Not Great… But Works
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the Youtube app on the iPhone is great when you’re bored and looking for something to entertain yourself, but for real video viewing, you need real videos. And for videos, you need a way to get your videos in a format that your iPhone can play.

Videora is one of the many apps out there that does just that. I decided to try this one because it was completely free - you just need to suffer a few banner ads in the application (the interface looks like a poorly designed website). But quickly you find yourself ignoring the ads and in general it works great.

Videora allows you to convert 3 types of files - DVDs, video files (AVIs, MPEG, WMVs, etc.) and online videos into various iPhone compatible formats. Once you select the type media you want to convert, it’s pretty straight forward. Select the format you want to convert to (I tend to use the H.264 format as I found the compression difference is negligible compared to other formats and I know H.264 always works.), and press the convert button and come back in 15 minutes. You can also hit the “Show Progress” link which shows a progress bar, and allows you to control the CPU usage (anything above “Above Average” and your computer slows down so much you can’t even surf).

Overall, Videora has been working quite well for me. 99% of the files I’ve tested works (files with built-in subtitles do not; they either crash, or the subtitles are not converted). The program tends to crash after you press the complete button when the you’re done converting, but I usually don’t care since it’s done it’s job.

Verdict

Videora’s not a great app in by a stretch, but it works; and because it’s free, I’ll keep using is instead the variety of shareware apps out there.

App Review Score: 2.5 out of 5.

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Ripe or Rotten Tomatoes?

• Category: Entertainment
• Developer: Cyrus Najmabadi
• Version: 1.4
• Cost: Free
• For: iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch
• Download URL

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I found ourselves with some free time after dropping off our baby boy at my parents, and decided to catch a movie.  I pulled out my iPhone and loaded the local theatre chain’s website in Safari.  Finding a movie using the website was not a pleasant experience.  I had to drill down 3 menus starting from country to get down to my location, and then hit another page to find the showtimes for “Tropic Thunder”.  Even with 3G turned on this took more than a few minute to do.

Needless to say, after I got home I immediately started looking for apps that would speed up that process.  With that I started playing with two apps - Showtimes (review coming) and “Now Playing”.  Both apps take advantage of your GPS to find the theatres nearest your current location and provides showtime information.

The nice thing about the app being reviewed here - “Now Playing”, is that it integrates a number of features that makes a single-source for movie decision-making.  Besides finding the nearest theatre and displaying showtimes of the movies played, there, Now Playing adds a number of value-added features.  Now playing includes the movie synopsis, but more importantly, allows you to view the movies reviews from Rotten Tomatoes which I love.  Rotten Tomatoes is what I use before I decide seeing a movie anyways, so this integrated feature is perfect for me.

In addition to the movie reviews, even provides links to movie trailers.  I think this is a great feature if you are in a wi-fi network when deciding whether to see a movie or not.  The only thing is when I selected “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, the trailer that I got was the one for Sex and the City.  Luckily most of the links with the other movies were correct.

Thumbs Up or Down?

Thumbs Up.  I love apps that do more than the standard and provide you with features that make it the complete package.  For me, the integration with Rotten Tomatoes does it for me; if I just want to watch a movie with nothing in particular in mind, checking the tomato score and reading a couple of reviews makes those decisions so much easier.

App Review Score: 5.0 out or 5

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The Jack-of-all-trades note taker

• Category: Productivity
• Developer: Sophiacom
• Version: 1.0.2
• Cost: Free
• For: iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch
• Download URL

Some type of apps are available in bunches; surprisingly, the metronome is one of them.  The other one, much less surprising, is the note taking app.  There’s the default iPhone note app, apps that try special input methods, and those that transcribe voice notes into text.  YouNote is another note taking app - the approach it takes to be different is to allow you to take different types of notes.

First off you can take plain-old regular text notes. Type in what you want, save.  Load later.  To save itself from being completely vanilla boring, Younote adds little features like the ability to put in tags on the note for searching later, or attaching a contact to the note.  The second note is the photo note;  take a picture, and file it away as a note.

The next app is the voice app.  This app allows you to record an audio note.  There’s definitely a bug with this feature, because the playback volume (or record volume, not sure which it is) is so low that I originally thought that the playback didn’t work at all.  Only after a few tries did I realize it was just really low volume.

There’s also a doodle note, a mini MS paint for those quickfootball plays.  This one works pretty well I found - somehow with its simplicity and lack of too many options, i actually thought it responded well to my doodling than some pure doodle apps out there (although with much less tools).  Lastly, there is a web bookmark note that allows you to bookmark a website and add notes to the bookmark.

Overall Impression

Given the diversity of the functions in this note app, I’m willing to give this app a try for a while longer.  While none of the note types are particularly impressive, its usually not to be expected with jack-of-all-trade type apps.  You lose a little on the feature list, but you get a one stop shop in return.

App Score: 3.0 out of 5.

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Good with the right expectations

• Category: Productivity
• Developer: SpeechCloud
• Version: 1.1.0.0
• Cost: Free
• For: iPhone, iPhone 3G
• Download URL

As much as I love my new iPhone 3G, there are some features on my blackberry that I do miss on the iPhone.  Some of those features, I keep hoping will be added with future firmware upgrades (the ability to send and forward meeting requests on Exchange, for one).  Others, I’ve been adding slowly through third-party apps.  Voice Dialing is one of them.

From an interface perspective, SpeechCloud is as simple as they get (not that voice dialers in general have too many features from what I’ve seen).  Hold onto a button, say a name, and the program will do its best to find the best match in your address book and dial the number for you.

In terms of performance, I’d say it’s good - as long as you have the right expectations.  Having been using the BlackBerry’s voice dialer and the built-in voice dailers in cars for a couple of years now, I know that you have to work with the program in order for it to work. E-nun-cia-tion is key.  Having enough length in the name for the program to uniquely identify the name is the other.  This is no different than any other voice dialers I’ve used; which is why in my address book even my wife’s entry has full first and last names.  If you stick to the rules, it does a decent (not perfect job)

Conclusion

Personally, I think VoiceDialer is pretty good for a free app.  Speech recognition is a tricky art, and personally I’ve found it to work no worse (but no better) than a lot of other voice dialing capabilities of hands free sets out there.

App Score: 3.0 out of 5.

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