A persistent iTunes bug presents itself every time I’ve tried updating ALL of my applications through iTunes. Whenever there’s an update available I click on the “update all” and promptly (and consistently) receive “The information on this page is outdated” followed by a big red error message “We could not complete your iTunes Store request. An unknown error occurred (5002)”.

Apparently this error really is unknown since various people report that it’s been around since at least iTunes 9.2. The latest iTunes 10 does NOT fix it (and if you think it does just test the upgrade for a couple days because numerous people report that it promptly returns).

The solution? I’ve read a bunch of stuff online about uninstalling iTunes (works for a short while but the problem re-appears) and clicking your email address in the upper right of iTunes and logging in (works but a pain to keep doing every time you sync all updates). The only thing that I’ve found to get around this consistently is to click through the error the first time then continue and select update all again. The error vanishes and your applications will all download.

Apple Support

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It’s been possible for a while to stream Sirius radio over the iPhone using the Sirius Radio application. The problem with the Sirius program is that it blocks  some of the more popular channels – including Howard Stern on Howard 100 and Howard 101.

Other applications for iPhone/Touch such as Pocket Tunes ($6.99)  allow for streaming of these restricted channels – but the login process has been kludgy with frequent requests to enter passwords and delays while audio buffers.

A new FREE application called MusicDock in the iTunes store connects via WiFi or 3G to Sirius and allows you to stream over 120 channels – including Howard Stern.

Did I mention this application is free? And it supports high quality audio?

An online subscription from Sirius is  required to initially login and listen to the Sirius audio streams.  What’s nice about MusicDock is  you won’t be prompted to continuously enter a Sirius login and password. Once your login information has been entered it’s stored so in the future you can quickly start up Howard without any pesky buffering or connection issues.

Grab this download!

Features:

• Automated login (no re-entry of passwords)
• Save favorite channels
• See what’s playing on the channel list – with album artwork
• Background listening in iOS4

MusicDock (iTunes link)

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If you’re an avid New York City Broadway Show fan then you’ll want to pick up a copy of At The Booth. This (unofficial)  iPhone application posts periodic updates about the TKTS booths’ selections –  located in Times Square, Downtown Brooklyn and the South Street Seaport.

What’s a TKTS booth?

TKTS Discount Booths offer same or next day tickets to Broadway and Off-Broadway musicals and plays at up to 50% off. All locations sell tickets at 50%, 40%, 30% and 20% off full-price (plus a $4.00 per ticket service charge, which helps support other TDF services and programs).

The catch? Availability and ticket inventory change throughout the day and at the discretion of individual productions. Until now this meant the only way you could determine what shows were available was to visit the booth.  Every time we’re in New York we make sure to visit the TKTS booth to see what shows are available. Unfortunately that’s not always convenient if you’re all the way across town in the city. With At The Booth for iPhone you can remotely view an approximation of what’s going to be available at the booth (the information is not real time so it could change by the time you get to the TKTS booth)

This application (which is not sponsored by TKTS – who states they have their own official application slated for September 2010)  lists Broadway Shows generally available as well as giving a great rundown of show synopsis , their performance times and directions (maps) to the theater. New visitors to New York will definitely want to grab a copy of At The Booth since it easily replaces the need to carry a map and show guide when visiting the city.

At The Booth (iTunes link)

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Through January 24, 2010 you may download and use the NBA League Pass for free on either your Android or iPhone. The application allows for streaming live game video either through 3G or Wi-Fi connections. You can listen to one game while checking scores on another. Full replays of past games are also available. The NBA League Pass Lite trial version is free through 1/24/2010 when the normal $19.99 fee will apply if you wish to continue.

NBA League Pass Free Trial

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This creepy infomercial demonstration of Square credit card processing by Kevin Rose (Warning: Disclosure that he is an investor in this doesn’t come until the very end)  looks pretty interesting. I’m not sure what the fee is to process a card (The site claims there’s no monthly fee or contract so I have to imagine the per charge cost is rather high) or how quickly you can access funds. This seems to be one step higher in convenience than Paypal (which also offers credit card processing though it only occurs via the web and with a $30 per month fee).

I’ll reserve judgment until I see what process is in place to combat fraud (think of how easily this could be used by an unethical waiter or waitress one night to quickly capture a restaurant goers charge card twice  for example) .

Square via Kevin Rose

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I use Things as my to-do list manager on my Mac. Until now the biggest pain about using the program was synchronization. I was partially able to overcome lack of a native sync function between my iMac (home) and MacBook Pro (road) with DropBox (free file sync). However the achilles heel to the situation was always the crappy synchronization between the desktop and my iPhone version of Things. It just never worked. Or more accurately I’d sometimes have 20 to-do items on my desktop and 37 on my iPhone. Hardly my description of “synchronzed”. Over the summer they promised a fix for this “any day now” — and today’s the day. Go grab the updated Things for iPhone as well as the companion desktop upgrade. Both are available and seem to finally fix the synch problem.

Things

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Who thought we’d see the day when Microsoft launched an application onto the Apple iTunes marketplace. That’s exactly what happened today. This iPhone application is a near carbon copy of the Bing web site. You can use the iPhone GPS to locate yourself which then can be placed on the Bing maps. Voice search is available as is the daily news, business search, movie listings and traffic display.

Bing (iTunes link)

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This morning I awoke to an update of a new sort. An application called Notifications that I’ve used to send push notifications for RSS feeds  had this  interesting (if not very diplomatic) wording about their latest update:

“Pricing changed, don’t update if you don’t agree with it. The bottom line is I’ve tried to make it fair for you and for us. You will now have the application for free (might take a few hours for the change to apply on iTunes) and will unlock it within the app for the same price as before: $2.39. If you had paid for the previous version already, your account should be unlocked, else contact us. For this price you will get 20,000 notifications. 20,000 notifications means more than 50 notifications a day for a full year, our average user should go for at least 6 months. When you run out of notifications, you can buy 10,000 notifications more for $0.99. Oh, and if you bought the application, you start with a fresh 20,000 notifications even you received a million the last month, to thank you for being early adopter.”

Apparently what’s happened in this $2.99 application which promised free unlimited notifications when I purchased it back in September changed the terms and has gone limited – and if you don’t like it don’t upgrade (in other words kiss the use of your iPhones “upgrade all” button goodbye).

Notifications

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Ustream have just released an iPhone application that includes the ability to stream live video over the iPhone. The capability to transmit video in real time (aka stream) has until recently been prohibited by Apple and/or AT&T. The application, Ustream Live Broadcaster, works on either 3G or Wi-Fi and can easily share  video streams with your Twitter (live broadcast notification), YouTube and Facebook friends. If you’re in an area with no 3G or Wi-Fi the app will automatically record the video and save it for subsequent upload to the Ustream servers.

Ustream Live Broadcaster (iTunes link) via Techcrunch

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Dragon Dictation is a free application just released yesterday to the iTunes App store. This program does a remarkably fast job of accurately converting your speech into text.  There’s no advanced registration required to use the application. After downloading from the iTunes App store you can quickly convert your spoken words into text. And this application is  fast – less than a few seconds to convert a paragraph or two.

The interface for Dragon Dictation couldn’t be simpler. Using the red record button you’ll press once and start your dictation.

Here’s a quick paragraph (unedited) that I dictated this morning.

There are a few wrong words – but nowhere near as many as there should be given my rapid pace of speaking. During this dictation I spoke in a normal conversational tone. With some practice and steadier and more pronounced speech I’m certain the accuracy would approach 90-100%.

The application is sophisticated enough to allow you to append text to an already created dictation. To do this you just press the record button again at the place where you’d like to insert more text.

Dragon Dictation’s not perfect. As with any speech to text software this program works best when you pronounce your words clearly and slowly. Although the app can copy and paste all the dictated text to the clipboard I’d like to see it add native ability to transfer that information to several different types of Twitter client.

The description of Dragon Dictation in the iTunes Store also states that you can update your Twitter and Facebook status. I was unable to find a native way to do that within the program however you certainly could copy/paste whatever was on the clipboard into either of those service (or any other service for that matter).

For a free application Dragon Dictation has certainly raised the bar on voice to text applications. It’s probably put quite a few paid applications out of business as well. Although I can’t say for certain I’d imagine there may be a paid version shortly that adds links directly to popular Facebook, Twitter and other social media applications.

Dragon Dictation (iTunes Link) via GearDiary

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