iPhone News Updated

iPhone app review: Battle.net Mobile Authenticator

by Rand Miranda
http://www.jacksonville.com

Now you can use your iPhone for extra security with your World of Warcraft account.

On Friday, Blizzard added the free Battle.net Mobile Authenticator app to the iTunes App Store.

Previously, you could order a dongle for $6.50 (plus shipping and handling) and use the code it generated to protect your WoW (or other online Blizzard) account from identity and toon theft. With the recent changes the video game maker has made incorporating all of its titles under the Battle.net umbrella, this makes it a little easier and safer for your online toons.

Just open the app and it generates a pin code. Type that pin code in when logging in and once validated, you are good to play.

Note: I did a little quick and dirty Photoshopping so the numbers shown are not lined up as they are when actually generated.

You’ll need to sign up at the Blizzard Web site if starting this to link your app version (you get a code for each app) to your account. If you have a dongle, you can continue to use it as normal or deactivate it and then activate the iPhone app.

You can’t beat free when it comes to protecting your toons and it shows that Blizzard recognizes the power of the iPhone and App Store as the company has promised to offer more WoW (and other games such as Diablo and Starcraft) content for mobile phone users.

I wouldn’t be surprised if down the road, Blizz added an official Armory app such as Characters (reviewed here) already does.

Rand

[Thanks: http://www.jacksonville.com]

Kindle: iPhone App Review

I have a confession to make: I am a reader. Hardcover, softcover, mystery, technical manual, horror, sci-fi. If it has words, arranged into sentences, I want to read it. But I live in a rural area, so there aren’t alot of good bookstores, and although I work in a city with several big name book stores, as a single father, there just isn’t alot of time to go sift through shelves to find something interesting after work. Amazon has just about everything, but I am truly impatient, and hate waiting for things to arrive. To that end, last summer I bought a Kindle.

If you are one of the people fortunate enough to have a Kindle, you know what I am about to say: the Kindle is the single greatest device I have ever used. I know I am an iPhone app reviewer, but when I say the Kindle is better, I mean it.

The ability to download a book, for very little money, and read it almost immediately, on that e-paper screen, is nothing short of sublime. And the battery life is everything we all wish the iPhone’s could be. But the device does have some downsides. It is a tad ugly, there aren’t very many accessories, and turning the page takes a little while. Less than a second, but still, you notice it. My personal annoyance is that the Kindle isn’t pocket sized, so carrying it around isn’t as convenient as carrying around my phone.

Until now. Amazon has released the Kindle app for the iPhone, and now the world is beautiful again. Although there are some places where the functionality doesn’t match up, the Kindle app for the iPhone is really the mobile phone ebook reader we have all been waiting for.

When you open it up, you are greeted by a list of books you have downloaded onto the device, and an archive, where all of the books you own are downloaded from. You, unfortunately, cannot purchase books from inside the app, like you can on a regular Kindle, but honestly, the Safari browser on your iPhone or iPod Touch is better, anyway. Once you have bought a book and downloaded it, reading is as simple as swiping the screen to change the page, and tapping the screen to bring up the menu. Your location is saved, and automatically synced to your Amazon account, so the next time you open the book in either your iPhone, or on your actual Kindle, it will open to that location.
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