Many people were moaning about the lack of a built-in camera on the iPad, it never really bothered me as I don’t think I would use it anyway, however this app, which costs just 59p, allows photos to be taken with the iPad, although maybe not as good as a built in camera, having a wireless ‘bluetooth’ camera also has it’s advantages, it allows images to be viewed and snapped that would be difficult or at least embarrassing to take with a built-in camera.

Obviously all of this assumes you have an iPhone to begin with!

Go get it here!

WeeMee makes it really easy to make great looking avatars of yourself, the options are a bit limited, for example the body shapes don’t appear to have any affect on the final avatar, at least not when they are clothed.

For anyone who wants an avatar of themselves for their website etc it’s great, although don’t expect anybody to recognise you from your WeeMee avatar.

To help both myself and my customers I decided I needed a better system to keep all of this data in order, I had two main issues, first was keeping all of my clients contact details, including domain names and hosting purchased from me, as well as their login details for site administration, webmail and ftp, the second was billing and invoicing clients for any work I have done for them.

The simplest and most effective option I could find was ‘Wallet’, by acrylic, for storing all my clients details in one place, with the added benefit of iPhone syncing, which means I now have access to all of my customers details no matter where I am, if I ever get an email from a client in a panic having misplaced their ftp password whilst I’m perusing the coffee section in the supermarket I can simply copy and paste the required details into an email from my iPhone!

For billing and invoicing I needed an application for tracking time spent working on projects that was simple to use yet flexible enough to accommodate various rates of billing such as flat rate and timed. I initially looked at ‘Billings3′, and whilst it’s a brilliant application I found during my free trial that the interface and features were more complex than I needed, the invoice templating system also seems difficult to use.

It was whilst browsing for alternatives that I found ‘OnTheJob’ by StuntSoftware, it has a beautiful interface and is very easy to use, the invoice templating is a joy to use, just drag and drop required elements onto the page!, ok maybe it lacks the reporting of Billings3 however I don’t think that’s something I’ll need.

All dekoded customers now also benefit from having their project files mirrored and backed up, which means protection from hard drive failure and accidental deletion.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all existing dekoded clients for their custom, and if you are reading this and still haven’t decided who to trust with your website needs then I hope this post shows that dekoded treats it’s customers needs and concerns with the priority they deserve, we want to give you a level of service that we can be proud of!

There are literally thousands of Apps available for the iPhone, now I’ve just discovered that you can even use it as a security camera to monitor your home or business with the help of iCam.

iCam is a brilliant App that allows you to view live camera feeds on your iPhone, it’s simple to use and even allows notifications to be sent to your iPhone when motion is detected from any one of the cameras you have configured, a maximum of 4 cameras can be monitored at any one time.

The beauty of such a setup is that you are likely to have your iPhone with you at all times, and if you do get a notification you can start the App and then see if there is anything untorward going on, or it was just your cat wandering past the camera!

I’d been waiting for ages for TomTom to release their navigation app for the iPhone, however it felt like it was never going to happen and with rumours of a price the wrong side of £100 I was searching for an alternative.

I first downloaded the demo version of the Navigon app, although quite simplistic it seemed to offer what I really needed, but then Sygic released their app, for just over £50 I couldn’t resist the app which included europe mapping, Unfortunately after some real world testing I soon realised that it just wasn’t reliable enough and I couldn’t trust it, the app was slow to track my position and often got confused.

In the end I had to accept that I’d made a poor choice and wished I’d waited for the TomTom, just when I thought all was lost I checked the app store and noticed that CoPilot had released the UK SatNav app for a bargain price of £25!, having used CoPilot on a previous smartphone I knew it would be great and it is!

Okay, it does lose track of my position once or twice during a journey and can take a second or two to realise that I have started to move when pulling away from junctions and traffic lights, but apart from that I’ve found it very reliable, has loads of routing and display options and has a beautiful interface.

If you have an iPhone and drive a car then what are you waiting for? go get CoPilot before the price goes up!

CoPilot 8 for the iPhone, dekoded rating 9/10

I’ve just discovered a great app for the iPhone, it’s called ‘Simplify Media’ and it’s amazing!

Basically this app, along with come client software which installed on your host computer, allows you to stream your itunes music to your iPhone, you can even create shared playlists and share either all or selected music with your friends.

I’m surprised that this app has been released, as it allows music files to be shared and I imagine this could harm music sales from the iTunes store?

This app also has the benefit for those who have limited storage space left on their iPhone memory.

Although this app also works on the iPod Touch, the iPhone has a huge advantage as files can be streamed even over a relatively slow phone connection, it takes a while to buffer songs when not in range of a 3G network but it does still work.

The only downside that I can see is that a host computer needs to be running all the time and obviously a home broadband connection is required, this would be a great use for an old laptop or computer, if I upgrade my trusty old MacBook then I think I’ll keep it as a media server as it’s very cheap to run compared to a desktop PC.

Go here to find out more: http://www.simplifymedia.com/

Just got my new 3GS iPhone this week, Yippee!

I had the original iPhone when it was first launched but sold it soon after I got it as I realised it just couldn’t cut it as my full time all-in-one gadget and had to resort to a Pocket PC device…urgh.

This latest iPhone really was worth waiting for and can finally compete with any other smartphone on the market, but there’s one thing that no other mobile phone has and that’s the gorgeous user interface ( and stunning good looks ).

What I’m most impressed with though is the apps, it’s tightly integrated into both the itunes interface and direct from the iPhone, there is a huge range of brilliant applications available for the iPhone and no other mobile device benefits from Apples huge resources and infrastructure.

I was using a Nokia 5800 as my daily mobile device as I couldn’t face getting lost in yet another windows mobile sub-menu to perform the simplest of tasks, to be fair the 5800 is a great phone, it has all the features anyone could really need and is tough enough to take the everyday bumps and knocks, a complete new housing can be purchased for a mere £25, so even a heavily abused 5800 can be made as good as new with a new case.

The trouble is, once you’ve seen and used an iPhone you really won’t want to use any other device, sure the S60 interface is much better than the nightmare that is Windows Mobile, and a device like the 5800 is perfectly adequate, much cheaper and much more sturdy than an iphone, but it just can’t compete with the ease of use and the amazing range of apps available for the iPhone.

One area where the iphone was lacking is a SatNav application, however Navigon have just released their Navigation app and TomTom are soon to release a bracket and app which will finally make the iPhone a viable option as a Multi-use device and is what led me to finally come back to the iPhone.