I’ve been using a Mac Mini as my DVR/media center for about a year now and there are times when I have to pull out my laptop to control it despite having a Harmony Remote configured for it. If we want to watch shows on USA Networks, TNT, etc. in a web browser, I can’t control that with a remote (at least not until Google TV or the like comes out).

The other day I really didn’t want to use my laptop to control the Mac Mini, so I looked at VNC clients for the iPad. I found 2 that had free (trial) versions. Mocha VNC and ezDesktop. Mocha VNC Lite didn’t impress me. I turned on the VNC server on my Mac Mini, setup a password, and easily connected to it with ezDesktop. I played around with it, managed to navigate fairly easily with the iPad and did some web browsing. By the time I had done all this, my free session was up and I decided that it was worth the $6.99 to purchase the VNC module via the in-app purchasing.

I’ve been using it for a few days now and it works pretty well. The hardest part is moving windows and making the dock show (I have it set to hide on the Mac Mini). The keyboard that it displays has extra keys for command, control, etc. and screen refresh is quite good. It’s been nice to be able to control the TV right from the iPad and has given me a view into the future of using an iPad as a remote control for the TV.

They have another product that helps get to your computer when you’re away, but I didn’t need that, so I stuck to the cheapest version.

Pros

• Easy to setup.
• Decent frame rate.
• Using it to move the mouse works well.
• Extra keys for the keyboard are available.

Cons

• Dragging windows is a bit difficult.
• Moving the mouse to the screen edge to show the dock doesn’t always work.
• Some part of the app (setup and help) could use a little polish.

Summary

If you have a need for a VNC client on the iPad (I haven’t tried it on the iPhone, yet), the free trial should give you plenty of time to evaluate it. When I have my laptop and I’m watching TV, it is only sort of relaxing; if I have my iPad, due to limited ability to do things on it, I find I am a bit more relaxed. So, ezDesktop is definitely working well for me as it allows me to sit in front of the TV and control all aspects of my Mac Mini without having my laptop. It’s worth the $6.99 for the app; the other VNC clients out there way have more bells and whistles, but ezDesktop seems to be a good fit for me.

After I started using River of News to read RSS feeds on my iPad, I wanted to grab more and more feeds as it was so easy to read the feeds. This, of course, causes information overload. One of the sites I found is called Deal of the Day Tracker which has RSS feeds for daily sales on stuff (like Woot!, eBay, etc.). (I didn’t know that so many sites had one day deals and it’s hard for me to resist looking to see if there is the off chance that something will catch my eye.) The problem with the feeds is that there are well over 100 deals a day and scrolling through them with River of News was a bit painful (see my review where I commented that the loading was an issue).

So how was I going to handle my desire to get a good deal while still using River of News? I discovered an app called iDealyzer. For $2.99, I decided to give it a try as the free version gave me a taste of how useful it could be. So while I haven’t used it to buy anything, yet, it has quenched my thirst to see daily deals. The free version doesn’t let you prune the list of deals, so that’s why I spent the big bucks on the Pro version. Is the app a winner? It is quirky and crashes every now and again. Its utility is definitely questionable. If I buy something, I guess it will be worth it, but so far, it’s just a curiosity.

Pros

• Ability to customize which deals to display.
• Push notifications for deals (I don’t use this).

Cons

• Could use some stability improvements.
• Images are a bit slow to load.
• Settings to configure which deals are on/off is awkward.
• Some of the buttons look ugly.
• Limited selection of deals. (Deal of the Day Tracker shows a lot more.)

Summary

I can’t really recommend this app. If you are completely addicted to daily deals, then this might be for you. Download the free version and check it out. I’ll keep this on my devices and am periodically checking it, but I could live without it.

The other day I was listening to MacBreak Weekly and during their “Picks” Leo Laporte recommended River of News, a Google Reader app for the iPad. About a year ago, I wrote that I was done with RSS readers that had to synchronize with Google Reader and was satisfied with the web interface. However, I decided to take a look at River of News. It was only $2.99, so buying it didn’t break the bank.

When I first started it up, I was amazed at how well it worked. After playing with it for awhile, I started wanting to read my RSS feeds on it instead of on the desktop; now that’s saying a lot! I’m not sure how it is talking to Google Reader, but it didn’t seem that there was a “sync” process to mark feeds read/unread and the flagged of articles worked flawlessly. It makes reading my feeds (OK, maybe information overload) a pleasure.

The only issue I have with the app is that it’s a bit slow when you scroll down and it has to retrieve a few more articles. While I realize that the trigger for fetching new articles is when the user hits the end of the page while scrolling, it would be nice if the developer changed it so that when you were done with a few articles, it would go fetch the next batch in the background so that there is no waiting.

Pros

• Inexpensive
• Easy to use interface
• Integrates well with Google Reader

Cons

• A little slow at loading new articles

Summary

If you read RSS feeds, this is currently my reader of choice. It’s a no brainer to spend the $2.99 on this, even just to see how it works. Now if the developer addressed (fixed is highly subjective), the slow loading, I’d be in reader heaven.