photo credit: woodleywonderworks

So you’re learning a new language.  We’ve mostly focused on free or nearly-free resources that you can use to assist you in this process.   So now you find you are willing to spend a little money, but not a lot, or you need a little more assistance or you just need a little different approach than the free resources have available for you.  What kinds of things are available to you?

Continue Reading

A few week ago, I received a copy of this book to review. I’ll admit it, I’m primarily a Mac user, but I use Windows XP at work, and I run it on my Mac in a VMWare session so I can support my Windows Mobile devices and do those things that are available only for Windows. And yeah, I’m one of the many, many, people who played with the Windows 7 betas – and I like it. Not enough to give up my Mac, but it’s nice to see what Vista should have been finally come to fruition. It’s not perfect, but it’s still very nice.

So, even though I haven’t done a book review since I left school many years ago, I was looking forward to this book because I was hoping to learn about the new OS in some detail – like in previous versions of this book. That’s not quite the spin they took this time around, however. So let’s see what they did instead…

Continue Reading

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

In part one of “Learning a Language on a Budget” I talked a bit about the things you can do to get prepared to learn a language. A number of you offered comments and provided additional information about some resources that are available. Much appreciated!

In this second post in the series I’m going to focus on some of the Internet resources that are available for the study of Spanish and, to some extent, other languages. There are an amazingly large number of resources available to language learners on the Internet.  Many resources are free (or near free) and, with proper dedication, can go a good distance toward your goal of learning another language without spending any (or much) money!  So let’s take a little time and examine a few of these resources.

Continue Reading

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

So far, I’ve talked about dictionaries and dictionary sites, and other language-learning resources on the Internet.   There is, however, one Internet service that many of us will come across, even if we aren’t in the process of learning a language – online translation tools. Arguably, the biggest sites today for these services are translate.google.com, and babelfish.yahoo.com. This week, I want to talk a little bit about the differences in these sites and how they approach language translation and some things you can do to make your translation more effective and accurate.

Continue Reading

Last week, I took a look at MotionX GPS Drive.  The hits just keep coming, and this week a big player stepped into the ring.   MapQuest comes to us with a new off-board (maps are loaded over the Internet on the fly) navigation app which they have kindly allowed me to test drive.

With the iPhone Navigation market getting quickly populated, I was curious to know how a big player like MapQuest would do in this space, especially given their long experience in mapping and route navigation.  So let’s take a look!

Continue Reading

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

For a few weeks now, Judie has been writing about her experiences learning Spanish using the Rosetta Stone system.  It’s a wonderful language learning system used by diplomats and business leaders the world over.  But it has one big drawback – it’s really, really expensive!

In these times especially, many of us are living on a budget and need more cost-effective options.  So, I decided to pull-together some things I had already been working on and go on a mission to learn Spanish as well, but I’m going to try to do it on a more modest budget.  Along the way, I’m going to look at some moderate and even low-cost options for helping you learn a new language.  I’m going to focus on using the computer, the Internet, and even my mobile devices to get the job done.  Who knows?  We may even uncover some valuable tools and resources you may not know about!  I’ll also be reviewing some the products I’m using along the way!

This week, I want to start by looking at a really basic tool you should probably have, no matter what language you want to learn, or how much you plan to spend – your bi-lingual dictionary.

Continue Reading

A few days ago, I reviewed the new navigation app MotionX GPS Drive. I cited a few limitations of the applications. Well, MotionX released an update to the application that addresses some of the things I experienced.

The new version, 1.2, offers improved GPS locking and map caching – two things I was concerned about in my review. My experience with the new version is that these things are improved, but may still need a little bit more tweaking. The GPS locking, for example, is MUCH faster than before, but on the base map, the icon is often off from your road position. Whether this is a problem with the maps or the application or simply working with a limited number of satellites (and getting a slight incorrect positioning) I’m not sure. In navigation mode, you are locked to your roadway, but not in the non-navigation mode. Adding the road-lock to that screen as well would likely help the situation.

The map caching is also significantly better, but I still saw a healthy amount of background grid on my screens as I was moving. I still believe that all off-board navigation apps will ultimately need to go to a hybrid model where they pre-download maps around a corridor (or something similar) in order to obtain a smoother user experience,.

Also – the anomaly I mentioned where road names and symbols are all upside-down is still present in this release.

Overall, the updates are welcome. Clearly the people at MotionX are committed to improving their product. Additionally, the product remains an excellent value for the money. I look forward to seeing where they go with it!

I’ve been looking at iPhone GPS navigation applications for a while now, and  some products need more work, and I’ve seen highly-polished products. One thing that continues to surprise me is that more companies keep jumping into the competition!

One of the new entries is GPS Drive from the folks at MotionX. They were kind enough to send me a code for their $2.99 program (which comes with 30 days of live voice guidance) just in time for my semi-annual road trip to visit my mother – about a 1000 mile long trek.

So lets take a look at how it did.

Continue Reading

Withings, a company out of France, is now offering the world’s first WiFi scale in the U.S.

The scale is less than 1 inch thick, and features integration with the Withings secure website. Oh, and you can even access the information via an iPhone application. So you can see the effect of all those burritos from the comfort of your iPhone!

The Withings WiFi scale is available at the Withings site or at Amazon.com for $159.00.

So have you gone wireless yet?  In what seems to be a rapidly growing market, Tenqa has entered with their own line of wireless stereo Bluetooth products. They are offering their HP-109 model headphones ($59.99), and 2 different speaker systems – the SP-99 ($79,99) and the SP-109 (89.99).

The devices all have a range of 33 feet. The headphones are utilizing a behind-the-head design to make it easier for people who are exercising/running and includes a build-in mic and supports hands-free calling.

Their systems are compatible with equipment that supports the A2DP Bluetooth profile and you can find them for sale on Amazon.com.

A few weeks ago I reviewed Alchemize. Now the folk at Schiau Studios have updated the game to include 3 new power-ups (bowling ball, good chameleon, bad chameleon), 2 new game play modes (Avalanche and Action – although Classic is still my favorite!), 2 new music soundtracks, new graphics/sound effects, and other improvements. This excellent game keeps getting better!

They’ve already listed their plans for version 1.2 which include: incorporating your iPod music, at least one new game play mode, an improved save/load system, improvements to online rankings, more strategy, an Alchemist store, shifting game dynamics, and more.

Alchemize is available at the AppStore for $2.99. Check it out – they now have a video too.

iLuv has announced that their new i1166 PMP will be available for shipping in mid-October. The unit features a 9″ TFT screen and can play DVD and CD media (including CD-R/RW, and DVD±R/RW and VCD/SVCD) as well as access media on MMC/SD cards and even USB flash drives.  It will play a wide variety of media formats including DivX, MP3, and WMA.  It doesn’t specify AAC, but one would hope that with iPod compatibility would also come AAC support.

Continue Reading

Now that the various major players in the iPhone navigation arena have been out for a bit, I thought it would be a good time to mention that all of them have released (or are about to release) significant updates to their applications. Here’s a round-up of the most recent updates:

Sygic Mobile Maps
The folk at Sygic have recently added text-to speech (TTS) to their application. They have also added a Brazilian voice to their available instruction voices, as well as the ability to choose addresses from your iPhone’s contact list. They have made improvements, to music playback, made the GPS lock faster, removed the repeated disclaimer after phone calls, made the road name font size bigger, fixed the crash at state borders and major interchanges, and corrected the way that parkways (boulevards) were seen. They have been busy! For a short time, they have also reduced the price of their application to $39.99, making it an excellent value!

Continue Reading

A couple of years ago I got hooked on the original SPB Brain Evolution. It is a “brain training” game that helps you improve your brain skills in a variety of areas.

The original Brain Evolution was fun and had a lot of different games, but the graphics were very simplistic, and the overall look left something to be desired.  Still, the game received a lot of awards and was a bestseller in 2008!

Now we have SPB Brain Evolution 2. Improvements in appearance and usability have clearly been made. How does it do? Let’s take a look!

Continue Reading

I have a number of weather apps on my iPhone. Overall, they are OK, but I’ve generally had two complaints: 1) They never seem to be as accurate as the information I find at the Weather Underground, and 2) They always seem to want to display the temperature in Fahrenheit OR Celsius, but never both at the same time! I grew up in Detroit where they often broadcast both (because Detroit is on the Canadian border). Additionally, I have friends all over the world. It’s nice to be able to talk about today’s weather without having to reset all the setting on my weather app!

Enter All Weather. This application, from Steve Parker, is actually endorsed by the people at Weather Underground. Better than that – it displays the current temperature (as well as wind chills/heat indexes) in both Fahrenheit and Celsius. Let’s take a look at how it does in general.

Continue Reading