I have not used Jott’s  iPhone application in a while. Instead I was going the "old-fashioned route" and calling the service from my phone.  It wasn’t that I don’t like the application, its just that I was
finding it, on occasion, a little bit buggy. The biggest issue was if I were calling numerous times in a row and I wasn’t in a WiFi zone, the application kind of choked on itself and messages were not sent to the server until I was back in a WiFi zone.  Without high-speed net access, it became more of an issue when I need it to get the note back and wasn’t going to be in WiFi coverage for a while.

Yesterday, I needed to send myself a series of 15 Jotts in rapid succession while driving home. I don’t know what the company did with the application, but suddenly it was not only sending each message over 3G, but as soon as I finished the message, it was available to send back to me right away.  If this is the continues, it means that the service itself and especially the iPhone application for it are now very useful in any location.

If you haven’t tried the service it is definitely worth a look. I find it to be incredibly handy — a convenience and a significant timesaver. And while the free version of it includes the iPhone application that works quite well, it may well be worth looking at a subscription — the difference between 15 seconds of recording time and 30 seconds is tremendous.
 

When all is said and done, after searching for a decent voice dialing app I find myself using good, old fashioned dialing when it comes to placing calls on my iPhone. It isn’t that there aren’t good apps ot there for voice dial, there are, but sinceit still takes nmerous steps to use voice dial on the device, dialing works almost as well if not as well. One of the keys to finding and dialing people who are alreayd in my large contact list are apps like Smart Dial.

As we have written previously, Smart Dial lets you use the large, finger-friendly, phone pad to type in names. Dial 9 for "W" (of X,Y,Z), dial 6 for "O" (or M or N), dial 4 for "I" (or G or H) and dial 7 for "P" (or Q, R or S) and in four taps Smart Dial brings up my contact for whatsoniphone.  

Smart Dial allows you to quickly dial your contacts by spelling their name directly on the number keypad. It uses the contacts in your Address Book, starts quicly and includes "smart logic" such as default phone number and recently dialed calls to keep your number of taps to a minimum.

You can-
• Find contacts by first and last name
• View contacts by default phone number or other alternative numbers
• Create new contacts immediately when a new phone number is entered
• Access previously dialed phone numbers
• Editing of contact info from within the app
and more….

Best of all, Smart Dial just received a nice update. In addition to the usual bug fixes, you can now

Pano for iPhone is, by far, one of the neatest iPhone imaging applications I have seen. It lets you take a series of pictures and then seemlessly stiches then together to create a beautiful panorama. Best of all, the entire process occurs ON THE IPHONE ITSELF!

The interface is simple, the process is quick and the results are nothing short of stunning. Now Pano, which was just released last month, has already received a nice update.

In Version 2.0, Pano

The rumormill is beginning to build for MacWorld 2009. Once again, we’re seeing all sorts of buzz. Some are a bit interesting but many of them are simply rehashings of previous rumors. Yes, I am referring to the "larger than an iPhone but not a slate tablet" and the "Apple NetBook" rumors. Yes indeed… here we go again.

Having gotten caught up in previous rumor-fest-fever over the last year and a half, I’m gonna take a pass on this one. Yes, I will simply wait and see what actually happens . . . . . . .

Oh, who am I kidding… I want to see a tablet 2 to 3 times the size of the iPhone!!!  Please, Uncle Steve… pretty please?!

Unfortunately, something tells me it isn’t happening this year either.

I won’t however, be surprised to see the release of a 32-gigabyte iPhone, though. With the increase in capacity, the reduction of price, and the ability to put more and more memory in the same physical space, it seems inevitable that the iPhone will jump up to the same capacity as the largest capacity iPod Touch. Here’s the thing, though- I’m not all that interested in it. In fact, I’m not interested in it at all.

When you absolutely, positively, don’t want to actually talk… use the newly released Slydial iPhone app.

What is Slydial? Slydial let’s you bypass actually having to speak to the person you can and instead jump directly to voicemail. (With the on-again-off-again reception of some celular phones they’ll never know you didn’t ACTUALLY call.)

The Slydial app lets you make Slydial calls from your iPhone to anyone in your address book so long as they have a U.S. mobile number. Just click on the Slydial icon, select the mobile number and the app instantly puts you in the other person’s Voice Mail.

So whether you don’t want to bother someone or are just trying to avoid actually having to speak to them, the free slydial app has you covered.

Then again, you could always just send an email or a text…

Slydial is available HERE in the App Store for free.

As I wrote yesterday, I am a huge fan of Mental Case, the flash card creator and study tool from www.maccoremac.com.

I think both the Mac application and the iPhone app are exceptionally well done. Moreover, now that access to FlashcardExchange.com is part of the all new Mental Case 2.0 app, new flash card sets can be found and downloaded over the air. Mental Case is even better than before and offers a ton of possibilities for learning and organizing

The Mac application costs $25 and the full Mental Case for iPhone app (which allows for ota downloads and on-iPhone editing) costs $7.99.

The good folks at maccoremac.com have been kind enough to offer codes for both the desktop and iPhone app to one of our whatsoniphone.com readers. (Thanks Drew!)

Here’s all you have to do-

Poker Stacks is brand new in the App store. Its developer claims it is

based on games like Bejeweled 2, Tetris, or Bubbles and builds on them in that you are trying to match real poker hands to clear the board and move to the next level.

Moreover, they claim

If you love games like Trism, Puzzle Quest, Fuzzle, Poker Dice, Glyph, or Aurora Feint and/or you enjoy Video Poker or Texas Hold ‘Em you have to give Poker Stacks a try.

I love Bejeweled. Tetris is nothing short of a classic. And I was out with a friend last night who adores Trism. So trying to mention your game in the same post as those amazing ones is potentially chutzpah.

Thanks to the developer, I have had a chance to play Poker Stacks for the last day and I already have a clear conclusion on this one…

Dimitri was more than a bit taken with Fieldrunners when he reviewed it recently. As he put it-

Wow. One word that pretty much says everything I feel about this game. I am usually not the type of person to play a game on the iPhone for a few hours, but on more than one instance, I found myself doing just that.  This game is by far my favorite game for the iPhone.

(And if you were to search all of whatsoniphone you would find that this is NOT the way he normally describes games!)

Well, Fieldrunners received a nice update recently. Among them-

There has never been a doubt in my mind that the iPhone than the iPod Touch had the potential to be superb educational tools. They just needed the right tool. Well, the right tool exists and it is amazing.

I’ve been meaning to write about Mental Case for some time now and the release of version 2 of the iPhone app definitely calls for a full review.  This update changes the entire application and its power and makes it nothing short of a "must have" for any student at any age!

There are two parts to Mental Case. There is a Mac application and an iPhone/iPod Touch application. They can work independently of one another but when used together are even more powerful.

We’ll look at both…

So we try to keep it clean here on whatsoniphone. And it’s going to stay that way.

But darn it if we haven’t heard this complaint over and over again…

you want to be more expressive than usual (or perhaps "as normal") but you come up with sentences like

Yeah, autocorrect is nice and works great, but sometimes it gets in the way.

Well the good folks over at Gizmodo have you covered…