The PandoraBox App from AppZap is a handy little app that notifies you whenever there are Apps on sale. If you  have a list of Apps that you wanted to buy but do not want to buy it at their normal price, you can save them as  your favourites in this app and it will indicate to you if any of them have reduced in price.

You can also look at each app’s details just like in the app store and view the screenshots. There’s also a link from each app to the app store to make it easier for you to purchase the app. In addition to that, in order to make it easier for you to notify your friends about the apps on sale, there is also a little ‘Tell a Friend’ link at each app’s features page.

At the top of the screen, you can also find 2 different categories i.e. free and new paid apps both ordered by release date. Below is a screenshot of the Pandora Box App.

All in all i personally think this is a neat little app to help you save money on your apps. It has certainly saved me some money and because of that i will give it my thumbs up for this app.

So if you want to save money on your app purchases, go over to the app store and get your hands on the PandoraBox  App from AppZap and start saving now.  :-)

Below is one of the local news on the iPhone adoption in education.  The source of the below news is from the Sun newspaper dated 25th September, 2009 (Friday)

CILC integrates iPhone into curriculum
Liew Shan Verne

CEMPAKA International Ladies College (CILC) will be making use of 100 units of the Apple iPhone 3GS in its daily curriculum when the school opens tomorrow.

“The iPhone will open a whole new world of applications to us and keep our students constantly connected,” Cempaka Group of Schools vice-chairman Dr Iskandar Rizal Hamzah said at the initiative’s launch recently.

“When our students travel to external project sites, they will be able to use their iPhones to record, photograph, interview and take videos for their project files on the go,” he said.

Adopting the iPhone will also give students access to Apple’s vast library of education-based applications such as interactive tables for chemistry, multi-language dictionaries and graphing software for mathematics.

As one of the six learning institutions under the Cempaka Group of Schools, CILC is Malaysia’s first fully residential international secondary school exclusively for girls.

“Cempaka Schools has been a long-standing advocate of technology in the classroom. We introduced the MacBook for each secondary school student in 2007 and we now look forward to the iPhone being a seamless extension of our learning environment,” Iskandar said.

CILC adopted the device as part of the school’s Virtual Learning Environment programme, in partnership with Maxis.

Present at the launch were Maxis vice-president Fitri Abdullah and Cempaka Group of Schools founder Datin Frieda Pilus.

“It will be exciting to see it being deployed as a tool for enhanced learning and for access to education functions outside the classroom,” Fitri said.

To bring the iPhone 3GS closer to students and teachers, Maxis held a roadshow at Sri Cempaka in Damansara Heights to highlight its Maxis Value Plus Family plan.

The plan provides for 20 hours of free voice or video calls and 2,000 free SMS messages for principal lines communicating with a supplementary line, at a monthly rate of RM30.

Supplementary lines will get 15 hours of free voice or video calls and 1,500 free SMS messages for communicating with principal or supplementary lines, while talk-time sharing will also be made possible.

Maxis has given students, parents and staff of the Cempaka Group of Schools 38 free hours of intra-community calls and 500 free SMS messages a month as part of another promotional programme.

A lot of people has been asking the same question on which phone should i get; the iPhone 3GS or the Blackberry Storm? There are advantages and disadvantages of both the iPhone 3GS and the Blackberry Storm.

Wi-fi: One key difference is that the blackberry Storm model currently available in Malaysian market i.e. the 9500 Storm does not support wi-fi. If wi-fi is an absolute must for you, then you may want to go with the Blackberry BOLD or the iPhone 3GS. After using the Blackberry BOLD and iPhone 3G for sometime, i do realized that the ability to hook onto the wi-fi network is definitely an essential component for any smartphone.

Speaker and Multimedia: The quality of the speakers are quite impressive on both the iPhone 3GS as well as the Blackberry Storm. i would say that both are pretty close or if i have to vote for one, i will probably say that the Blackberry Storm is “a little” better in this area.

Camera: Pictures taken are pretty much similar under the same lighting conditions. In terms of resolution, the iPhone 3GS has a 3Megapixel camera vs the Blackberry Storm with 3.2Megapixel camera. Both have zoom capabilities. For the video camera, i will have to say that the iPhone 3GS is “a little” better compared to the Blackberry Storm.

Emails and calendaring: This has always been the stronghold of the Blackberry and my vote will go to the Blackberry Storm(for BES) although the iPhone 3GS is catching up with the OS3.0 release and is getting closer. So, if you are going to use a company server(Blackberry Enterprise Server), the Blackberry Storm will be your choice device. If you are using the email for personal access eg gmail, yahoo, pop3 or imap, i don’t think there is much difference between the two. i personally find setting up and configuring the emails on the iPhone to be easier compared to setting up the BIS(Blackberry Internet Service) on the Blackberry devices.

Internet Browsing: i personally prefer the internet browsing experience on the iPhone 3GS much better compared to the Blackberry Storm because of the better sensitivity of the touch screen as well as the ability to “pinch” to zoom.

Cost of ownership: The retail price for both the Blackberry Storm and the iPhone 3GS 16GB are pretty close at the time of this posting. Both devices are in the range of RM2,400-RM2,500(without any contractual subsidy).  So, in terms of device pricing(at the time of this posting), they are about the same. Monthly usage cost on the iPhone will be a little lower because there is no additional licensing fees(for BIS or BES which is applicable for the Blackberry) that is applicable for the iPhone.

Applications: This is the stronghold of the iPhone 3GS where there are more than 60,000 applications that are downloadable from the Apple AppsStore. This will be the key differentiator that separates a device from being just another device to an awesome multi-purpose gadget. Blackberry is  just starting to develop more applications on their devices and it will take a long time for them to catch up(if they ever will) to iPhone.

Below is a video on the comparison of the iPhone 3GS vs the Blackberry Storm. This is quite a good and fair comparison in terms of speed and functionality of both devices. What this video does not show are the difference in the applications that are available on both of these devices. Check it out!  :-)

So, which device do you think is the overall winner? In my personal opinion, the iPhone 3GS will get my vote on this simply because it meets my requirement for emails and calendaring and it provides a much better internet browsing experience as well as the wide range of applications which are downloadable from the Apple AppStore. This is what really makes the iPhone 3GS stand out from the rest of the pack and is often labelled as a “cool” and “sexy” gadget!.  :-)

If you are doing something on your iPhone and wanted to show the screenshot of what you are doing on your iPhone, there is a way to create a screenshot and save it as an image. The trick is to hold on the “Sleep” button at the top right of your iPhone and then click on the “Home” button” while still holding onto the “Sleep” button. You will then hear a “click” sound as if a picture has been taken. The image of the screenshot is then saved in your camera roll. Go there to retrieve the new image file of the screenshot of your iPhone.

Below is a screenshot of the iPhone that i have saved as an image file after doing the 2 steps above:-

If you fancy having a collection of cool ringtones on your iPhone and am not prepared to fork out your own money to purchase it from the iTunes store just yet, you may want to consider creating it on your own. This will work with songs imported from CDs into your iTunes.

Below are the summary of steps to do it:-

1.  Select the song from your iTunes Library that you want to create a new ringtone with.

2.  Right click on it and goto “Get info” and then to “Options”.

3. Trim the selected song using “Start Time” and “Stop Time” to get the right section of the song that you wanted to create into the new ringtone. Keep this to less than 30 seconds in order for iTunes to be able to recognize it as a ringtone later. Click “OK” to save it.

4.  Right click on the song and go to “Create AAC version”. A new file of the song will be generated in the AAC format.

5.  Drag and drop this new file to your desktop.

6.  Delete the copy of the AAC file from your general Music list (because I don’t think you want to have ringtones randomly playing next time you do a song shuffle…). Also, set the original song back to normal by accessing the “Get info” and “Options” and by unchecking the “Start Time” and “Stop Time” boxes.

7.  The ringtone that you have just dragged onto your desktop should have a title “songname.m4a.” Now, simply change the file extension(by renaming it) from .m4a to .m4r.

8.  Drag and drop the new “songname.m4r” back to your iTunes Library under “Ringtones”.

9.  Synchronize it with your iPhone and you will have created a new ringtone which is ready to use!

As always, to make it easier for you to follow the steps above, you may want to view the video below which shows you step-by-step on how to do this. Today, i have created 5 new ringtones(from my favourite songs) for my iPhone and all this was done within 30 minutes. If i can do it, so can you…..Go ahead and start creating new ringtones yourself if you have not done it before.

This is a question i have been asked quite a lot lately. So, i figured it would be good if i can put this information on this blog so that it can benefit those who(are just as paranoid as myself about leaving credit card details on the internet!!) does not want to provide their credit card details when signing up for the iTunes account. The “trick” is quite simple actually…… Just go purchase a FREE Application on the iTunes and when asked whether to create a new iTunes account or to login to an existing one, just choose to create a new account. Of course, before you can access this, you will need to download the latest iTunes software from Apple. It is normally located at the following website:-

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

After downloading the software, just do as per what is described above i.e. to do a purchase of free Apps on the iTunes store and then create an account. When you reach the payment details information, there will be an extra “None” button(on the right hand side after the different types of credit cards) that you can choose to complete the iTunes account setup without providing your credit card details.

If you need a little more help in this, you may also watch the below video which shows you step-by-step how this is done.

Since the launch of the iPhone 3GS in Malaysia, it has given the consumers an added option to choose when they want to get an iPhone. So, the biggest question is which one should i get? This is really a personal choice as you need to really know what you want to use the device for. Obviously, the iPhone 3GS will be more expensive than the iPhone 3G. The new iPhone 3GS does come with some cool things which the iPhone 3G does not. If you want to know more about the difference in feature between the iPhone 3GS vs the iPhone 3G, i have posted a video on this site as well. It is located at the “Great iVideo” tab above. Do feel free to check it out if you are planning to purchase the iPhone and wanted to know the major differences between the 2.

This posting is going to focus on the speed test for both these devices only. Below is a video that compares the 2 devices head-on to see which device is faster and by what margin. After watching this video, you may be able to make a better decision on which one to purchase despite the price difference.

Results: Based on the speed test only, the winner is……….the iPhone 3GS(nothing unexpected here!)

One of the biggest wish list for most iPhone users that i know of is that it would be great to have a longer battery life. While we may not have much control about the battery that is being used in an iPhone, there are multiple ways that we can do to enhance the life of the battery of our iPhones.

Below are 6 things that i personally do to enhance the battery life on my iPhone so that it can last longer with a single charge(considering the fact that i am quite a heavy iPhone user!):-

1.  Switch off the wifi network – this will prevent your iPhone from constantly searching for new wifi hotspots to hook on. Even if this option is turned off, all your known/saved wifi network will still be automatically connected when you are within the area. What this does is that if the search for wifi network is off, the iPhone will not search for any other wifi network unless you manually instruct it to do so. Do this and you will see some significant savings in your battery life.

2.  Turn off location services if you do not have any intentions of using your GPS or if you are not using any applications that requires to access where you are located.

3.  Turn off your 3G if you are in an area of low 3G coverage or if you do not have an intention to use the 3G. 3G networks typically sucks more battery from mobile devices compared to 2G.

4. Turn off your bluetooth if you do not have any intention to use it.

5.  Turn off the auto-brightness settings in your iPhone and set it manually to dimmer backlight settings. Of course, do not turn it so low until it strains your eyes when reading from your iPhone. The iPhone device is a gadget that we are supposed to feel good using.

6.  Turn the “push” email off and switch it to “fetch”. Using “push” email will typically drain more battery as compared to when it is switched to “fetch”.

To illustrate this better, below is a short video on some of the things that you can do to save battery.

If you are not currently practicing some of the things listed here, i would strongly recommend that you test them out to see if it helps in conserving the battery life of your iPhone. With a longer battery life, you can be more productive when you are mobile.

This is the second part of the article on how to do blog posting using only iPhone. Well, i figure that it would not be too nice of me if i just tell you that it can be done but not showing you the exact steps on how to do it.  So, i will be spilling the beans here. As always, my motto in life is “Sharing is Caring”….

Below are the steps to do this:-

1.  Download the Application “WordPress” from your Apple Apps Store. Since you most likely already own one i will not show you how to download applications. Just do a search on your AppStore by typing “Wordpress”, you should be able to find it. It is a free Application developed by Automaticc, Inc.

2.  Use the wordpress application to access to the blog that you would like to post(once it is setup, it will always be there). You can set it up to access more than 1 blog if you own more than one blog.

3.  You can start writing your blog post as well as attached pictures into the blog.

4.  Finally, upload the post into your blog and you are done!

To make it simpler for you to follow, you may want to watch the below video……

PS: Please note that the blog posting using this method can only work if your blog is powered by the wordpress software(like the one i am using on my site here!). If your blog is powered by other software, then this way will not work.

Disclaimer: At the time of writing, this software is still in beta. This is not a recommendation to use it. i have  personally been using it without any problems. i will leave it to you to decide on whether to use it or not. 

This is going to be a short post as we are planning to do a posting to this blog using my iPhone only. Chor Guan(on the right) is my friend who is already an existing iPhone user while Fitri(Left) and John(Centre) are going to be the proud owners of the new iPhone 3GS very soon.