Hi Kary and Others, Neil James wrote:
> I can vouch that Coi Pond and System activity monitor both work with > Voice > Over. I find Coi Pond to be a very nice relaxation tool. > > Neil > > I haven't tried out iSpectrum or the World Newspapers app, but since I originally posted the information about both Koi Pond and System Activity Monitor, I'll describe both of these apps and paste in some of my original detailed posts about Koi Pond at the end. I'm also cc'ing this so I can more easily search for and link to this post in secondary archives that are faster and simpler to use than the Google Groups archives -- the only archive facility supported on the VIPhone list. Koi Pond by Blimp Pilots ($0.99) is a lot of fun, and also a great hit with kids, who love to splash the water in the virtual fishpond, feed the fish, get their fingers nibbled (iPhone in vibrate mode), as well as customize all the sound effects (rain, wind, birds, insects, waves, etc.) You can use it simply as a nice app that plays relaxing sounds, but if you use the feature where you can toggle VoiceOver on and off with a triple-click of the Home button, you can also splash around in the water and play with the fish; you need to be able to touch the water at the top half of the screen (with VoiceOver turned off) so that you can dismiss the control screen for selecting the sound effect options. When the control screen is out of the way (after you've chosen all your settings with VoiceOver turned on), you can splash around in the pond and feed and play with the fish. There are two unlabeled buttons on the start-up screen (at the bottom left corner and the bottom right corner); just flick to the last one (or touch it in the bottom right corner) and double tap to get to the set up controls. The other button (in the bottom left corner) brings up a purely visual display of how holding your finger still on the water surface will cause the fish to nibble your fingers and how shaking the iPhone releases fish food into the pond, and you want to avoid it. Since this is the month before Christmas, there is also a first button (in the top left corner) that is labeled as the Christmas button (grin). Apparently, double tapping this button puts red and green Christmas lights around the border of the screen, changes the lily pads in the pod into holly, and turns the fish colors to red and green. This button only shows up when the date is within a month of Christmas. Double tap that button again to get back the "normal" colors and dismiss the Christmas lights. (Incidentally, iPod Touch users won't feel the fish nibble their fingers, since this feature uses the iPhone's vibrate instead of ring mode -- they'll just hear the swish of the fish tails, etc.) Just use triple-click home to turn VoiceOver back on again when you're through playing with the app. More explicit details are pasted in at the end of this post if you need them. • Koi Pond by The Blimp Pilots ($0.99): http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=286420263&mt=8 The System Activity Monitor app by Recession Apps ($2.99) is straightforwardly accessible with VoiceOver. I use it purely to free up memory when VoiceOver gets sluggish or when I notice performance issues on my iPod Touch. This is usually in connection with large file transfers or processor intensive activity. This app reports on many other things (disk space usage, processes running in the background, battery status, your internet IP address) that are only of interest to "techie" users, but you'll probably only use the feature to release memory, which is on the startup screen. Just flick right past the announcements of various types of memory usage to the "Free Memory" button and then double tap to press the button. You can also do a two finger flick up to read "all" and then stop the reading with a two finger touch when you hear "Free Memory button" or flick left back to it if you've past it. For example, I might find that when I read off the Runtime Memory and flick right to the first entry that gives me the free memory, the value is 69.52 MB. I flick past the other memory usage category stats to the "Free Memory" button and double tap anywhere on my screen and hear "Free Memory, dimmed". Shortly after I flick left or do a two finger flick up and hear that the Free Memory is 153.07 MB. These are sample numbers from my iPod Touch; your values will be different, depending on your active processes, recent app usage, and device set up. I could also free memory and stop background processes by periodically shutting down my iPod Touch and restarting, but I find that using the "Free Memory" feature of the System Activity Monitor app is more convenient and improves the overall stability of performance on my iPod Touch. YMMV. There is also a switch on the settings menu for the app that allows you to start freeing memory as soon as you launch the app (without having to press the "Free Memory" button), but this is a slower process. Important to note: this is labeled as "System Activity Monitor: 3GS Update! With Free Memory and Battery Level" and is version 1.1 dated July 16, 2009. Check that the version has the free memory feature before you buy and don't update this app if you want to keep the "Free Memory" feature. Apple started making apps remove the "free memory" feature earlier this Fall, and this is the only app that I'm aware of that both supports OS 3.0 and allows your to free memory. When Recession Apps update removing this feature appears in the App Store you won't be able to use it to free up memory. Also, they warn you that the first time you use this app you should have an internet connection. (This is likely because their app also reports your IP address in another menu, and this probably gets queried the first time you use the app.) • "System Activity Monitor: 3GS Update! With Free Memory and Battery Level" by Recession Apps ($2.99) http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=306192663&mt=8 HTH. I'll paste in details from earlier posts about Koi Pond below my signature. Cheers, Esther <begin first excerpt> Subject: Koi Pond - virtual fishpond app Hello, I thought I'd mention an app that became more fun with the recent OS 3.1 capability of setting triple click Home to toggle VoiceOver on and off under the Settings menu. Koi Pond is a paid ($0.99) app that plays relaxing sounds from your own pond of Koi fish. There are two unlabeled buttons in the left and right lower corners. The button in the lower right activates the controls. The sound effects buttons for controls are all along the left: You can turn on or off: rain and distant thunder, bird sounds, wind sounds, frogs, and insects in any combination. There are other buttons for customizing visual effects, such as the tint color of the pond water, the number of fish (you'll want to set this to the maximum, or 3), the number of lily-pond plants, the brightness of the water, whether there are bright rings around the rain drops, whether the bottom of the pond is rocks or tiled, a separate volume slider for the sounds of the app, and a sleep timer slider to automatically turn the app off after a fixed number of minutes. While the sound effects are nifty and soothing, what's really neat is if you toggle VoiceOver off after setting the options. Then tap the top of the screen to make the options panel vanish. At that point if you brush your finger across the pond or tap the surface, you'll hear the ripple of the water. Even better, especially if you've set the button for a large number of fish, try shaking the iPhone or iPod Touch. This releases fish food across the bottom of the pond, and you'll hear the quick swish of a fish gobbling up food and swishing a tail to move away. If you touch your finger to the surface of the pond and hold it very still, fish will come to to nibble at your fingers and the iPhone will vibrate. You'll hear the swish of the fish tails near your finger. Also, the sound effects are stereo and directional. This is an app that little kids love. (Of course, they'll probably also be touching the water to try to scare away the fish). Normally you wouldn't be able to get through the VoiceOver touch gestures to splash in the water and let the fish nibble your fingers, since the option screen wouldn't disappear. Koi Pond has been one of the top selling paid apps for some time, mainly for the snazzy visual features of the fish and pond water simulation. The sounds are pretty neat, but it's much nicer splashing in the pond, sending ripples across the water, and playing with the fish. Just a warning that the unlabeled button in the lower left corner apparently brings up a visual of how to shake the iPod to feed the fish or hold your finger to the surface to have them come nibble your fingers. Just avoid pressing this. If you press it by accident, use the Home button to get out of the app and restart it. As soon as you press the info button in the lower right corner of the screen, the options menu with the buttons for sound and visual effects gets announced. Leave this screen by toggling VoiceOver off with the triple-home key press and then touch the top of the screen. Very slick. From Blimp Pilots at: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=286420263&mt=8 Cheers, Esther <end first excerpt> <begin second excerpt> Subject: Re: Can't find the button to change things on the Koy pond app Hi, Try the following: when you bring up the Koi Pond app under VoiceOver, once you start hearing sounds flick right all the way. That should focus you on the button in the lower right which brings up the options. Then put one finger on the screen and do a split tap by touching a second finger to the screen. The options menu will come up. The sound option buttons are along the left side of the screen, so you can just run your finger down to listen to them. Actually, if you do a two finger flick down from the first button you find after you run your finger down from the top at the left, you'll hear all the buttons announced, but they'll be identified going across in rows, with 5 buttons to a row, so I'll hear a sound button and then four visual buttons. If you start from the left side of the screen, about two thirds of the way up the screen, and move down, you'll come to the "Rain" button. Split tap with another finger to listen to the effect with this turned on and tap again to turn off. (You may want to wait long enough so that you can hear the thunder effects as well). Then move down to "Bird sounds", "Wind sounds:, "Frog sounds", and "Bug sounds" at the bottom left. If you move to the right from the "Bug sounds" button, you'll get the adjustable volume slider for the app. Just below that is the sleep timer slider. When you've customized the sounds and volumes to your liking, triple press the home button to toggle VoiceOver off. (I'm assuming that you set this up in Settings > General > Accessibility > Triple-click Home to check the "Toggle VoiceOver" option before you opened the Koi Pond app). Then tap anywhere at the top of the screen, starting a little way above the position of the first sound button, to dismiss the Options menu. If you touch the center of the screen with your finger, you should hear water splashing. Just a note that it's harder to hear the fish splashing around and feeding if you have rain and thunder on (smile). Shake the iPhone and you'll hear fish food shaken onto the bottom of the pond, and wait for the fish to come around to snap them up. When you want to move on, just triple click the home button again to turn VoiceOver on. This would probably qualify as one of those relaxation sound apps if you weren't playing around with the fish and splashing in the fond. If you want to leave the sounds on as relaxing background, you can set the sleep timer to turn off. Enjoy. Cheers, Esther <end excerpt 2> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
