Articles and Reviews by Michael Alexander

Touch Karma (Parenting) is for moms and dads who like to keep a record of who has been naughty and who has been nice.

Talking calculators, like what you get with  VoiceCalc, aren’t new—I remember owning one in the mid-80s—but this is the first voice calculator app that I’ve looked at for the iPhone and iPod touch. What’s really different about VoiceCalc, at least compared to my now ancient gizmo, is that instead of using computerized speech to say [...]

Almost from the ribbon-cutting ceremony, it’s been tough for developers to grab the attention of App Store shoppers. Maybe it’s coincidence, or the start of a trend, but two groups of devs announced this week they are collaborating on their own versions of a department store, blue-light special in hopes of generating attention, and obviously, [...]

ChangeWave, a market research company, just released a study that tucks Apple right behind Palm and  RIM as leaders in the corporate smartphone market. Although, Palm and RIM lost a few percentage points in the past quarter, and Apple picked up a few points, the iPhone has a long ways to go to rival RIM's [...]

Several developers, particularly those who use PhoneGap — a tool software devs use to access the iPhone’s hardware — have been kicking sand in Apple’s face over the use of private, or third-party Application Programming Interfaces (API). Apparently, the App Store has either booted or rejected apps that use private or third-party APIs. Michael Nachbaur, [...]

Mortgage and loan calculators – A real estate agent told me recently that she’s seen a small uptick in house sales in my little town. Along with most Americans who own, or plan to buy, homes, my wife and I are always worrying how the current economy will affect us. Any positive news, no matter [...]

WiFi Directory — You can never have too much Wi-Fi, which is what makes WiFi Directory (Wireless Hotspots Finder) as appealing to me as a medium-rare steak is to my dog Henry, who will eat anything other than dog food. Whenever I’m out at the mall, a restaurant—anywhere—I check for Wi-Fi access whether or not [...]

Remote Mice and Trackpads – The last time I went to my local coffee shop to slurp a large Sumatra, with a splash of free Wi-Fi, I realized I had forgotten my wireless mouse. I’m not fond of using trackpads, especially the one on my Dell, so I broke out my iPhone and went to [...]

JMDictate-Professional Dictation, from JOTOMI, is an industrial-strength app for people who are constantly recording notes, memos and other bright ideas and then need to store or share them by email or file transfer. When you first launch JMDictate-Professional Dictation, the app must build a "working area," which takes several seconds (about 30 seconds in my [...]

Ipong! Game, from TouchTen.com, was created by a group of Indonesian teenagers with a noble purpose: To sell at least 14,285 copies of their game so they can donate up to $10.000 of  proceeds to charity. The group says it hopes to reach its goal — minus Apple’s 30 percent share of sales — by [...]

If you’re not a member of AAA, you should be. It surprises me just how pervasive and ubiquitous are the companies that provide discounts to AAA members. Check out AAA Discounts, a free iPhone app, and you’ll see what I mean. When my wife brought up the idea of our joining AAA a few years, [...]

Wallet Pro aims to solve one of the biggest concerns I have about using my iPhone: As much as I would like to have Web logins, credit card numbers and similarly crucial information on hand, I worry what might happen should I lose my iPhone. Because of that, I won't store on my iPhone information [...]

I downloaded ocrNow! Lite developed by WordCraft International Limited, with a good amount of skepticism. It’s an app that is designed to convert hardcopy text into a PDF or text doc, using the iPhone’s camera for optical character recognition. I was skeptical because I’ve looked at a couple of apps with OCR-like features and they [...]

If you need to get to a site quickly, Fast Web Free will take you there in pretty good time. In fact, Hobbyist Software, the developer, says Fast Web Free will feed you pages 10 to 30 times faster than loading your everyday Web pages. Think of Fast Web Free as a no-frills Web browser [...]

The long-awaited SlingPlayer Mobile for Sling Media’s SOLO, PRO and PRO-HD TV set-top boxes finally made its grand appearance in the App Store on Wednesday. If you aren’t an owner of one of Sling Media’s set-top boxes, here’s what they do: Plug in your Sling Media black box into your cable or satellite box and you [...]