The iPhone Mom

I have an iPhone 3G which means I have a built in camera but not the ability to record video.  I use the camera quite a bit to capture things around the house and when I’m out and about with the kids. It also comes in handy when I’m at the store and see something I want to remember. I’ve got plenty of photos of Costco items on my camera roll. So when it comes to using my iPhone camera I think of myself as a no frills photographer who is just fine with point and shoot. Still, I was curious to try out the Camera Genius app and see what it could bring to my iPhone camera.

Zoom – A slider appears on your screen and you can use it to zoom in and out. It’s a decent zoom feature,  not as great as what you’d get with a real camera but I think that’s to be expected with a camera phone.

Sound Capture – If you turn on this option the camera will take a picture when it detects a noise. Don’t try this out when you’re in a room with noisy children! If your house is like mine your phone might go into overdrive from all the noise, taking picture after picture after picture!

Anti Shake – This feature will help you reduce blurry photos. I didn’t get a good test of this one because I tried it out on my baby who never sits still. It’s not a fair trial when the subject is in a constant state of  movement.

Big Button – This simple option was one of my favorite features. When you turn it on your entire screen acts as a camera button and you can tap anywhere on the screen to get the shot. No need to hunt for the tiny camera icon.

Guides – This turns your screen into a grid so you can set up your shot perfectly.

Timer – Set a timer for group photos.

Burst – If you have an iPhone 3GS this feature lets you take three photos, one right after another. For an iPhone 3G it’s two photos. On my regular camera I always use my burst setting when I’m taking photos of my kids.

Settings – In the settings you can set up an automatic location and timestamp for your photos.

Video Mode – Video Mode turns your iPhone into a video camera, even if you have a 3G like I do. You won’t be able to zoom in the video but it does a decent job with the video capture. You’ll be able to share your photos directly from Camera Genius but you can’t share your videos. You can pull them off your phone when you hook up to your computer but it’s an extra step.

I was pleased with all the features that Camera Genius provides for the price tag.

Price when Reviewed: $1.99 – Price for a limited time

Seller: CodeGoo

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

We have four children and we have gone through a baby monitor with each child. I’m not sure why they fail on us every time but it probably has something to do with our buying cheap baby monitors. Inevitably the cord gets a short and you never know when it’s working or not. There’ve been many times when I’ve walked by the monitor and discovered it’s not on, so I go to check on the baby (because I’m worried it’s not been on for awhile) and by opening the door I wake her up. Oops!

I’ve read about iPhone apps that turn your iPhone into a baby monitor but I’ve never tried one out until now. The app that I tested is BabyPhone Deluxe (Baby Monitor). It’s easy to use, you configure the microphone’s sensitivity, enter in the phone number of another phone, turn the phone to silent and leave the room. The microphone sensitivity lets the iPhone detect more or less noise. I like less noise because I want to make sure she’s really awake and not just moving around in bed. I would suggest testing the app out before you actually use it to make sure you get the noise sensitivity set to the right level. The phone number is important because the app will call that number when it registers noise. And I probably don’t even need to explain why turning your phone to silent is critical. You wouldn’t want a phone call coming through and waking the baby up! Another nice feature is the ability to set a time delay between when the app registers the sound and when it actually calls you. I’ve got a decent delay on mine because I want to make sure my baby is actually awake before I barge in that room. You can also set the app to reactivate itself after it’s triggered. When you answer the phone you can talk to your baby over the iPhone’s speaker. This would probably calm many babies down but mine would only get more upset and wonder where in the world I was. Plus I’ve got to keep that feature hidden from my older kids or my iPhone is going to become a very expensive walkie talkie.

BabyPhone Deluxe also has a recorder that will record the noises and “talking” your baby makes. You’re able to adjust it’s sensitivity to sound and you can email out the sound clips. The app has an event log that tracks and displays everything that has gone on. You can see when the monitor was triggered and when things were recorded.

This app is $2.99 and when I add up the total amount of money I’ve spent on baby monitors it seems like a steal to me! Plus, there are no cords to mess with and no worrying about the monitors range.  Now here’s the catch for me. We don’t have a home phone so during the day I’ve got no additional phone number for the app to call. Drat! But if you’ve got access to another phone during the day and you’re looking for an alternative to a traditional baby monitor then definitely give BabyPhone a try!

Price when Reviewed: $2.99

Seller: Bluefields BVBA

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

I didn’t upgrade my iPhone 3G when the 3GS version rolled out. I’m holding out hope for an upgrade this year but so far we’ve been just fine with our older models. One thing that I do envy on the 3GS is the ability to record videos. There are times when I don’t have my video camera with me and things worthy of video taping happen. I know that I’ve said it before but my iPhone is with me constantly. It would be nice to add yet another thing to what I abuse it for.

A few days ago I received an email asking me to look at the Video Genius app. It claims to give your 1st Generation or 3G iPhone the ability to record videos. Honestly, my first thought was one of skepticism. Then I tried out the app and by golly, it actually works. It’s not HD video but it’s video, with sound to boot! (That doesn’t look as good typed out as it does when I say it.) Video Genius lets you record in one of two modes. Regular mode only lets you record 40-60 seconds of video but it’s at a rate of 10 frames per second. I thought the quality was pretty decent. I was surprised how good it looked. The longer mode records videos at a rate of 4 frames per second. You’ll capture more video but you’ll notice a difference in quality.

There’s really nothing to using the app. Open up the app and point the iPhone at what you want to record. (Recording can be done in landscape mode too.) Now to record you’ll tap a small green dot in the bottom center of the screen. To stop recording tap it again. Once you’ve stopped recording the video file is immediately transferred to your camera roll. When the transfer is over you can tap the camera roll button on the bottom right to view the video. On the bottom left is a button that looks like a light switch. Tap here and you can switch from the regular recording to the longer version. You can see the videos in the iPhone’s Photo Library, even when the app is closed.  I wanted to see how the videos looked on my PC so I hooked up the USB cable and dragged the files over. It worked smoothly and they play just fine, although they’re very small on my computer screen. I also emailed myself a file and it wasn’t so large that it got stuck, either coming or going.

Video Genius is currently free and I think I’m going to keep it on my phone. Would it be a good way to record the 5th grade orchestra recital? No. But for capturing quick moments it’s great.

*3/28/10 – Just received word that the new Video Genius update improves the quality of recorded video and the app is still free.

Price when Reviewed: Free (App store says for a limited time)

Seller: CodeGoo

Have you heard about the Dragon Dictation app? It was just released this past week and has the potential to make my iPhone even more useful then it already is. When you use the app you speak into your iPhone and Dragon Dictation displays what you’ve said. It’s as simple as opening the app, pressing a record button and speaking into the iPhone’s microphone. The dictation isn’t perfect but I’ve noticed that it’s getting better the more times I use it.  So far it’s  done a pretty decent job understanding me in spite of my mumbly voice and all the background noise that occurs my house.  If the app has dictated a word incorrectly I can tap on it to see alternate suggestions or delete it completely. This is a quick way to clean up the dictation. I can also tap the keyboard icon and edit things that way.

Now for the part of the app that I thought was pretty great. With the tap of a few buttons I can send the dictation directly to an email, text message or the clipboard. If I send it to the clipboard I’ve got the ability to paste it in another program. I like this because it frees up my hands. If I’m holding the baby and I remember something for my to-do list I can dictate it and quickly copy and paste it into Evernote. No hunting and pecking around the keyboard with my one free hand or worse, not jotting it down thinking (ha!) I’ll remember it later.

That’s all good…now for the questionable, and it’s nothing to do with the performance of the app. The first time you use Dragon Dictation you will be asked to read a very lengthy user agreement. Very lengthy. Reading through the agreement it states that they will be using your contact information for dictation purposes. It also states that the information will be used for nothing other than identifying names you are dictating. I visited the Nuance Communications website and read more about the privacy policy. Again it states that they do not collect email or phone numbers from your contacts, only names. I personally don’t have a problem with this but if you look at the app’s reviews in iTunes you’ll see there are a number of people who are pretty unhappy. If you’re concerned about this issue then chances are you’ll be unhappy too. ***SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM OF REVIEW***

As for me, I’m thrilled with Dragon Dictation and the way it’s going to reduce the  typing I have to do on my iPhone. I’m quite impressed with both the speed and accuracy of this app. It’s extremely user friendly as well. Now I’ve just got to get over being self-conscious about walking around the house talking to myself. My kids were quite concerned about my sanity when I was testing the app out the other day.

Update - Just about a week after releasing the Dragon Dictation app and hearing the uproar about the collection of contact information (see above), Nuance has already come out with an update that 1)makes the uploading of contact names optional and 2)allows you to delete any previously uploaded contacts from their servers. Talk about an impressive response to user feedback.

Price when Reviewed: Free

Seller: Nuance Communications

RedLaser is on my iPhone because my husband kept raving about it, telling me how everyone at work loved it and it’d be a great shopping tool. So I went ahead and bought it to try out with my Christmas shopping. I don’t want to say this too loud but he was right, it’s a pretty terrific app.

You use RedLaser as a barcode scanner. With your iPhone’s camera you can scan any barcode. It’s as simple as pointing the camera and lining the barcode up within some guides. You don’t even have to tap any buttons, it begins to scan as soon as the barcode is within range. Now RedLaser will pull up a list of online shopping sources for the product. You’ll get results for Amazon.com and a whole list of results found in a Google search. It will also save a list of all your scanned searches. You can email out the list of scanned items and if for some reason the scanner doesn’t work you have the option of keying in the code.

I am absolutely loving this app, especially for Christmas shopping. I was brave/stupid enough to enter a ToysR’us store on Black Friday. As I was trying to keep my mind I scanned a few toys that seemed a wee bit overpriced to me. RedLaser pulled them up and I saw that they were quite a bit less on Amazon. So I waited and ordered online when I got home. It saved me quite a  bit of money.

The possibilities of the barcode scanner in shopping lists could be terrific. I would love to see a grocery shopping app where you could use the scanner to add something to your shopping list. RedLaser won’t do anything like that but they are marketing their technology to developers who want to try.

RedLaser has already helped me save money and it’s paid for itself several times over. It gets a great big endorsement from me for it’s ease of use and the value it brings.

Price when Reviewed: $1.99

Seller: Occipital, LLC

Mobicip provides a “safe browser” alternative to Safari.  It’s a way to restrict what your children are allowed to access online using an iPhone or iPod Touch. I found it to be a fabulous product. There are two versions of Mobicip, standard and premium. I’ve tried both and will give you a quick run down.

Standard: This is available through the $4.99 app. The first time you use the app you’ll establish a user account with Mobicip. You’ll be asked to enter in your child’s first name and select a filtering level – elementary school, middle school or high school. Each filtering level blocks different types of sites. Elementary is the most restrictive in it’s blocking, high school the least. A summary of what types of sites are blocked can be found on the Mobicip website under “User Levels and Policy. There you can also read about the real time content filtering that the app employs. I’m impressed with what they’ve done and the resources they’re using to filter out all the icky stuff. Plus, they’ve done it in a way that doesn’t really slow down the internet access. When I was browsing and using Mobicip I didn’t find much of a noticeable delay in the internet speed.

The app comes with preset bookmarks and the kids can also add their own. They’ll be able to create and use bookmark folders just like you do in Safari. The Google search is also still present at the top of the screen, only when they use it in Mobicip it’s subject to their search restrictions.  I was surprised to find that it offers search suggestions. I tried a search for Hannah Montana and by the time I’d typed in Hannah it had pulled up a list of suggestions for what I might be searching for. Another really cool feature is the ability to use multiple tabs, just like in Safari. The iPhone’s copy/paste feature will also work.

Premium: This version is available with the $4.99 app and a $9.99 annual subscription. You receive quite a few additional features with the upgrade. You’re able to monitor multiple users from your one parental account. Each user can have a different level of filtering and a different device. You can customize the type of filtering that’s done. For example, you can add extra restrictions to a high school level account or remove some from the elementary school one.  You can create a blacklist – specific websites that you want blocked.  Or create a whitelist – websites you want to allow. This means that you can have social networking sites blocked but allow Facebook to come through. You’re able to receive reports detailing what your children have done online, which websites they visited and even better, which one’s they tried to visit but were blocked from. All this can be done online at www.mobicip.com. The user interface on the parental account is extremely straightforward and user friendly. Exactly what I needed. I haven’t the faintest idea how all the technical voodoo works to block/allow websites so I’m grateful they’ve kept the parental account features simple.

I was explaining how it all worked to my husband and he asked a valid question. He wanted to know why the kids wouldn’t just get around the restrictions by using Safari. So I told him what I’d do is hide Safari through the restrictions setting on the iPhone. That way the only way to access the internet would be through Mobicip. The icky possibilities of the internet are endless and if Santa manages to put an iPod Touch on his sleigh for my kids this will be one of the first apps that I install.

Price when Reviwed: $4.99

Seller: Mobicip,LLC

My husband uses the LogMeIn Ignition app to help his family when they have computer issues. They live in other states but this app combined with the LogMeIn software allows him to take control of their computers and attempt to fix whatever’s ailing it. I knew he was somehow using his iPhone to do all this but hadn’t asked for details. Too much technical mumbo-jumbo was my thought.  Then I was contacted by LogMeIn about advertising on my site. I mentioned the name to the husband and he told me what he’d been using it for. I figured since we already had the app in our library, and they wanted to be a sponsor, I’d take a look at what LogMeIn could do for moms.

The app itself is slick. It turns your iPhone into a remote control for your PC or Mac. When you’re using the iPhone app your desktop will show up on your iPhone screen and you use your fingers to move around.  You can open programs, view files, etc. – basically it’s just like you’re using the computer yourself. Except your not and you could be anywhere. The hubby showed me a couple tricks that improved the speed of the app. First he changed the color quality to “Grayscale” and then he lowered the resolution. After he did this I noticed a big improvement in how quickly the app and PC were working together. In the settings you can also lock the keyboard of the computer you’re accessing. That way no one on the other end can interfere.

To use the app you’re going to need the LogMeIn software installed on your PC or Mac. There are several different versions. I started with the free one then I received an email offering a trial version of LogMeIn Pro2. It appears the free trial is also offered on their website. The upgrade in the desktop version doesn’t affect the features you get with the iPhone app but with the Pro2 you have more features available when you’re using your computer to access another computer. The key differences between the free and Pro2 software are detailed on their website. If all you need is basic access to your Mac or PC then you’ll be just fine with the free software. But if you need to fully use your PC/Mac remotely then Pro2 has the features you’ll need.

So why would a mom need LogMeIn Ignition and/or the desktop software? If you work outside the home and need to be able to access your work computer in the evenings, on the weekend or even on vacation, the software allows you to do this from your home computer and the app will allow you to do it with your iPhone. Or maybe you’ve got a situation like we do where you’re often called upon to assist relatives with computer trouble. This is much, much less painful then trying to visualize the problem and then walk them through the fix-it process. With the iPhone app you wouldn’t even need to be home to help. Although maybe you don’t want to become the 24 hour, 7 day a week family geek squad.

You’ll see below that this is not an inexpensive app. It’s definitely one that you put on your iPhone for a specific reason and not every mom is going to need it. If you’ve got a reason and need to remotely access computers anytime and anywhere then this is a great way to go. I found that the app ran smoothly and did everything it said it would. The same with the LogMeIn software. That technical mumbo-jumbo I was worried about wasn’t any more than I could deal with. Which considering my sleep deprived state says a lot.

Price when Reviewed: $29.99

Seller: LogMeIn, Inc.