One More Tap

DataViz‘s highly anticipated Microsoft Office documents viewer and editor, Documents To Go has been released for both the iPhone and iPod touch. Documents To Go, now in its 10th year, is the mobile office suite of choice and comes pre-loaded on millions of devices worldwide, including Palm and BlackBerry devices.

Currently, only Microsoft Word editing is supported, with Microsoft Excel support coming soon as a free update when available. Exchange email users will probably find the other version, Documents To Go with Exchange Attachments more useful. This special version allows users to access email attachments right within the Documents To Go application. If you constantly switch between editing a document on your mobile device and desktop, then you’ll probably find that DataViz’s InTact Technology ensures original document formatting is saved across edited files.

Documents To Go for iPhone features:

• create, edit and view Microsoft Word documents (including Word 2007 and 2008)
• view and synchronize Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat PDFs, Apple iWork and other supported files
• receive, edit and email Microsoft Word attachments (Exchange Attachments version)
• desktop application (Mac and PC) for two-way Wi-Fi synchronization

Documents To Go (Microsoft Word Editing) is currently available at an introductory price of only $4.99, while Documents To Go (Exchange Attachmentes) is going at $9.99 each. Hurry up, as this special offer expires on June 30, 2009. Note that competitor products like QuickOffice Mobile Office Suite is going for about $20 as of this writing, so if you have yet to decide on your office suite of choice, give Documents To Go a look. I personally have used most versions, starting from my Palm OS days.

written by xcool \\ tags: Apps, Documents To Go, iPhone, iPod touch, Productivity

If you’ve been trying out a lot of apps (free or paid) on your iPhone or iPod touch, then you would have most likely encountered an app or two that doesn’t behave as intended. It’s quite common to have some badly programmed apps to freeze or stop responding. Here’s when a tip like this falls in.

The iPhone OS, just like its big brother, Mac OS X, allows an application to be quit, forcefully – hence the name force quit. On the Mac OS X, you’ll simply press Command+Option+Escape key combinations. On the iPhone however, things seem to have gone into muddy waters, now that iPhone OS 3.0 as well as the iPhone 3G S was announced.

During the keynote presentation on Monday, June 8, 2009 – we were all told about a new function for the iPhone 3G S, and that is the Voice Control features. Activating Voice Control on the iPhone 3G S can be done by simply holding the Home button. As you can see, the Home button used to be the magic button that force quits an application when held for about 5 seconds. You’ll notice that when the application exits and the home screen reappears. Here’s a video I did some time back, demonstrating how to force quit the Safari application.

The function is now missing in iPhone OS 3.0 – or shall I say, enhanced. Force quitting an app in iPhone OS 3.0 can still be done, with an extra step.

If you are one of the lucky Lukes (or Leia, so to speak) to have iPhone OS 3.0 installed, try this the next time you want to force quit a misbehaving application. Hold the power button for a few seconds until you see the “slide to power off” prompt. Let go of the power button and hold the Home button until you see the application disappear and the home screen reappears.

Force quitting can be good avenues, not only to exit a misbehaving or frozen app. It’s also a good practice to quit background apps like Safari and Mail, which take up precious memory, especially before starting a game. Also, since most games save its state when you quit, you could actually force quit it if you want to prevent the game state from being saved. That’s what I did most of the time to somehow ‘cheat’ in certain games. Try it!

written by xcool \\ tags: Apps, iPhone, iPod touch, Tips

Check out XEmoji, my first application for the iPhone/iPod touch!

Most of us have heard about emoji and probably using it now. XEmoji is the first reference tool to all 461 emoji icons available for use in the iPhone or iPod touch. Looking up for an icon in XEmoji is easy – the icons are arranged and categorized in the same order as they appear on the emoji keyboard!

Each icon is explained in detail – some of them are self-explanatory (like the phone, computer and smileys, etc), but there are some dubious ones like the carp streamer, moon viewing and hinamatsuri. As one kind reviewer said, get XEmoji to avoid emoji faux pas, and to look smug when people don’t understand what you’ve just texted them about.

Unlike other emoji applications, this is the only emoji application that you might want to keep on your iPhone or iPod touch – good for your future referencing needs. Oh yeah, it also enables the emoji keyboard for your iPhone or iPod touch!

Check out XEmoji from the iTunes App Store (or XCoolApps.com) for more details – it’s available now at an introductory price of $0.99.

written by xcool \\ tags: Apps, iPhone, iPod touch, XEmoji

Aside to TweetStack which we reviewed previously, I thought I’d review both Tweetie and Twitterfon Pro separately. However, I am currently stuck between using both amazing Twitter clients for the iPhone and iPod touch, and I thought I’d share my views thru this app vs app review. Read on to find out more!

Tweetie was one of the first paid Twitter client that I had the opportunity to try out. It comes with a very clean, polished interface and is one of the most competent Twitter clients available to date. I have a strong feeling Twitterific 2 made it to the public all thanks to the pressure of this app by one-man-show Loren Brichter.

I previously tried Twitterfon when it was free and there’s no Pro version to boot. It was one of the best free Twitter clients available at that time. However, when the Pro version came, with features like themes and multiple accounts support, I was somehow sold.

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written by xcool \\ tags: Apps, iPhone, iPod touch, Review, Social Networking

Twitter has been getting a lot of attention lately – with its number of users growing exponentially. I currently tweet on two different accounts, a personal one as well as one dedicated for this site where I use to announce new posts and other topics related to our favorite Apple devices.

I have tried a multitude of different clients, both on the desktop as well as mobile where I eventually stumbled upon TweetStack and liked the idea that I could actually import my ‘stacks’ from the TweetDeck desktop client into the application.

TweetStack is a full featured Twitter client, with the main selling point of being able to manage stacks. If you happened to follow a lot of Twitter users, you’ll start to get the idea of a clutter – lots of tweets, some useful, some utterly rubbish. In TweetStack-speak, stacks refers to groupings that you can create in order to minimize the clutter everytime you check your Twitter feed.

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written by xcool \\ tags: Apps, iPhone, iPod touch, Review, Social Networking