Pinoy Trends » Apple

PadPressed: Turn your WordPress blog into an iPad native app

karlaredor — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 03:43:27 +0000

PadPressed will make your WordPress-powered blog to look like as if it is a native app for the Apple iPad when it’s accessed from it. This is actually a premium WordPress plugin and a theme and you can purchase it for $49.99. Do you think it’s worth the price just to have an awesome user experience when viewing your blog with an iPad? Check out the features after the jump.

Social Sharing Features
This will allow your readers to share your content via Facebook, Twitter, and Email.

Swipe Featured Slider
This will allow you to set a Featured category for your homepage.

Custom Homescreen Icon
If your reader decides to add your blog to their homescreen, you can design and upload your own homescreen icon (your logo) so that it would not display the boring bookmark icon.

Touch Based Navigation for Categories
Its touch based navigation for categories will allow a user to click on an icon associated with a certain category. The set of icons are overlays which are large enough. This makes it easier to press it rather than with text links because you have to do a pinch-to-zoom first before you can properly press a link.

Swipe to Advance
This will allow your users to use the swipe gesture on the iPad to navigate to the previous or the next article.

Accelerometer Aware
When reading it in a landscape orientation, your blog will have 3 columns and it will have a widget area on the homepage. If you’re accessing the blog in portrait orientation, it will only have a single column

Click here to purchase PadPressed

SmartCoach iPhone app: An App for Runners

karlaredor — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:48:09 +0000

Joining running events is one of the trends here in the Philippines. Runner’s World just released their iPhone app dubbed as SmartCoach. This iPhone app for runners creates a customized training guide depending on a race distance (i.e. 5km, marathon, etc.).

Features:

Input most recent race time
Weekly and long-term distance goals
training level (maintenance, moderate, hard, very hard)
schedule long runs (day and duration) resulting to their customized plan

The customized plans generated from the app is based from work of Jack Daniels, PhD. According to Mashable, he co-published two equations that relate oxygen consumption to the speed and length of various running performances.

Apple iPad Prices in Hong Kong and Singapore

karlaredor — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:26:41 +0000

The Apple iPad were already being sold in some stores here in Manila. There’s one in Rockwell which sells the 32GB iPad with WiFi and 3G. There are also some stores in Greenhills that sells the Apple iPad. Anyway, if you are planning to go to Hong Kong and Singapore anytime soon, or if you have friends who are there that will be coming home soon, it’s a good idea to get the Apple iPad there.

Apple iPad Prices in Hong Kong
Apple iPad 16GB WiFi – HK$3,888 (currently equivalent to PhP 23,205.31)

Apple iPad prices in Singapore
Apple iPad 16GB WiFi – S$728 (currently equivalent to PhP 24,604.00)

For the Apple iPad variants with WiFi and 3G, I estimate that the starting price could be around PhP 30,000+ when converted to Philippine Peso.

iPod Nano: Now with Video Camera!

karlaredor — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:43:19 +0000

Apple’s iPod Nano is amongst the leaders of MP3 players in the Philippine market. A new feature that has been added recently to this popular portable digital entertainment device is a video camera.

Even though the video is in VGA like most cheaper mobile phones offer, the resolution of the video is up to 640×480 pixels (30 fps) making it suitable for uploading in online video sharing sites such as YouTube. There are 15 special effects that you can use while taking a video. These special effects are: Sepia, Black and White, X-Ray, Film Grain, Thermal, Security Cam, Cyborg, Bulge, Kaleido, Motion Blur, Mirror, Light Tunnel, Dent, Stretch, and Twirl. You can see some sample videos here.

Music lovers who would also like to radio stations will be very much happy with the built-in FM Radio. Before, consumers will have to purchase third-party hardware add-ons just to listen music from the Radio. You can also pause music from FM radio but I’m not sure if it will work here. iTunes Tagging is another feature that won’t probably work in the Philippines since as of this writing, only some of US radio stations support the said feature.

New Sony Ericsson phones to watch out for

iPhone OS 3.0: Finally!

karlaredor — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:22:24 +0000

Everyone was becoming impatient with the release of the iPhone 3.0 OS update in iTunes. I was one of those. Anyway, I did not download it from iTunes by clicking the Update button. Instead, I learned a tip from TUAW where I only have to execute a few command lines from the Terminal and I will be able to get the list of the download links. I got the correct download link and pasted it to my browser. Time to download was pretty fast and I was excited. Installing is also easy. And if you see emergency calls appear on your iPhone screen, just wait for the main screen of the iTunes to load with the heading “Unlock your iPhone”. After activating your iPhone, you’re good to go

The 13-inch Macbook Pro

karlaredor — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:55:48 +0000

Owners of the 13 inch Macbook Unibody may have had mixed emotions after Apple announced the 13inch Macbook Pro in the WWDC ’09. Others were probably excited while others may have been dismayed especially those who have purchased the Macbook Unibody just a couple of months before WWDC.

This lighter and smaller Macbook Pro is probably included in the wishlist of those who would go for both performance and portability. A battery that would last 7 hours is impressive enough but still, the Acer Aspire Timeline beats it with the 8 hours battery life (standby time) and with a much lighter weight especially if the buyer’s deciding factor would be better battery life and a lighter weight. But if one would consider performance over a lighter laptop with a better battery life, a 13 inch Macbook Pro would be a great choice.

Coming this June 17: Apple iPhone OS 3.0 Update

karlaredor — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:29:04 +0000

Filipinos and the rest of the world are excited with the 3.0 software update for the Apple iPhone OS. Here are the features why you should upgrade to iPhone OS 3.0:

Cut/Copy/Paste
Landscape keyboard
MMS support (hoping that the MMS support will be available across the three major mobile networks here in the Philippines)
Spotlight Search
Bluetooth Stereo
Voice Memos
Autofill usernames/passwords for Safari
Internet Tethering (connect your iPhone to your laptop to connect to the internet – using your mobile network’s data service)
YouTube login
Peer-to-Peer games

In addition to this features that were announced during WWDC, I heard some rumors of including a video recorder to the 3.0 version of the iPhone OS. Also, if you closely read the page on the Apple website featuring updates on the iPhone OS 3.0, you will see there this snippet under MMS:

Send MMS messages and include video, photos, audio, and contact info. Even tap to snap a picture or shoot a video right inside Messages

I do hope that the Qik app for the iPhone would be listed in the App Store since it seems that there’s already an official app for recording video.

Amongst the announced features, I’m looking forward to the internet tethering feature (hoping that other carriers will support this).

Just like the 2.0 software update, the 3.0 update will be free to all iPhone users while iPod Touch users will have to pay $9.95 which is almost half the price of the Apple iPhone OS 2.0 update (20 USD).
The iPhone OS 3.0 will be free to all iPhone owners and cost $9.95 to iPod Touch users.

Mac OS X on your ultra-portable

karlaredor — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 08:11:28 +0000

Video Demo of Mac OS X on MSI Wind

As of this writing, the lightest laptop being sold by Apple is the MacBook Air. However, some just would not want to buy it because it’s so expensive for its specifications. The most practical choice would be buying either an MSI Wind or a Dell Inspiron Mini 9. You can just download the installer (Mac OS X that’s customized for the MSI Wind).

Dell Inspiron Mini 9