Erwan Macé – Passionate Geek

Google Apps is Google’s set of messaging and collaborative tools for groups and businesses. It is basically a customizable version of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites and Google Docs for your own domain name. That means you can start enjoying all the benefits of Gmail (conversation threads, huge storage, great anti-spam, integrated Gtalk, etc…) with a personalized email address like <yourname@yourbusiness.com>.

Whereas the standard edition is free for up to 50 users, Google Apps also comes in a Premier Edition should you require Google Groups, Google Videos, more users and storage, as well as support and SLA. Check this page to compare both editions. It actually even comes in two more versions specially packaged for Educational and Government use.

I personally use the free standard edition as the emailing and collaboration platform of my mobile applications company (Bitsmedia Pte Ltd) and, despite a few frustrations, I simply love it. Make sure to read more to find out if Google Apps is the perfect tool for your organization.

Read more…

I attended my daughter’s friend’s birthday party last weekend and guess what? I fell in the pool, all dressed up, with (among others) an iPhone in my pocket. Needless to say that the pretty Apple device turned into a wet brick which would not even switch on.

I initially decided that rather than throwing it away, I would at least dismantle it (for the geeky joy procured by looking into its guts) and share that joy by uploading a few pictures on this blog.

To my biggest surprise, the iPhone started working again after reassembling it !! Read more for more pictures !!

Read more…

Apple and its iPhone have definitely created, over the past 2 years, a major revolution in the way we use our phone. In terms of technology: the best capacitive touch screen ever and a powerful CPU/GPU in a sleek device; in terms of user-interface: a whole new concept of navigating through the menus of your phone with your finger-tip; and of course, probably the most important of all, in terms of ecosystem: a powerful SDK combined with a 30/70 revenue share app store on iTunes. All this has allowed thousands of 3rd party developers to come up with more than a 100,000 apps in just 18 months. There is, as Apple likes to claim it, “an app for everything”.

Yet, there has also been lots of controversy about some limitations of the iPhone, such as the lack of multitasking, notifications, widgets, customizable home screen, etc…

Well, jailbreaking your iPhone (I take no responsibilities whatsoever as per the legal or technical impacts this could have on your phone), might actually help you to overcome these limitations as it will allow you to install apps that you can’t find on the official iTunes app-store. Here is a list of my top 10 jailbroken apps and top 10 reasons why I could not use a non-jailbroken iPhone anymore.

Read more…

Facebook: the 3rd edition of Facebook’s very own iPhone app will keep you connected to all your friends and Facebook pages. It also allows you to update your status on the go, as well as upload photos and videos (iPhone 3GS only). iTunes link

LinkedIn: a full-featured iPhone client for the most professional of all social networks. If you’re an active LinkedIn user, here’s how to manage your network on the go. Invites, messages, profiles, updates, etc… all the LinkedIn features available on the web are there. iTunes link

Tweetie 2: there are tons of different Twitter clients available on the AppStore and you may need to try a few to find your own pearl. Although Tweetdeck for iPhone is free, I believe that the guy behind Tweetie did a great job in terms of user interface and performance. iTunes link

Foursquare: there again, some of you might be more into Gowala or Loopt when it comes to checking in at your favorite venue. I am personally addicted to Foursquare. iTunes link

Pingle: I don’t think the guys at Ping.fm have developed an iPhone app (it might change now that Loic Lemeur and Seesmic bought them over) but Pingle lets you connect to your Ping.fm account and update all your various social networks at once. iTunes link

My Hub: you’re right, that’s number 6 and the title up there says “5 apps”. Well, at $1,99 it is still a great tool to access all your contacts from one single app. The current version brings Facebook, Twitter and Plaxo together with the native address book of your iPhone. Future releases will hopefully support LinkedIn, unified search and cached data. So I thought my #6 deserved its place in my top 5 iTunes link

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Just a few days ago I tried to highlight why, in my opinion, the Google Nexus One is not quite there yet as a true replacement for my aging iPhone (see previous post here).

The Blackberry Bold 9700 is a totally different story. Despite the Blackberry’s App World, a decent camera and a cute tiny screen, this phone is certainly not competing with the iPhone as a true “entertainment” device. Yet, it seems to have found its place in my pocket as an incredibly addictive device for what a phone is ought to be: a communicating platform.

Read more…

It’s all in the title! I recently got my beautiful Nexus One from Google and there are lots of things about it which I truly like. But for some reasons that I will try to clarify in this post, I can’t seem to give up my iPhone.

Read more…