SCHED.org's
SXSW 2012 Blog

Kyle Matteson is the founder of More Cowbell. Click here for details on his day party during music.

I’ve been figuring out what iPhone apps will be most useful to me for covering this years SXSW Music Festival, and here are my top 10:

10. AroundMe (FREE)

There are plenty of apps that do what AroundMe does, but in my experience it seems to be the cleanest and has the most accurate results. Basically this app will let you easily find certain types of businesses/services nearest your location using GPS. The info it pulls up is usually just from Google Maps, but that usually includes a phone number and website URL. It also makes it easy to add items to your iPhone Address Book (ie: Austin venues).

9. Brightkite (Free)

I know i know, how is this different from Twitter you ask?

Well, There are a few other location-aware social networking apps (Loopt, Google Latitude (no iPhone client yet), etc.), but Brightkite is the most promising and polished at the moment. If you can get all of your friends to sign up for a free account (they don’t need an iPhone, it works with any phone that can send SMS too), you can “Check In” when you change venues and keep track/meet up with them, as well as post messages and photos, which are all geo-tagged based on your checked in location.

8. Facebook (Free)

As much as we all hate to admit it, Facebook i here to stay and is a great way to not only keep in touch/meet up with other friends at SXSW, but also an essential tool to share your photos, thoughts, etc. with friends back home. (See PixelPipe at #1 below for uploading photos & videos directly to Facebook)

7. BlogPress/iBlogger/Tumblr ($0.99 / $0.99 / Free)

All 3 of these apps do essentially the same thing, allow you to post text and images (and in the case of Tumblr, audio notes) to your blog. Tumblr only works if you’re posting to a tumblr blog, but both BlogPress and iBlogger allow you to post to various blog systems (Blogger, Wordpress (both .com and self-hosted), TypePad, LiveJournal, Joomla, etc.). For the on-the-go blog posts that just can’t wait until you’re at a full computer, use one of these apps.

6. iTalk (Free)

Planning to do interviews at SXSW? Want to record audio of some bands playing? There are definitely a dozen or more voice recorder apps for the iPhone, but iTalk is not only free (there’s a $4.99 ad-free version) and made by a well known company (Griffin), in my tests it’s also one of the higher quality sounding recorders as well. Another neat feature is it works with the acceleromator so if you flip it upside down (to hold the mic up to someone), the UI flips the right way as well. And the other great feature (a few other recorders have this now too) is it’s wi-fi syncing. Download the Windows or Mac client to transfer your recorders to your computer over the air (Wi-Fi only).

5. Tweetie / Twitterfon ($2.99 / Free)

This year mark’s Twitter’s 3rd year at SXSW, and the number of people attending who are also on Twitter is probably upwards of 500 times the number last year. There’s no shortage of Twitter apps for the iPhone, and i’ve used every last one of them enough to tell you that Tweetie is well worth the $3, especially if you post from more than one Twitter account. If you don’t need a bunch of bells & whistles nor multiple account support, Twitterfon is the best free option.

4. Qik / Ustream / Cycorder / PPVideoEnabler (Free)

Want to stream live video from your iPhone? Or recording higher quality video for uploading later? Since Apple doesn’t allow native video recording on the iPhone (yet), all of these 3 apps require your iPhone to be Jailbroken (i’m not going to tell you how to do that, google is your friend). Qik has been pretty great for me the last 6 months or so, and supports rebroadcasting to Mogulus. It also archives your streams for future viewing. Ustream.tv is the new kid on the block and has had a few growing pains, but it’s a good option as well. And lastly, Cycorder takes much higher quality uncompressed videos. Keep in mind these files are pretty large, so don’t expect to transfer them over 3G. PPVideoEnabler allows videos recorded via Cycorder to be uploaded via PixelPipe (see #1 below).

3. Snapture / CameraBag / Darkroom ($7.99 / $2.99 / Free)

Snapture is another jailbroken app, but it’s like the default iPhone camera on steroids. This is easily my favorite jailbroken app. CameraBag is an App Store app that allows you to manipulate photos to a number of different effects (Polaroid, B&W, etc.). Darkroom is also an App Store app, but it’s main feature is that it uses the acceleromator to take steadier photos than you can get from the default camera.

2. Google Maps (built-in)

Probably the most helpful iPhone app is actually the built-in Google Maps. Since the 2.2 update introduced walking directions, Google Maps is even more useful at SXSW. My suggestion is to add all of the Austin venues you plan to attend, your hotel, and other Austin landmarks to your address book. That way you don’t have to waste time or battery searching online.

1. PixelPipe (Free)

And my #1 recommended app for SXSW is mostly because of it’s versatility. PixelPipe allows you to upload photos (and if you’ve jailbroken your iPhone, videos) to various online sites (Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, SmugMug, Twitpic, YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) all at once. And since the file is uploaded to PixelPipe’s server first, then distributed to your “pipes” (destinaton/accounts that you setup and enable), so you only have to upload your file once from your phone to distribute it to various sites. The app allows titles, tags, as well as allowing you to specify albums/folders on your destination “pipes”. the PixelPipe app allows you to resize your photos automatically to 1024×768 or 800×600, in additon to the default original size (1600×1200) before uploading, thus uploading faster and saving your battery.

Battery Tips

The iPhone’s one big downfall is it’s battery, so whatever you can do to squeeze every little bit of juice per charge out of your battery, the better.

1. Brightess

Adjust your brightness as low as you can while still being able to use your phone. At night/indoors be sure to turn your brightness all the way down.

2. Turn off Locaion Services

Sure there’s a lot of great uses for the iPhone’s built-in GPS, but it’s not needed all the time. If you know you’re not going to use the GPS function for a few hours, it’s worth the 10-15 seconds it takes to turn it off in the Settings.

3. Turn off 3G

The biggest drain on the iPhone’s battery is also one of it’s best new features, but unless you’re streaming videos, uploading photos, or doing heavy browsing, your phone will do just fine on Edge. You can always toggle 3G on for the times you want a faster connection.

4. Turn off Push / Lower or Turn off Fetch

Unless you truly need new emails to show up instantly (use SMS in that case), you’ll save a lot of battery life by turning off Push email and either lowering the automatic email Fetch time to an hour or longer, or setting it to manual.

5. Carry a charger / Buy a battery pack

The charger that ships with the 3G iPhone is pretty damn small and pocketable, so it can’t hurt to keep it with you on the go. Another option is one of the many battery packs available for the iPhone, which will allow you to charge your phone on the go, and in most battery backup cases, will give you at least 2x more battery life than the default iPhone battery.

Have any apps you recommend or battery tips? Post them in the comments! And remember SCHED* has a pretty sweet iPhone view!