Another mobile client for using craigslist on your iPhone/iPad, Lifelike Craig is well designed and organized in a way that makes it easy to craigslist on your mobile devices. This app is a universal app and works virtually identical on both the iPhone and iPad with obvious differences in the UI to work with each individual device. This is definitely one of the better apps that I have seen for using craigslist. It is very well designed and provides very useful functionality for this type of use. This is a very good app with active developers that are working hard to improve it on a regular basis.

The app is designed to look like your typical classifieds ads newspaper, with The New York Times font to really give them that official newspaper look. The UI is particularly well done on the iPad with all of the extra real estate for viewing ads. This feature rich app was designed with the end user in mind and provides easy search, as well as the ability to drill down further into each ad allowing you to view maps and images easily. With features like search, respond, favorites and the ability to share an ad, this app is even easier to use than craigslist itself (although that isn’t saying a lot). Here are some of the features I found most useful about this app:

FEATURES:

• Automatic location detection.
• Classic classifieds ads type layout with NYTimes font for the headlines.
• Search bar at the top for easy searching.
• Category lists for fast switching between categories.
• Drill down into categories or searches to view the listings relevant to what you are looking for.
• Listings that you like can be circled (using your finger) to be marked as favorites and/or saved for later.
• Listings that you are not interested in can be crossed out by writing a ‘Z’ over them.
• Save searches for easy access later on.
• Adjust the font size.
• Post your own ads right from within the app or easily access your account.
• Multiple sharing options including Facebook, Twitter or Email.
• Reply to ad without leaving the app.
• Flag an ad for the Craigslist staff.
• View the location of th ad without leaving the app (if the location is available).
• Filter your search to refine it.

The fact that there are so many apps out there for using craigslist shows just how difficult the website can be especially from a mobile device. There is certainly a need and a market for craigslist apps and it is really nice to see the beneficial features that some of these creative developers are able to come up with helping us get even more use out of a great service. At $1.99,this app is priced slightly higher than other craigslist apps out there but comes with one very big difference, it is a universal app. Whereas a lot of the other ones you must buy both an iPad and an iPhone version. The price definitely won’t break the bank and is very worth it in my mind, if you are using craigslist regularly. I recommend this app more than any other app currently in the app store for using craigslist.

This idea has often made me wonder why I can get so much use out of it and others find it so useless. I cannot help but think that many bought their iPads simply because it was the thing to do. But, as an Apple fan boy, I can always find a use for such a device so it baffles me that others cannot as well. Perhaps they regret their decision to buy it, or even resent Apple for the device, or maybe they are just looking for an excuse to hate it. No matter what the excuse, I have seen plenty of articles about why people hate their iPad and they just don’t stack up to those who LOVE their iPads. Of course that is easy to say coming from the guy on this side of the fence, but I also wasn’t one of those who jumped on the bandwagon, I waited to purchase my iPad until I could “justify” the purchase. I had to come up with a reason WHY I needed that iPad. Now, I see that it was truly one of the best purchases I made last year, not a day has gone by since I purchased it that I haven’t used my iPad. Literally, I use it day in and day out. I have many uses for it, one of which is maintaining this blog. I have found it easy to carry around with me, in a good case it stays safe and I can use it in many environments. If I am going to have a sit down meeting with someone, this makes for a great tool to show demos, write up notes or look things up on the internet. I use my iPad for news, videos, documents, communication and when I’m bored, games! I can also see the day when I am on a hunt for a new job, with all of my cover letters and resumes right on my iPad, the ability to print from my iPad, email my resume, and even show examples to potential employers.

My iPad definitely gets a lot of use, it was a great purchase and it is the perfect device for me (at least until the iPad 2 is released, then we’ll talk again). There are many things I use to do on my iPhone that I no longer do because I have a better environment in which to do those same things. As you can see from my timeline below, my iPad is definitely heavily used. This is a typical day for:

7:00 am Wake Up – I can look over and see my iPad sitting on my bedside table right where I left it. Sometimes it is even propped up for watching something in bed, I must have fallen asleep in the middle of some Hulu+ show last night. Other times, and most times, it is closed and charging, ready to go for the next day. I do use my iPad a lot throughout the day, but I don’t necessarily charge it nightly. I usually use at least 30% – 40% battery life per day. So if this is the first day of the cycle it may not even be plugged in. My day generally starts off, while I am waking up, catching up on all I missed will (unnecessarily) sleeping away my time! There is news that has happened, twitter, Facebook, new apps in the app store, etc. So I browse my favorite news app, The Early Edition, catching up on the news. Some days there is a plethora of news, like today when we had the official release of FaceTime, the new MacBook Pros, the Developer release of Lion all in one morning. My news list was full that morning. I check Twitter to see how the world is doing, and of course Facebook because that matters too and then on to the app store to see if there are any cool and exciting apps being release, and if there are any updates.

8:30 am Arrive at Work – Once I arrive, I usually have a lot of catchup to do, checking email, responding to people looking at my tasks for the day, organizing myself. As I get my day going, I find it very nice and convenient to lounge back in a corner somewhere in the office, in a quiet space, gather my thoughts and plan out my day. I usually do this using OmniFocus and Calendar (the native Apple Calendar). I go through my lists of tasks, plan out what I can accomplish and review all of my meetings and plans for the day. I schedule time for the things I need to get and make sure I have a full grasp of the day.

9:00 am Work Begins – As I begin working on today’s projects and action items, I sit back at my desk with my bluetooth headset connected to my iPad streaming Pandora Radio. I have my channels all setup and ready to listen to. I am able to easily get myself into the zone, focus on my work and get a lot done sans distraction when I have that headset on. Sometimes I also will prop up my iPad so that I can view a slide show of my favorite photos while listening to the music. Since I am connected by bluetooth, that means I can easily get up and walk to the printer, or to get some water or any number of things without having to disconnect, stop or start the music. Now if only I could get my co-workers to realize that while that headset is on, I cannot hear a thing they are saying!!

11:30 am Time for Lunch – We like to have lunch together in this office, it is a real social event. However sometimes I like to do alternative things for lunch. So this can go one of a couple of ways, either I go out with others and leave my iPad in my office, OR I use my iPad during lunch. One thing I like to do is to head down to the local deli shop, get a sandwich and site and eat it while reading a book in iBooks on my iPad. They generally provide free wifi and a good environment indoors and out for relaxing and enjoying this quiet time alone. The other thing I like to do is to head back to the office and while eating my lunch at some location in the office whether at my desk or on the couch, I can watch Hulu+ or Netflix. I enjoy catching up with reruns of The Daily Show and the Colbert report, alternatively when baseball season starts I can catch part of a game.

DURING THE DAY – Throughout the day I attend various meetings and I have found no better way to stay on top of things than by using my iPad. I can use it for taking notes during a meeting, for using GoToMeeting and following a presentation or even playing a game when the meeting gets boring! (I sure hope my boss isn’t reading this) The important thing is that with the iPad I am connected at all times to what I need to be able to access. If during the meeting for example, someone talks to me about some of the code, I can easily make a change or view the code right on my iPad. I was in a meeting once and someone sent an email from another office asking us to print off the contents for everyone present. I was able to do the entire thing right from my iPad.

6:30 pm Arrive Home – After a long hard days work I arrive home. I usually sit down and have some dinner with my wife, and we’ll either watch a movie or TV show together, or catch up on something from our DVR, or I’ll head to my home office and relax in a cozy chair. This becomes the perfect time for me to write a review, edit a review or process something relative to my tech blog. I can also respond to emails, catch up on Twitter or Facebook or do any number of other things that have gone neglected throughout the day. If I feel up for it I might edit some of my code here and there or plan out a project I am thinking about. Sometimes I’ll even turn on the TV and watch something all the while playing a game or reading news or doing any number of things right on my iPad. I can send emails to me people and catch up on things, if an emergency comes up at work, I am fully equipped to handled it right from my iPad.

8:30 pm The End of My Day – By this time I am starting to unwind and getting ready to head to bed and do it all over the next day. At this point I’ll either lay back and read a book in iBooks or I’ll turn on Hulu+ or Netflix and watch something while I fall asleep. I don’t have a TV in the bedroom so this makes for the perfect companion when I just want to lay back, relax and enjoy a show. The iPad case I have allows me to easily prop it up and watch a show. It is convenient and perfect for me, I find it very comfortable and really I can do this from any location, say for example I am out of town on business. My routine need not change, it remains the same and I have access to the same set of shows. Usually at some point here I either fall asleep or I’ll turn the iPad off and go to sleep and then I can start the day all over again.

Now of course this is a normal week day for me, I am pretty set to my schedule but things do change from time to time. On a normal day though you will see the above mentioned activities occurring pretty regularly. On the weekend naturally my schedule changes a bit but usually includes something like sitting around and relaxing with my iPad working on some of the things that I haven’t been able to work on during the week. Whether that is reviews that need catching up on or emails that need responses.

As you can see the iPad is a very important part of my life. I love my iPad and the freedom it brings to me to do what I want, WHEN I WANT, WHERE I WANT. No more being tied down to where my computer is. Yes I have a laptop and now that I have an iPad I find myself using that laptop less and less often. It is so much easier for me to get around with that iPad than to worry about the laptop. No the iPad is not a replacement for the laptop, but it sure does a darn good job of meeting my needs.

This app has been through a lot, as one of the first apps in the app store they started off with a promise to deliver something they could not and that cost them a lot of users. Now this app is finally there, with all the recently added features users can finally do what they’ve been promising for several years now. Unfortunately I think it is too late for most who tried once and saw no reason to continue. This app has gone from bad, to now a great way to look at social media. Loopt is not a universal app and unless you have built in GPS in your iPad there really is no point to using this on your iPad (as far as I can see).

Loopt was originally featured by  when they were introducing (then iPhone OS) 2.0 which brought 3rd Party apps. Loopt was the example of not only the things 3rd party app developers could do, but also of the things that users could now expect from their iPhone. As one of the first apps in the app store it was extremely popular to start with most people at least giving it go. They sold it as the app that allowed you to keep track of your friends on the go. They told us about how you could view your friends locations and even get updates about when your friends were near you. Unfortunately most of what they promised just wasn’t possible with out multitasking. A few months after their launch they began loosing users left and right and new they had to make a move. At this time they decided to partner with AT&T and, for a monthly fee (using AT&T’s ability to track your location in the background), they came up with a plan that would allow them to market this app as a tool for keeping in touch with family members’ locations. They setup a private beta that, to my knowledge, never took off.

As time has gone on, there have been many other apps released with similar concepts. Facebook introduced Places which does a lot of the same types of stuff (Without any notifications) and there are other services now such as Foursquare which provide even more to the game than just locating friends. So now that Loopt has finally begun to improve, they have the problem that if no one uses the app, then it doesn’t do any good. Not much fun to track only your location when none of your friends use it. With the release of iOS 4.0 and multitasking, Loopt was able to start delivering on some of its promises bringing background syncing of your location to the Loopt servers as well as notifications of friends that are nearby. They even now have it set so that you can ALWAYS share your current location with a small set of friends (close friends or family members) while sharing your location through check-ins with another subset of friends and posting those check-ins on Facebook or twitter. However I think for most users, it is too little too late. Loopt really has improved their app and turned it into a great Social Networking tool, unfortunately with little to no body using it, it doesn’t make much sense anymore. Sort of makes you wonder how they are staying afloat. Nonetheless, the app does offer some good features:

FEATURES:

• Auto Location Sharing, this feature allows you to pick some of your closest (most trusted) friends with whom you’d like to share your location ALL the time. This feature stays on all the time and when used in conjunction with notifications, you can get regular updates when family members are close by.
• Push notification when a friend comes near allows you to receive a notification when someone on your list comes with in a specified distance. For example, with Auto Location Sharing on (on one of your childrens’ devices), and Push Notifications on on your device, you can setup an alert when that child is within 1 mile of you. It works exactly as they say it does although keep in mind it is not updating your location constantly but rather something like every 15 minutes (to save on battery life).
• Check-ins allows you to send our location update to another subset of friends, you can include an exact location (or not) as well as a little blurb and a photo.
• Check-ins can be posted to Twitter or Facebook or both.
• Map or list view of your friends.
• Loopt now works together with Facebook Places allowing you to see information in list or map view about their check-in via Facebook Places.
• View a journal of your actions or your friends actions. Comment on any action.

I still have the app installed and use it from time to time, mostly when I want to post information about what I am doing to both Twitter and Facebook and especially when I want to include a photo. It is also great to use for keeping track of a family member’s location although since any user can simply turn off the location sharing feature, it makes it very difficult for a parent to compel their child to use such a feature. If you haven’t used this app for a while, hop on over to the app store and give it another go. Who knows, you might actually like it this time.

This is one of those fun apps that isn’t really a necessity nor is something that has a lot of value but it does serve a purpose: pissing off your friends with mundane and constant updates to Facebook and Twitter about your favorite music! Yes that’s right, this app will post (with your permission, not automatically) the current track you are listening to on your iPad or iPhone. Along with that you can add on additional details such as a link to the track’s album image, a link to the track on YouTube if available, as well as other details. Each post can be made to Facebook or Twitter or both by simply toggling the buttons. This is a universal app so you get it for all of your iDevices with just one purchase which maximizes your ability to piss off your friends. Let all your friends know, track by track, as you listen to songs.

This app does not work with third party music apps such as Pandora so if you are listening to music in Pandora you cannot go into this app and post about it. It will only post about music you are listening to through the iPod library. It is quite a simple idea and works just as easily: While listening to a track that you particularly like and want to let everyone in the world know about, go into Face The Music, view the pre-written message ready for posting and hit post. No longer will all your friends and family have to go without the knowledge of the songs you listen to the most! This is particularly great to let people know that you are listening to Christmas music in July which always seems to upset the same characters . This app is really simple and easy to use although some of the features like “Search on Twt.fm” and “Search on Youtube” may not be the most intuitive. As a matter of fact I have yet to find a single song that I was listening to actually worked in a search on Twt.fm. Searching on Youtube just does a general dump of the results you’d get if you searched on Youtube.com for the same keywords which can of course result in hundreds of thousands of results.

FEATURES:

• Post the music you are listening to, to both Facebook and Twitter.
• Posts include Title, Author, Album as well as various hash tags if you choose (in the settings).
• Post the album artwork to Twitpic and include a shortened url in your post.
• Post a link to that track on Twt.fm and/or Youtube.
• Modify the post before you send it, change any aspect.
• View character count to help out with Twitter post max length.
• Toggle on and off Facebook or Twitter allowing you to post to just one or both.
• Pick songs or albums to play right from within the app.
• iPod controls right in the app to stop, play, pause, rewind, fast forward or change the volume.
• Email the post instead of posting to Facebook and Twitter, (this is for those that really want to piss off their friends by emailing them useless spam).
• Settings for changing a lot of options about the operation of the app including changing the format of the post.

Ok, so I have been quite sarcastic throughout this review. The bottom line is, this app doesn’t serve much more of a purpose than to piss people off. The reality is, I don’t know many people who really care what I am listening to on a track by track basis. That being said, it is still a lot of fun to use and certain I have it around for a reason. One thing I do like to do with it is when I find a song that I like a lot, I’ll post about it. I do try to keep those posts to a minimum! Happy Posting!

If you are a mac user, you are likely familiar with Growl. It is a tool for providing HUD (heads up display) from any app. It is a very useful tool for keeping track of activity in the various applications running on your mac. Prowl for iPhone is very similar to growl (hence the name) providing a similar HUD for your iPhone. In this case it uses push notifications to provide you with the alerts. The app works allowing you, through various means, to send push notification messages to your iPhone. This is not a universal app but since it just uses the push notification system, the app itself works just fine for your iPad. And since the app redirects me (in most cases) to another app when a notification comes in, I hardly ever use the actual interface which makes this as close as I can come to being a universal app without it actually being one.

The app is configurable to allow the sender of the notification to also specific the related app so that when you slide to view, it opens in the correct app instead of within prowl. This is particularly handy for notifications of things like tweets or updates to Facebook. When you receive the notification you can go right into the correct app to respond to the event that triggered the notification.

This is definitely a very useful app. Through the developer’s website you can sign up to receive an API key which will allow you to integrate this app into any of your web apps. This includes a WordPress blog with the proper plugin, you can receive a push notification of every new comment that is posted to your blog. You can setup the app to launch you right into the WordPress app allowing you to go right in and moderate the comment. The app also works together with growl, allowing you to create a specific style of HUD that when selected to be used for certain applications or events (and even based on idle time delay) you’ll receive those HUDs as push notifications. Never again miss an important message or notification.

FEATURES:

• Sign up for a free API key through the developer’s website to allow you to create a web app or deploy a web app that uses their APIs to submit push notifications.
• The integration tool with growl allows you to easily configure which apps and even which actions are allowed to go to prowl, limiting the notifications to just what you need (from your Mac).
• Configure idle times for your machine so that you only receive notifications if you are truly away.
• Passing an application name to the API will allow you to launch a mapped app when you receive a notification.
• Settings allow you to configure different tones for different types of notifications from low priority to emergencies.
• Setup time schedules during which you will not receive any notifications. Don’t worry about getting bugged all night.
• With the schedules in places you can still receive a notification if it is an emergency.
• Go into the app at an time to see a list of notifications received, a log file containing both the message and time it was received.
• Color coded title bars indicate new vs. previously viewed items.
• Personalize the name of the application displayed as well as the type of notification. These two items plus time are displayed on the color coded bar.

This is a great app for stting up all sorts of notifications. The push notification system is vey reliable. You can setup your phone to receive a wide variety of notifications. If you build your own web or desktop app, you can build integration right into it. Send notifications and updates about any sorts of data from twitter searches to IMs, even notifications about actions going on with your servers. This is the perfect companion for any IT or tech guy. And since it will work on both the iPhone and iPad it is definitely worth getting, and the price can’t be beat!

I know you have heard a lot from me already about the Twittelator Apps. I get excited about apps that work well and in particular about apps that I get a lot of use out of. In this case, Twittelator has always been a useful app for me and has only gotten better over time. This is NOT a Universal App. This is the iPad only version of Twittelator. There is also an iPhone version available for purchase as well as a free iPhone version. I use both the iPhone and iPad versions of this app, but they are two very different apps in how they function as well as how they look. Be sure to take a look at each app to see if it is right for you. The same core features are (mostly) available in both, but functionality they are very different apps.

Twittelator Pro (the iPhone version) was what first got me interested in Twitter. I had a great time sitting there on my iPhone and tweeting away. It is fully functional and provides the most amount of features (as far as I can tell) out of all the Twitter apps. With the release of the iPad came Twittelator for iPad. It is still fairly new so features are being added a little bit at a time, but consequently this version is not yet as mature as the iPhone version which has had a lot more time to develop into the app that it is today. But little by little it is coming along. The big plus with Twittelator for the iPad is the extra screen space which allows the app to do a lot more and look a lot better.

The app itself functions well for a Twitter app. I like how things are organized and how easy it is to navigate around. Additionally the developer is very responsive to issues with this app and is constantly making updates to fix it. The app was recently updated (ahead of the release of 4.2.1 for iPad) to bring multitasking, printing, Facebook integration and several other key features to the app. This developer is constantly on-top of what’s new and exciting in the twitterverse and that makes his app one of the top apps in the app store for Twitter and certainly my favorite. Using this app makes my twitter experience all that much more enjoyable, so much so that any other twitter clients I use can’t even come to close to comparing, they leave me disappointed in the end.

FEATURES:

• In landscape mode, you have two views open at any given point in time, your friends timeline as well as another view of your choosing.
• Drill down into tweets and view the conversation of back and forth tweets.
• Print invidual tweets or groups of tweets.
• Using a built in feature, bookmark a tweet or any group of tweets.
• Mark a tweet as favorite.
• View and edit your profile including profile picture.
• View other’s profiles including whether or not they are following you.
• Easily follow new Tweeters.
• Block or report as spam users that are bothering you.
• View the follow cost of any tweeter before you follow them back.
• View trending topics by region or using the master list.
• View tweets by your lists.
• Easily search for nearby tweets or search by username or keywords.
• Reply to any tweet.
• Twittelator can breakdown long tweets into multiples or post a link to twitlonger automatically.
• One click to shrink URLs and tweets.
• Link to various services for URL shrinking as well as Media saving services.
• Save tweets in your favorite service such as Instapaper or OmniFocus, OR email the tweet.
• Manage multiple accounts.
• Post directly to Facebook.

The list of features really does go on and on. New features are added regularly. There are still a few issues here and there with the app, but in this case the developer does such a great job of fixing them whenever he finds them (or someone else finds them) that I never have to worry about bugs getting fixed. He is constantly releasing updates with new features. One feature I’d really like to see him bring to this version that the iPhone version has is the MUTE option, allowing you to silence certain active tweeters without un-following them. There really isn’t anything negative to say about this app. It does not have Push Notification which would be nice, but I understand why he does not do that and I really feel that other features out weigh that one negative.

This is NOT a universal app, but it is worth buying for both the iPhone and the iPad if you use twitter a lot. This review will be solely about the iPhone version with the iPad version being covered at a later date. The iPad version is available for $4.99 as well. If you are familiar with this app, it is not hard to see why it is worth buying for both devices. There is also a free version available, more than likely it is limited in some way although I am not sure exactly what the limitations are but it certainly will give you a chance to try out the app and decide for yourself. This app is definitely worth the purchase. Every time a new twitter app has been released for the iPhone, I have tried it out. Sometimes to see if I am missing anything by sticking to Twittelator Pro, and other times because those apps promise some great new feature. This includes of course the official Twitter app, when it was first released and since then, I have tried it out a few times. However every single time, I end up back with Twittelator Pro.

This app has had a lot of thought put into it ever since it first debuted back in 2008. It started off as a feature rich, but unpolished app (visually) and has grown into a very nice, very functional and very feature rich app. I use it quite regularly on both my iPad and iPhone.  A lot of the features in this app were developed and supported even before twitter released support for them. For example geo tagging tweets, or even lists are features that this app implemented in one way or another prior to twitter doing so. I have a long list of features for this app so I’ll get right into them now.

FEATURES:

• View separate tabs for each timeline including friends, mentions, directs and any number of custom feeds.
• Customize the navigation bar to include any tabs you’d like for fast access to the most important views.
• View all of your lists and follow them easily right from within this app.
• View all tweets associated with a specific list.
• A special misc view allows you to easily follow the last search you did.
• Geo tag your tweets.
• Add images/video/audio/maps to your tweets.
• Automatically links to your favorite media service for storing media and tweeting about it. You select which service to use, I am using Posterous.
• View images inline with the tweet for select media sharing services.
• Automatically breaks a long tweet down into multiple tweets or using twit longer.
• Links directly to your bit.ly account allowing you to store links with bit.ly for viewing later as well as going back later and tracking stats on your links.
• One click link shortening using bit.ly service.
• One click tweet shortening turning specific words into shorter version( too = 2, you = U, etc.)
• Add multiple accounts and then easily switch between the accounts.
• Email tweets or links, open them in safari or send to a link saving service such as read it later and instapaper.
• Send tweets to OmniFocus if installed on the current device.
• Customize the look and feel including changing fonts, font sizes, background colors and text colors.
• Easily search for tweets based on location, name or keywords.
• View all nearby tweets on a map or in list format.
• See a list of the tweets from around your general physical location.
• Mute select tweeters, this allows you to continue to follow a tweeter without seeing his/her tweets. This is particularly useful for some who tweet jut a little too much but that you dont want to unfollow.
• Block or report users as spam.
• View stats on each tweeter including follow cost.
• Publish right to Facebook in addition to twitter.
• Save/bookmark tweets individually or in groups
• View if a tweeter is following you.
• Change your settings for SMS notifications (twitter based) on a user by user basis.
• View and save images
• Print tweets.

The only feature missing from this app is push notifications. But fortunately there are a variety of services out there that handle this for you, which makes it acceptable to not have the feature in exchange for the value I get out of this particular app.

There are of course many other features and probably a bunch I am missing here simply because I may use it differently than you. But these are definitely the features that matter most to me. AND every time I have run into an issue with this app, I have been able to get quick and easy answers from the developer on how to resolve the issue. Yet another reason this app is #1.