Posts from ‘reviews’
Hootsuite iPhone App Review
Hootsuite.com is to Twitter what Gmail is to email. It’s like a swiss army knife for twitter. So if you haven’t tried it yet I highly recommend it. It’s my favorite twitter client and it’s web based. You get all the benefits of the cloud and none of the BS that comes from traditional desktop software. IE software updates syncing between multiple computers etc etc…
The new Hootstuite iPhone App (iTunes link) includes all of that functionality. The app is snappy, easy to use, and slick. It allows you to go between you mentions, DMs, etc with the swipe of the finger. Just like paging through your apps. It also has infinite scrolling ala Google Reader. I’ve been using the product for a few weeks as Ryan Holmes aka @invoker gave it to me to check out. You can get the app starting December 10th, 2009.
Pros:
- Multiple Twitter Accounts
- It’s fast
- It’s clean
- The UI is very well done
- It does stats
Cons:
- Initial setup wasn’t as simple as it could have been.
Conclusion:
IMHO the Hootsuite iPhone app is the best twitter client for the iPhone.
[Get the Hootsuite iPhone app (iTunes link) | or visit http://hootsuite.com/iphone]
The GorillaMobile from Joby is a small flexible tripod that lets you attach a small camera or an iPhone to pretty much anything. It’s a great little tripod. It comes with the standard 1/4″-20 tripod screw, a suction cup for the iphone, and an adhesive for other applications. It is very grippy for such a small thing.
I wanted to use this to mount my iPhone to my bike and improve the quality of the live stream from my bike. Turns out you cannot use this tripod to mount your iPhone to your bike. The suction cup is simply not strong enough. On my first time out it was solid for the first five or ten minutes. Then I hit a little bump and my iPhone went flying off at high speed. It skipped, bounced, flipped, and grinded to a halt. Normally this would make me cringe but I’m secretly hoping my 3g will die so I can get a 3gs. Either way my iPhone is now so scratched to the point that the suction cup no longer works on the device.
Also, the whole suction clip thing is really annoying to use. If you mount the suction wrong you have to basically dissemble the head of the tripod to put the suction cup back on.
Pros:
- Small
- Light
- Flexible
- Cheap
Cons:
- Suction is not strong enough for movement
- Locking mechanism is not designed well at all
Conclusion
Don’t buy this if you need to mount your iPhone to anything that bounces around. Otherwise it’s a great little tripod for static applications.
[Get it at Amazon | Joby]
I’ve stopped holding out for the perfect video camera and purchased a Flip Mino HD camcorder. At some point I decided it was better to have low fi videos of my life than to have none. Full res 1080p videos that don’t exist aren’t very fun… So here’s a couple quick thoughts on the Flip Mino HD:
Shooting Video with the Flip:
The mino is very easy to use. All you have to do is push the giant red button and you’re shooting video. There are no settings and that is an awesome feature. You can toss it in your pocket and go because it’s super light small. It’s so easy to use that I’ve started using it to send that you videos instead of thank you notes… It’s perfect for little off the cuff youtube style videos.
Quality:
The quality is crap. Get over it and have fun with it instead. For those who want to know the lack of image stabilizer really hurts the the quality of the video on playback. If you need to shoot some quick video and put it online quickly this is the best solution for you. If you need super high quality video that will be viewed on large screens get something else.
FlipShare Software:
The software installs right off the device itself. No install disk bullshit, no drivers, none of that crap. It’s a huge plus to be able to get going quickly.
Pros:
- No tape
- No capturing
- Easy Uploading
- Small
- Easy
- It’s fun to have lots of video
Cons:
- No image stabilizer
- No HDMI
- The screen is low resolution
- The buttons don’t work very well
Conclusion:
It’s amazingly rare to find a piece of technology (excluding Apple products) that has good hardware-software integration or whatever that’s called. 99% of the time the device kicks ass and the software is complete shit. In this instance both the device and the software do exactly what they should and nothing more. What’s even more rare is something simple and fun to use with no feature bloat, yet.
