app

To reach a human from the iPhone, Dial Zero

I've made my share of vociferous complaints about spinning through automated phone systems without ever reaching a real person. The self-help Internet Age has made everything worse as more corporations channel customers back to online help centers. Grr, it dampens my mood just thinking about it; there are simply some situations that call for prompt human interaction.

Dial Zero is one free iPhone application that can ease the pain. To get a live person, start by scrolling or searching for the company you wish to call. Then, tap the phone number and follow the instructions posted on each record … Read more

Jamd for iPhone: Stacks of celebrity pics

It's only a matter of time before pictures of the Jolie/Pitt twins wallpaper the Web. But when they do, Getty Images has provided iPhone and iPod Touch users a surefire scrapbook.

Jamd is a free news application that's tailored to celebrity pursuits. Nicely designed, it lists featured articles, breaking news, and popular Hollywood stories that you can send to friends. Since this is a Getty project, photos are the real draw. In the top right corner of each story is a "stack" of images related to the story. Clicking the thumbnail takes you to a … Read more

Bloomberg's iPhone app a window onto Wall Street

The world of finance is sober, serious business, ever more so in a struggling through economy. Bloomberg's freeware application for the iPhone and iPod Touch gives information-seekers a clear view of the moment with financial headlines, a ticker finder, and a fleshed-out index of world markets.

An appealing dark-themed application, Bloomberg contains a read-only newsfeed and statistics on various exchanges in global markets. Highs, lows, and a graph of yearlong performance are displayed for each exchange--further charts and tables are available for industry and stock movers.

To discover individual stock performance, users simply enter the company name into the … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 765: Thank goodness for robot crabs

I'm so sick of saying the name of that darn phone, but the fact of the matter is, people want to hear about it. So we do one more day about the weekend issues and thank goodness for Microsoft and Yahoo giving us something else to talk about. And robot crabs. Thank goodness for robot crabs. Listen now: Download today's podcast Episode 765

Yahoo rejects joint-bid for search business by Icahn and Microsoft http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9989870-93.html

Microsoft' Latest Offer Detailed; Major Shareholder Legg Mason (Still) Unimpressed http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-microsoft-latest-offer-detailed-legg-mason-unimpressed/ http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/13/1217220… Read more

Five great free apps for the iPhone and iPod touch

Over the weekend I updated my iPod touch to the 2.0 software, and I consider that $10 well-spent. Now I can access all the same great apps as iPhone 3G owners. Thankfully, many of them are free; I've rounded up five I really like. (Note that all links require iTunes.)

AOL Radio Stream radio from over 200 stations spanning 25 music genres. It can even round up local stations. Who needs an FM tuner now? eReader As a longtime fan of reading e-books on my PDA, I'm overjoyed I can now do the same on my touch. … Read more

iPod Touch firmware leak

Thursday's leak of the free iPhone firmware update may have given Apple a little heartburn, but the iPod Touch firmware upgrade making the rounds might induce a coronary in the company's accounting division. Apple hasn't released specific sales figures on how many iPod Touch models are in circulation, but assuming the device makes up a modest slice of the 22.1 million iPods sold last year, Apple stands to lose a fair chunk of money if users find their way around paying the $10 upgrade fee.

What do you guys think? Is Apple's $10 upgrade charge … Read more

Truphone's VoIP app dials up iPhone

Getting poor Skype sound and want to cut down on international call costs? Truphone's new iPhone app might be worth checking out.

The London-based mobile VoIP operator has offered the service since 2006 for the E or N series Nokia phones. An iPhone version of Truphone's service hit Apple's App store Friday.

The VoIP service lets people send text messages or make calls to anywhere in the world for a low fee.

Calling a landline costs 6 cents per minute, and dialing a mobile phone costs 30 cents per minute. SMS text messaging costs 20 cents. Calling … Read more

Good eatin' from Yelp, the iPhone way

Yelp for iPhone contains all the ingredients you'd expect from the well-known site for users to rate local business and restaurant listings--except one. It has a perplexing tendency to space out when loading user reviews. The instability is surely an early bug, but a detraction nonetheless.

Apart from that, Yelp for iPhone features a clear display composed of category listings for nearby restaurants, bars, banks, and so on. Like so many of the other apps that CNET editors have reviewed, Yelp's iPhone offering taps into the phone's GPS receptors to find matching listings in your neighborhood, with … Read more

Can you trust your business to Google's cloud?

A large number of Google Docs users couldn't use their online word processor or presentations for about an hour Tuesday. But the glitch illustrates not just the troubles with cloud computing, but also the gradual progress in making the concept palatable.

Cloud computing, in which software runs not on PCs or company servers but instead on computers on the Internet, requires something of a leap of faith both technologically and culturally. Those making the move must get accustomed to a reliance on somebody else's computing infrastructure, and that can be scary.

What's gradually emerging, though, are guarantees … Read more

NetNewsWire spoon-feeds iPhone the news

Of the several news readers offered in Apple's iTunes App Store to date, NetNewsWire stands out as the most appealing. Unlike Mobile News from the Associated Press, NetNewsWire pulls in stories from multiple sources, and unlike Google Reader, it does so nearly instantly in a true native application (Google Readers whisks you to an iPhone-optimized Web application after you select it from a list of more options on Google Mobile.)

Like many other applications, NetNewsWire is the iPhone version of an already-brawny Web service operated by NewsGator, and one whose desktop versions CNET Download.com editors have already acclaimed … Read more