An audible moment – hiking alongside a monk
I hiked the Cowles Mountain trail alongside a monk last Monday morning. I don’t know what he was saying, but I like the sound of his voice and the crunching earth under our sandals. Was he blessing my path? I’d like to think so. If you’re reading this, thank you.
Adobe CEO Stops Making Sense
Wolfram Alpha Admits Mistake: Mobile Site is Back; iPhone App Down from $50 to $1.99
A New Policy for Wolfram Alpha
According to Wolfram Alpha’s newly minted managing director Barak Berkowitz, the team’s “number-one priority as of today is to get Wolfram|Alpha in the hands of everyone.” This, obviously, is a complete reversal of Wolfram’s earlier policy, but we are very happy to see this new direction the team is taking.
Refunds for Those Who Bought $50 App
While Wolfram always argued that the app was worth $50, not too many people thought so. The current version only has 24 reviews in the App Store. Wolfram will obviously take a loss on the refunds as Apple won’t return the 30% cut it took from all the sales, but the Wolfram Alpha team clearly feels that this is the right thing to do. We can only guess how much money Wolfram made from the $50 app, but chances are that the company will sell more than enough $1.99 apps to make up for the price difference. If you bought the app at the full price (or $19.99 during the holiday sale), you can go to this site and ask for a refund.
To get a refund, users will have to supply their phone’s or iPod touch’s UDID, a screenshot of their UDID on the iTunes summary and account details page, as well a copy of their receipt from Apple.
You can find our full review of the iPhone app here.
New Mobile Site
The new mobile site feels faster than the original page, but at least in the version we tested just before the official launch, result pages seemed to be formatted for a screen somewhat larger than the iPhone. We assume, however, that this is just a glitch and that the company will fix this shortly. Unlike the native app, the mobile site obviously also doesn’t offer the specially formatted virtual keyboards for entering formulas (something Wolfram used as the main reason to charge extra for the iPhone app).
More To Come
According to today’s announcement, the company also plans to expand on this strategy of making the service more accessible in the next few months, though the announcement didn’t offer any further details. According to Schoeller Porter, Wolfram|Alpha’s architect, “the new iPhone and iPod touch app price, and the refund offer are just the beginnings of a wider strategic move toward ubiquity.”
I’m pretty sure Wolfram Alpha made the right call here. Maybe the $50 price tag was a marketing ploy to make the $1.99 feel like nothing. If it was, it worked on me.
Okay, I’ll give MapQuest another try …
MapQuest 4 Mobile Brings Free Turn-by-Turn, Voice-Guided GPS to iPhone
iPhone: If you’re an iPhone user who’s jealous of Android’s awesome free, turn-by-turn, voice-guided Google Maps Navigation GPS app, here’s some good news: MapQuest just released its own free voice navigation app for the iPhone.
The good stuff: MapQuest 4 Mobile features voice guidance, off-route assistance (it warns you if you get off course and can automatically re-route you), nice point-of-interest integration, and plain-text search. (If you’ve used GPS tools that require you to drill down by city, street, then address, you know that being able to simply search for a location by name is a godsend.) The maps and directions are all downloaded as you go from MapQuest, so it’s also a very lightweight download (“offline” GPS apps are often several gigabytes); the downside to that is that it won’t work if you don’t have a data connection, but if you live in an area with good coverage, that won’t be a regular problem.
The not so good: MapQuest 4 Mobile isn’t close to as polished as Google Maps Navigation. It doesn’t rotate the map based on the direction you’re heading, it doesn’t have cool Street View integration, you can’t search by voice, and it doesn’t feature built-in traffic information. Still, if you’ve been looking for a free GPS app for your iPhone, it’s not a bad place to start. The only other solid competition that we know of is previously mentioned Waze, which is available for the iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile, and turns GPS navigation into sort of a game.
MapQuest 4 Mobile is a free download, iPhone only. Got a favorite iPhone GPS app, premium or not? Let’s hear about it in the comments.
Send an email to Adam Pash, the author of this post, at tips+adam@lifehacker.com.
I’ve consistently been underwhelmed by MapQuest and amazed that they still have such a faithful user base. Free Turn-by-Turn, Voice-Guided GPS on my iPhone is enough reason for me to give MapQuest another try.
Styleguide: A new global visual language for the BBC’s digital services
Our recommendation is that pages have a predominantly neutral colour palette with colour being provided by large and dramatic imagery. The highlight colour is used sparingly to create vibrancy and draw the eye to key areas of the page.
Really nice web styleguide co-created by designers at the BBC and Neville Brody. I’d love to see the whole thing.
It’s raining red lines
