Lisa is an avid yoga enthusiast who enjoys writing in her spare time for Usdirect.com – home of USdirect.

I love music. Unfortunately, the only thing I know how to play is the radio. My husband sings, my daughters play the piano and my son not only beat boxes, he can hear a song twice and sing it back to you in key. Makes me sick.

On the other hand, I also love technology, which can help you look more musically talented than you really are if you know which programs to use! Personally I believe everyone can make music, and everyone should. So here are some brilliant applications you should consider if your interest is in music, but your talent isn’t.
Ocarina. One of the top 20 selling Apple apps of all time, Ocarina will have you making incredible music in moments. This amazing application uses the microphone on your iPhone to create a wind instrument. There are several ways to create music:

• You can hold down each of the four “holes” on the iPhone to create the pitch (or combinations thereof).
• You can change the way you hold the iPhone by tilting it and change the depth and vibrato rate.
• You can even change the key.

Another fun aspect of this app is Ocarina’s user community. There are over 2000 user-generated songs you can learn with cool finger charts to show you how to do it. Just plant your fingers and blow! When you’re ready, you can name your Ocarina and allow other people to listen to you play, from all over the world. Want to listen to what other people are playing? Then just tap on the globe icon!

Magic Piano. Makes playing the piano and sounding like a musical prodigy virtually effortless. Created for the iPhone, you can now take music with you anywhere, and with it, the ability to spin your own versions of popular songs. Magic Piano is fun and easy to learn, because all you have to do is follow the beams of light. It’s that easy to sound that great. By the way, Magic Piano is FREE!

I Am T-Pain. Want to sing instead of playing an instrument? Then show off your amazing vocals with I Am T-Pain. Use it with your headphones or plug your iPhone to an external speaker and sing away. This powerful app applies the T-Pain vocal effect as you sing! You heard correctly: this uses the same correction technology used in professional studios, now available in the palm of your hand.
GLEE. Another fun option is the #1 music app in 21 countries: GLEE Karaoke. It’s FREE, it’s incredibly enjoyable to use and it lets you strut your stuff. The app has pitch correction with a little taste of reverb, so you’ll sound, well…better than you actually do. Made for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, GLEE allows you to sing along with any song you have in your iTunes library. You can even join into someone else’s performance and add your voice to theirs! One feature I find especially fun is owningmy own radio tower from the app itself. Share songs on Facebook and Twitter and once you’re ready for the big time, compete in weekly contests to win free songs.

Magic Fiddle. Want to show off your sophistication? Mashable says Magic Fiddle is “…pure, unadulterated musical awesome.” I couldn’t agree more. This brilliant app teaches you how to bow, pluck, vibrato, trill and glissandi right from your iPad. Give yourself and hour or two and you’re sure to blow away your friends and family. You can share your experiences with other enthusiasts around the globe as you perform like the masters. The fiddle shows you all the right notes and gives you a piano accompaniment to show off your new found musical genius. Heck, I bought it just so I could say “glissandi” more often.

Rebecca is blogger by profession. She loves writing on topics related to luxury and fashion. Beside this, she is fond of books. These days she is busy in writing an article on celeb on beach.

Controlling a computer and accessing it remotely is required to stream down the important data from a system to an iPhone. It helps the work to be done conveniently as the user wishes. Google has launched an application named “TelekinesisG” to access a mac system remotely from an iPhone. Controlling a mac from an iPhone is different, interesting and new. It helps in streaming music, videos, browsing important files, performing online searches, performing mouse clicks, running apple scripts, taking pictures in the icamera, entering text in the system using an iPhone. This application is really helpful and simple to work with.

By following the below mentioned steps, a mac can be controlled from an iPhone:
1.From Google code web-site, an iPhone remote needs to be downloaded.
2.Set the price option as “Free”.
3.Install iPhone remote after it has been downloaded.
4.Click open iPhone remote.
5.Create a login id with required password.
6.Go to apple menu in the iPhone.
7.Select System Preferences.
8.Select Network.
9.Select the network connection on which the iphone works from the pop-up menu.
10. Click on the Tcp/ IP tab.
11. An IP address appears.
12. Go to the iPhone and launch Safari.
13. Enter the IP address as :5010. For example, if the IP address found comes to 192.22.22, enter it as 192.22.22:5010.
14. Enter the user name as password created earlier in the iPhone.
15. A set of icons are displayed on the iPhone screen.
16. Click on the icon you want to access.

The mac can be controlled if the internet connection is active on the system and the iPhone as the iPhone depends on the IP address to access data from a mac. The controlling can be done when there is no Local Network connection. It requires being aware of the external IP address. After getting this IP address, the internet router can be set to pass the external traffic and thereafter, it can be connected to a computer. When iPhone remote is not required to be in use, it should not be launched. It helps to retain the security of the iPhone as it disables other sources to access the mac. Despite the inventions of this Telekinesis and other applications, at times the remote controlling does not happens. It can be blamed to the application crashes that happen in the system. Sometimes, the iPhone and system do not support the Telekinesis application.

This has been considered as a useful technique to access the mac remotely as it serves many problems to be solved easily without sticking to the computers for a long time. It helps to work and fix the important issues whenever the user gets leisure time. It does not require to transfer and to store everything in the iPhone to work with. It only accesses the files and after working on those files, it is again saved in the computer. Eventually, it is proved to be time saving and comfortable way of performing the tasks.

Google Latitude lets you see your friends on a map on Google Maps for mobile and iGoogle. Use Latitude to plan an impromptu meetup, see that a loved one got home safely, or just stay in touch with friends.

So, how does Latitudie work? It does a few things; one it uses your iPhone 3G and up or iPad GPS to find your location, updates your Google Latitude location and it shows your location account. Latitudie also has a location history view where you can delete past locations. Sounds simple enough right? But wait there’s more, it also runs in the background. Sounds like automatic checking in to me.

Reading the reviews, some have said this app will drain your battery in 30 minutes or less because even if you’re not running iOS4 Latitudie will run in the background and update your location every minute causing massive battery drain. The developer has stated this is a bug in version 1.0 and will be fixed in version 1.1 as soo as Apple approves it or if Apple approves it. Here’s a note from the developer on the upcoming Latitudie 1.1 features:

Latitudie 1.1, adding the following features, has been sent to Apple for review and should be available soon:

- Added support for location updates in the background using high precision
- Added support for periodically updating your location when running on the background, even if you haven’t moved
- Added support for temporarily hiding your location
- Fixed a bug which updated your location too fast

But wait.. should have Apple have approved this app from the start, being that it’s Google Latitude and it doesn’t work like it should have?

Regardless if you’re looking for a Google Latitude app for the iPhone or iPad Latitudie is available. Something Android users have installed by default.

Do you use Google Latitude? If so how? Do you have Latitudie installed?

There are some who thought the Facebook iPhone app wouldn’t be update because of Apple App store nightmare stories and the original Facebook app developer saying no mas. I’m glad the updates are still coming as this is the second Facebook iPhone update we have seen in the last 30 days.

How do you use Facebook on your iPhone?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I told the guy who would be buying  my old phone that I would call him when I was out of the Apple store.  ”What time do you think that will be”, he asked.  I wanted to be CONSERVATIVE, so I replied, “about 9:00am.  I’m getting there at 6:45, so i can’t imagine it will take that long.”  I’m a first-class fool.

6:30am   I put my 5-year-old in the car and told her she was going with me to “pick-up my new iPhone” at the mall.  I figured she would get fidgety in the store, but we wouldn’t be there that long.  At one point, while driving to Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh, NC, my daughter asked, “Mommy, what is wrong?”  I told her I was anxious and had a lot to do today.  ”I just want to get in, get out, and get you to the pool with your aunt,” I said.  A few minutes later, we pulled into the mall parking lot and I looked at all the cars.  I think I said out loud, “Elin, these cars must be mall employees and the people who walk the mall when it’s too hot outside.  Surely, they can’t all be here for the new iPhone.”  Again, first-class fool.

We park and head in.  I can’t begin to articulate how I felt the first time I got a look at the crowd.  The line.  The masses.  I’ve been at Crabtree Valley Mall on Black Friday and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many people on one floor.  I’ve been to Disney World and I’ve never seen a line that long.  I took and deep breath, tried to remain cool, and walked around the people with sleeping bags and lawn chairs.  I kept walking.  I walked some more, turned 4 corners, went down a hallway and into the food court.  I saw the end of the line and like a first-class fool, I decided to stand in it.

But then things really started looking up.  I was NOT a fool.  I had reserved my iPhone and I was in the correct line.  Clearly, there were only 200 people in this line.  Whew!  My goal of 9:00am was totally do-able.  Smile on face, cocky swagger kicking in.

8:40 am   After a visit from my husband with Starbucks in one hand and muffin the other, I was feeling pretty refreshed.  My daughter was chill and I spotted two other moms who had brought their kids.  I wasn’t the worst mom on the planet…just 3rd or 4th.  It was going a little slower than I thought, but I knew there were only 150 people in front of me MAX and the line seemed to be moving.

9:30am  I turned the corner and saw the store!  I was in!  Maybe 75 people in front of me.  I was golden.

9:31am  A lovely mall security officer came over and said, “we are going to move this line.  We need to get the food court cleared for lunch.”  There were 400 people behind me at this point, so this made sense.  We were herded like techy-nerd cattle and put into a line down the hallway.  This is when my day was officially over.  I realized the line I was in, which had put me close to the entrance of the store, actually wrapped around the perimeter of the mall.  There were 700 people IN FRONT of me.  Good-bye, day.

10:00am  My 5-year-old was a little antsy, so I called Aunt Bonnie to give her some relief. ” PLEASE come and pick her up and take her to the pool!”

10:30am  Aunt Bonnie arrives and my daughter informs me she would like to stay.  She wants to see what’s behind those glass doors.  No way is she missing out.  This is actually the most compelling part of the day.  The excitement in the mall was energizing.  These 2000 people were all pumped.  We were surrounded by strangers but we all had something in common.  The converstation for the last 3 hours was high def camera, retina screens, mult-tasking and apps.  It was a mall full of people, some who had been since 10pm the night before, some who were just hanging with friends.  But we were wired from the thrill of the hunt because we were all early-adapters.  My daughter had picked up on this energy, and she wasn’t leaving.

11:00am  Did I mention energy?  I introduced my daughter to suicide drills, which she executed beautifully in front of Bath and Body Works.

11:30am  Food!  Apple paid for a truck load of subs.

12:30pm  My iPhone 3GS is dead.  This is the worse possible thing that could have happened.  No more tweeting.  No more facebook.  This day was going downhill fast.

12:30pm – 1:59pm  This was not pretty.  It was still exciting and the energy was great, but I was starting to smell and my neighbors were realizing I skipped my usual hygiene routine this morning (remember, I was going to be home by 9…I would bathe then).  We were all hungry and thirsty.  We weren’t talking as much.  The guys at the Brookstone store were laughing at us.  Actually, everyone  not involved in this insanity were laughing.  They walked by the nerds behind the rope lines and pointed.  ”No way” and “idiots” was overheard many times.  I was starting to agree.

2:00pm  I’m the next in line to enter the store.  I’m feeling good.  The lighted apple icon above me was almost a symbol of success.  The finish line.  At this point, it’s not about the phone, it’s about finishing this marathon.

2:05pm  I’m in the store.  I can’t believe it.  My sister (Aunt Bonnie) is documenting on her iPhone.  The employees were calm, the store was comfortable, the police officers out front didn’t arrest my sister for photographing an Apple store.  But most importantly, I had my new iPhone.  I did not have a shower, and that was the next thing on my list.  I know my line mates were thinking the same thing (about me, not them).

2:45pm  Home.  Synced.  My daughter starving.  My voicemail going nuts.  I don’t care.  I stood in line for 7 hours to get a phone I could have ordered and had shipped to my house by mid-July.  But I’m a first-class fool.  A first-class fool with a sweet iPhone.

What are your thoughts on iAd? Do you think you’ll click on an iAd more than you would a text or regular ad?

PS: I never did make it to the movies.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

It looks like there’s a new MacMini in the Apple Store too.

Did/will you pre-order or reserve an iPhone 4 today?

– Post From My iPad

1. Twitterrific

2. TweetDeck

3. Twittelator

4. Tweetings

5. Tweet Flow

6. TweetBrowser

7. Sociable

8. ShinyTweet

Vote for the best Twitter app for the iPad in the poll below.

– Post From My iPad

Location:Glenwood Ave,Raleigh,United States

A few months ago I did a survey asking readers to vote on their favorite location-based application out of 17 different apps. Since then a few more have launched and some continue to fly under the radar.

Here’s a list of 9 location-based iPhone applications you may have never heard of.

1. Flock

2. GraffitiGeo

3. Nulaz

4. Stalqer

5. Wikitude

6. Friendsaroundme

7. Rally Up

8. CauseWorld

9. GeoLorean

Update from Brett:

10. Pegshot

You may or may not have heard of these 9 location-based applications but if you have, out of the 9 which one is your favorite or the one you use the most?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Fayetteville Street Mall,Raleigh,United States

G-Whizz also provides a clean list of all of the Google services to switch between along with the ability to customize quick access icons locations. Besides the multitasking feature G-Whizz is very much like the official Google iPad and it unlike Google’s free app G-Whizz cost $2.99.

About G-Whizz from http://www.gwhizzapp.com
G-Whizz! brings all of your favorite Google mobile websites to one convenient app. After the initial load of each site, you can effortlessly switch between tabs to quickly check your Gmail, read some stories in Reader, or edit your documents in Docs.

Features include:
Support for iPhone AND iPad!

18 of your favorite Google mobile sites (see below)!

For Gmail, a convenient unread badge keeps you informed if you mail arrives while you’re browsing another site.

For Reader, stories load in a pop-up window. After you finish, simply dismiss the window and you’re back to your reading list!

For Reader external links, content can be displayed in a mobile-friendly format or optionally with original formatting.

Email links are detected from within the app and a pop-up window (with appropriate fields filled-out) allows you to send your message without leaving the app!

Tapping links to other Google services will be detected and automatically take you to the appropriate tab!

Ability to use your Google Apps account! Just enable this option and enter your email address in Settings to use Gmail, Calendar and Docs for your domain. For the other Google apps, log in with your favorite gmail.com address and use them simultaneously Google Apps account!

I decided to give G-Whizz a try and here are a few screenshots of the app.

If you’re using G-Whizz or another browser multitasking app for the iPad let me know what you think about it in the comments.

– Post From My iPad

Location:Turtle Point Dr,Raleigh,United States

The app looks very similar to the iBooks app and comes with the current month of the magazine for free. You have the option to buy magazines by the month or a 6 or 12 month subscription.

*Disclaimer: this is not a sponsored post.

– Post From My iPad

Location:S McDowell St,Raleigh,United States

Recently App Notifications released App Notifications 2.0 for the iPad and iPhone and it work/looks great.

Here’s the pitch from http://www.appnotifications.com

What is the purpose of your application?
Push is an iPhone App that acts as a client for the Apple Push Notification Service. We support push from RSS feeds, Google Voice, Facebook, Twitter, Email, 3rd party with a standard API. We even include a REST API. We also support multiple devices syncing if you own more than one iPhone/iPod Touch device.

We also have a full featured website available at 4push.com (use a desktop browser) where you can read your notifications, change your settings and more.

App Notifications is an iPhone app that acts as a client for the Apple Push Notification Service.
Use our ready-made Twitter, GMail, Google Voice, and RSS notification services to instantly receive new tweets, search results, emails, RSS feeds, or create your own custom notifications with our simple REST API.

*Disclaimer this is not a sponsored post and they did not ask me to blog about their apps.

What is your favorite iPhone and/or iPad app?

– Post From My iPad

Location:Chapel Hill Rd,Durham,United States

When the iPad first launched two twitter apps that are highly used among iPhone users were available such as Twitterrific and Tweetdeck. Soon to follow was Twittelator and I have never used Tweetings before but now they have released an iPad version of their Twitter app as well. Here’s a list of my top 4 Twitter apps for the iPad.

Twitterrific

Tweetings

If you have an iPad what Twitter app are you using?

– Post From My iPad

Location:Market Plaza,Raleigh,United States

Looking at the app store today I noticed an app called Penultimate surge past Apple’s Pages App and the popular utility app GoodReeder. So what is Penultimate? Well among first launching the app it reminds me of…..my old Molkeskine.

Will I use Penutilmate on a regular basis? I don’t know yet as I like how Evernote saves my notes on the “cloud” and I can access them from anywhere. But you can email your “handwriting” notes to review later or you can email an entire Penutilmate notebook.

To see how Penutilmate works take a look at one of my “hot” handwriting notes below.

App description from http://www.cocoabox.com

PENULTIMATE HANDWRITING
The ultimate notes app for iPad®. Write, sketch, imagine and remember. Your touch creates beautiful ink. Organize your ideas into infinite notebooks, and share by email with your coworkers, classmates, and friends.
Write everything from love letters to doodles with your own Handwriting, on your iPhone® or iPod touch®. Share notes by email, Facebook, or Twitter.

What iPad app do you use for taking notes/sketches and why?

– Post From My iPad

Location:Turtle Point Dr,Raleigh,United States

After watching the video let me know what you think about Apple’s iAD decision for geo targeting ads.

Do you agree?

I just wanted to use the word “breaking” in a blog post, it sounds exciting right? Sorry about that. Either way the big news is there’s a new iPhone app on the way that will allow you to upload photos and videos to FourSquare. How you ask? Well, the iPhone app called SquarePik. SquarePik is created by Florida based startups Thirtynine and Pikchur and uses FourSquare API to post. The way the iPhone app works is a very simple. You login with your FourSquare email address or phone number. After signing in you’ll see list of recent FourSquare activity from your friends. There’s a places button that will use FourSquare’s API to find locations nearby. After you select a location, then you click the icon to upload media which can be either existing media or taken on the spot. Next SquarePik will check you into the location and post links to the uploaded media inside of FourSquare and send links to your social profiles such as Twitter & Facebook status updates if you have those options enabled in your FourSquare settings.

Why is SquarePik important? Well in the very competitive location based app market, apps such as Whrrl, Brightkite, TriOut and Yelp provides a way for users to upload a pictures but Foursquare has yet to implement such features. Now with SquarePik not only does it allow Foursquare users to send media to there networks but if FourSquare was thinking about adding media uploads, SquarePik has developed the app to show them how. Note there are a few more features to SquarePik but I’ll let you find them out once the app is released. I don’t have a release date for the app but be sure to follow @Squarepik on Twitter for updates and a big thanks/congrats to Davide Di Cillo @DavideDiCillo of Thirtynine along with Pikchur team for allowing me to test the app.

The Pitch:
SquarePik is an easy way to add photos and videos to your foursquare check-ins. It will also show you all photos and videos that were dropped at a venue.
URL: http://squarepik.com
Twitter: @SquarePik
SquarePik is a joint venture between Pikchur Inc. and 39llc.

Would you use this app?

Back in June of 2007 I had this grand idea of launching an iPhone blog called iPhonesinRTP.com. The RTP part was for Research Triangle Park, NC. Meaning the blog was going to be about iPhone users and apps from the area, along with general iPhone and iPhone app news. Since the launched of the iPhone I have published over 255 post and have covered various local Apple events such the original iPhone launch in 2007, along with the iPhone 3Gs launch in 2009. Other blog entries included featuring iPhone wallpapers, tips and iPhone app video reviews.

For the readers of iPhonesinRTP.com I want to say thank you for your support but do to other projects, working at Twine Interactive and launching TriOut with @LawPower my time is very limited. Plus there’s tons of iPhone blogs and it seems like everyone is talking about the app store and covering niche apps on most gadget blogs. I’ll still cover iPhone news and apps here on SocialWayne.com from time to time and will redirect the iPhonesinRTP.com url to this post.

If you would like for me to review your iPhone app please email: pitches at socialwayne dot com .