Brian Minor

So this article would have started out with how great this little device is for how little the cost, but since it broke on me the other day after only using it for a week my thoughts on it have taken a slight turn.

Don’t get me wrong the device is great and it will give you more then double the iPhone’s battery and all that for about $15 bucks is amazing/ Others backups hold half the capacity size and sell for almost 3 times as much.

But the flaws come into play with the design. The item is very large and connects to the phone with no support other then the connector itself, making it only safe to use when laying flat on a surface. Putting it in a pocket or other unstable surface could lead to damaging the device or worse your iPhone or iPod itself.

So I would still recommend the MonoPrice backup solution is you are wanting something that will give you the best bang for the cost, but be warned that you must me very careful with it cause it could end up costing you more then you planned.

Side Note: I am currently in talks with MonoPrice to try and get my battery replaced I will updated this page with my progress when I hear back from them.

So a couple days ago my RTM (remember the milk) pro account expired on me. Normally I would just shell out the $25 bucks and go on, but with it so close to Christmas and my NYC trip, I really don’t want to spend any more then necessary right now, even though I do use it daily and I believe it is worth the cost.

However, as I was looking for a cheaper alternative. I noticed that RTM had a mobile version of there site. But even more importantly, I noticed that the push notifications from the RTM app were still coming through everyday. Now if I open the actual app I get a pro account required screen and get booted out, but to me the popup notifications is what I use the app for.

So, for all you iPhone/iPod-Touch users out there, all you need to do is download the RTM app from the app store, setup a trial account. Get the setting just the way you want them, use the app during the trial, then switch to the mobile version once your trial runs out. I also recommend creating a shortcut to the mobile version on your iPhone/iPod-Touch home screen. If you call it the same name as the RTM app it will have the same icon (see images below). After that I just moved the RTM app icon to my last home screen page and all is well and I get to keep my $25 bucks for my trip.

click images for larger view

It seems like almost every carrier is doing a top 5 (some even 10) list. With these lists they allow you to add 5 to 10 “friends”and no matter what carrier/provider they use, you can call for free and not waste any of your minutes. They all seem to have their own little names. AT&T calls it the “A-List” and Verizon calls it “My Fave Five”. But in the end it’s all the same.

Most of you are thinking, yeah, we know this already, but as I was changing some setting in my beloved Google Voice account I noticed that they allow you to change the number that appears when you received a call from someone. You can have either their number display, which is of course the default and what most people would want. But they also allow you to always have the google voice number show up with every call.

So my workaround is why not just add your google voice number to your top 5 list and give everyone that number. Then change it so that all incoming calls come from your google voice number and never waste your minutes on incoming calls again.

But thats not all, google voice allows you to make outgoing as well, by calling your google voice number, then dialing the number you want to call. So no wasting minutes on outgoing calls either.

Okay, now I know for some of you this just wont work. A lot of us love to always know who is calling before we answer the phone, but google helps with this as well. Google Voice give you control of what numbers you want to ring straight through, but it also give you the ability to have callers announce themselves first and/or just announce their number or name (if in contacts) and then gives you the ability to answer or send to voicemail.

Also, keep in mind you can still give out your real number to the other 4 in your list and anyone else who is worth wasting your minutes on. This workaround is meant to be given out to all those that call you constantly and love to talk for hours or perfect as a business line.

If you think this is something you could really use and want to give it a shot, I have 2 Google Voice invites to give out just leave a comment below and I will pick 2 at random and send out the invites later this week. Just be sure to add the tag “I want an Invite” to the beginning or end of your comment.

This week on the blog I’m going to be posting at least one hack/workaround a day.

Before I start it all out though, I wanted to give all of you a heads up on some of the topics.

They include:

• A newer Google product and how you can use it to save money.
• A hack on your iPhone that you may never use, but if you need it, its amazing!
• Using a popular task managing service for free with the benefits of the paid account
• and a couple others…

Along with those, I will also be posting my thoughts of MonoPrice’s iPhone/iPod battery backup and I plan to end out the week with a topic I don’t normally post about, but one I plan to do more of in the future.

Along with all that, I also plan to start working on a redesign of the blog and get my priorities straight with where I want it to go and what I want it to be about. Hopefully all this will help me keep up a daily post (or more) schedule.

So, keep an eye out later today for the first post and I hope you will enjoy this week as much as I plan too.

Be sure to let me know what you think with comments and/or emails.

So MacHeist is at it again, but this time it miniaturized and free. Before I begin I do want to mention that I did actually participated in the last MacHeist. There were a couple apps, that I wanted to have and a couple I wanted to try out so, I figured might as well. Overall, I have been pretty happy with my purchase. I don’t use the apps all that much, but at the same time I don’t regret the purchase.

This time they are offering 5 apps for free and a 6th app free when they reach 500,000 participants. The total value of the nanoBundle is $154 bucks. So you may be thinking wow, free?, I gotta have this, just as I was when I first heard about it. But then I took a look at the apps they are offering.

Here are the apps:

ShoveBox

Catch all the little scraps of information that you can’t immediately act on, but don’t want to forget. ShoveBox sits up in your menu bar, waiting for you to drag in text, images, URLs, and more.

WriteRoom

WriteRoom is a simple, but powerful app that provides you with a distraction-free writing environment. WriteRoom does one main thing and does it incredibly well: It’s all about writing…

Twitterific

Twitterrific is an exquisite app that enables you to make the most out of your Twitter experience. It has a clean user interface that’s designed to take up little of your precious desktop space.

TinyGrab

TinyGrab is a simple, powerful app that enables you to quickly share screenshots of everything on your Mac.

Hordes of Orcs

Hordes of Orcs is a Tower Defense strategy game where you build walls and towers to defend your village from orcs gone rogue.

And if enough people participate

Mariner Write

Mariner Write is a fast, streamlined word processor that’s useful for everyone… professional writers, educators, students, casual computer users, and everyone in-between. It has a simple, elegant user interface so that you can create beautiful documents the very first time you start using it.

If you ask me most of them are pretty worthless. I guess if you don’t already have a better word processor, then Mariner Write would be nice once it is available, but the others really don’t seem worth the process to even download them. I already have a better twitter client and my the other seem pretty pointless.

But hey thats just me. Let me know what you think.

So last Friday I finally received the much anticipated (at least by me) Magic Mouse in the mail (see unboxing video below) and have been using it everyday since.

The mouse is pretty amazing, I’ve been using the Mighty Mouse for close to two years now and the transition from one to the other was easy and smooth.

Normal everyday use with the mouse is great I don’t have any issues with the scrolling or multi-touch options. Over all I love the mouse. The only issues I’ve had is when I took it home over last weekend and edited a wedding using Final Cut Pro.

The mouse is worthless for using with FCP, the vertical scrolling cause the playhead and all the other controls to go nuts while trying to edit. You basically have to not touch the mouse while the video is playing. My main issues came when using the multi-cam edits in FCP. I use this feature a lot with weddings and it works great, but not with this mouse. any slight vertical scroll and the play head go 5-10 minutes back or forward and you have to relocate your place. But I forced myself to use it thinking I would eventually just get used to it and I really thought I had, till I was finished with the edit. Thats when I notices that a ton of my clips where off by a signal frame. I have no clue exactly how it happened, but I know it had to be the Magic Mouse and that it took forever to correct.

So I’ve taken the mouse to work with me where I rarely, to never use FCP, so the harmony is back and I am loving the mouse. It’s slim, comfortable, and glides easily on the desk. So i would recommend it to other just as long as their not heavy FCP users.

Side note: I’m really hoping to find a way to disable the vertical scrolling just in FCP I think that alone will solve all my issues. So if you know of a way please let me know.

And now, onto the video: