TheRandom [Photographer//Traveller//InMotion] » iphone

iPhone App Categories

Sam — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:59:52 +0000

I’m hoping the version 4 software will sort this issue out on the iPhones GUI, but for now this is how I’m grouping my apps. Trying to find a certain app on pages upon pages of colourful icons has been bugging me for a while. I seem to find myself scrolling endlessly left and right searching for an app before forgetting what I was looking for in the first place. I came up with a little solution I thought I would share with you, maybe some of you do it this way already, but I find it far easier to group my apps in to categories on each page, so:

Page 1 is my most used apps. (I’m sure most of you do this already).

Page 2 is for Photography related apps.

Page 3 is for navigation and travel.

Page 4 is for weather apps.

Page 5 is for audio apps.

Page 6 is miscellaneous apps that I only use in a blue moon.

Page 7 is for the junk that you can’t delete which comes with the iPhone.

It might look a bit of a waste having pages half empty, but trust me, browsing for a certain app is much faster this way.

I hope this helps some of you out. let me know how you get on.

#FridayFeature – Emma Jane Smith

Sam — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:16:44 +0000

After a few weeks brain storming on the next phase of my website, I’m back with another wonderful #FridayFeature photographer for you all. Emma Smith, (No, not my sister) but Emma Jane Smith from the dizzy heights of Northampton, England. I started following Emma after I found her on Flickr and instantly fell in loved with her iPhone work. Primarily using the Hipstamatic app and DSLR, she has come up with some truly wonderful and abstract photos for this weeks #FridayFeature. So go ahead, add her to your Twitter and check out more of her work on Flickr. Comment are appreciated.

Emma’s Blurb
Giddy, bright, curious girl; into yoga, apple mac, photography, conversation, Buddhism, art, crafts, giggles, outdoors, travel, movies, music & more…

Twitter – @ellakopella
Flickr – sunsetsandseabreezes/
Posterous – ellakopella.posterous.com/
MobileMe – web.me.com/emmajanesmith

Welcome to the World of Hipstamatic

Sam — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:13:05 +0000

This isn’t a review as such, there are so many sites and blogs these days ripping apart iPhone apps down to their finest technical details and workings, the last thing you need is another one of them. If you really want to know the ins and outs of the Hipstamatic app then be my guest and click here. If you want to look at pretty photos and what can be achieved by using this app then stick with me.

A quick oversight of Hipstamatic and you find it’s basically another ‘Toy Camera’ app for the iPhone, adding various effects, filters and backgrounds to give your photos the look and feel of a lo-fi film camera.

I’ve had Hipstamatic since Christmas after the apps store genius recommend it to me. After installing it I took a instant dislike to it, mainly because once you have bought the app you have to hand over more money to buy the additional filters, and that’s not cool in my mind and a very sneaky way for developers to extract more money from us, I would rather them charge more for the app than drop the a-bomb on us when we hand over our money. Other things quickly annoyed me, you couldn’t save high-res files. (Fixed in the latest version) and the slow speed of processing the image. I gave it a few goes but I just couldn’t get the hang of it, so there it lay on the back page of my apps list gathering digital dust.

A few months in to 2010 and I started seeing some of my fellow iPhonegraphers crop up on flickr with rather slick Hipstamatic photos. Seeing what this app was capable of in the right hands, gave me a quick swift kick up the arse to try it out again. The last few weeks I’ve been getting some pretty cool results with it. Will it replace my favourite iPhone app, Camerabag? I very much doubt it, but it will certainly not be on the back page of my apps from now.

*These photos were taken with the standard filters that come with Hipstamatic.

7 Photos, 7 Songs, 7 days

Sam — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 07:39:46 +0000

I should stop watching the clock, I’m watching it count down to 8am before my shackles are released and I can escape in to the real world.
I’m a night owl for a week, the country sleeps and I drink coffee, trying not to lose my mind watching endless repeats of the Jerry Springer Show and having American Infomercials rammed down my neck for hours upon hours. This is my life for the next 7 days, I hibernate during the day, followed by staring blearily eyed at monitors in a soulless room for 12 hours at a time. Slumped in my chair, wrapped up in a hoodie and 3 day old clean jeans, my night’s seem to merge in to one long unbroken day. Is it Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday? Who knows, who fucking cares, all I know is I’m counting down to Friday morning where I shall escape this rat race for seven days.

As the week goes by, the snow falls, freezing the roads that morph in to one continuous ice ring. I amuse myself by watching commuters sliding ever which way, trying their best to get to work unscathed. My evil side comes out as I secretly hope I catch someone wiping out, how that would make me laugh, except if it was me, landing on my fat arse.

I can’t even enjoy my daily bike ride because of the weather. I must find another release to stop me going insane and to break up the daily grind of work, sleep, work, sleep.
For the next seven days I had an idea to take one photo every morning on the walk home. At the same time I would log the song I was listening too.
London feels like a very different place this time in the morning, quiet, subdued & lonely. With the music jamming in my ear, the following photos were captured during those seven sleepy walks home.

To play the track, click play on the media player under each of the photos.
All photo’s were taken on the iPhone 3GS and using the wonderful Camerabag app.

Saturday

Tricky: Abbaon Fat Track

Sunday

Fever Ray: Triangle Walks

Monday

Broken Social Scene: Cause = Time

Tuesday

The Beloved: Sweet Harmony

Wednesday

Booka Shade: Charlotte

Thursday

Yelle: Tristesse/Joie

Friday

LCD Soundsystem: All My Friends

Snow Day & Blog Upgrades.

Sam — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:51:59 +0000

You may have noticed (or not) that my blog was down for the past couple of days, this was thanks to a failed Wordpress blog update. Everything would have been ok, but my back up of the blog corrupted and I couldn’t roll back to the previous version. The past few days I’ve been rebuilding, coding and testing frantically as I lost the whole Wordpress theme. Luckily the corruption didn’t affect the database so the past 4 years of posts were in tack.

With all this going down, I hardly noticed the snow falling. I snapped this one photo to remind me of the day I nearly lost 4 years of my life. It might sound a bit drastic, but this blog has now turned in to a monster, it’s big part of my life, my memories and my creative release. If I lost it, I would be losing a big chunk of my life.

REMINDER: I MUST BACKUP!!!

Acton Lane – Taken on the iPhone with the Camerabag App

Fring

Sam — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:07:41 +0000

Got a 3G mobile? Got an iPhone? Got Wifi? Got Skype? Got MSN? Got Twitter? Then you need Fring.

It is the best tool for a mobile ever seen and will one day change the way we use the mobile. It allows you to make free VoIP calls with Skype (As well as Skype Out), messaging on MSN, Aol and Yahoo and of course you can send Twitters anywhere you can get a data connection.

Now, you will need an unlimited data plan with your phone provider as VoIP is pretty data heavy (in mobile terms) and ideally a 3G connection for VoIP calls, though I did test not in a 3g area and quality was really clear and crisp. The best thing about Fring, its FREEEEEEEEE!!

Point your WAP broswer on your phone towards www.fring.com/download/ to download the latest software.

More Info on Fring.