All articles tagged , Camera, iPhone, iPod touch, MobileMe, Photos, SMS, Social Networking, Tips, Voice & Data Plan, Weekly Roundup

Happy Friday, Touchtip readers! Today we’d like to share with you some of the best tips that our readers have sent in over the past week. We’ve got some terrific reader tips this week which include how to get free SMS messages on your iPhone, and how to get free push syncing of email, calendar, and contacts without shelling out the extra cash for a MobileMe subscription. You’ll also learn the secret of mastering the iPhone keyboard (hint: it’s easier than you think!).

Read on to learn about these tips, and more. And if you have your own tip you’d like to share, please send it to us and we’ll post in our next Friday Roundup. Now, on to the tips.
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If you do any social networking with your friends or colleagues online, then you know what a pain it is to check all the sites to monitor their activity. You have to go to each site, sign into your account, check the updates. This gets more and more tedious as you connect with more people using different social networks. You’ve got friends on YouTube, and some are on Facebook, your colleagues are on LinkedIn, he uses Digg, she uses Flickr, you get the idea. It’s getting to be a big distraction just to keep up, and your CPA (constant partial attention) is getting stretched to its limit.

Enter FriendFeed, a social media aggregator that combines activity from all of your social networks into a single stream. While FriendFeed does not currently have a mobile-friendly version of the service, there are other ways of using it on mobile Safari and we’ll tell you how after the jump.
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Outalot is a new, and free, location-based discovery site specifically designed for iPhone and iPod touch owners who want to be reminded of what’s nearby, or would like to discover new places. The founders of Outalot, Joe Cohen and Jesse Boyes, have domain expertise in location-based services having worked at Vindigo for over four years. Unlike Vindigo’s platform-specific mobile software, Outalot is purely web-based and optimized for the iPhone and iPod touch. Outalot is available to anyone using a web browser, but the city data is currently limited to San Francisco and New York. These test-bed cities will be used to improve the user experience before more cities are added the service.

There are many services, both online and mobile, that work well if you already know where you’re going - that’s more the search paradigm. We wanted a product for location-based discovery and knew others did, too. - Joe Cohen, co-founder of Outalot

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The media’s fickle love affair with social networking has spurned MySpace in favor of Facebook, and now Twitter, with a little LinkedIn on the side. Each of these social networks has enjoyed some level of success either by focusing on one market, or by doing at least one thing very well. Also, each of these started as a desktop web application before offering mobile access and only a handful deliver a true iPhone interface. There is one problem with these iPhone versions in that they feel more like an afterthought, created for the sole purpose of riding the iPhone media frenzy to get some press. Take the iPhone versions of Facebook and LinkedIn, for example. They are feature-crippled compared to their desktop siblings which makes the overall social networking experience for mobile less than satisfying. Yet quietly, deftly, iRovr has been building up an iPhone-only social network that leaves all the others sitting in the dust. Simply put, iRovr is fantastic and laden with features for blogging, life streaming, sharing photos and videos, social bookmarks, and polls. iRovr has everything we need in a social network, and more. Read on to learn more about iRovr for iPhone and iPod touch users.
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Mobile computing is destined to transform online dating and it’s obvious that the iPhone and iPod touch will be leading the charge. You would think that the online dating giants like Match.com and eHarmony would be all over this like the papparazi on Paris Hilton, but we suspect the little players in this space will be the ones to revolutionize it. Imagine how iPhone 2.0 features will be coupled with native apps to bring online dating into the mobile age. Real-time video conferencing and location-based services will help singles hook up faster than Lindsy Lohan at a frat party. And forget about STDs, the real danger will be iPhone viruses getting passed around town like canker sores. We smell an opportunity for iPhone condoms in the form of security apps to protect our mobile devices. But we digress. Dating DNA is looking to give the big online dating services a run for their money by betting on iPhone and iPod touch. Read on to find out how Dating DNA’s free service has already changed mobile dating with social networking, and get a glimpse into what they have in store for iPhones in the near future.
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Last fall, we were very excited to tell you about the newly launched vTap which gives you YouTube and much more. vTap is a web video aggregator that makes it easy to access quality video on your iPhone or iPod touch. vTap actively collects video content from over 50,000 sites like YouTube, ESPN, and the New York Times. vTap automatically converts videos into an iPhone compatible format using QuickTime. In addition to a browse by topic feature, vTap offers several ways to find content and has added one new feature specifically designed for mobile users. vTap’s search feature has always been handy, auto suggesting content while you’re typing which reduces tapping on your touch screen. vTap’s newest “feed” feature continuously pumps new content into a topics category that you set up one time. This makes using vTap on the iPhone and iPod touch much more passive giving you more time to enjoy videos instead of looking for them.
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The life evolution of iPod touch jumps the track and produces Chumby, the platypus of web-enabled touch devices. Like a forbidden mashup, the unholy communion of the iPod touch and the popular bean-filled footbag has produced a quirky new breed of web-enabled touch devices that make you say WTF as you fall hopelessly in love with its cuddly charm. Chumby is about the size of a cup of coffee and makes a perfect bed mate for your night stand, or even a desk pal at work; always within sight and just a touch away. Chumby’s squishy, Italian leather body features a color touch screen, audio, and built-in Wi-fi all running on a Linux-based operating system with Adobe Flash. Chumby comes loaded with widgets that deliver Flickr photos, weather, stocks, sports scores, news, internet radio, video, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, email, and on and on and on. Heck, you can even play games with Chumby, and not just hacky sack, either. Find out more about Chumby after the jump.
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Sure, we know that web portals are soooooo nineteen ninety-eight, but we also know that the iPhone age is breathing new life into these destination sites, especially when they are optimized for the iPhone and iPod touch. Take myijump.com for example. At first glance this looks like another iPhone portal site offering a convenient starting point for web surfing from mobile Safari. However, a deeper dive into myijump reveals a virtual cornucopia of web sites and web apps that are all optimized for the iPhone or iPod touch. The web apps are all categorized under tap-formatted buttons designed for the touch interface. With games, entertainment, news, sports, social networking, productivity, free iTunes music, and more, you will find something for everyone here making myijump.com worthy of a web clip on your device.
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