Interestingly, after writing a review about iDownload, and reading and responding to a reader’s comment, I began to consider what it would be like to tap into the possibility of using the iPhone as a mobile storage utility. First, I explored Air Sharing, since I downloaded it for free a few months ago, but never actually setup the program. I was impressed with its ease of use, but was disappointed that only WiFi access was available. Upon reading that Readdledocs supported 3G or EDGE connections as well, I became further intrigued.

Overview
Similar to Air Sharing, upon opening Readdledocs, you can view your files and file folders available on your iPhone. When you open a file, the document appears on screen, and the application supports many file formats including the common MS Office file types and PDF files. There is an extensive PDF manual that comes with the program that effectively explains all of the features that come with this program. There are a lot of bells and whistles included (reading ebooks, iDisk access, and exchanging files with other users), but I will stick to the ones that mattered to me the most. In addition to the iPhone’s storage, your purchase of Readdledocs comes with a 512 MB of online storage where you can keep more files of your choosing. A web browser is also included for you to download documents directly into Readdledocs. For an extensive list of features, check out their website.

You’ve got files.
Since I had experience setting up the iPhone as a network drive with Air Sharing, the initial setup with Readdledocs was fairly straightforward. Within minutes, I had access to my iPhone’s storage capacity through my home computer. File transfer was very easy and relatively quick as well. Viewing documents on the iPhone was speedy, though I noticed a bit of lag with larger files and some of my Excel spreadsheet files. As I mentioned above, Readdledocs advertises file access via 3G and EDGE connections. This is true, though the access is to your online storage files, not to your iPhone’s files. To the developer’s defense, Apple probably has something to do with restricting access to WiFi only. Readdledocs gives you 512 MB of online storage with the iPhone application, as well as an option to purchase additional amounts of storage space. Thus, you can store files on your iPhone for WiFi access, or online for both WiFi and 3G/EDGE access.

Close, but I think I still need a flash drive.
If I had steady WiFi access at my workplace, I think that I would eliminate my flash drive and use my iPhone along with Readdledocs as my go-to option for storing documents. Since I don’t, I would need to upload most of my important documents online so I could then access them anywhere including on my iPhone. With only 512 MB of free space, and the potential to lose these documents (what happens if the company goes under or if the server is unavailable?), Readdledocs does not provide the complete solution to the file storage dilemma for me. Furthermore, there is no editing features, emailing files was a bit sluggish, and large files tend to frustrate the app a little bit.

Conclusion
Overall, Readdledocs excels in several areas. It’s user interface is intuitive, clean, and comprehensive. The included manual also helps you with setup and provides details on all of the included features. With this neat program, you can easily store files on your iPhone (downloaded or transferred from your computer), email them (in theory – I had some challenges with this), and view nearly all types of documents. Complaints in iTunes reviews have mostly been about the application’s price, and I agree that it’s a bit steep at $9.99. Air Sharing retails for $4.99 now, but I do prefer Readdledocs, and would be comfortable recommending it at the higher price point. The key is whether you will have WiFi access wherever you plan on using the app or if 512mb of free storage is enough for you. If so, then this app is worth the investment.

“The chromeless Edge (free), vibration-countering Shaking Web ($1.99), privacy-inclined Incognito ($1.99) and enhanced-tab WebMate ($0.99) browsers all claim functionality that you can’t get with Mobile Safari, but they’re all based on Safari’s version of WebKit. In a sense, they’re like browser extensions, but which can only run one at a time and as completely separate apps.”

So, does this mean we will soon be seeing Firefox available in the App Store? Probably not, but it does seem like Apple has been relaxing some of it’s restrictions lately. These are not the only type of applications that have been added to the AppStore in recent days that, in the past, were not allowed. Honestly, the AppStore is so saturated already that I’m not sure relaxing restrictions is that big of a deal though, I’m wondering if it will affect Apple’s stature. Let me know what you think in the comments.

via Gizmodo and MacRumors.

Search is an application that allows you to search for keywords in your Mail, SMS, Notes, Contacts and even on the web. When you open Search, you will notice a lower menu bar with the options; Mail, SMS, Notes, Contacts and Web. At the top of the screen is a Search bar. You can select any of the options in the lower menu bar and then use the search bar to search within that application. The thing that I like about this application is that once it has found an entry you can then select it to see the full Email, SMS message, Note, Contact etc. The Web option will search Google keeping you in the application instead of directing you to Safari so…that is also nice.


I did find that the Search is not extremely thorough. When searching in my SMS, I searched for the word “Sorry”, knowing that I was looking for a some specific text messages. It brought up three other text messages but, none of the ones that I had just look at in my SMS. Also, I searched for the keyword “Advertising” in my email and was greeted with one email when we have had a ton of emails lately with the word advertising in them. So, the search works decently well but is definitly not complete. I would also love to see more usability within the application. Like the ability to reply to an email from the app or respond to a text message. You are able to call a contact via the Contacts option which is a nice feature.

Overall, if you are looking for a quick way to search your email, SMS, notes or contacts you might want to check out this application.

FriendFeed enables you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends.

FriendFeed is pretty kewl and I’ll probably use it more now that there is an iPhone version. There are people beginning to abandon Twitter for FriendFeed with all the recent server problems at Twitter. My problem is I’ve already convinced a lot of people to use twitter and they are actually using it. It would be very difficult to get them to switch now. Hopefully Twitter gets their act together soon. If you’d like to follow me on friendfeed visit friendfeed.com/ahhyeah.

Official Announcement

It also shows the last time your timeline was updated. With a new version comes a new web clip icon. Not a huge change but more of a gradient from yellow to orange than solid orange. Other features include relaying what service your friends are using to twitter, faster load times, and a whole bunch of custom settings. The custom settings include inline replies, inline messages, custom colors, show full names, bigger avatars, selecting homepage action. Overall a very nice update and a great choice for non jailbroke iPhones rather than the twitter web client. Just visit hahlo.com. No installation needed!