Pizza for storm workers

Pat wanted to take pizza to the crew working our street’s downed trees and power lines. We are at local Dominos, which went in with us, preparing to deliver pizza for 20.

NBA apps

As a National Basketball Association (NBA) junkie (my brother’s diagnosis), I have two NBA-sponsored apps: NBA Game Time Lite (free) and NBA League Pass. The latter permits me to watch lots of games on the tiny iPhone screen, provided that the game is not blocked because I’m in a geographic region that is within the broadcast area of the home team. In addition to the live feeds, it also provides standings, simple and more detailed results, and other features.

The free app does not provide video. I can get current scores from around the league, standings, and more. What’s interesting to me is that the for-fee League Pass updates less frequently than the free Game Time Lite! I can, however, alter the settings on the Game Time Lite to lenghten its refresh interval, but why should I as a close game comes to an end?

What is more, the data from League Pass seem to report the time remaining in the games more accuratelyl. At least twice I’ve switched back and forth between the apps while the time remaining in a game dwindled. The more expensive League Pass gave a gross estimate of the time remaining (e.g., “under 4 minutes”) while the free Game Time Lite reported the number of seconds remaining and updated every 15 seconds.

So, if a game is blacked out, am I better off when I use the free app? Is there no NBA coordination of the app-development efforts? Is there a problem with this business model?

Anyway, I’m glad to have these apps. They’re even valuable when one can watch a game live on TV, as they permit one to monitor team and player stats in real time. I’m removing neither Game Time nor League Pass from my phone.

Thanks, Mr. Pogue

I am pleased to be able to report that I have joined the bandwagon and am on my way to encouraging you to use Nuance’s Dragon Dictation speech software on your phone.

Thanks to David Pogue’s post, I learned about Nuance’s Dragon Dictation for the iPhone. I created the first paragraph with my first dictation, pasted it into Word Press’s iPhone app, and posted it here to edit. Dragon Dictation joins Nuance’s Recognizer (which has Mr. Pogue, or a look-alike, in a banner). It’s using the excellent resources provided by Xiph.org, the folks who’ve made a lot of things possible on the Internet. This news is all over the Web the last couple of days.

WordPress 4 iPhone

So, I downloaded this WP app for managing a blog from the iPhone, and this is my first test of it. Although many reviews on the iTunes app store reported concerns about the app, I haven’t encountered them.

I was able to connect on first try. I can navigate pretty readily. I’m experiencing no problems with comments.

To be sure, I would like to be able to use landscape for typing. Also, it would be nice to have a few common mark-up commands. At least I can type the raw commands…I trust.

Eye Glasses

I need ‘em. I can see things at a distance quite easily but, when it comes to near vision, I carry 2.50 magnification reading glasses. In this context, because I’d read about Freeverse’s app, Eye Glasses, it was one of the first apps I acquired.

The Eye Glasses app is ideal for farsighted individuals, those with reading glasses or bifocals, senior citizens and anyone that just needs to see more clearly. Both for convenience and in Emergencies, the Eye Glasses app is one more task the iPhone can do — and it’s always in your pocket.

Eye Glasses uses the iPhone 3GS autofocusing camera to clearly display text or imagery. To use Eye Glasses, choose between 2x, 4x, 6x or 8x magnification and hold the iPhone camera about five inches away from the item you want to see magnified!

I’ve used Eye Glasses only a few times in the first 10 days of having it on my iPhone. Most of those instances have been for the purposes of play, but I imagine I’ll be glad to have it several times in the future (e.g., removing a splinter).

I was somewhat surprised to see that I couldn’t find an information button on the app’s screens. Probably that omission is by design, but I haven’t deduced why it was designed without that function.

Link to Freeverse’s page about Eye Glasses.

apps series

As a consequence of my recent acquisition of an iPhone (3GS, 32 gb, 3.1.2), I’m learning about apps. I thought I’d post irregularly about what I’ve found interesting among these products. I’ll have to see how the series evolves, but I expect that it’ll include both quick reviews, comments, observations about the genre, and such.

Although the posts will be associated with the technology category, I’m going to give the series a category of its own, also. In keeping with what I see as current usage, I decided not to capitalize the category name.

Of course, folks are welcome to critique my observations and reviews. Note, however, that I shall monitor comments and, as I don’t want the posts to turn into an advertising opportunity for spammers (even if they are pushing good products), I’ll tag anything that looks suspicious to me. So, to keep addresses off the blacklists, I recommend that developers limit comments about their products.