent choice, but if you have the money, a (more expensive) touchscreen might be a better choice.
Once a property has been selected, I want to see pricing details, photos, amenities, etc. I also want to know about deposits, pets, etc. The details area just says “Yes” for pets, which I have to assume means all pets are welcome. It also doesn’t show “Fitness Center” for one of the places I looked at like it does for other places, even though I know this complex has one. If that was a deal-breaker, I’d be avoiding a good complex for no reason. I’m unsure if that’s due to too many other amenities listed or the complex just didn’t include it when they submitted their data. From the details page, I can go to another map with just the one property listed, view photos, see a property description, see the unit options, call them, email them, email the information to a friend, save as a favorite, or enter notes and photos. The photo gallery is clean, offering a large view and five thumbnails along the bottom. I like that they accommodate more than five photos by just letting you flick the thumbnail list left or right for more. I think my property actually had twenty photos. You can also just ignore the thumbnails and flick right through the larger views. The property description page includes a thumbnail, name and address of the property, contact options, and a long blurb of text. In this case, the text included visible HTML that was neither parsed nor stripped, so that looked a little funny. The next option from the property’s profile page was “See Units” which just shows the available unit types and detail about each such as square footage, number of beds/baths, and monthly rent range. One of the little treats that brought it all home was the Notes & Photos area. Suppose I visited the property. I could note that it had a full (two-sink) counter in the bathroom and a large garden tub. Both are selling points for me but aren’t listed in the amenities. I could also take a few pictures during my walk through and they will be saved to this profile. As soon as I do either, it saves this property as a favorite. Of course, I can always get back to visited properties with the “Recents” and “Favorites” buttons on the starting screen.
