Princess Ariel's Mobile Application Blog

Email was such a great technological advancement.  It is so much more efficient and affective for the age we live in.  The availability of email has become greater and greater with each passing year.  The capabilities are truly mind-blowing.  The iPhone has added an Email application that lets you add as many email addresses to your address screen as you want.  The instant you get an Email, the iPhone vibrates to let you know that "You've Got Mail!"  Once you open the mail icon, it lets you know which account and you can reply now from your iPhone as well.  

How nice would it be to have every activity you are obligated to appear on your cell phone and send you a reminder so that you are never late and never forget birthdays, anniversaries, weddings etc.?  Paper calendars get easily lost and misplaced.  There is always room for mistakes on paper calendars and its difficult to erase and change.  White out is to messy.  With the iPhone calendar application you can keep track of all your business meetings and appointments and reschedule easily.  The iPhone will list events in order of month, daily and hourly.  With reminders you can set up to an hour before the event, you are bound to be on time for everything.  The calendar will not let you unknowingly book two events at the same time. What a wonderful solution to the over-booking, time-crunching, chronically late people!!!

 

 Shazam is quite possible one of the smartest iPhone applications.  It is perfect for the music lover and perfect for the person who is on the go and in the car a majority of the day.  Have you ever been driving around in the car and heard a song on the radio and thought, "I really like this song, i wish i knew who sang it!"  Well with Shazam, problem solved.

The concept behind Shazam is simple: whenever you hear a song playing and can't identify it--on the car radio, at a friend's house, at a bar--you activate the Shazam application on your mobile phone. It "listens" to the song for about 30 seconds, then sends a text message to your phone identifying the artist and title. Shazam's database contains audio fingerprints for nearly 5 million songs, so there's a pretty good chance of a positive ID. However, closing the loop with an actual purchase is hard--you have to tag the song, then consult a Web site to see your tagged item, then go to another service (such as iTunes) to buy it.

The version of Shazam for the iPhone 2.0 fixes this problem: once you've tagged a song in Shazam, you can launch iTunes directly from that tagged song and buy the song immediately. That's assuming you have a Wi-Fi connection to the Internet--iTunes doesn't let you download music over a 3G data connection yet. (This is weak, but it's not Shazam's fault. Once Apple, AT&T, and the music companies work out all the business details to allow 3G downloads, Shazam could become even more useful. )

Downloading Shazam from the Apple App Store is free for the time being. No charges are mentioned in the terms and usage but the company reserves the right to begin charging for its service later (after notifying users). Using Shazam from other phones generally costs about $1 per identification, or about $4 per month for unlimited usage, so a similar fee structure could apply to the iPhone version as well. Below is a demonstration of how Shazam works. Enjoy! 

Facebook is a social networking website launched on February 4, 2004. The free-access website is privately owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves. The website's name refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some American colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus.  Now Facebook has developed a mobile application and for the interface and home menu for your mobile device.  From anywhere you can be socially connected with your friends and colleagues. You can chat, message, post, upload pictures and update your status from anywhere. There is also a Myspace Mobile application that essentially allows the same type of social interconnectivity. 

Have you ever been lost?? Well if you are anything like me, even a native of our great city gets confused at times.  With all the one way streets downtown and the constant road construction, its easy to throw any traveler astray. But not with the iPhone!!! The Global Positioning System (GPS) is the only fully functional Global Navigation Satellite System signals, that enable GPS (GNSS). The GPS uses a constellation  of between 24 and 32 Medium Earth Orbit satellites that transmit precise microwavereceivers to determine their location, speed, direction, and time. GPS was developed by the United States Department of Defense.  The iPhone enables a constant GPS which means that where ever you go, your GPS keeps up with you.  It's as simple as typing in your final destination and selecting "route" and this wonderful application will take you anywhere your heart desires.

 

Above you will see the YouTube icon boxed in on the Apple iPhone interface.  This another extremely useful Mobile Application offered.  From the desktop of your Mobile Phone you can access thousands of uploaded videos from YouTube visitors across the world.  Not only can you access videos but with the proper equiptment, you can upload them directly to the internet.  Once logged into YouTube you can comment on videos and watch as many as you wish.  YouTube is a valuable tool for quick reference and demonstration of whatever you desire to look at. Also it is an added bonus to keep your kids entertained for hours!!!

With technology so readily available now it is easy to access the Internet at many different locations throughout the day.  You may check your email at work, school, the library and your cell phone.  However one of the great benefits about Mac, or more specifically the new 3G iPhone is the capabilities of the iTunes store and the iPod features.  From your iPhone you can access the iTunes store and download, purchase and listen to podcast, artists, and new releases.  You can virtually find any artist you desire and instantly purchase their song(s) for .99 from your iPhone.  You can sync your iPhone with your iTunes library and have your entire music genres at your fingertips.

Mobile Applications have come so far within the past few years.  There are limitless possibilities as to what you can do now with and from a mobile phone.  The possibilities are endless.   Who would have ever thought that it was possible to check email, search the web, access and use social networking sites, use a continuous global positioning system, access satellite radio, check the weather, access iTunes and iPod capabilities, and many many other applications.  It truly is a remarkable new feature and much of Mobile application success is credited to Web 2.0.