The estimated reading time for this post is 4 minutes
NCAA March Madness On Demand
Are you a big NCAA basketball fan? If so, check out the NCAA March Madness On Demand app by Turner Sports in the iTunes App Store. This app is free, is available on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices, and streams every live NCAA tournament basketball game. That’s right, you can watch all of the NCAA tournament games on your iOS device for free. The app is available in the US and all international iTunes App Stores and the games can be viewed anywhere you have an Internet connection, in the US and internationally.
As an added bonus, you can pause and rewind games you are watching live. Just tap the screen and the controls will appear. The games can be viewed over Wi-Fi or 3G, but be careful of your data limits if you are watching over 3G instead of Wi-Fi.
In addition to watching live games, you can watch highlights and tournament news; check the brackets and scores; and get alerts for your favorite teams, upsets or close games. You can share your thoughts on Facebook and Twitter right from the app.
I watched last night’s games over Wi-Fi on my iPad and there was some pixilation (those annoying little colored squares) so this app won’t replace watching the games on tv. But if you can’t get to a tv and are a big NCAA basketball fan, this free app is a must have app for you!
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Zite
One sign of a great app is that it’s your “go to” app first thing in the morning. If an app is the first one you open to start your day then that’s a great app. Zite has become the first app I open in the morning. It’s that good.
What is Zite? Zite is an iPad-only app that becomes your personal magazine on almost any topic you wish. After you download the app onto your iPad, you can set it up by selecting various sections including news, politics, entertainment, science, technology (guess whose favorite section that is?), business, cooking, arts and culture, health and other topics. You can pick and choose which ones interest you the most. You can also help Zite learn your interests by providing your Twitter name and logging into your Google Reader account through Zite.
When you’re finished with choosing sections, Zite searches through over half a million databases and compiles articles for you in a beautiful format with snippets and an image from each article. There is also a list of sections on the side of the screen so you can jump around to different sections if you would like to. If you want to read an article, touch it and the article will open to fill the screen. What is particularly impressive about the app is that on the right side of each article you can vote on whether you liked the article and select whether you want more from that particular publication, author and/or each topic covered by the article. The more you provide your preferences to Zite, the more customized your article selections become. You can share the articles on Twitter, Facebook and email.
Just about any publication you can think of is covered by Zite, including The New York Times, BBC, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Huffington Post, Fox News, CNN, ESPN and many other sites. No word yet on when The Wonder of Tech will be covered, but I will keep you posted! While Zite is only available on the iPad now, they plan to expand to other tablets by the summer.
I love having one-stop shopping to read my tech news and any other news I find interesting. Zite really seems to be homing in on my interests so I look forward to reading Zite more than other news apps.
How much for this amazing app? It’s free, so if you have an iPad, grab Zite from the App Store and give it a try.
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Google App Update
The Google app received a major update for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices, making searches using Google much easier on your iOS device than it was before. Here is a helpful video from Google on how their updated app works.
To update to the new Google app, either 1) go to the App Store app on your iOS device, find the Google app and click Update (you will have to enter your iTunes password), or 2) go into iTunes on your computer, click on Apps in the left column, click Check for Updates at the bottom right of your screen, then find the Google app and click on Update. If you have updated the Google app on your computer, you must sync your device with your computer for the update to be on your device.
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Survival Apps
In light of the multiple disasters in Japan, Mike Elgan from ComputerWorld has put together a recommended list of five iPhone apps to use in case of a disaster. The article also gives great advice on other ways tech can help during a disaster. Some of the apps, such as Close Call and Pocket First Aid, are worth getting even if you aren’t worried about disaster striking you.
That NCAA app looks great. Makes me kind ofwish I had an iPhone. Any apps like it for Android?
Hi Joe, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Check out Watch Live Sports by Appsolutely. It’s available for $2.99 in the Android Marketplace.
Happy birthday, tech lady!
Thanks, Gramps. I hope you are having a tech-tastic day!
NCAA app – that rocks! Thanks for the tip.
Hi Ed, Welcome back to The Wonder of Tech! I’m glad you are enjoying the NCAA app. It’s such a fantastic app, it’s hard to believe that the app is free.
This NCAA app is great, but the screen in the middle is really small. It’s hard to watch the video..
Sorry, stupid comment. I figured out how to make that screen bigger.Great app, thanks for letting us now about it.
Hi Sam, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Thanks for your posts. No comment is stupid at The Wonder of Tech. If is isn’t obvious to you how to do something, then others are probably wondering too. To expand the video, tap your screen and the controls appear. In the bottom right is the control to expand the video (or live stream) to full screen. I agree, it’s much better to watch basketball on the full screen!
Downloading the apps now. Great post.
Hi JK, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I’m glad you like the apps. There are tons of great free apps in the App Store, but March Madness and Zite have to be two of the best.
I think you mentioned in a previous post that we can download apps for an iPad even if we haven’t gotten one yet. How do you do that?
Hi Nina, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech. If you don’t have an iPad yet, you can certainly get apps now and download them onto your iPad later.
Do you have iTunes on your computer? If you don’t yet, no worries. iTunes is free to download. Go to apple.com and download iTunes. You set up an iTunes account and then you can download music, apps, podcasts, videos, etc. into iTunes. You can enjoy the music, podcasts and videos from your computer, you don’t need an iPad, iPhone or iPod to do that.
Once you have iTunes set up, click on iTunes Store in the left column. Then search for Zite (or March Madness or any other app you want to get) in the search window in the upper right corner of the App Store window. Once you get to the app’s page, click on Free App on the upper left side, under the icon. The app will download to your computer, ready to sync to your iPad once you get your iPad. Unfortunately, you can’t enjoy these apps without an iOS device (iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch), but you can enjoy the music, podcasts and videos while you’re waiting for your iPad to arrive.
Enjoy!
Me again. I just tried a Google search on my Android phone and you can’t just talk into the phone to search like that guy did on the video you posted. Can you really do that on the iPhone app?
Hi Joe, Welcome back to The Wonder of Tech! The iPhone app just got updated and with the update, you can just talk into the phone to search, you don’t have to press anything. On the former iPhone Google search app and on the Android app, you have to press the microphone icon to do a voice search.
I have no idea why Google updated their iPhone app before their Android app, but I imagine Android will be getting a similar update very soon.