Credit: Distantsuns.com

A guest post by Mike Smithwick, author of Distant Suns 3 for the iPhone/iPad and blogger at distantsuns.com. Mike is a seasoned iPhone/iPad developer who has developed numerous iPhone applications. He has recently released Distant Suns 3. Follow Mike’s work on Twitter for more information. [Read the first part of this story]

After leaving my cameras in the men’s room at Gate 25 of the Santiago, Chile airport (D’oh!), it became Hey! Look! An eclipse!necessary to make my iPhone 4 my exclusive camera to shoot the July 11 total solar eclipse.

This posting is merely some observations about the phone’s handling in less than ideal conditions.

The eclipse’s path began in Argentinean Patagonia, the most southern province in Argentina. Our target was the town of El Catafane, pop. 25000, a popular destination for summer vacationers.

While Patagonia was not known for clear skies during the winter, about 20 eclipse chasers and me (the only certifiable “eclipse virgin”) came from all across the US and Mexico hoping against the odds to see a sunset corona. Totality was to take place when the sun was a mere 1 degree above the horizon immediately before sunset.

The promised clouds and snow never materialized, as Sunday dawned perfectly clear, and surprisingly warm, with a temp peaking about 45F degrees.

Four of our party brought pretty hefty DSLRs, everyone else would use their small pocket cameras and me with my iPhone. One woman from San Diego had just purchased a Nikon DSLR but still didn’t feel comfortable using it so told me I could us it instead while she’d take the iPhone.

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StumbleUpon is one of the most underrated communities around. While Twitter, Facebook, and other similar sites get a lot of credit and publicity these days, the StumbleUpon community keeps moving forward. Now StumbleUpon fans can take advantage of this social surfing network on their iPhone. StumbleUpon for iPhone gives users an easy way to start stumbling to discover new websites.

In order to take advantage of this application, you are going to need a StumbleUpon account. This application does have a familiar feeling if you have played with StumbleUpon toolbar in the past. You can find stories and rate them instantly on your iPhone (using the bar at the top). Read the rest of this entry »

The latest version of Facebook app (version 3.2) is now available in iTunes. In case you missed it, Facebook recently announced some pretty exciting new features. The new version of Facebook for iPhone includes some of those features (mainly Facebook places). FB Places is the company’s effort to compete with Foursquare. Users can take advantage of this feature to find out where their friends are and check-in to their favorite place.

By tapping on Places, you can see where your friends have checked in recently. You can also check in to a new place yourself. Considering that the product is new, there are bugs everywhere. So do not expect to get these new features to work flawlessly. Unfortunately, Facebook Places does not work for international users at this point. Read the rest of this entry »

The iPad may be considered just a large iPod Touch, but it is much more than that. There are certain things that you are going to have a difficult time doing on your iPod Touch and not so much on your iPad. Taking journals and sketching things are just two things to name a few. Thanks to iPad notebook apps, you can capture your ideas no matter where you are without needing a physical notebook.

If you use your iPad to do business or just want to be able to write down your thoughts and ideas on the go, these 6 premium iPad journal apps get the job done:

Penultimate: the ultimate notebook application for iPad. It lets you write down your notes, draw your diagrams, and do all kinds of things on your iPad. It lets you organize your notes as well.

Audiotorium: you can think of this as your audio notebook. Great tool for college students and anyone who wants to record lectures, meetings, and so on.

PaperDesk: it essentially emulates a real notebook on your iPad. Pretty easy to use and comes with a cool toolbox to let you customize how your take your notes. Read the rest of this entry »

HBO is the home to some of the best series on television. These channels do show some of the more recent movies, so users do get a lot of value from their subscriptions. But what good is a HBO subscription if you can’t watch your favorite series on your iPad? Apparently, HBO is planning a new iPad application that will allow subscribers to stream HBO content on the go. The good news is there is no additional cost for HBO Go as far as subscribers are concerned. Considering that HBO has refused to work with Netflix for now, this move should give the network a boost.

While Apple is making progress with HBO, Google is having major issues with its push to bring Android to set top boxes. Some studios seem not too happy with Google’s business plan. Google may have lofty plans for Google TV. But that could force content providers to block their content from playing on certain devices. Apple is expected to release its next generation of Apple TV (iTV) very soon. So this market is going to explode in the very near future.

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