Enter AutoStitch for iPhone.

AutoStitch appears to be based on the same core technology as my favorite desktop stitching application, Calico. It was almost two years ago to the day that I found a Mac application using the AutoStitch technology and AutoStitch for iPhone is a great way to celebrate that anniversary.

Unlike either Panorama or Pano, you can simply point Autostitch to photos you’ve already taken and it will automatically analyze the images to create the best panorama possible from them. This DRAMATICALLY reduces the time it takes to capture a panoramic image. There is no need to worry about accurate alignment. For the sample image below, I took 15 photos in quick succession. I only almost no care in making sure there was consistent overlap. Those photos were automatically saved to my iPhone photo album.

After launching Autostitch, you simply select the photos you want it to stitch together. AutoStitch has a “tutorial” on their site, but it’s not needed. Point it at your photos and let it rip. AutoStitch analyzed the photos and created a panorama from the images in short order.

Here are some screen captures from the process:

Here is the resulting image. (Click to view larger)

And here is the cropped version. (Click to enlarge)

It just doesn’t get any simpler than this. And don’t worry that your panoramic image doesn’t look very clear on your iPhone. When you get it to your computer you’ll find a nice surprise. As the AutoStich FAQ explains, “The iPhone Photos app limits the resolution at which it displays images. As it limits display resolution to a maximum in each image dimension, the display resolution can seem particularly low for long and narrow images.”

I’m going to have some fun with this app!

UPDATE: Here is a sample AutoStitch for iPhone photo set on Flickr. To demonstrate ease of use, took the 14 photos in 48 seconds.

Does Google email you your messages? How accurate are they at taking the spoken word to text? That is my biggest issue… that and my messages are getting cut off before I get the phone number. Does it go to your email (gmail) or to a text on your phone? (Do you use the Google Phone? or who is your service with) Do you have a blackberry or IPhone?

So I thought I’d take the advice I often give to others and write a blog post as the answer to her questions. I asked Amy to call into my Google Voice number and leave a message. I use an iPhone, so I’m with AT&T, but the Google Voice service doesn’t care. It’s entirely independent of my network. I have my notifications sent to send to me via SMS and email. It will send to any email you wish. You can see the images below. But Google Voice also stores every message online for you.

Here is Amy’s message. (Yes, you get an embed code for each message.)

This is the exact transcription:

hey jeff this is amy programer from cincinnati ohio thanks so much for suggesting that i’d give you a call to see how well google translates voice to text i’ve been having some trouble with my spending box the i guess it’s AT&T or cincinnati bell wireless and wanted to see how well it translated hi find that motormen messages or getting cut off prior to my client or customer is actually leaving their telephone number at the end of the message which is the whole point of getting it translated so that all i have to do is look in my email and just click on the number and call them back without having to almost rack my car reading the number down and then dialing it back so let’s see how long this allows me to talk and it it puts my number again my number is (513) 377-3637 i’m currently using a blackBerry and hopefully this will work very well i’m curious to see if it goes to your google mail your email or jess at text message because my current service because it’s a text message thanks so much again this is amy programer with facebook and i hope you’re having a great day and sunny california see you later bye bye

Here is how it came to me on my iPhone via SMS:

And here is how it looked in email:

I think you can judge for yourself how well Google did at converting the human voice to text. I’ve been very pleased with the improvements they’ve made to the old GrandCentral.com service. And this is one of the features I’ve enjoyed the most.

Amy, what do you think?

Twootball has one simple function – display a live stream twitter conversation about NFL teams, organized around the games for that week. The idea of sitting in front of an upcoming playoff game and easily meeting new people via conversations about the action on screen seemed like a no-brainer to me. So, even though I don’t usually interface with technology on Sundays, I downloaded the free app and waited to give it a whirl.

Selecting which game I wanted to have a conversation around was simple.

On first glance, it delivered just what I was hoping for. Unfortunately, the moment I went to reply to one of the tweets in the stream, I was disappointed. Nothing happened. I touched my finger to the screen several times. I expected a window to open giving me the ability to reply to the sender, or retweet their comment. Instead, nothing happened. I even restarted the app to make sure it hadn’t frozen in some way. No luck.

Without the ability to reply or retweet, Twootball becomes somewhat pointless. Especially since I can enter hashtags into Summizer, or even create a special football page on Tweetgrid, that would allow me to do exactly that with minimal effort. I was surprised to find that even on the Twootball.com website, replies and retweets are not possible. This seems like basic functionality to me.

I love the concept of Twootball, and the interface is nice, but I don’t want to simply watch a stream of comments. I want an easy way to engage in a conversation. In that regard, Twootball fumbles the ball.

I’ve tried every Twitter application on the iPhone, including the favorites Twinkle, Twitterific, and Twittelator. I’ve even tried Tweetsville, TwitterFon and GPSTwit and fired off photos with Twitfire. But in the end, I always ended up coming back to Hahlo, a web-based Twitter client built specifically for the iPhone.

Why? Simplicity and the ability to separate “replies” from “direct messages.” I wish it were more complicated than that. It’s not. I don’t want my direct messages mixed in with my replies and I certainly don’t want them mixed into my friend stream, indicated only by color. I want to choose easily whether to reply in public or private and I want to be certain that choice is honored. Hahlo did all of that for me. Tweetsville does it as well, but doesn’t allow me to access replies on the main screen. And… the one feature that was missing from Hahlo, was the ability to retweet, to easily repost something interesting.

Tweetie gives me all of that and more.

It is has now replaced Hahlo on my main iPhone toolbar. Tweetie allows me to set up multiple Twitter accounts, as you can see below. That’s helpful. My only “complaint” is that they’ve gone overboard on the text bubbles. I’d like to see more tweets on screen at one time and the graphics are taking up too much space.

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That said, the fact that “Tweets,” “Replies,” and “Messages” are easily accessef from the main menu was the first clue that I was going to like this app. And when I choose to reply, the option buttons are large and easy to hit accurately. I can’t tell you how frustrating the small icons on most of the iPhone apps are to hit accurately.

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The ability to copy and paste links was an unexpected bonus! When you access a link in a tweet, it opens inside the Tweetie browser.

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The icon on the lower left then gives you the ability to either open the link in Safari or “post the link,” which copies a shortened URL into a new tweet. Sweet.

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Ahh, but there’s more. Easy access to Twitter Search features and trends. And a quick way to search for tweets directed at me, but not directly at me, via the “Search @ResPres” button.

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In addition, Tweetie allows me to save drafts and easily follow and favorite right from the app. Simply put, this is finally a Twitter iPhone App I can recommend. Now, if only Twitter would take the limits off the API. The reason I keep resorting to Search.Twitter.com, even on the iPhone, is this:

But I know it’s not Tweetie’s fault. So, my first click is on Tweetie now. If that fails, then my saved Twitter Search icons are my fallback plan.

TweetGrid – A Quick “How To” from respres on Vimeo.

iTunes App Store.  One of my interests is weather, and while Apple’s Weather application has a simple interface, it only provides current and forecasted temperatures.  Because one of my other hobbies is flying radio controlled gliders, I am also interested in wind forecasts.

MyWeather Mobile not only provides temperature forecast information, but it also provides temperature and wind speed forecast graphs that are easy to read.  The $9.99 price tag makes it one of the more expensive apps I’ve purchased, but it’s interface is easy to navigate and uncluttered.

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The Weather Channel also published an iPhone application earlier this month and while it contains much of the same information available in MyWeather Mobile, it  displays it in tabular form instead of a graph.  The hourly forecast screen shows the next 12 hours of temperature, precipitation, and wind and the 36-hour forecast screen shows summarized information for each day rather than each hour.  The Weather Channel iPhone application is currently free.

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I should point out that both apps will use your GPS location to show weather information for your current location in addition to the cities you manually add.

I’m usung Air Mouse, the clear winner in my quick search for an option that would allow me to work using my right index finger. It beat out Snatch. And it’s wasn’t even a close competition.

Snatch

While the Snatch touchpad is larger and allows for multi-touch control, it has several problems. First, the multi-touch is finicky. It performs only ome of the time, which forces you to switch to the scrolling control screen to scroll inside windows. Second, the mouse position control is not accurate. a lot of time is spent getting the mouse to the correct position on the screen. And third, the keyboard is hidden away on yet another screen. Snatch simply requires too much effort. The two main control screens are shown below.

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Air Mouse

In stark contrast, Air Mouse places most of the controls you need on one screen (see below). Two buttons, a scroll wheel, track pad and keyboard are all on screen at the same time. It is all I needed to type this post, and upload photos.

The cursor control is extremely accurate and responsive. And it acts as you would expect it to. Taps and double taps on the track pad respond just like the Powerbook trackpad. And the secondary control screen gives me access to my programmed mouse options.

After one evening of use, i’m now comfortably conrolling every aspect of this process with my right arm pinned against my chest, leaning back comfortably and without moving my shoulder at all. Air Mouse allows me to work. I would have been severely limited without it!

I hadn’t run in a long, long time. And as I took in large quantities of air, I had a brief moment of clarity. “Hey,” I thought. “Maybe I should test StepTrakLite for the last portion of this death march.” So I did.

The last portion of my run/jog/walk is 100% uphill. It’s the downside of living on one of the highest points around. I didn’t even attempt to run it. I just turned on StepTrakLite and put the iPhone back in my pocket. For most of that last mile, I simply walked at a brisk pace. It was certainly faster than I’d normally walk, but it did not even approach a Jog. When I pulled the iPhone out of my pocket and checked the final stats, this is what I found.

First off, I clearly need to alter the settings, you’ll see that graphic below. It judged my brisk walk as running and I can tell you right now, that just wasn’t the case. But apparently 248 of my steps were so slow that they registered as walking. I don’t know what part of the “run” those steps might have taken place. I wasn’t getting enough oxegen to my brain to remember anything. What the graphic clearly shows, however, is that it took me sixteen and a half minutes to walk that last uphill mile. Yep. That confirms it. I’m officially out of shape. Thanks for that insight, StepTrakLite. I appreciate it.

I watched for part of the way and it did indeed count each step accurately, even though my classification of steps was off. I would agree that it was “vigorous” but I wasn’t running. So, the application allows you to change the sensitivity in the settings.

Clearly, I need to change my classification bias to have it more accurately predict my running. But applications like this one are what I love about the iPhone. StepTrakLite helps make the iPhone something more than a phone. And this is an application I’ll certainly be using on my “runs” in the future.

Maybe soon I’ll be able to remove the quotations from “run,” and when it counts my steps as running, they actually will be. Sounds like a worthy goal to me.

TextExpander has greatly simplified the task of getting common emails responses out to customers for me without having to rely on cut-and-paste or a template email that I have to find in a folder somewhere. And I’m not just talking about using a keyboard shortcut to generate my signature. Sure, TextExpander can do that too but it’s real power shows off when you can craft a full page email with formatted text or even generate AppleScript (which I haven’t tried yet). I have only touched the surface of what this program can do for me – I’ve only written about how I use it with email but TextExpander can work in all applications.

I can’t do it enough justice here in a short post so you really need to check out the videos. TextExpander is available from Smile On My Mac and there is a downloadable trial.

I’d be interested in hearing about how others are creatively using TextExpander as well.