Happy Friday, folks. This week in real life, Brian invests in the Bose SoundLink after his pet rabbit destroyed his previous setup (no, really), while our own Andy Bowen explains why he'd rather use the DropCopy app than DropBox, much less AirDrop. And Darren, who racked up frequent flier miles this week traveling out to Google I/O, details the virtues of Worldmate over TripIt. Bunnies! Apps versus apps versus more apps. All that, just past the break.
The Bose SoundLink seemed an ideal solution, a standalone speaker that can be synced to multiple Bluetooth devices, and that's small enough to cart around. It's not particularly light, but it can fit in my messenger bag, and is a lot easier to pick up than a standard home stereo system. Granted, it's not quite as ritzy as a multiple-room system, but despite my love of music, I'm not really trying to impress anyone with my audio setup.
The Bose has big enough sound to fill the rooms of my apartment. It's a warm and full sound, and breathes a lot more life into those Thelonious Monk records than the computer speakers I've been relying on. The whole thing's pretty easy to set up, and being able to play Spotify tracks off of my iPhone the minute I get home is a nice bonus. I've run into a few syncing problems on occasion, but it's nothing that can't be remedied by holding down the Bluetooth button atop the speaker. Meanwhile, the range is good, but not great -- my dream of pushing music from my house into the back yard is often met with hiccups in the stream.
Those minor issues aside, this thing has been an awesome addition to apartment living. Since I picked it up, not a day's gone by that I haven't used it -- and that includes recent trips to Boston and LA, when I kept the speaker stashed in my luggage.
-- Brian Heater
Ideally, I'd like DropCopy to chug along in the background (as it does on OS X). Manually launching the app every time I'm in need of a transfer? That gets annoying. I'd also welcome the ability to share those bits and bytes with my Macbook Pro courtesy of my data plan, and not be limited to a local WiFi network. Cloud apps definitely have the advantage here. Of course, thanks to Apple's third-party app regulations, internal files aren't accessible through DropCopy anyway, and vice versa -- you won't find an "export to DropCopy" option. There are a few ways to sort through the files that you're storing in DropCopy on your iOS device, but other than that there's really no organization at all. Just one folder with many, many files. A falling star perhaps? This app has a temperament: it's 100 percent dependable, 90 percent of the time.
-- Andy Bowen
For those who aren't familiar with the app, it's designed to digest travel information via email. Just shoot over any email with confirmation details (a flight, car rental, hotel booking, etc.) and it'll update your trip and any connected calendars. The Gold edition also keeps tabs on your upcoming flights, alerting you to gate changes, time changes and the like as they're reported -- push notifications here work excellently, except when information isn't delivered to Worldmate from the airlines fast enough. Granted, that's not a Worldmate problem.
Overall, it's remarkably useful for keeping tabs on a schedule that involves well over 80 flights per year (read: mine). But, I do have a few bones to pick. For one, it didn't recognize legitimate Delta flight information for a flight that was 9.5 months out (but flights happening within the next six months were added sans fuss). Two, it rarely understands atypical emails. For example, your casual email conversation about a Homeaway.com rental will probably confuse Worldmate's processing engine, again forcing a manual entry. And lastly, it requires you to forward each piece of your trip to "trips@worldmate.com." TripIt, in contrast, simply looks in your inbox for you and makes updates as new email confirmations arrive -- that's way, way slicker. Of course, TripIt requires a $49 annual subscription for most of its niceties, so for $2.99, I'm more than willing to forgive Worldmate Gold's minor shortcomings.
-- Darren Murph
posted Jun 29th 2012 9:43PM 
