Shazam vs. Midomi

Shazam and Midomi are iPhone apps that use the iPhone mic to listen and find music you hear on TV, Radio and even from a restaurant, anytime you want to know, “what’s that song?”

They are both free apps but Shazam gets more attention and has fewer features. Maybe to some simple is better, but Midomi in my trials had better success at finding music in public places and even picked up on live performances where Shazam couldn’t find the artist or song.

Ways to find music

Shazam:

Finds music by listening from a speaker

then,
Finds music on iTunes and Youtube

Midomi:

Sing some lyrics
Say the artist or song name
Grab it from the air
Type the artist or song name

then,
Find music on iTunes and Youtube

Saving music found

Shazam:

Saves all songs you search for. Organized by day.

Midomi:

Bookmark to save the songs you want to check on later.

The bottom line.
If your looking to find music they both work very well. Shazam is great if you want to keep it simple, but if your looking for options and more control give midomi a try.

Spore n Star Wars

Some cool games for the iPhone!

I admit, there have been some great games for the iPhone and a lot of them free. However most of them just pass the time when your waiting to have your car worked on or find yourself alone for lunch. That’s exactly what happened to me yesterday, so I figured it was a good time to check out the new “Spore Origins” and “Star Wars The Force Unleashed”.

Spore Origins is a 79MB $9.99 game download for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I have been reluctant to spend anything more for iPhone apps than around $5.00, so I had to be sure it was worth it. By simply reading user reviews in the app store and watching some gameplay (see video of gameplay after this article), it looked like a fun challenging game. Read the rest of this entry »

No App Crashes…

One of the boldest statements I heard at our last apple event was “No More App Crashes”. This was something that took me right back to the CannonGame for the iPhone. I installed this game on my iPhone 3 times before I gave up. It would install but it would always crash on the loading screen. So On Friday I plugged my iPhone into my MacBook with the intent to upgrade.

First lets look at the upgrade to 2.1. iTunes recognized my phone and I pressed the upgrade button, the update downloaded unpacked and my iPhone began to backup to iTunes. A half hour later it was still trying to back up. I pulled the plug on it thinking it froze up and repeated the steps 3 times before realizing it wasn’t going to backup. After reading a few forums online, where people where complaining of the same problem I figured it was backing up my entire phone. The simple solution was to remove large files from the Phone. I took off all my movies and music, as I have them in playlists anyway. I ran through the install process again and it went through perfectly. Read the rest of this entry »

Are We Being Cheap?

Frogger iPhone Game $9.99???

Dizzy Bee iPhone Game FREE!!!

Well, I don’t think we are being cheap when we say $10.00 is too much for an iPhone game with obvious mediocre game play. In my opinion Frogger and Dizzy Bee are equally fun games.

The App Store has been both a place of applause and disappointment. Games Like Frogger, Crash Bandacoot and Super Monkey Ball have price tags which some users complain is too much for these simple little pixel graphic games. When Great games like Tap Tap Revenge, Dizzy Bee and Jibro Break are Free. Where do we find the right price for an iPhone Game? What would you feel is fair to pay for games?

When the App store came out I purchase Super Monkey Ball as it was supposed to be an impressive game using the acceleromiter for its controlls. While it is in fact a fun game I felt it was a few dollars too much. I was curious to check out Crash Bandacoot but did not want to spend another ten on another game. I feel if the games where around five or six dollars I may have picked up the pair.