Review: iDealizer Pro

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.

Review: River of News (Google Reader app for iPad)

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.

Review: Charles Proxy - Useful development tool; ugly interface

During the testing of one of my projects, our QA folks mentioned a tool called Charles Proxy that they used to throttle the connection speed down to 3G speed as some issues can only be reproduced on slow connections. I pretty much ignored the product as I wasn't assigned any bugs related to this. A few weeks later, I was assigned a bug dealing with 3G. As I really didn't want to try to reproduce the issue on a device over 3G (the iPhone simulator makes it easy to reproduce issues, but as Apple points out, there is nothing like testing on a real device), I downloaded Charles Proxy and gave it a whirl. Unfortunately the limitations in the demo quickly required me to cough up the $50. As much as I was reluctant to cough up the money for an app that doesn't look like a Mac app, it has already paid for itself.

Throttling down the connection speed seems to be one of the small features of Charles Proxy. It is a full tool for analyzing web traffic. When developing iPhone applications that talk to web services (which is pretty much everything these days), being able to look at the packets, headers, responses, XML results, and JSON results. In addition, it gives timing results for the requests so that I can see where slowdowns exist.

I've used it to determine that a client's server was slow (they reported poor performance), that a different client's web server wasn't doing compression on text/plain files, and to see where I made incorrect requests to the server.

The major downside of the software is that the interface doesn't look like a Mac app. As I've written before, I really dislike apps on the Mac that don't look like Mac apps. Cross platform apps just aren't my cup of tea.

Pros

• Extremely useful for iPhone app development involving web services.
• Lots of information about web requests; requests, responses, headers, etc.
• Easy setup; it auto-configures the Mac proxy settings when it starts and changes it back when it quits.
• Ability to throttle down the connection speed.
• Lots of settings.

Cons

• Ugly Mac interface.
• A bit costly. (Maybe not for a developer tool.)

Summary

If you're developing iPhone (or even Mac apps) that involve web services, Charles Proxy is an absolute necessity. If you ignore the ugly interface (I'm not talking about the layout, just the interface elements don't look very Mac like), the app works well and gets the job done. It could be prettier, but the tool is extremely useful.

Review: PixelSkin HD Case for iPhone 4

Today I received the PixelSkin HD case for my iPhone 4 through the Apple case program. I had been using a $0.99 case I purchased off eBay and was relatively happen with it. It's really hard to review a case as it does so little, so I'll mostly compare it to the $0.99 cases I bought off eBay.

First off, this is a hard plastic case (the one I was using was rubberized). This makes the phone feel more solid and it has a slight lip that may prevent the phone from being scratched if I put it face down on a surface. Second, the case is pretty tight fighting and doesn't add much bulk to the phone. Next, the fancy pattern on the back definitely helps with gripping it as the plastic as a little slippery. Finally, the case is rigid enough that the small piece of plastic on the bottom connecting the sides near the dock connector doesn't feel flimsy.

When I started looking for cases, I thought that since all the cases are made in China anyway, what was the difference between one off eBay direct from China and a name brand. Well, there are plenty of differences and the PixelSkin HD case feels like a solid case. If I didn't get the case for free, however, I wouldn't have known there was a difference (not that $20 is a lot of money to spend on a case, but cheaper seemed better).

Pros

• Solid feel
• Pattern on back makes it easier to grip
• May offer some protection to the iPhone

Cons

• On/off button feels hard to press

Summary

If you didn't already receive your free iPhone 4 case from Apple, this could be a good case. I'd goto the Apple Store and give it a try. Cases are very personal and some like this type of plastic while others like rubbery cases. Some people just are too upscale for plastic cases and go for leather or some other material; in that case, this is definitely not for you.