I know that I have personally have wanted to be able to tweet what I’m listening to without having to type everything out, even though I’m a fast typer.  Well, I decided to Google for iTunes plug-ins that would allow me to do so.  One of the first (and best) that I found was Twunes (Mac only).

When you first open Twunes, it will ask you to add your twitter account.  After you add your account, you have options of how you want a tweet to look.  You can include the album name, make the artist a hashtag, include a track link to either iTunes or last.fm, and choose a prefix for your tweet like “iTunes plays” or #nowplaying.  You also get the option to pause the song you are currently listening to or skip to the next track right from the application.

The Twunes pane looks really good, giving you album art, Track name, Artist name, and Album name.  In the “Your Tweet” part of this pane, it shows you a preview of the tweet you can send out based on your settings.  Click the tweet button, and it will send the tweet out to your twitter account.

Overall I give Twunes a 4/5 for it’s great interface and the amount of options you have, though I would like an option to tweet the songs automatically.  I recommend it to every Mac user.

There are many devices that act as a battery backup for you “I” device, but the Monaco solar charger will not only charge your “I” device but it will charge anything powered by USB. The solar charger can be charged via a wall outlet, this will take about six hours for a full charge, or it can be charged by the solar panel, this will take about eight hours.

Any USB powered device can be charged while the solar charger itself is being charged. For example, While on break I can listen to my iPod, in its charging state, while sitting in the sun with my solar charger. The solar charger also works quite well when it is placed on the dashboard of any car. The sun will charge it right up and you’ll never have a dead phone, iPod, iPad, Navigation System etc. ever again.

Over the few weeks I have been testing out this solar charger I have realized that, at times, it is very difficult to find sunlight. When I was riding in the back seat of the car traveling to Canada and back I couldn’t get the solar charger to charge. Why? Because of “privacy” backseat windows. These windows block UV rays and make the solar charger just a normal battery pack. On a cloudy or rainy day, it will be impossible to charge on solar power alone. But hey, it’s a battery pack, it gets the job done and is extremely convenient in certain circumstances.

I recommend this product to… everyone! Almost everyone now-a-days has a mobile phone or something that uses a USB cable to charge. Whether its a sunny or cloudy day, the Monaco Solar-Powered USB Charger gets the job done.

The graphics of the game are amazing, especially on the retina display on the iPhone 4. This is nothing new, though – Gameloft is known for having great graphics on just about every game they make. The game provides the usual modes of a football game – you can do an exhibition game, a full season, just the playoffs, or a quick tutorial on how to use the controls of the game. One thing that really caught my attention is that you can get full RSS from the latest news in the NFL at the bottom ticker. All you need to do to enable it is head over to settings > other > and then toggle RSS to on. You can also chat with other people using the Gameloft Live service.

Gameplay on NFL 2011 is alright – but it is very unrealistic on certain occasions. When the opponent is at a 3rd and long situation, it seems like they always convert on it regardless of how many yards they have to get in order to complete the play. At first I thought it was just me not being good at the game, but the opponent was at a 3rd and 50 situation, rushed the play, and still managed to get the 3rd down. But besides that, gameplay is pretty nice.

Pros

- Great graphics(typical Gameloft), Overall decent experience playing

Cons

Unrealistic gameplay at certain times, No multiplayer gaming

Overall ranking: 7/10

The app is a good bang for your buck, but if you have the money and looking for a full experience for playing football and have the money for it, I’d go for Madden ’11.

You can download NFL 2011 here ($0.99 for a limited time)

When you first open the application, it gives you the date at the top, an analog clock on the left telling the time, two sliders on the side to control the volume of the alarm/radio and the brightness, and then three knobs towards the bottom that turn off the alarm, radio, or puts the alarm to sleep. There is a power button below the sidebar, which quits the app.

You can do a lot with RadioAlarm. You can set alarms just like the clock app, except you have more options. You can set the alarm to either play iPod music from your library or Internet Radio from ShoutCast, which provides hundreds of radio stations right on your iPhone. Another thing you can do with RadioApp is have a Sleep mode, which is essentially the opposite of the Alarm clock. It provides about ten different calm noises you can choose for a certain amount of time, and usually you can fall asleep to them. Some noises include Rain pouring on a window, Wind, campfire, a garden, and some waves at a beach. I haven’t been able to fall asleep to them since I’m not the type of person who can(I’m a very light sleeper).

This also serves just to listening to Internet Radio. You don’t have to set an alarm to listen, and since it supports iOS 4 and multitasking, you can leave the app and still listen to some radio.

The app is $1.99 in the App Store, and I definitely recommend it if you’re looking for a better alternative to the clock app for the iPhone. You can download the App Here.

I tried it out by joining a few channels on two IRC networks. My overall first impressions of the client weren’t that great, but as I started to customize the theme and change a few settings around, I started to like it. The User Interface is good, but it doesn’t quite compare to the simplicity of Colloquy, which is another alternative to an IRC client on the iPhone. In terms of features, Linkinus provides just about every feature that one can ask for in an IRC client, but there is one feature that I’ve needed to use that I could not find anywhere in Linkinus. As of right now, you can’t set Linkinus to make a command upon connecting to an IRC network. For example, if you are an IRCop in a network and want to automatically do a command that makes you oper, there’s no way you can add it in Linkinus(from what I’ve seen). But besides that, it’s pretty jampacked with features.

The client works smoothly, and I haven’t had many issues with lag in terms of moving around through the client looking in settings and going through queries, but I have noticed a small bug when switching themes in Linkinus. If you switch a theme or move the keyboard out of the way to see IRC too quickly, once you bring back the keyboard it wont show the bar that shows what you’re about to type in IRC. It can get kind of annoying, especially if you’re making typos and not knowing about it, but all you need to do is move from the channel to your channel list and back. It should fix any issues you have there. I’ve also experienced a crash or two when I switch out of Linkinus and return after a while of inactivity.

Linkinus provides a great experience to IRC with many features and a good UI. It’s $2.99 in the app store, which, considering Colloquy’s existence, is a bit too pricy. Colloquy has similar features and sells for $1.99. So honestly, it comes down to which UI you like better. Linkinus has a more feature-based UI with a lot of buttons to mess around with but still making it look good, while Colloquy provides a rich and simple way to use IRC.

Download Colloquy ($1.99) [iTunes Link]

Download Linkinus ($2.99) [iTunes Link]

Full features page for Linkinus

As of today it is Windows only, and runs on Silverlight, Microsoft’s online platform for videos, music, and applications.  To enable the user stream preview, click the settings gear down on the left -> click plugins -> scroll down until you find twitter -> click settings -> check the box for user stream previews -> save and restart.  Tweets will begin flying at you!  That is if, you’re following a lot of people.  I only follow 209 at the time of this writing, so tweets didn’t fly at me in the video.

Update: It is available for Mac OS X, too.

Download [iTunes Link]

While recording my first test in Skate 3 I saw really nice results. The quality was very good and there were no black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. When I started recording Battlefield Bad Company 2 I noticed there were black bars but, they weren’t only in the recording, they were on my TV too. I guess Bad Company expects everyone to play in HD.

Overall the quality of this device is very nice. If I ever record Modern Warfare the true capabilities of the EasyCap will be revealed, MW2 doesn’t have the black bars.

I think this device is a steal for only $10 and it arrived within a couple days! I recommend this to anyone who is just starting out with commentaries. While I’m on this subject; what do you guys think of the commentaries? Should I keep doing them? What games would you like to see? Comments Welcome!

Sean over at WirelessGround.com was nice enough to send me a solar powered mobile charger. If you would like to purchase any mobile accessories head over to WirelessGround.com!

The solar charger comes with a wall USB power adapter, the solar charger itself, a Mini USB to USB cable, and a USB to micro/mini USB adapter. The solar charger will charge just about any device that uses a USB cord. For example my iPod, LG Voyager, and iPad all charged on this device. The iPad will not charge on certain computers, like mine, but it will charge on this device!

While looking at the solar charger I could see there is a power in and power out. This device also works as a battery backup! The solar charger can be charged by USB to a computer, the included USB wall adapter, or by sunlight! I have already decided that the best place to keep my solar charger will be on the dashboard of my truck, therefore I will never run out of battery life.

So far I am very please with the Monaco Solar-Powered Battery Pack and I recommend it to anyone that has a mobile phone, iPod, or iPad. This solar charger will charge thousands of mobile and “i” devices and is a must when leaving the house. Make sure to head over to WirelessGround.com if you would like to order yourself a Solar Powered Charger.

Today I went to Guitar Center and picked up the Audio Technica AT2020 in hopes of great audio quality. During my tests, the microphone was phenomenal! The AT2020 will run you $150 at Guitar Center but I was able to snag it for $130. I got this microphone mainly for the purpose of high quality audio recording of my  musical instruments and YouTube videos.

My initial impressions of the microphone was that it looked really nice! Of course judging a microphone by how it looks is a terrible idea, its all about the quality. The quality of this microphone is amazing as well, when you hear the quality for the first time it will astound you!

The AT2020 is a USB microphone, therefore it was plug and play, no drivers or software needed. I plugged the microphone in, went to system preferences and set the AT2020 as my default input source, that was it! This particular microphone does not require an external energy source, it runs off of the Mac/PC via USB.

I highly recommend this microphone to any musician, YouTuber, radio announcer, or podcast producer. This microphone will be perfect for many people and I know it will be perfect for me in my upcoming videos.