Simplify Media: It’s hard to share your music, when you find out it’s secured.

Share you music library through Simplify Media - Legally!

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ALERT – WE’VE MOVED TO RAZORIANFLY.COM

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Yesterday I blogged about a new, easy, secure way to share your iTunes libraries with other people across the globe. With it, I invited you guys to share mine. Couldn’t access it because of a prompt for a password? – I apologise. I recently found out I had my shared library password protected. This restriction has now been lifted – Go ‘n’ enjoy my music!

For anyone else who wants to add me through Simplify Media:

Screen name: razorianfly

I have 6.8GB of mixed music, and at the current time of posting this, I have 6 spaces of my 30 left to fill from invites.

R-Fly

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Pure Volume: We’re Listening to You.

The heart of start-up bands and solo artists.

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ALERT – WE’VE MOVED TO RAZORIANFLY.COM

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I always like to share and recommend truly amazing sites, with anyone and everyone I meet, and I’ve known of this one for quite some time.

Pure Volume is a site aimed around up-coming bands and solo artists in the music industry. The site showcases their profiles and displays a range of each of the artists music of which the artist can choose to upload. Whats even greater, is not only can you listen to previews of the track, but some music is being given away, licensed and legal – Absolutely free!

Give Limewire up and head over to Pure Volume!

Featured categories.

The reason they can do this, is the artist’s want mass exposure. Some artists have even made it onto iTunes through showcasing their works on Pure Volume! – Some are already known, and are trying to gain even more exposure. Each week the site features some of the best on it’s site-front. In order for the artist to be featured, the artist must pay to compensate for the time the advert is exposed.

It’s a great way to find out about new genre, styles and simply unique music from all across the globe.

Some of my personal favorites include:

- Kill Paradise (Electronica)
- Mercy Mercedes (Powerpop / Rock / Pop) – Absolutely diggin’ these – Please come to iTunes UK!
- First Class Fever (Rock)
- The Ropes (Rock / Pop / Indie)
- Hockey (Pop / Soul)
- Dan Erikson (Pop / Rock / Powerpop)
- The Phantom of The Cineplex (Powerpop / Electronica / Techno)

Check it out today at http://www.purevolume.com, because this site truly ROCKS.

R-Fly

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Twinkle = Twitter + Location + Style – [Updated].

Twinkle by Tapulous

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ALERT – WE’VE MOVED TO RAZORIANFLY.COM

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[UPDATE] – 31.08.08

Tapulous recently pushed an update to the App Store for Twinkle.

Version 1.1 Fixes include;

– Fixed an issue where corrupted image could cause Twinkle to crash.
– Toned down notification sounds.
– Toned down starry background.
– Fixed an interaction problem when composing messages by moving the Send button out of the
keyboard.
– Increased text color contrast to enhance legibility.
– Localized units of distance.
– Overall increases in performance and stability.
– URL scheme twinkle:// now launches Twinkle from other applications, including Safari.

Original Article:

I’m not a big twitter user, but when I do use it, I like to be able to use it in a user-intuitive and easy fashion.
This is where Twinkle from Tapulous comes in.

If your new to Twitter …

From Wikipedia

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them.

The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Twitterrific or Facebook. For SMS, four gateway numbers are currently available: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, as well as a United Kingdom number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email.

Feel free to follow me on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/razorianfly and of course, I use Twinkle on iPhone too.

Twinkle not only allows you to see tweets and follow others users, but with the iPhone 3G and it’s build in GPS chip, it also allows you to see where those people are twittering from – this is truly a step forward for mobile twitter clients.

The UI of this app is stunning, and updates being pushed from Tapulous to the App Store, to fix bugs, are steadily appearing and rectifying minor issues I currently have with the app.

The Old Days
We first heard of Twinkle when it appeared on the ‘Jailbreak’ scene. It’s fair to say, even though the idea was there, it wasn’t very well implemented at the time, but people had nothing better, and so lived with it.

Twinkle has come a long way. Old UI (Left) New UI (Right)

I’m pleased to say, the guys and gals at Tapulous took Twinkle under their wing,
and have bought it into the 21st century.

Using Twinkle
Using Twinkle couldn’t be simpler, and the great part about it is, you don’t even have to have a Twitter account – but it does help if you do. To get started with twinkle, all you need is a valid e-mail address.

Get started with twinkle, and get twinkle'ling!

Twinkle Location API
The makers of Twinkle have also made the experience even better as you can now ping the native GPS chip inside of iPhone 3G to attach a location to your tweet! Not only that, but you can search for ‘Twinklers’ in your area and photo-blog on the move!

Sharing that picture of your half-eaten Sunday roast, is no longer a challenge – with Twinkle.

Twinkle's photo-blogging ability & location aware UI

Rating: 8/10 (Recommended)

Get it here: Twinkle

R-Fly

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Yes, it’s the iPhone – Now with 3G.

iPhone 3G White (OMG!)

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ALERT – WE’VE MOVED TO RAZORIANFLY.COM

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Yes, I got one.

Late news, I know, but I thought I’d give my opinion on the device anyway …

It is in fact, the iPhone 3G – Twice as fast, Half the Price – or is it?

I’ve had the device for over two weeks now, and it has it’s good and bad points. Being my first ever iPhone, I had to get use to the device and how iPhone-specific features functioned. With previously owning the iPod touch I wasn’t entirely new to the interface or most of the software-related features previously added in v1.1.3.

I have to mention, that this is now my second iPhone. The first unit had a battery which lasted 3 hours including standby, and after toying with myself whether to take it back or not, I decided, I just had to. The exchange was painless (or less painless than I thought it was going to be) – and I now have another perfect looking, iPhone.

3G Networking
Ok, so firstly, 3G speeds are great. I’ll go as far as to say it’s approaching Wifi speeds. The first thing I loved about the iphone 3G, quite ironically, was 3G. The ability to be in the car, and browse the internet is truly a necessity, but doing it with no limits – is even better. Thanks to O2 here in the UK, data usage is unlimited and uncapped meaning no extra charges, and no limitations of how much data your device can receive.

GPS
As well as 3G, iPhone 3G now has GPS. Now the type of GPS differs to that of, say, a garmin or Tom Tom GPS unit, in the sense that it is A-GPS (Assisted GPS). This means iPhone switches to cell towers when GPS information is not available or is unreceivable in your current location. I’ve only tested it a couple of times, but I have to say, it works, and it works, very well. It will consult several services to locate you. 3G/Edge (cellular network), Wifi and finally the satellites. Some users on Mac Rumors have been experiencing the device not showing their location as precisely as they’d like. I’ve found that this is due to one or two of the iPhone’s GPS sources to be unavailable or not reachable. For example, iPhone will first triangulate you by cell towers, if not Wifi, and finally display a direct reading from A-GPS. Overall I’ve found it to work as advertised.

So thats the main features of iPhone 3G, but what about the other features added, through software …

The App Store & Software 2.0
On July 10th – in time for the iPhone 3G launch (July 11th) – Apple released the App Store, a new, user-intuitive way to download, buy and install further 3rd-party applications onto iPhone.

The App Store

Let me tell you, this works, but has some flaws.

Firstly the app store allows you to browse the 500+ application library from your iPhone, Mac or PC.
30% of the store consists of completely FREE applications – some of which are really so very, very kool.

Some of my current favorites include;

- Aurora Feint (The Beginning)
A fast paced game which is really good for passing time, and possibly the best free application on the store to date.

- Password1 (Free for a limited time)
Need to lock information down on your iPhone securely? – Get this.

- Bejeweled
Great port of Bejeweled 2 for iPhone

- Twinkle
This is a great client for on-the-go twitterlious tweets
Checkout my latest review

Battery Life
So with this great platform, new applications, demanding 3G networking, push email notification and more, how does the battery life fare on this truly capable device? – honestly? – not that well.

I mean ok, for a device which does nearly everything, it is great battery life, but realistically, you won’t get more than a day, and it may die before the day is out requiring a recharge on the move.

Verdict?
It’s a great device.

It looks great, it sounds great, it functions pretty well, but it has flaws which your probably now sick of hearing as they were not present on iPhone Classic, either.

- No MMS Support
- No SMS forwarding support
- The camera is still stuck at a measly 2MP
- Software 2.0 is extremely buggy

I’ll keep you all up to date of how I fare with my new iPhone 3G …

R-Fly

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