Marianne Schultz

the musings of a geeky girl

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What we have here is a failure to communicate

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I posted a review of Push 4.0, an iOS push notification app, this week at AppShopper. What I didn’t mention in that review is what drove me to find it to begin with, which was ultimately a lack of support and responsiveness from the first push notification app I’d tried, Boxcar.

Granted, there aren’t many push notification apps in the App Store right now and Boxcar is arguably the most popular one. But Boxcar stopped working for the most important RSS feeds I like to stay on top of and nothing in their troubleshooting tips helped, so I turned to their support forum. I found another user with the same problem and posted in his thread here to add my voice. That was back in May. Fast forward to July and there was still no update from Boxcar though others had chimed in to say they have the same problem.

I even pinged Boxcar on Twitter a couple of times and received no response there either.

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everythingiCafe: the show “Cheese Whiz”

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Chris Meinck and I recorded episode 37 of the everythingiCafe podcast this week and it is now available for download through iTunes. As always, you can use the embedded audio player here (unless you’re on an iPad or iPhone) to listen to it if you’d rather not go all the way to iTunes to get it.

We talked about a lot of iOS 5 and iPhone 5 rumors, which all point to releases in October for the latest version of Apple’s mobile device operating system and the new iPhone model. I don’t know about you, but I am more than ready for a new iPhone model – although I’m still pretty happy with my iPhone 4, I’d really like to get past the never-ending rumors and get to real news. Hopefully Apple will announce its press event to unveil the iPhone 5 soon.

We also talked about a funny observation made by the acting president of HTC’s American division who doesn’t believe that iPhones are “cool” anymore following a visit to his daughter’s college.

Chris’s Teh Awesome earned him a little teasing from me since he selected a flashlight app for his iPhone 4. Surpax Technology’s Flashlight saved his bacon during the power outage caused by Irene a couple of weeks ago.

The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks

My Teh Awesome was the SAS Survival Guide app for the iPhone. I have some paranoid leanings, particularly related to any Zombie Apocalypse (and any t-shirts referencing said apocalypse) that may occur, and the SAS Survival Guide provides a ton of information on how to survive in a variety of environments should all hell break loose and civilization shudder to grinding halt in the face of a catastrophic event. If you’ve ever wanted instructions on how to trap and kill wild game, field dress their carcasses, and use every last bit of meat, bone, and fur to help you survive in the wilderness, this is the app for you.

(For the record, I’m also getting a survival guide in paper form since I’m quite sure that electricity to power my iPhone will be scarce during the Zombie Apocalypse.)

We usually record the podcast every week on Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. ET though our schedule for the next few weeks is a bit tentative at this point. See this thread in the everythingicafe.com forum or the site’s Twitter feed to get the most up-to-date information about our recording schedule.

Lion can kiss my…

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If you listened to the everythingiCafe podcast episode #32, you probably already know that there are many things about Apple’s latest version of the Mac OS, Lion, that irritate the hell out of me. I’ve calmed down a little bit since then and have made some settings adjustments to tame Lion into something more manageable.

But despite these tweaks, I still don’t feel like Lion is necessarily a step forward for Apple and it certainly has not made any substantial improvements to my day-to-day productivity. Why, you ask? Well, the reasons are manifold, my dear.

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Review: Adonit’s Jot Pro Stylus for the iPad

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Image courtesy of Adonit

I’ve now spent a couple of weeks with the Jot Pro stylus and like it a lot – enough to get rid of the other styli I’ve collected over the past year and a half or so since the iPad first came out. It offers more precision than the other rounded-rubber-thing tipped styli currently on the market. And it has an ingenious hidden feature: a magnet that lets you attach it temporarily to your iPad 2 to prevent it from rolling way if you need to take a break from writing for a few moments.

The Jot Pro’s tip is metal with a clear plastic disc over it. You can see where you’re writing more easily and it writes very smoothly, feeling almost like you’re using a pen on paper.

My detailed review is now up on YouTube – it’s embedded here after the break.

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everythingiCafe: the show: “Mario’s Pizzeria”

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Episode 36 of the everythingiCafe.com podcast is now available through iTunes (or you can listen using the embedded player right here as long as you’re not visiting my site on an iPad or iPhone – sorry!).

Chris Meinck and I talked about Steve Jobs stepping down from the CEO position at Apple (which I also wrote about in a blog post) as well as the purported iPhone 5 prototype lost in San Francisco and the dubious involvement of the SFPD to locate it. So far, it sounds like the SFPD may have acted inappropriately in assisting Apple. Chris and I also talk about what either one of us would do if we found a prototype iPhone.

Of course, the most recent iPhone 5 and iPad 3 rumors were on the agenda as well. We also chatted randomly about our experiences with hurricane Irene (Chris’s was much worse than mine since he lost power for nearly a full week and experienced some flooding).

Chris’s Teh Awesome for the week was actually a Teh Suck involving the requirement for an internet connection for iTunes to authorize computers and transfer rental movies between devices. He had a bad experience trying to watch a movie rented through iTunes during the power outage caused by Irene.

My Teh Awesome was the iOS game I am currently addicted to:

It has guns, more guns and aliens. What more could you ask for?

We usually record the podcast every week on Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. ET though our schedule for the rest of September is a bit tentative at this point. See this thread in the everythingicafe.com forum or the site’s Twitter feed to get the most up-to-date information about our recording schedule.

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