My latest obsession is Flixel. This is a free app that lets you easily make animated gifs or ‘cinemagraphs’ with your iphone camera. As a technology enthusiast who works in animation I’m obviously excited by this app, but I think it has a much broader appeal. The interface and process is very simple and Flixel also includes a social aspect similar to instagram or other image sharing communities.

With Flixel you simply shoot a 20 frame sequence of images and then rub out the parts of the image that you want to move. You can set the start and end frame and whether it loops forward or back and forth. There are also a few filters to adjust the look of the image. Here are a few shots I’ve taken so far:

The simplicity of the user interface has a flip side and that’s the challenge of what makes a good flixel clip? This is almost like a game – I find myself looking around and thinking “would that make a good flixel?”. There are some scenes that loop nicely and naturally make good clips.

Here are a few tips if you want to try out Flixel:

1.  Lock down your camera. Since flixels move, it can be distracting if your hand-held camera is swaying. I’ve had the best results when I stabilize the phone against something before I take the shot. This can be as simple as leaning up against a tree or holding you iPhone against a rock before you shoot. The camera doesn’t start taking until you release the shutter button, so make sure you’re stabilized before you release the shutter.
2.  Think about motion. Flixels are even more magical when it’s tricky to see the loop, so it’s worth thinking about how you use your twenty frames.
3.  Don’t make the whole frame move. This is a bit of a subjective one, but when you first use Flixel you might be tempted to make the whole frame an action area. There are a couple reasons not to do this. For one the look of an image that is partly frozen and partly moving tends to be more interesting, but also the smaller you motion area (in size and frames) the quicker your flixel will load.

Flixel is new and so there are some rough areas. I’ve had the app crash a few times and sometimes it takes a long time to load up the network. I imagine that a network of animated gifs must be pretty server intensive as they grow, and hopefully they’re working on the stability of the app.

Here’s my wishlist of features that I hope are included in future versions of Flixel:

•  Shutter release delay. Sometimes you want to get the camera set up and then take the shot with a self-timer delay. This would also help eliminate shutter bump at the very start of the shot.
•  Internal storage. Right now flixel wants you to take a shot, edit it for motion and then upload it before you take the next one. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to take a bunch of image sequences and then edit them for motion later, picking only the best ones to upload and share.
•  Image / Video import. It sure would be sweet to be able to take 20 frames with another camera app so you could do timelapse or animation and then import it into flixel to edit and share!
•  Privacy setting per Flixel. Right now you can set your account to be private to hide all your flixels from the network, but it would be great if you could take part in the social aspect but have some flixels as private.

That’s my wish list for now. Even without those features flixel is fantastic fun and I encourage everyone to try out the app. You’ll find me on flixel as filmblender, the same name I use on Instagram and Twitter.

Offsite backups can be trickier, especially if you have a lot of data. Most services have limits to the data and monthly fees can add up. After looking around and comparing a few different options I settled on Crashplan. There are a few things that I really like about their service. First of all the software is robust and free. You can use it locally, or even across a network with a friends machine for free without any service subscription. If you do opt to use the crash plan servers the cost structure is very competitive and they offer a discount for prepaying up to four years in advance which I really like. If I’m going to use a backup system I’m going to use it for more than a year. They also offer web access to your backed up files and you can create backup sets to prioritize your files and schedule the backups.

I’ve been using crash plan for about a year now. I’m writing about it today because they just added a new feature that changes it from a great backup service to an indispensable daily tool – Crashplan has just released a mobile app for iOS and android. I’ve just tested the iPhone and iPad version and am blown away by the quick access to all of my files. It may be because the tool has just been release and not many people are using it, but navigating my backup file structure is zippy- it’s like browsing a local directory. To view a file you click it once and it downloads the file, then click it again to view it.

I can see this app being a huge lifesaver. Huge kudos to the Crashplan team for their service and this fantastic new app!

Whoa. The killer photo app for the iPhone is made by.. Microsoft?!?

If you’ve got an iPhone and want a simple way to make panoramic photos check out the new Photosynth app for iOS.  It’s dead simple to use, very effective at stitching images in the phone and completely free.

Microsoft Photosynth has been available as a windows desktop app for a while and if you want to do huge HDR gigapixel pano images that’s still the way to go, but as a simple portable way to capture scenes without any extra gear this iOS app is pretty fantastic.

If you came from an all PC background and used an old windows smart phone you know this isn’t too complicated. You could use outlook and sync it with your phone.

But what if you’re a switcher, a turncoat, a technical wanderer? Apples iPhone is a great combination of hardware and software, but they left some pretty basic stuff out, one of which is a to-do list.

For the last year I’ve looked around for a solution to this lack, never really finding the right combination of iPhone and desktop software that would work together flawlessly.

The closest solution looked like it was Things by cultured code. Things is an elegant task management program that is very flexible and has an iPhone app that works with it. Problem solved right?

Well, not exactly. Things is Mac only and I’m platform agnostic. The iPhone app can only sync manually over wi-fi, and worse than that is the price. The desktop app is 60 bucks and the iPhone app is $10.

$70 bucks for a task list? Really? I guess Apple users are willing to pay more for everything.

So after all my searching and complaining and being cheap, what’s the point of all this?

The point is I found the dream solution I was looking for.

Wunderlist runs on Mac, PC & iPhone and they say an Android app will be released soon. Wunderlist does wireless cloud syncing and is the right combination of simple, powerful and pretty. And how much does this elegance cost?

Nothing.

Nada. Zip. Not a penny charged for the desktop or iPhone version. There isn’t even any advertising in the various app versions.

WTF? How can they do that? I have no idea, but after just a few days of using it I can highly recommend it.

CC Photo by Lars P.

Here’s a product I’d like to find that just doesn’t seem to be available yet: a wireless heart rate monitor for the iPhone. I use RunKeeper when jogging to track distance, speed and elevation. This is a terrific app that produces beautiful graphs of your run allowing you to compile and share data, but there’s one data point missing and that’s heart-rate. A heart rate monitor would allow you to aim for target zones and optimize calories burned as well as track improvements in your fitness level.

There’s a couple of ways I could see this working, none of which seem like they’d be too difficult to implement.

1) A wireless bluetooth heart rate monitor.
This would strap on your chest and sync to your phone allowing data to be streamed and tracked as you run. You would need no extra hardware physically attached to your phone.

2) A dongle that picks up existing wireless standards from heart rate monitors
There are a few different standards already out there for wireless heart rate monitors used by Polar, Suunto and Garmin to name a few. Why not use one of the existing ones? A reciever that could plug in to your iPhone and send data to an app (ideally runkeeper) would be excellent as long as it wasn’t to large or unwieldy. Considering they fit recievers into watches, I don’t see why they would need to be very large.

So if you’re reading this and your work for one of the fitness equipment manufacturers out there, how about it?  Can we have a heart rate monitor that will work with the iPhone.

Or if I’m wrong and such a product already exists I’d love to hear from you – where can I get one?

This is the EASY way I built an iPhone cradle for my car – using the ashtray.  I’m using a JVC KD-800 deck because it was cheap, had built in head unit control for the iPhone* (not just ip0d), and most importantly had 2 USB ports, one in the front and one in the back.  On a side note, I’m quite happy with this JVC deck.  It has all sorts of extras I don’t use, like bluetooth and is HD and Satellite radio ready (with an extra adapter).  I use the front USB port with a thumbdrive and have wired the back port to my DIY car cradle hack.

I plugged a standard iPhone charge/sync cable in the back of the deck when I installed the head unit, and ran it down behind the ashtray, which in my car is located in the same center console.  I pulled the ashtray out and removed the tray itself leaving only the drawer that held it.  I then needed a cradle to hold the iPhone.  I think you could use any standard iPhone/iPod charge cradle, but it would have required cutting to fit in my ashtray, and they’re only available in white.

I wanted a shiny black cradle, so I got this Scosche charge adapter which is supposed to help with charging issues in old cradles.  Why you wouldn’t just buy a new cradle if you had that problem I don’t know, since they cost about the same as the adapter, but it was perfect for my needs.

I pried the cradle part with the cable port in it out of the plastic base and it was almost a perfect fit for my ashtray – I expected to have to do some drilling to hold it in, but lo and behold, the two screw ports that held the ash tray in matched up with two wholes in the Scosche adapter.  I just plugged in the cable, attached the cradle to the inside of the ash tray drawer and popped it back into my console.  There are a few things I intended to fix about this installation, but since it ‘just works’, I’m not sure if I ever will.  This is what the ashtray looks like without the phone in, I haven’t bothered to hide the cable yet since it doesn’t interfere with the tray sliding in and out and the phone covers it when its in the cradle.

Here’s on more shot of the phone in the cradle.  It covers part of the ventilation controls, but you can still access them and I don’t find it inconvenient.

*a head unit built for iPhone control is important because decks built just for use with the iPod can pick up interference from the mobile phone causing extra static and stress while listening to music.

I’ve been using eWallet to store sensitive data for years, originally on a PC and a windows smart phone.  When I switched over to the iPhone I was very happy to find that eWallet was available for the iPhone and bought a license to try it out.  Unfortunately at that time there was no OS X version for the desktop which meant I had nothing on my shiny new MacBook to enter data into my eWallet.  This turned out to be a huge drag.  Entering data bit by bit via the iPhone screen is no fun at all, so I started using eWallet less and less.

Recently a coworker introduced me to 1Password as a solution to a different problem: web password management.  I started using this to manage my web logins and then noticed that the functionality doesn’t stop there.  1Password duplicates most of the functionality of eWallet enabling you to securely store credit card and banking info, software install licenses, notes and membership login information.  1Password also has an iPhone app that will sync via wifi to the desktop app, so I’ve regained the convenience of being able to enter information on a proper keyboard and have it available on my laptop and my phone.

Illium did finally release an OS X version of eWallet, or at least a beta of it.  I downloaded it and was underwhelmed, now preferring the 1Password interface.  In the end my decision to switch from eWallet to 1Password was based on just a few factors: Completeness of support, interface aesthetics and price.  I already had the desktop version of 1Password and the iPhone version of eWallet.  It looks like it will only be $10 to upgrade to the Mac OSX version of eWallet when it’s released, but it’s even cheaper to buy the iPhone version of 1Password: $5 bucks for the standard version and $8 for the ‘pro’ version which adds a few extra features.

Of course price alone shouldn’t be the main determining factor when buying digital wallet software.  Data security and support are important issues.  eWallet has been well supported on the PC platform, but they haven’t been quick to support the Mac.  I feel more comfortable with the level of support and security updates from Agile right now, so 1Password is the winner for me.  Of course on the PC I suspect eWallet is still one of your best choices for a secure digital wallet.

One more alternative for the windows world is the open source KeePass, which I haven’t tried, but I’ve heard good things about.

Apparently not! If you enjoy reading ebooks, you should really do yourself the favor of checking out Calibre.  This incredible free library management software does everything I was looking for and more.  You can manage multiple formats and convert them to your preferred eBook format for reading whether it’s a Sony reader, a kindle, a smartphone or iphone.  It comes with it’s own server as well, which means if you run stanza on your phone while connected to the same wifi network you can browse your library and download books to read later, you don’t even need to be USB tethered to do it.

That’s basically everything I was looking for in a library management program, but Calibre goes one step further.  It can auto download metadata to fill in missing descriptions, covers, tags and author information.  You can add internet news sources and have them automatically downloaded and converted to your eBook format of preference for reading later.

Can you tell I’m impressed?  Calibre is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.  It has a vibrant user community and is maintained and upgraded with regularity.  I highly recommend it.

The problem is that in their pursuit of elegance they dropped some basic things that I miss from my old smart phone.  One simple key feature is ring profiles.  Why the hell can’t I set this phone to not ring at certain hours?  Sure I can mute the whole thing, but then what if I forget in the morning to turn the ringer back on?  How hard is it to add a timer in software to control the sounds my phone makes?

And why not allow input from bluetooth keyboards?  I guess I should just be happy they’ve finally given me the ability to cut and paste text.

All these little frustrations finally added up to the point where I was willing to take the risk of jailbreaking my phone so I could use Cydia to add missing functionality.  I had fears of bricking my phone, but it turns out I had nothing to fear.  Thanks to the brilliant simple process allowed by the freely available blackra1n my iPhone now feels like MY phone.  I can enable features that were missing and modify the little annoyances this device shipped with.

Certainly Cydia is a lot uglier than the app store, and there is the very real possibility of bricking your phone – with great power comes great responsibility – but after a month or so of freedom I am so very glad I busted this mobile phone out of Apple corporate lockdown.

One note: After the 40th week of manufacture Apple changed the bootrom on the 3GS which adds an irritating limitation to the blackra1n jailbreak.  If you ever need to reset your phone, or your battery runs completely down, you’ll need to reconnect your iPhone to your computer and run blackrain again to reboot.  If you’ve got one of the early models, you’re in luck, you can reboot with impunity.  You can tell the week of manufacture by the 4th and 5th digit of the iPhone serial number. If that number is below 40 you’ve got an early phone.

You can download blackra1n for Mac or PC here.