There is an App for that!  Yes, there is an App for nearly everything, some more useful than others but the fact is (according to Pinch Media) just 30 percent of people who buy an iPhone application actually use it the day after it was purchased. And the numbers drop significantly from there: after 20 days, less than 5 percent of those who downloaded an application are actively using it and the drop-off is worse for free applications.  Only about 10 percent of iPhone applications appear to retain an audience over time.

I definitely fall into these numbers as I am known for downloading an app, checking it out once or twice and then never touch it again until I notice it on my screen weeks and sometimes months later.  However, for the 10 percent of the apps that I use on a daily/weekly basis they have been great.  Below are the top 10 apps that I find most useful.  These include jailbroken apps.

1.  Winterboard (jailbroken) with the Picnic and Picnic Lockscreen theme - I have downloaded many themes and this one seems to be the cleanest best looking theme.

2.  Installous (jailbroken) - Allows you to download fully functional cracked apps for free.  This is nice to check stuff out before you buy.  I know developers probably hate this app as some people probably keep the cracked app and never buy the legal version from the app store, but I like to try before I buy so this is where I go.

3.  DirecTV - Allows you to schedule your DVR remotely from anywhere.  Very handy when you forget to set your DVR when you are vacation.

4.  SportsCenter - Free app for checking sports scores.

5.  DailyFinance - Free app for checking stocks in real time.

6.  MyPhone+ - $$$ App that allows you to copy Facebook information to your contact lists (including picture).

7.  Tweetie - $$$ Great app for Twitter.

8.  Mint.com - Free finance app that allows you to check all of your accounts in one clean screen.

9.  IM+ - $$$ IM with Gmail, Facebook, AIM and a slew of other instant messaging accounts.

10.  Occassions - $$$ syncs with Facebook and notifies you (via Push) of upcomming events and birthdays.

As I mentioned in a previous post ISP’s are throttling and sometimes completely blocking Torrent services.  I stumbled across a handy tool which helps detect if your ISP is indeed throttling or blocking your torrent uploads/downloads.  They report that a majority of US users being blocked / throttled are in the Cox or Comcast networks.  To run the test go to http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest.php

iPhone users have been asking for video since the first generation.  Along with many other people that was one of the top items in my wishlist.  Well it may not be long before we see a video camera added to the iPhone.  Mac Rumors reports a patent application from Apple was submitted that looks to have a front facing video camera.  The patent application which was filed today shows the camera directly above the earpiece on front of the phone and is labeled as 180 (see image below).

This is all speculation but it looks promising.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have the ability to video chat?!

OnLive is launching the world’s highest performance Games On Demand service, instantly delivering the latest high-end titles over home broadband Internet to the TV and entry-level PCs and Macs.  So how is that going to work?  Chances are you have heard the buzz about Cloud Computing.  If you haven’t,  Wikipedia defines it as a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources are provided as a service over the internet.  Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them.

So users of this service don’t need a pricey high-end computer with a top end CPU and video card to run these games since all of the processing power is done at the OnLive game server center (or the cloud).  All you need is an entry level computer.  What the service does require is a high speed internet connection since you need a way to access the OnLive game service center.  This is pretty exciting for gamers out there and probably a little worrisome for Sony, Nintendo and Mircosoft.  Could this be the console killer?  Time will only tell and I am looking forward to hearing reviews on the beta testing this summer.

The service, which is scheduled to go into beta testing this summer promises to offer high end games such as Bioshock, Prince of Persia, Fear 2, Tomb Raider and many more.

For more information on OnLive check out their website.

For more information on Cloud Computing check out Sun Microsystems website.

I backup my PC on a regular basis, but I needed a backup solution for my newly purchased Macbook.  I thought it was  necessary after taking all my photos and music from my PC and loading them on to the Mac.  So after doing some research I decided to go with the Western Digital My Book Studio II.   I was debating on getting a NAS for the Mac but decided it wasn’t really necessary and to go along with that there really hasn’t been a Mac compatible NAS with stellar reviews.  All of them had some drawbacks.  So to save some money I went with the Western Digital; which is Mac and PC compatible. If you are a Windows user looking for a NAS read this post on my favorite NAS.

In terms of price I picked it up for $255.99 from J&R and at the time of this writing that still seems to be the best price.  For 2TB’s (2 x 1TB) of storage I thought it was a great deal, as it turns out to be under 13 cents a GB.

On to the review….

What’s in the Box?

The packaging was very good. It came wrapped in a hard plastic protector so even if you’re having this shipped you shouldn’t be too worried about the hard drive being damaged. The drive comes with an installation CD (equipped with both the Windows and Mac Install), Power Cord, Instructions, Firewire 800-400, Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 cable. I was happy that the drive came with all of the cables, but I was a little upset with the length of each of the them. I would say the Firewire and USB wires were only about 3 feet in length. So if you have plans to have the drive more than 3ft away from your computer you will have to invest in either a whole new cable or buy an extension.

Features

Serial Transfer Rate

• FireWire 800 Serial Bus Transfer Rate (1394b) of 800 Mb/s (Max)
• eSATA Serial Bus Transfer Rate (eSATA) of 3 Gb/s (Max)
• FireWire 400 Serial Bus Transfer Rate (1394a) of 400 Mb/s (Max)
• USB 2.0 Serial Bus Transfer Rate (USB 2.0) of 480 Mb/s (Max)

Physical Specifications

• Capacity 2 TB
• Interface Quad Interface

User Serviceable

• Want to upgrade a drive? Simply open the case and replace the existing drive – no screwdriver needed.

Capacity Gauge

• See at a glance how much space is available on your storage system from the lights on the front of the drive.

System Requirements

• Available USB port, FireWire 800 or 400 port, eSATA port or eSATA adapter card
• Mac OS X 10.4.10+, 10.5.2+
• Windows 2000/XP/Vista

Appearance

The drive is one of the better looking drives I have seen. It has the exact same finish as the aluminum finished Macbook’s so they blend well together. The drive is also fairly small in size with dimensions of 3.87(W) x 6.54(H) x 6.06(L) and weighs 5.2 pounds.

Installation

I ran the setup on the Mac in about 2 minutes. The Western Digital software appears in the header bar next to Airport Utility and the Time. When you enter the drive manager it gives the option as to whether you want to run the drive as RAID 1 or RAID 0 and have data in HFS+ (for Mac) or FAT32 (for Windows). The drive comes pre-configured for Mac (HFS+) so if you are running Windows it may take some additional time to re-format the drive to FAT32. If you need an explanation of RAID 1 and RAID 0 you can see my previous post on backups here. This is something you need to decide on prior to adding any data because if you decide to change it down the road you will have to delete all the data to reformat to whatever RAID you select. Because I want redundant data in case of drive failure I went with the RAID 1 setup. This also takes under 2 minutes after you make your selection. Now it’s time to backup data!

Backing Up

Since I am using a Mac I will be using the Time Machine application. Depending on your setup you may want to partition your drive so that you can have one part strictly for backups and another for storage. I decided to break the drive up into two equal partitions; having one strictly for Time Machine. For Mac users, I strongly recommend this because Time Machine uses whatever space you give it; so if you don’t partition, Time Machine will eventually eat up all 2 TB (or 1 TB, if you are setup using RAID 1). That most likely would not happen for a very long time, but to save you a problem down the road it’s easy to partition the drive up front. Again, this is something you can’t (easily) change down the road without deleting all the data so you will want to decide this before you backup anything. Once you have the drives partitioned backups pretty much run themselves with Time Machine. For storage it’s drag and drop. Unfortunately my speeds aren’t great but I am using USB 2.0 since the new Macbook’s don’t have Firewire (grrrrr!!). If one of the drive does fail it is really simple to swap out drives. You just pop off the top cover and pull out the drive; no special tools required.

Final Thoughts

Weaknesses
The only drawback for me is the length of the included USB and Firewire cables.

Strengths
For a 2TB (also available in 1TB) hard drive with RAID 1 capabilities this is a great buy. The appearance and the ease of use is also a major plus. If you’re in the market for a hard drive I would give this drive a serious look. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

With all the talk of Google buying Twitter I imagined that Twitter would eventually be part of Google, but I figured that would take some time.  Well I just tested out TwitterGadget and it is a fully functional Twitter Client that sits right in your Gmail sidebar.  Tweet away Gmail users!  You can get instructions on how to add to your Gmail from here.

Here is an App that was recently submitted to Apple’s App Store.  This looks like it will bring Google Voice right to your iPhone and iPod touch.  Check out the video below and read up on Google Voice.  Get more info from the developer.