gran diccionario vox de la lengua española - spanish dictionary.

i’ve had this on my watchlist for a while, as i really love ultralingua’s dictionary software. i’ve got the desktop app [along with a few of the language packs] and, with its dashboard widget, it’s a really handy way to look up words quickly.

this iphone app gives you the ultralingua goodies, such as searching, verb tables and number translator - inside which is embedded the complete vox diccionario de la lengua española

what always put me off buying the ipod app was the hefty £14,99 price tag. however last week, it was on sale for ‘cyber monday’ at £10,99 - still a mighty hefty pricetag for an ipod app but, after humming and hah-ing about it for most of the day, i decided to go for it. after all, it’s still less than the price of a decent sized ‘dead tree’ dictionary and it’ll be a lot quicker looking things up on the ipod, than flicking through several hundred pages of a real book [and a lot lighter to carry, too!]

in use the diccionario is pretty minimalist:

1: enter the search term

2: results screen - complete with full ‘sweary’ coverage

3: there’s a handy verb conjugation facility

4: with more tenses to choose from than i actually knew existed!

5: one other nice touch is a handy ‘number translator’ which translates numbers into spanish as you type them

i’ve not had a great deal of use out of the diccionario as yet, as i’m not reading anything in spanish at the mo’ but, in the finest traditions of schoolboy dictionary users everywhere [and as you can see from the screengrabs] i made my first port of call the entering of all the swearwords i know - and the dictionary didnae let me down. so i’m tentatively giving it full marks for comprehensiveness! :grin:

i would give this app five stars but for two things:

1: i still think that £14,99 is a helluva lot to pay for an ipod app [even the sale price made me sweat a bit!]
2: i’ve had it crash once or twice when i’ve brought up the history screen, so i suspect there might be a few instability problems. only more intense usage will tell for sure.

COST: £10,99 [sale price - normal price £14,99]
RATING:

photoshop.com mobile - photoshop.com app

if you’re unaware of photoshop.com, check out the smugmug vs flickr vs the rest thread. basically it’s a flash-driven cut down version of photoshop, on the web. as i said in the above-linked thread:

madra wrote:

all in all photoshop.com is not actually that bad: the interface is quite desktop-app-like, the ability to load your flickr snaps is always a bonus for potential switchers and, unlike smugmug, photoshop.com didnae seem to randomly lose photos from my sets and it preserved the correct order for images within the sets*. i’d also expect [or hope] that since adobe seems to be taking digital photography seriously these days [you all know that i’m quite keen on lightroom ] that this app will have more features added and become more like lightroom as the years go by.

the same, but less so, could be said for the ipod app. it integrates into your account on the photoshop.com website and allows you to make some basic [and i mean *very* basic!] image adjustments. you’re pretty much limited to cropping, rotating, flipping, adjusting brightness/contrast and a few built-in effects which are completely shite and completely degrade the image.

no screenshots i’m afraid, as this was one of those ‘install-play with for five minutes-delete’ applications. if you’re expecting anything remotely like a mobile version of photoshop [or even photoshop elements], think again. this is a pretty feeble under-powered app which i could never envisage being of any use to anyone… ever.

i really cannae even justify giving this even one star. if it was produced by an independent ‘one man in his bedroom’ outfit, i’d lay on a star or two for trying, but for a company the size of adobe to come out with something this feeble and crap, disnae merit anything at all, IMHO.

COST: FREE
RATING:

OK. time for this week’s sunday round-up. i actually shelled out a fair bit of cash this week on ipod apps, mainly due to the fact that a couple of ones i had on my watchlist were on sale for cyber monday [whatever the feck that is :wink: ]

NHS drinks tracker - monitor your drinking

how can you resist a freebie app which shows you in graph form how your liver is about to explode? this is an app from the NHS [national health service] which allows you to input what you’ve drunk each day and then display this as a graph over time, which shows you by how much you’re exceeding the government guidelines. given that the government guidelines wouldnae get mother theresa tipsy, it’s pretty hard *not* to exceed them!

the app is OK for a freebie, but has quite a few flaws:

1: select the type of drink

2: select %proof and size of ‘portion’ - this is the first flaw. the presets dinnae cover all of the ‘standard’ strengths of beer and wine you tend to find on sale. neither do the provided portion sizes cater for some of the common sizes sold in shops. i mean, c’mon! - there isnae even a setting for 500ml for the beer bootles. hello-o-o-o-o. we have gone metric you know :stick:

3: save the amount entered earlier against a date to add it to that day’s consumption. here’s the biggest flaw for me. i dunno what it’s like with the dates in english, but with mine set to irish, the actual date isnae readable, coz the long month names push the dates off the end of the screen. if you want to add up your drinks for previous days, you have to count the clicks as you wind the date back, coz you cannae actually see what it is! i havenae seen this problem with any other date rollers in ipod apps, so i’m assuming the devs have screwed up here, rather than the OS being at fault.

4: data entered you’re presented with a graph, showing you how pickled your liver is becoming

5: and clicking on ‘info’ brings up a nice warning, telling you, you’re doomed!

so, all in all it’s an OK app, let down by the clunky interface and the government guidelines themselves, which are almost impossible to meet, unless you really are a ‘sip of sweet sherry, once a week’ kind of person. still, i’m sure lots of folks will take a perverse pride in downloading it and seeing how high they can get their graph to go. :cheers:

COST: FREE
RATING:

last.fm - last.fm mobile app

here’s another one i downloaded a few weeks back but never really got round to road-testing til now.

if you’re even more ‘time-liney’ than i usually am and dinnae know what last.fm is, it’s a website which plays streaming internet radio. nothing novel there, but what makes last.fm really interesting is that you can create your own ‘virtual’ radio station by typing in the name of a band you like and last.fm will start playing tunes that it thinks you will like, based on that band choice. now, i’m more cynical than most when it comes to these “you like this…. so you’ll like this” algorithms [amazon’s and ebay’s for example are absolute pants!], but last.fm’s is surprisingly good. it really does seem to throw out stuff by other artists like the one you chose and is really great for those lazy times when you want some tunes on but cannae be arsed manually building playlists.

the iphone app is just as easy to use as the website:

1: click on “start a new station”…

2: type in the name of an artist you like and select the appropriate artist from the search results…

3: and away you go. last.fm will start streaming music that it thinks will suit your tastes….

i suppose to be fair, the app isnae actually doing much - all the ‘magic’ happens on last.fm’s servers. like the flickr app i reviewd above, it’s more a front end for delivering the content of the site, rather than a fully interactive app, giving access to all your account details and options etc. but it’s free. it looks nice and, if you’ve got access to a wifi network, last.fm will provide a nice addition to your own tunes by effectively giving you an infinite playlist of other music. all for free.

COST: FREE
RATING:

speedtest.net speed test - ipod version of the speedtest.net broadband speed tester.

i actually got this app a few weeks ago but didnae get around to reviewing it.

there’s not too much to say really; it tests the speed of your ipod/iphone’s wifi connection, in the same way as the website does for your home broadband.

the interface is nice and clean and basic. you select a test server near you, hit the ‘begin test’ button and the app will test your upload and download speeds. there is a screen to view your test history, so you can monitor your wifi’s performance over time. it’s all pretty straightforward and works well [just like the website].

i’d suggest a couple of improvements, which would be nice:

1: i’d like some way of assigning a location to a test. this isnae really needed in the web version of the app, where you’ll usually be testing your connection speed from one place. but with a mobile device like an ipod or iphone, you’ll tend to be moving around from place to place. i’d like the ability to save my tests from home separate from my tests from college, so i can view each location’s performance over time separately.

2: some way to export the data would be nice too and handy for those times when you’re arguing with your broadband supplier about whether you’re getting what you paid for.

all in all a handy wee app, which does its job - but would benefit from some minor improvements such as i mentioned above

COST: FREE
RATING:

an update on my earlier review of good reader, an app which can be used as a viewer for PDF, MS office docs, HTML, webarchive, iwork docs.. etc. etc.

i got an alert in the itunes app telling me there was an update available for goodreader and, as usual, i was just about to hit ‘install’, without bothering to read the release notes, when i noticed the following:

so, apple’s heavies are now forcing a developer to cripple his own, really useful app, for god knows what reason. [and as i always say] meanwhile 438 apps which make a fart noise were ushered through the app store approvals process in minutes.

WTF are apple playing at? they’re really starting to piss me off with their arrogance these days. i’m seriously considering jailbreaking my ipod, just so i can stick two fingers up at apple’s thought police.

needless to say, i’ve forgone the update and am holding onto the old version of goodreader - with USB file transfer.

[UPDATE:]

i emailed goodreader’s developer asking for more info on why he had to drop USB support and got the following:

Quote:

….USB file transfer feature was removed from v.2.4 of GoodReader due to Apple’s demand, to avoid a violation of Apple’s rules (accessing a certain iPhone folder that lies outside application’s sandbox). There’s nothing we can do about it. When Apple demands to remove a feature, we have no choice but to obey. We hope for your understanding.

However, we managed to keep this feature for old users who were updating from older versions of GoodReader. So if you’re an old user and you’re updating from older version of GoodReader, you should be able to use USB file transfer feature.
Unfortunately, new users will not be able to use this feature. But it is safe to update for old users….

so, i upgraded and my USB connectivity still works. hurray! - one in the eye for the itunes store gestapo! :grin: :thumbsup: